Video Evidence

To me the JFK assassination is most remarkable because of the sheer amount of visual documentation that exists on Lee throughout his life. I first noticed this watching the Frontline Documentary on Lee, and was continually struck by just how often they were able to find photo documentation of  where he was and what he was doing at various points in his life. This of course culminates in the famous Zapruder film which catches the moments before, during, and after Kennedy's assassination. Such evidence before that time would have been considered quite rare, and a valuable piece of evidence in any investigation. And while the Zapruder film certainly has been the backbone for much of the investigation into the assassination, and has helped with ballistics reports, it has also become one of the most (if not the most) controversial pieces of film in the twentieth century.

I think in our current day and age we take it for a given that for most any major event that may happen on any given day there's a pretty good chance someone filmed it. This is due to the widespread use of recording devices, but in addition to that many of these devices are connected to the internet and often make their content available for my viewing pleasure, as well as millions of people around the world. In my opinion the Zapruder Film could be viewed as the harbinger of the visually documented era. And while this may to large degree mean that people can be better informed with first hand documentation, but it also leads to even greater levels of skepticism of the extent to which seeing something happen really means you understand what's going on. It's remarkable really that I can hop on the internet and from the safety of my room watch video footage of war zone action in Libya. It's also remarkable the extent to which imagery can be manipulated, and in many different ways too, not just the photoshop method. In other words while it may be the case that my generation has come to expect an almost omnipotent range of vision throughout the world, I think we've also come to accept the fact that in many cases a simple video falls woefully short of a full explanation.

The distance from History

In a book that focuses on bringing out the human nature of the larger than life historical figure of Lee Harvey Oswald I've continually found myself drawn to him and how I can relate to him and the way he feels throughout the novel. Probably more than any other character in the book I recognize the desire he has to be part of something bigger, to enter history and be recognized. Not to say that I condone the way he's went about doing it, but he really did succeed in catapulting himself into the international spotlight, and he's stayed under a similar level of scrutiny and attention for many decades. His frustration with his lack of a voice and general depression with the state of politics lends a very sympathetic air. To put it bluntly, I can understand why he might have felt so strongly a desire to be a known figure in history when the world has otherwise snubbed him most of his life.

As a result I can't help but compare myself in various ways to Lee. One of the most interesting reflections I have is on the extent to which I, as an individual similar to Lee's level of notoriety for much of his life, might be able to enter in to the limelight as he was able to. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about him I find is the extent to which he is able make himself known without actually having anything particularly noteworthy about him. He's not especially good at anything--while he makes an earnest effort to stay educated and inspired he's by no means a genius, and he has no wealth to speak of that could be leveraged. In fact as I was first reading Libra I was almost annoyed by the extent to which Lee believed he would become a figure of historical controversy. And yet here we are.

While there is a certain extent to which Libra plays with the idea of Lee being driven by "the universe", but I think an even more interesting angle is to consider the idea that there really is nothing special about Lee apart from the fact that he has a desire to make himself known. To what extent would it be possible for me to become the next Lee Harvey Oswald? And I don't mean to suggest that I have plans to assassinate anyone, but the question of how far removed from "history" any of us really are is a legitimate question. I would say that in our contemporary context, with the advent of the internet, being famous is easier than it ever has been. Yet, I think most of us live our lives without any expectation of ever being a part of mainstream history. What Delillo--and even Adam Gopnik when he remarks on the connection between the seedy basement plotter and the president himself--makes us ponder is what really is the distance between the common place person and the historical records. Perhaps that separation is merely one that we live our lives never deciding to try and break out of?

Lee Harvey Oswald bringing us into the Postmodern era

As I sat watching the PBS Frontline episode on who Lee Harvey Oswald was one question kept popping into my mind: How the hell did they get so much of footage and information on the guy? Seriously it's like from every episode in his life historians have been able to find photographs and stories about him, even video footage of him during some points. And it's not even government surveillance that we see, mostly it's either photographs that he himself took, or it's photos and videos that were taken by the people around him. Really this is only surprising to me because of the historical era that it comes from. In our contemporary setting it goes almost without saying that if someone wanted to find a huge amount of voluntarily recorded material on just about anyone it would be available. Social Media plays no small role in this, but mostly it's simply an effect of how widespread cameras and recording devices have become in our society. In Oswald and Kennedy's time however, the amount of digital records of a persons life were way down.

Or at least up until that point in history it certainly was not the case that so much information could be drummed up on an individual. I've heard the Kennedy assassination described as the event that changed the way Television was viewed and I like that idea because it shows how shockingly connected and people had become compared to previously in history. Gopnik in his New Yorker piece describes how "The accepted division of American life into two orders--an official one of rectitude, a seedy lower order of crime--collapses under scrutiny, like the alibi in a classic film noir". The mention of the film noir seems like an especially interesting comparison, given the ties that the mystery genre has to Modernism and how differently the Kennedy case has gone compared to the generic detective story. Where there is a set method and end result for the detective to find in the story, in the Kennedy case there is almost an infinite amount of questioning and intrigue. And as stated above this isn't because of a shortage of facts, quite the opposite. If we knew less than we really do about the case I think it would be entirely more likely that people would accept a single explanation. In reality, the abundance of factual evidence available is what allows conspiracy theorists to raise the questions they do.

I think also this sense of "seeing is not necessarily believing" is another aspect of the Kennedy assassination that seems so linked to the postmodern mindset. Again I would say that in our contemporary setting it wouldn't be at all unreasonable to have suspicions about the extent to which the Media and the U.S. Government are keeping details hidden, or even fabricate them. In addition to this we've also become accustomed to the sense that there can be multiple sides to any given story and all seem true. In this way I find it a fairly compelling argument to think of the assassination of JFK as the major catalyst for the beginning of the postmodern era.

Kevin's white privilege

Inspired by Mr. Mitchell's post at the beginning of reading of Kindred that involved a segment from Louis C.K. on the freedom that white people would have when time traveling to the past I began thinking about what that added to trying to describe the sometimes elusive idea of white privilege. I don't think I have to explain to anyone what it means, but the idea of white privilege is an idea that goes against the official idea that racism and race inequality was done away with during the Civil Rights movement. Apart from obvious socioeconomic examples of race disparities there are more subtle examples of the ways in which white people can remain comfortably out of touch, a capacity granted to them solely by the color of their skin. White males are the obvious pinnacle of this phenomenon, suffering from neither racial nor sexual discrimination. In Kindred we get the taste of both worlds from Dana as our narrator, but also get a taste of what their absence is like through Kevin.

On the whole Kevin is an extremely sympathetic character, if every white guy in the U.S. was like Kevin I think everyone would be quite a bit happier. Regardless of this we still get a crucial cringe-worthy scene where we see the crucial difference between Dana's experience in the slave holding South and Kevin's. He says on page 100, "Weylin doesn't seem to pay attention to what his people do, but the work gets done" to which Dana responds, "You think he doesn't [ay attention. Nobody calls you out to see the whippings". He later claims, Wait a minute, I'm not minimizing the wrong that's being done here" And Dana says, "Yes you are. You don't mean to be, but you are [...] You can go through this whole experience as an observer". This sense that Kevin doesn't quite get the situation the same way that Dana does, that somehow it's dulled down for him, is a pretty good representation of how his physical appearance protects him from these issues. If we view acting as an ability to maintain a comfortable ignorance from the realities of slavery it proves an acting job Dana is unable to maintain indefinitely. Kevin on the other hand has much more luxury to stay removed. Not to say that he comes away unscathed, but where he comes back with a scar on his forehead Dana endures hundreds of scars and loses an arm. In general I think that Kevin provides a good metaphor for what white privilege means: an ability to stay comfortably far removed from racial conflict if so desired, and even an inability to appreciate it in its fullness. 

Race relations linked through time

One of the main criticisms I've heard of Kindred is Butler's use of obvious plot developments to convey her ideas. Personally I think the most ingenious part of her writing is the way she manages to set up compelling scenes. Perhaps it's not hard to tell what she's trying to accomplish with things like time traveling, or explicitly going back to the slavery era, but I find that they still convey very powerful and moving messages. One of the most compelling aspects of the novel to me is the way that Butler manages to bring so much of the focus of the novel onto a reflection of the way that slavery and race issues still reflects itself in our current times.

The most striking example of such to me is the way in which Butler creates a critique on the status of modern day race issues through the constant flickering of Dana's perception of Kevin versus Rufus. Now I don't mean to suggest that at any point does Dana equate Kevin with Rufus, but her state of being often reminded of the physical similarities between the two is no accident on Butler's part. We're given the impression that no matter how far Kevin can try to distance himself from people like Rufus there are literal physical limitations to this in the form of Kevin's skin color. In addition to this we still get a few strangely blundering scenes on Kevin's part that suggest he's not quite as open-minded as he'd like to think. Both he and Rufus find it an appealing idea to have Dana do their letter writing for them, a scene that conjured conflicting images of a supposed ownership from Kevin. In addition to this there's always his somewhat less than adequate attempts to reconcile his admiring statements of how much less brutal slavery seemed.

Despite this I think that on the whole Butler delivers quite a positive message about where we are right now (perhaps even unrealistically so). While somewhat subtle comparisons between Rufus and Kevin reveal a situation more complex than history books may reveal, the overall comparison between the slave era white man and the contemporary white man and there respective relationships to Dana is stark. Where Rufus takes Alice in whatever way he wants at his will, Kevin wins over Dana's love. Where Rufus is slowly crafted by the slavery system into a man capable of horrible things, Kevin resists for over six years remaining true to his ideals. In simple the progress made can be summed up in Rufus' claim that Dana and Kevin can have each other in their time, whereas it's impossible in his. To say that Butler presents a gruesomely accurate and moving portrayal of all the horrors that happened in the slavery era and how they continue to be a big part of our contemporary setting, she simultaneously manages to remind us of the staggering advances that have happened.

Philosophy for Billy Pilgrim

Today in class in light of the two panel presentations I've been thinking about the place that Billy seems to occupy philosophically, either as a nihilist or an existentialist. Now of course Billy doesn't necessarily fit either of these classifications, but I think that for someone who has the "insight" into free will that Billy has those two philosophies seem like they would be pretty close. And related to this I actually don't think that he fits neatly into either one of those roles, but more closely a combination of the two. Throughout most of the novel Billy has a total disregard for the things in his life that we generally consider to be important: his marriage, his business, and most importantly his life. On several occasions Billy has near-death experiences, and seems to be entirely apathetic to them. He sees no value in the continuation of his own life, what most people would characterize as nihilism. On the other hand, he doesn't exhibit the symptoms of despair that are often associated with the nihilistic realization of a lack of free-will or meaning. Instead he seems quite content and happy with the knowledge that he can't change anything. "Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future"(77) and Billy's quite content with that knowledge.

So when I think about Billy's life philosophy earlier in his life I see him as having a mainly nihilistic viewpoint (certainly fatalistic), but exhibiting the happiness that you would generally associate with existentialism if you see them as competing viewpoints. That is, up until after his plane accident. For the first time in what we would conventionally think of Billy's life he feels that he has a true goal in his life: to inform people of the wonderful insights into the nature of time that the Trafalmadorians have helped him understand. "The cockles of Billy's heart, at any rate, were glowing coals. What made them so hot was Billy's belief that he was going to comfort so many people with the truth about time" (35). We see a definite switch from Billy as someone who has a lot of trouble finding enjoyment and purpose in his life to someone who has a definite mission: to spread the truth.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a religious experience for Billy, but I would go so far as to say that his discovery of the Tralfalmadorians has been a spiritual experience of Billy. There are a lot of similarities to someone who claims to have recently undergone a spiritual transformation. Instead of finding Jesus Billy finds the Tralfalmadorians. He goes onto late night talk shows and starts to write his knowledge down in the form of open letters. And it all brings him a great deal of happiness. While I think it's impossible to say whether or not we should interpret Billy's interactions with the Tralfalmadorians as real events, they do give us interesting and useful insights into Bill as a character. 

Would the real Billy Pilgrim please stand up?

One of the biggest problems I have when discussing Slaughterhouse Five is that I'm never certain who exactly we're referring to when we use the name Billy Pilgrim. What I mean by this is that there seem to be many different planes that Billy exists on, at least as far as he exists in our novel. For instance there's the constant linear story of his actual wartime experience in Germany, and then there are the "jumps" where we exit WW2 and enter some different period of Billy's life. For instance as we've been fairly steadily working our way through Billy being captured by the Germans, "Bill traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade mechanical owl [...] Billy had fallen asleep while examining a female patient who was in a chair on the other side of the owl" (71). So the question now is do we read this as Billy experiencing his life linearly or not? I'm not sure I can provide an answer, because I think it's supposed to be unclear. Later it says, "Billy was starting to get worried about it, about his mind in general. He tried to remember how old he was, couldn't. He tried to remember what year it was. He couldn't remember that, either." (71). So it seems to me like there are two explanations for how we read Billy as a character. Either we read his experiences as a single individual who is losing touch with reality in the form of his mental state deteriorating, or we read him as literally traveling through time periodically to different sections of his life.

Now I know there's a certain amount of debate over whether or not it's a valid reading of the book to try and decide if Billy is mentally unstable or not. As far as I'm concerned we don't even need to touch the topic, because what really matters here is Billy's perception of how he functions in time. And I think we can all agree that's messed up. Regardless of the "reality" of the situation it can be universally agreed upon I think that Billy Pilgrim has an extremely disjointed sense of his own self. For instance, "He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next" (29). Now I'm not sure I could adequately support the idea that his wartime experiences are specifically responsible for his disjointing from time, but he does say, "that he first came unstuck in time in 1944, long before his trip to Tralfamadore" (38). I do think that it would be an entirely reasonable reading of the book to see this as in part a commentary by Vonnegut regarding what constant interaction with death can do to a soldier's perception of his life. It causes both us and Billy to wonder if the real Billy Pilgrim would please stand up.