Proposal Paper: The Kennedy Assassination and Conspiracy
For my research paper, I'm going to talk about the Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy that followed it. When the Kennedy assassination occurred, there was an immediate fallout in the press. With people beginning to question the who's and the where's of the exact logistics of the assassination, photographs and film were implemented for the first time to bring about a sense of truth. Sadly, with some frames from the film being reversed in LIFE magazine, people began to doubt the validity of photographs, a medium that had always boasted a complete depiction of reality, a conspiracy was born that has still managed to permeate the interest of historians today.
The questions/topics I will be addressing/looking at are all in regards to how the Kennedy assassination first instance in American history where film was used to validate an event, closely followed by how this lead to the decline in photographic evidence that was still heavily used during the 1960s. Moreover, the contradictory accounts and interviews that were noted and ignored by the government (which lead to the Kennedy conspiracy) makes one question the government's intentions. Why didn't they try to find another shooter? Why did they disregard the Grass Knoll? Why are the files still locked? Why does the government still insist on the Magic Bullet theory when it was noted repeatedly that one bullet was impossible? All these questions can simply be answered by: the photographs did not support the accounts, not the film.
Research Material
For my research material, I will mainly be examining the Zapruder film, the film that actually depicts Kennedy getting shot, followed by the images from LIFE magazine, the magazine that published the still images of Kennedy's assassination.
Moreover, I will be looking at Jim Garrison's 1967 Playboy interview where he admits to a conspiracy and three semi-autobiographical books that revolve around three prominent people that were there for the aftermath of Kennedy's assassination: the surgeon Charles Crenshaw and journalists Edward Epstien and Mark Lane.
