[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

otherwise, is not a mere side effect of history or a glittering distraction from it but is
instead integral to it, playing an active role in the making of that history.” Lubin argues
that, “Our perceptions of JFK and his era, not to mention our own, rely entirely upon
endlessly replicated and infinitely elastic chains of images from art, literature, and
media.” 16 These images include the Zapruder film of the assassination, and the widely-
seen photographs of Oswald posing in the backyard with a rifle and of Jack Ruby’s
murder of Oswald.
Similarly, Art Simon in Dangerous Knowledge explores art and film about the
JFK assassination, including Hollywood movies, Andy Warhol pop-art, underground
cinema, and photographs. He argues that these images have been the subject of a
“complex struggle over access to and interpretation of film and photographic imagery,”
and that the debate over who killed JFK “raised crucial questions about who should
assume the authorship of history.” 17
Professor Barbie Zelizer of Temple University contends that the news media’s
coverage of the assassination also was the focus of an intense struggle over who had the
authority to tell the story of the murder of John F. Kennedy. She studied the media’s
coverage over the years since the Kennedy assassination and concludes that journalists
had a professional stake in upholding the Warren Commission’s findings. According to
Zelizer, journalists, especially those in the television industry, saw the official version of
16
David M. Lubin, Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003), xi., xiii.
17
Art Simon, Dangerous Knowledge: the JFK Assassination in Art and Film,
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 2.
13