Looking Back on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – 50 Years Later

Barna Donovan,Ph.D., associate professor of communication at Saint Peter’s University, shares his personal insight on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the 50^th anniversary of this tragic event approaches. Dr. Donovan is the author of the book, “Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Place in the American Conscious,” and teaches a class on conspiracy theories and pop culture at the University.

Q. Why are we still so fascinated by the JFK assassination after all these years, more so than other assassinations like the Lincoln assassination or attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan?

A. This fascination has a lot has to do with John F. Kennedy himself. Not only was he extremely popular, but he and his family had a glamour, a mystique that few other presidential families had. They were young, attractive, energetic and optimistic, almost like a family of movie stars in the White House. It is just too depressing for many to believe that someone as full of life and promise as Kennedy could have been killed so easily by a deranged individual like Lee Harvey Oswald. Additionally, since Oswald was killed before he could ever go on trial, the public didn’t have the opportunity to learn more about his motivations. As a result, people’s imaginations wander to mysteries and conspiracies even though there is no solid, incontrovertible, definite evidence for such conspiracies.

Q. Is the fascination with the assassination merely because some people feel there are unanswered questions about the JFK shooting or is there a deeper social and psychological need to keep the mystery and speculation about JFK alive?

A. The JFK conspiracy culture is definitely rooted more in psychological needs than in unanswered questions. In fact, there are far fewer unanswered questions than the conspiracy mythology in pop culture suggests. The kind of grand conspiracy imagined by conspiracy theorists, involving the military, organized crime, the police, the FBI, the CIA, all the usual suspects, would have been impossible to conceal for all these years. However conspiracy fans seem to think that larger than life have to be killed by larger than life villains. John F. Kennedy was such a larger than life president. He had stood up to the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis and brought the world back from the brink of World War III. He appeared to be the perfect real life embodiment of an action hero president or a superhero president. Therefore Lee Harvey Oswald just does not seem worthy enough of an assassin for JFK.

Q. How did the JFK assassination create the “modern era” of conspiracy theories? They existed before the JFK assassination, but this particular murder changed the cultural landscape and changed conspiracy theories.

A. The JFK assassination changed the focus of conspiracy theories from looking for enemies outside of the country to looking for enemies rooted deeply within the American system. Before Kennedy’s assassination, Americans were afraid of enemies like anarchists working on destabilizing the country on behalf of foreign enemies, or Nazi sympathizers and spies during World War II or communist subversives doing the U.S.S.R.’s bidding. JFK conspiracy theories changed this focus and claimed that the real enemies were within the American system. The JFK conspiracy theories claimed the real enemies were rooted within respected institutions like military, the intelligence community, the police forces and big business.

Q. How are the effects of the JFK assassination still being felt today?

A. For good or ill, the effects of the JFK conspiracy theories are still felt today. American culture is much more distrustful and cynical of its institutions than before the Kennedy assassination. While Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers affair, the Watergate scandal and various other political scandals also had a lot to do with making America much more suspicious of its institutions of power, it was the Kennedy assassination that was the first major turning point in inspiring more fear and distrust in our own system. This, of course, can be seen as both a positive and a negative. Perhaps it’s good for people in a democracy to be more suspicious, to question those in power, to be willing to speak back to authority; but the conspiracy culture can also have a dark side. Belief in all-powerful global conspiracies that control everything can also make people apathetic and turn them off from any type of social and political activism. What is the point in being active, they might say, if the system is rigged anyway and “they” are always in control of everything?

Q. Why are we so fascinated by conspiracy theories in general? Why do conspiracy theories crop up after every single major event such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Colorado movie theater shooting or the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting?

A. Another part of the dark side of a conspiracy culture is that it gives rise to all types of conmen and charlatans who can profit off the fears of others. Tens of thousands of conspiracy web pages exist, all claiming to know the hidden secrets about everything from JFK to 9/11 to UFOs to reptilian aliens running the world, and they all have self-published books and independently produced videos they are willing to sell you for a reasonable price. Today conspiracy paranoia is a multibillion-dollar cottage industry.

Q. Will the questions about the conspiracy surrounding JFK ever be resolved? 

A. No. The JFK conspiracy theories will probably never be laid to rest. The JKF conspiracies, just like all conspiratorial beliefs, function the same way as religious belief does and one can never change the mind of a true believer. A conspiracy theory attempts to explain how everything in the world functions and tries to tie everything together. A conspiracy theory says that all unrelated random events are part of a greater invisible design and behind it all is some invisible power that manipulates everything. Of course, for conspiracy theorists, the invisible power is not some benevolent being, but a nefarious cabal that causes all the misfortune and suffering in the world for its own benefit. Therefore those who want to believe will never give up on looking for shadows on the grassy knoll, or a bystander in Dealy Plaza whose neighbor had a brother who lived next to a man who might have had “ties” to the CIA.

Media Inquiries

To arrange a media interview with Barna Donovan, or for additional information, please contact Angeline Boyer, manager of media relations, at (201) 761-6238 or aboyer1@saintpeters.edu.