Shooting Kennedy

by Lubin, David M.

• ISBN13: 9780520229853
• ISBN10: 0520229851
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Jack and Jackie sailing at Hyannis Port. President Kennedy smiling and confident with the radiant first lady by his side in Dallas shortly before the assassination. The Zapruder film. Jackie Kennedy mourning at the funeral while her small son salutes the coffin. These images have become larger than life; more than simply photographs of a president, or of celebrities, or of a tragic event, they have an extraordinary power to captivate--today as in their own time. InShooting Kennedy,David Lubin speculates on the allure of these and other iconic images of the Kennedys, using them to illuminate the entire American cultural landscape. He draws from a spectacularly varied intellectual and visual terrain--neoclassical painting, Victorian poetry, modern art, Hollywood films, TV sitcoms--to show how the public came to identify personally with the Kennedys and how, in so doing, they came to understand their place in the world. This heady mix of art history, cultural history, and popular culture offers an evocative, consistently entertaining look at twentieth-century America. Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, Donna Reed,Playboymagazine, Jack Ruby, the Rosenbergs, and many more personalities, little-known events, and behind-the-scenes stories of the era enliven Lubin's account as he unlocks the meaning of these photographs of the Kennedys. Elegantly conceived, witty, and intellectually daring,Shooting Kennedybecomes a stylish meditation on the changing meanings of visual phenomena and the ways they affect our thinking about the past, the present, and the process of history.

Author Biography

David M. Lubin is Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	ix
1 Twenty-six Seconds	1	(38)
2 "Gentle Be the Breeze, Calm Be the Waves"	39	(28)
3 A Marriage like Any Other	67	(38)
4 Blue Slay, Red Roses	105	(38)
5 Hit the Road, Jack	143	(20)
6 Kennedy Shot	163	(30)
7 The Loneliest Job in the World	193	(24)
8 Down in the Basement	217	(34)
9 Salute	251	(38)
Notes	289	(24)
Select Bibliography	313	(6)
Picture Credits	319	(4)
Index	323