European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 21, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Cover Story the assassination from fhe cover where were you when it Happy cd Mathon a More reasonable question for those who Are Tike my self younger might be where were you when you first saw the zapruder film Mudio multimedia a Seattle software company is offering the Juk assassination a visual investigation which allows owners of cd rom interactive. Computer systems Access to five computer generated views of the Kennedy assassination each View trac ing the trajectory of bullets As postulated by the Warren report the House select report and three other theories. The animation is a digitization of the zapruder film. It gives hard Core conspiracy theorists Access to a Long cherished dream to actually enter the zapruder film. The networks have been with the surprising exception of Fox television performing a similar in tar the dream function with shows that aired mostly this past week. Their offerings trotted out in a mood that might Echo the rehashing of an anniversary of Tupperware or Barbie operate on Var ious Levels from sentimental desperation for a Narra Tive to. A frosty Speaks for itself documentary gaze. Witness Abc s fatal deception mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Helena Bonham Carter plays Marina Oswald before during and after the assassination. The merchant Ivory based actress forges ahead bravely in a Rote that essentially screams Valerie  dedicated viewers could pair this with who was Lee Harvey Oswald a nonfiction portrait of the Assassin on pcs today and tuesday Abc is offering a four hour dramatization of Nigel Hamilton s Juk reckless youth last year s biography covering the president s first 29 years which rankled some critics for portray ing Rose Kennedy As Dotty and the patriarch Joe As an ogre. And on lbs there is Jack a documentary com piled from Home movies and news footage two hours of Black and White and color film Stock. It s a Bruce Weber like spree of sultans flapping Canvas Foster Grant sunglasses Foamy beaches bristly necks and Blue skies. An added Bonus the 1960 Kennedy Nixon debates look just like nirvana s in Bloom video on mtg there is also lbs reports who killed Juk the  chapter Dan rather on the sixth major investigation of the assassination which involves another. Showing of the zapruder film. Then there is the inevitable round of specials from the news divisions and the talk show circuit. Larry King has already announced that today he will inter View new makers about where they were when they heard the news of the assassination. There will be over1 a dozen shows in All covering the usual bases. And just wait Fox could still sur prise us with a zapruder episode of the Simpsons. It would certainly be More inventive and possibly More insightful than much of what will end up Mak ing the 30th anniversary of the event a confusing blur of demographic pornography targeted at those 35 and older. Younger people beware you Are some one else s memory slave these Days. I was a born on a Canadian nato base in Europe 692 Days before the Dealey Plaza assassination. I have no memory of that Day in Dallas although peo ple just a year older than me seem to Harbor vague Kennedy memory flashes. I believe i was born on some sort of Cusp on the right hand Side of the Ful Crum that divides the population into those who remember and those who Don t. For the memory free Juk becomes one More fragment to be Cut and pasted in the scrapbook of personal political identity. His life becomes just As much province of tabloids As history books. Was he the sex president a Genius the backache presi Dent is he still alive and hiding in Idaho and whatever happened to that Pillbox hat a Halston ? speaking of that Pillbox hat Here s another ques Tion. What if there had never been a zapruder film consider that. Without the zapruder film there would never have been the visual Touchstone for three decades of questions about what really Hap president Kennedy and his Nephew Stephen Smith head for a Jet at Andrews fab md., on their Way to easter vacation in Florida in 1961. Opened. Its 36-or-so crucial frames open the Gates to All our other tabloid fears and curiosities. The zapruder film allows people to ruminate Long past the Point after which there is nothing left to say. Post modernists would say that without the zapruder film there would never have been a Rock group called the dead Kennedy no plastic Devo hairdos and certainly no Juk the movie. There would have been no tabloid nonsense about Juk and Marilyn about Juk and aliens. Without the assassination without its subsequent showings on to and the photo spreads in life Magazine without the endless re looping of the zapruder film in the collective brain the Kennedy administration would today be considered in the same Calm tones used for the Johnson administration. Without All that the Honor of becoming the first president tinged with Post modernity would have quite rightly gone instead to Ronald Reagan. But whereas the Reagan administration was Al most entirely Post modern based As it was on cynically simulated behaviour and the ironic divorce of statement from Content the Kennedy administration was largely pop. Perhaps it was the Only True pop administration. Everything the Kennedy family with its to Star looks and its four member consumer perfect configuration touched turned to pop the Bay of pigs crisis astronauts the Berlin Wall sail boats Hyannis port and hair. The inherent pop Ness of the Kennedy administration makes critical analysts of it difficult and for future generations maybe even impossible. History will probably know with some degree of empirical precision what sorts of presidents Lyndon Johnson or Jimmy Carter were but Juk can Only be a screen onto which Post modernist citizens project their own notions of what a president can and will be. Will i watch any of the forthcoming Tele shenanigans of probably. No doubt you la find me guiltily glued to whatever package gives the highest amount of super-8 footage containing those Foster Grant Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband s rave on nov. 28,1963, after she it the eternal flame at Arlington National cemetery in Virginia. Sunglasses and White Canvas buffing in the Massachusetts wind. Like most people who look at John Kennedy Long after he himself vanished into a Twilight zone of Fame i find myself across All these years wanting to ride on those sailboats needing to see those Clea Blue skies and trying to imaging what it was like to have been there. Page 4 sunday november 21, 1993