Oliver Stones Jfk essays

Oliver Stone's Jfk essays Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) is about the assasination of United States president John F. Kennedy as he passed through Dealy Plaza in Dallas Texas on the 22nd of November, 1963. This film seeks to raise concerns that had been building up for some time about the nature of Kennedy's murder. It is a film that seeks to raise a new myth surrounding the assassination that will, in Stone's own words, "interpret history in order to create lasting universal truths...Our film's mythology...hopefully...will replace the Warren Report, as Gone With the Wind replaced Uncle Tom's Cabin, and was in turn replaced by Roots and The Civil War." (pg. 201, The Cinema of Oliver Stone) The Warren reprt is the official investigation that took place regarding Kennedy's murder which concluded that Kennedy was killed by "lone nut" Lee Harvey Oswald who acted alone in the murder and was in turn killed by vigilante Jack Ruby who was also acting alone. Though this is the official conclusion reached in the case it has been suggested that, even before the movie was made "depending on whose poll you quote, between 55 and 75 percent of Americans today believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy." (Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr., The Saginaw News, December 21, 1991) That is to say that, after the conclusion was reached by the Warren report, most Americans found it hard to believe that Oswald was acting alone for a number of reasons and came to their own conclusion that he must have been part of a larger plan: a conspiracy. Stone became interested in the conspiracy surrounding the J.F.K. murder when he read Jim Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins (1988). Garrison was the District Attourney of New Orleans at the time of Kennedy's murder who, 3 years after the murder actually took place, began to have suspicions that the Warren commision had not found out the entire truth. This led to his becoming obsessed with the case and eventually bringing New Orleans business m...