Reactions to the Zapruder Film

I'll start here: this is more about me than the film itself, but the main point of it is the film's impact on me. I have gone through different phases in my life so far, usually marked by different obsessions, such as cars, sports, composing music, and, relating to this post, US Presidents.

2009. In fourth grade, I became more and more engrossed in US History, in particular, presidents (coincidentally, this was the same year as the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birthday). Lincoln was obviously a favorite of mine, but I was also drawn to Kennedy. It may have been his charismatic nature or his presidency at a crucial time in America's history, but JFK soon became one of my favorites. Now I do realize that he didn't really do a whole lot for America and little to nothing for the Civil Rights Movement despite supporting equality. But that's beside the point.

2015, May. Fast forward six years, and I was a Uni sophomore studying for spring finals in the library when I noticed a book in the "new books" area by James L. Swanson. I immediately recognized his name from his famous novel Chasing Lincoln's Killer: The Ten Day Manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. This novel, however, was regarding a different assassination: that of President Kennedy. It included a synopsis of the assassination from an objective view based on what we know (which sort of means it wasn't really objective since it followed the 'lone gunman' theory, but whatever, I guess it did acknowledge other possibilities), and had sketches of bullet trajctories and sniper positions.

But the important part I found is that it was mainly following Abraham Zapruder's film of the assassination that many historians are citing certain frames of from memory now. That night, probably Thursday the 21st of May for history's sake (last day before finals) I watched the Zapruder film on my school laptop, on a YouTube video similar to the one we saw Tuesday in class. The frame everyone talks about is frame 313, in which the fatal "third Oswald shot" is landed on the right side of Kennedy's head. Of course, while watching it, I was pretty sure Oswald fired that fatal bullet, but it did look like it came from the front.

2016, May 10. Fast forward one year and here I am, watching this film again in class. I've just read the chapter "22 November", which of course, deals with Raymo Benitez shooting the fatal bullet himself and my last thought is this: DeLillo does a great job of interpreting the Zapruder film so that the first shot ("the one that missed") hits Kennedy, the second ("supposed to have hit both") hits Connally before Raymo shoots Kennedy dead and Oswald misses, satisfying the condition that one bullet is found without making its mark. Genius or just another way to sell the conspiracy point of view? Your call.

Character Comparsons: Ragtime and Libra

We've compared a lot of characters in different ways this year in History as Fiction. For example, Dana draws many parallels to Billy Pilgrim in the way both travel back in time. Or perhaps we compare Coalhouse Walker to Hinckle Von Vampton as each toils without rest to achieve their respective goals. Libra presents more history than fiction, and as such, character comparisons are different and in some cases more difficult to manifest. I certainly can't think of a character from the other four books that matches George de Mohrenschildt. A couple Mumbo Jumbo characters could possibly be compared with the conspirators of the assassination, but I think the most clear-cut comparison is that of Lee Harvey Oswald and Mother's Younger Brother from Ragtime.
Perhaps the main point of comparison is that Oswald and Younger Brother are young men trying to find their identities and what they believe in. Mother often worries about her brother's stability, as does Lee's mother in the Bronx when she finds out he hasn't been showing up at school. Furthermore, each character has many different involvements. Younger Brother begins the novel following Evelyn Nesbit around but eventually encounters Emma Goldman who somewhat shapes him for other causes such as those of Coalhouse Walker Jr. or Emiliano Zapata. Lee somewhat knows what his passion is, as he obsesses with Marxism and thus is led to Russia (and later Mexico and Cuba), all of this after serving in a marine camp in Atsugi. So both characters jump around different places and people.
But I think it's the personality of the two that makes them most alike. Both of these people tend to keep to themselves when they aren't involved with another pursuit. Younger Brother is portrayed as lost, introverted, and maybe in some sort of existential crisis, evidence coming from when he could have told Coalhouse of his intentions of justice and progress toward a better day, but instead simply says, "I know how to blow things up". Lee keeps to himself, dodging school, riding the subway, wandering around the Bronx Zoo, and often playing the role of the confused youth who is maybe a bit troubled and in search of an outlet for his passions. There's something to be said about the way characters with close relations react around these two characters: Mother often worries about her brother the way Marguerite Oswald does about her youngest son.
And perhaps the most striking similarity: both, as they develop physically and emotionally, are waking to America, to the injustices and the things they would rather set right about our country. Lee believes the capitalist system is unreasonable, while Younger Brother has to take a stand against the injustices of the exclusive American Dream and how it wasn't necessarily available for all.

The Many Forms of Time Travel

Too many sources to count deal with the abstract idea of time-travel, that, without human knowledge of exactly how this is possible, we can envision jumping to periods of time outside of our own. But they all have different ways of going about it, and different implications for the future. To begin with, movies, such as Back to the Future, often have time travel existing with a caution: any actions done in the past directly influence the future. Kindred seems to follow this model pretty closely, and we get the sense from both of these examples that Marty McFly and Dana will both cease to exist in the future if they don't perform their necessary tasks. This is one way to go about explaining time-travel.

Kurt Vonnegut has a different way of writing about this concept. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim does not merely see his past/future self, instead he is his past/future self. He can't change his actions or his past/future; however, Billy is able to adopt a bored attitude that definitely influences what his compatriots in the train car say to him. So Billy has some fluctuation between observer and participant in his time-travel experience. But the important (relevant) idea is he is his past self, not merely watching.

Every book about time-travel seems to have a different interpretation and way of describing this phenomenon. My personal favorite is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the one book in the series with no Voldemort involvements!). In the third installment of the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling uses magic to justify having time-travel in her book. The element I like most about the nature of her time travel is that Harry does see himself hours earlier but everything he does completes his memory of what had happened before and answers his previous questions (read chapters 16-21 if you're interested, particularly 21). Basically, there is no way Harry can destroy a space-time continuum if every action of his simply plays into the past he remembers. In addition, Harry and Hermione go back three hours in time but the gist of it is, they're not always three hours ahead of their past selves, rather, they have three hours before their past selves will be going back in time. Thus, Harry and Hermione must get back to where they were location-wise when they traveled in time to ensure that their story goes on cleanly from other witnesses' perspectives.

Kindred, though, has an interesting storyline in that Dana went back in time not on her own will, but rather as a summoning by a character of that time. Dana does not travel back accidentally like Marty McFly or on purpose like Harry Potter but rather by a force outside of her world in 1976. The plot of Kindred sort of follows along with the standard Back to the Future sets (I actually don't know which was made first, the movie or the book, so I'll just base it on a Back to the Future standard) where Dana has to do these tasks or she will not exist one hundred and fifty years later. Marty McFly, of course, has to keep his real location in time secret, but Dana uses her present and the progress the nation had made from 1819 or so to 1976 for useful means. One, it immensely helps her to at least try and mold Rufus into a respectable, tolerant adult (which still isn't really enough) by coaxing him to adopt some of the polite measures of her time (as seen in "The Fire"). Secondly, being open about her advanced position and ability to save Rufus from his various situations helps Dana get some recognition and, dare I say it, respect from him which she needs in order to save her lineage and free her life from constant callbacks to the nineteenth century.

Does Billy Pilgrim Die?

The last thing I really want to do is put another blogpost out there about how dull Billy is. I have put the above title for the purpose of drawing my audience into reading this, but (spoiler) the following post mostly concerns the effects of time travel and Tralfamadore on Billy Pilgrim. And then, of course, the question the post is titled after. But mostly the effects.
(you may say this is anticlimactic just stating what I'm going to talk about and/or build up to. But the whole of Slaughterhouse-Five is anticlimactic, so...)
Remember when Frozen came out (around Thanksgiving 2013, to give you an idea of how long ago that actually was)? Everyone loved that movie. I was at least thrilled to see a decent Disney musical. The plot was interesting and pulled me into the movie, and Frozen was officially fun to watch...that  is, the first eight thousand times. The excitement of "Let It Go" and everything else really had died out by March of 2014. So it goes.

I feel the same fate has happened to Billy Pilgrim, in the sense where his life becomes a movie. Billy experiences his own life, or at least snippets of it, throughout the course of the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. 
To begin, seeing oneself enter World War II again, or be "picked up" to go to an unknown planet, to re-experience one's life as an optometrist, and so on would be simply fascinating to me or to anyone, but this is where the Frozen analogy comes in: when Billy ends up reliving the scene where Roland Weary leads him on for miles and miles in Germany, the excitement, as evidently shown in the book, vanishes. This is perhaps the scene where Billy Pilgrim seems the least interested, alert, or excited about anything at all, and who can blame him? Having to go through Weary's many iterations of "saved your life again, you dumb bastard", or his childish tales of his father's torture device collection: "do you even know what a blood gutter is?" seems emotionally taxing in the sense that Billy becomes so apathetic he literally gives German snipers another chance at hitting him. His life becomes dull and boring, as well as (if I may say so) overplayed.
What adds to this are his experiences on Tralfamadore: Vonnegut mentions many times that the inhabitants of this planet 460 quadrillion miles away seem to have a very nonchalant attitude about planetary peace, death, and existential questions. I believe their indifference toward many things rubs off on Billy, and obviously while he already doesn't seem to care for many parts of his life. Billy really doesn't make much of his wife's death (compared to many people), or his own death for that matter. Tralfamadore does however seem to give him a passion that he previously lacked: he is now enthralled in science fiction, Kilgore Trout, and spreading the word that these Tralfamadorian creatures actually do exist. He is so passionate about this (well, at least he is the first time he goes through his life) that he secretly escapes from his hospital bed following a ski accident specifically to try and gain publicity for the planet and its flying saucers.
Billy seeing his own death raises a question for me, though, and one that remarkably no one yet has touched on: does Billy Pilgrim ever really die? His being unstuck in time allows him to see his death, and to have some idea of what happens afterward (violet light), but he must have bounced back to a different point after that or he would not be aware of this. Billy Pilgrim's body does eventually die, we know this, but there doesn't seem to be a point coming where his mind and his time-traveling abilities cease to exist. Billy may just go on forever, not being able to change anything in his life, reliving experience after experience again and again.
What a dreadfully boring life that would be.

Jes Grew, Cam Newton, and the Super Bowl

The last Friday before Agora Days, our class had a discussion on relating Mumbo Jumbo and the Super Bowl, in particular, Beyonce's performance and the imagery that very much angered a particular crowd of people watching. But there was also mention somewhere about the role Cam Newton, the Panthers' quarterback played, as perhaps the "pro-Jes Grew" quarterback.

Through Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed sort of invites, even encourages his readers to see the world, its history, and conflicts throughout history through a different perspective, mixing Egyptian mythology with sound and music and casting jazz, ragtime, and blues (and dancing) as an epidemic instead of a popular new wave of music. So when given the opportunity to use the race, culture, and drama of football in a different, Jes Grew-based interpretation, I find the opportunity hard to pass up, myself being a Denver Broncos fan.

Football is a very biracial game, with players often being either African-American or Caucasian. Many different positions include people of different races, but some are dominated by one race. According to a Wall Street Journal* study, 90% or more of defensive backs, running backs, and wide recievers are black. However, the position of quarterback, generally the most important, the main position, is 81% manned by white players.

From these statistics, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton already stands out. He is, of course, black, but not only that, he has a style that defies the standard quarterback: Newton is energetic, strong, and defiant, having the character that some other quarterbacks lack. He the example of one who wants it all and has the drive to go there. Newton nearly got it all after being named NFL MVP on February 6, one day before the Super Bowl. But he still had his sights set on the Super Bowl.

Cam Newton's comments on race and football a week or so before the Super Bowl caused some controversy but do contain some truth. Newton wrote:

"I'm an African-American quarterback that may scare a lot of people because they haven't seen nothing they can compare me to."

There is your Jes Grew quarterback, people. Someone who is unapologetically going against the grain. He has his touchdown dance, his signature leap over defenses, and millions of fans, black and white, who adore him and follow his model of playing. And he has been criticized for his comments, especially if and when they have any racial implications. Interestingly enough, Cam Newton's Super Bowl 50 counterpart on the Denver Broncos, quarterback Peyton Manning, is the epitome of a white quarterback: intelligent, reserved, respectable, and white as a ghost, clashing greatly with Newton (the Broncos also elected to wear white instead of orange in the Super Bowl, and the Panthers wore black. Coincidence?). Take this into consideration. Manning prefers using his brain and his arm to get out of situations, while Newton takes to his size, speed and his strength. Newton is young and in his prime, while Manning is almost 40, shaky, and (hopefully) retiring before next season. The two are basically polar opposites.

The Panthers' 2015 season can be easily compared to the spread of Jes Grew. They started off as a team who had a mediocre group and a decent crowd of followers. But then the Panthers won 14 games in a row and grew in support, jersey sales, popularity, and status. However, in the end, they were defeated by the Broncos in the Super Bowl, ending Cam Newton's dream season much akin to the way Jes Grew was dissolved by Abdul Hamid burning the Book of Thoth. But the Panthers are now favorites to win the Super Bowl next year and are projected to be a power for at least some time, perhaps echoing PaPa LaBas's prediction that Jes Grew will resurface.

*read the article at http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/the-nfl-and-race-by-the-numbers-485/.

Whatifs and Whatnot

In my last post, I talk about E.L. Doctorow's buildup to Coalhouse's initial attack on the Fire Company, so I decided to settle on something less serious. Coalhouse's takeover of the Morgan library,

Throughout the book there are so many coincidences and events that have about a 1% probability of happening. Examples include Houdini crashing his car and meeting the fictional white family, Evelyn Nesbit avoiding the "1900s paparazzi" and by chance encountering Tateh and his girl on the Lower East Side. Emma Goldman pops up multiple times with Evelyn Nesbit and Younger Brother is everywhere just happening to be there at that time: Zapata, Coalhouse, Evelyn, etc.

In the final scene where Coalhouse Walker brings the book to its climax by taking the Morgan Library hostage, there are really so many situations that are just by chance. Many are overlooked, for example, Father, who went to Atlantic City purposely to get away from Coalhouse's further actions, goes back specifically to talk to Coalhouse. Or possibly the fact that Coalhouse could have escaped the situation with the aid of his man when their case became desperate.

Staying within history was probably important to Doctorow, and while he puts in fictional characters and has them interact quite a bit with famous historical figures, he doesn't contradict any historical evidence. He doesn't have one of Coalhouse's men "pull the plunger" on the Morgan Library, or have Evelyn Nesbit marry Younger Brother. But there are still the whatifs.

I love whatifs because they not only allow you to envision so many outcomes from a single decision, but they also sometimes can make you feel fortunate that the path history took was the one it did. Of course, Ragtime isn't totally history, but that point aside, it is historically accurate (without the evidence, of course). Feel free to add your own version of history and ending to this.

If Coalhouse had not agreed to anything but his demands, I feel one of many possibilities could come true as a result, excluding explosion for historical. Either people would enter the Morgan Library and storm Coalhouse and his men before they got to the bomb, resulting in a lot of bloodshed, or the black group (plus Younger Brother) could hold off the stormers and allow Coalhouse to escape. But I think white privilege would win either way in the end, maybe the notion that led Coalhouse to change his demands.

But what about the beginning of the epilogue chapter? It is not directly stated how Coalhouse reacted to the firing squad in front of him, except for a questionable report that he ran. What if Coalhouse had admitted defeat and not wavered? We can guess he would die in the end, but who more could he reach out to in order to spread his message of justice and equality? Or would he become a martyr all around America for his "heroics"? It is impossible to tell.

How Doctorow Sets It All Up

From the moment we read Chapter 23 of Ragtime, in which Coalhouse Walker and his car are abused by firemen, we know that something is brewing inside Coalhouse as he searches for justice. Next, following from the opening moments of Chapter 24 to the dying moments of 26, we see Coalhouse's plight get darker and darker as he searches for fairness in vain.
To begin with, E. L. Doctorow crafts these the first two chapters following the incident with care and meticulousness. What many people miss reading these chapters is that there is a direct reference to what is about to happen, that being Coalhouse's attack on the Emerald Isle Engine Company at the beginning of Chapter 28 that will consume the course of the story from here on. In Chapter 24, the text directly states, "given subsequent events, it is important to mention that little is known about Coalhouse Walker Jr." In this quote, Doctorow sets his story aside and "breaks the fourth wall", actually speaking in a manner where he seems to be talking directly to us for the first time in the novel instead of speaking exclusively for the advancement of the story. Furthermore, there is yet another hint in the following paragraph: "It was widely reported when he was achieving his notoriety that Coalhouse Walker had never exhausted the peaceful and legal means of redress before taking matters into his own hands." There we have it, a direct sentence that Coalhouse will take extreme action in the near future of the book.
Doctorow also does a masterful job of setting up Coalhouse's revenge as Sarah dies, citing Coalhouse as crushed by his fiancee's death and even using his own wedding money to pay for the funeral. And then Doctorow completely departs from the situation at hand after talking about Coalhouse's story for six straight chapters. Chapter 27 focuses once more on the outside world, in particular, Houdini and his new obsessions following the death of his mother. And then at the very end, a giant explosion shakes the theatre where Houdini is performing, signifying Coalhouse's return to the story in a shocking and dramatic manner, as the plot takes its climatic twist.