I have a machine for seeing . . .

Because of the upcoming 40th anniversary, the media is awash with descriptions of the November 22nd, 1963 assassination of JFK. CBC radio’s The Current is on and a Texas doctor describes his memories of the exit wounds through Kennedy’s “thick, bushy, bristly hair” that left bits of exploded brain tissue clinging to it like “angel hair pasta”
Just in time to for my morning tea. . . .
Feeling a bit nauseated, I wondered “what is this popular fascination with the tiny details around JFK’s death?” It is an almost pornographic, fetishitic obsession, yet undeniably beguiling. My postings on the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and on William Gibson’s ( in my view, related) concept of Fetish:Footage, have been engendering a lot of hits on my blog lately, even though I usually write about more arcane things like otaku botany, or the joy of filming postindustrial landscapes from a moving vehicle.
The JFK assassination and the endless conspiratology surrounding it, is definitely one of the defining ur-events of the 20th century, in fact like 9/11- a point of historical fractal bifurcation.
J.G. Ballard in his The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race maps this phase shift metaphorically:

“As befitting the inauguration of the first production car race through the streets of Dallas, both the President and his Vice-President participated. The Vice-President, Johnson, took up his position behind Kennedy on the starting line. The concealed rivalry between the two men was of keen interest to the crowd. Most of them supported the home driver, Johnson. Oswald was the starter. From his window above the track, he opened the race by firing the start gun. It is believed that the first shot was not properly heard by all drivers. In the following confusion, Oswald fired the gun two more times, but the race was already under way. Kennedy got off to a bad start . . . Kennedy went downhill rapidly. After the damage to the governor, the car was shot forward at high speed. An alarmed track official attempted to mount the car, which continued on its way, cornering on two wheels . . . “

The chaos that unfolded, propagated like a nuclear shock wave through the popular culture of the day and continues to scorch us, even now.
Zoned out in front of satellite TV, I was surprised to see one of my favorite Godard films –Pierrot le Fou– come on, albeit (sadly) in the dubbed version. Nevertheless, I got my fix of the achingly beautiful Anna Karina wreaking carnage with “the same rifle that killed Kennedy“, along with the perpetually droll, Jean Paul Belmondo playing Pierrot (“My name is Ferdinand”). Of course all of Godard is Fetish:Footage so I had to bang off a few screen shots with my trusty Digital Elph.