It may be a little fast to be discussing this, but at the risk of being
callous:

John F. Kennedy, jr's tragic death has _been_ the news here for the last
few days. Saturday, three out of five networks carried nothing else all
day, most of sunday, and todays morning news programs have basically
conveyed the impression that nothing else happened this weekend- I mean, we
had a couple of homicides in Atlanta, but these people weren't nearly
famous enough to be the top story in local news... or even one of the top
three.

Whats interesting is how deeply involved media (not just the news media,
but also the tabloid media, the entertainment media, etc.) has been in
JFKJRs life. I've seen the film of him saluting at JFKs funeral about
twenty times this weekend, as well as countless media clips, including the
premiere of George Magazine-media begets media...
Its like a movie thats been running for thirty years. Otherwise, why would
people "all across the country" care at all what happened to this guy? I
mean, yeah, its tragic, but a fatal _car_ crash is basically a weekly
occurance in this city, we have maybe one or two small plane wrecks a year
(all traffic, even air traffic, is heavy here) and no one ever goes to find
out who these people were, or details that tragic story of their family
history. But very few people have actually met JFKJR, he wasn't a public
figure to the extent that he held national office or ran a major
corporation or changed a significant part of our world. I mean, if Bill
Gates-arguably one of the most influential business men of the twentieth
century-wrecked his boat tomorrow, would it be the news all week? He ran a
small, moderately popular magazine and his dad was president 36 years
ago... which means that no american citizen under the age of 60 was old
enough to vote for him.
The connection is through the media and a media myth, a myth that has been
built carefully, in installments, covering the high points and the lows and
skipping the in betweens, slowly building up to the shocking climax... and
for those of us who may have missed all the previous installments, they've
re-run them for us a few dozen times.
I think that this event, the Diana event, the treatment of the Kosovo
crisis, and others, may be pointing the way towards a new understanding of
what a "film" can be... it also includes a body of work surrounding a set
of events or personalities... the JFKJR "film" would include not only news
footage, but also movies like JFK and even "The Rosie Greer" story and "In
the Line of Fire." Not so much the film as the meta-film...
This is not so much a new thing, there was similar talk after the blitz of
t.v. movies surrounding the Joey Butafuco thing a few years ago, and before
that the Iran-Contra scandal (a metevent that continues to this day with
the continuing saga of Ollie North...) but what I would like to do is pose
what may be a new question:
Is there a qualitative difference between film makers like the Coen
brothers, who make first order films that are in a sense narratively self
sufficient, and film makers like Oliver Stone, who concentrate primarily on
involving themselves in an ongoing meta-film (with the exception of NBK,
which was a comment on meta-film making itself-or so says Stone-which would
make it a meta-meta-film).

I say yes, and meme theory creates the basis for that response.
"Fargo" is a meme generator... people saw it, wandered around saying things
to each other like "Oh, yah, you gotta have a breakfast."
"Platoon" is a meme carrier... baseline events and story structures are
repackaged to be transmitted to the next generation... or more explicitly:
The VIETNAM memeplex CREATED "Platoon."
The KENNEDY FAMILY memeplex created "JFK".
But what memeplex created "The Big Lebowski"? It borrowed some bits and
pieces... but for the most part it was outside of established memeplexes.

What we're watching with the JFKJR news story is a continuation in the life
of a memeplex... another set of scenes in the Kennedy family metafilm.
To what extent does this movie influence the behavior of those who were
born into leading roles?


j.daigle




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