Copyright by Kara Alana Mavers 2018 The Thesis Committee for Kara Alana Mavers Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis:

Save Kennedy, Save the World: The Performance of Popular Historiography of the Kennedy Assassination in The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Charlotte Canning, Supervisor

Rebecca Rossen

Katie Dawson Save Kennedy, Save the World: The Performance of the Popular Historiography of the Kennedy Assassination in The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald

by

Kara Alana Mavers

Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication

For PRM Acknowledgements

I am incredibly grateful to all those who have provided academic and emotional support throughout my time at UT. Indeed, it does take a village. Most specifically, I want to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Charlotte Canning who has made an enormous impact on my scholarly work, from introducing me to fundamental historiography texts to providing me with insightful edits and suggestions. In each an every case Dr. Canning inspires me to work harder, write more eloquently and make efficacious scholarship. Thank you for getting me here. I also want to thank Dr. Rebecca Rossen, who in addition to being on my committee has continually empowered me to believe in my own work and continue making scholarship. Dr. Rossen's notes on an early iteration of this topic helped shape and guide my research. For such support, I am eternally grateful. Lastly, I want to thank the final member of my committee Professor Katie Dawson for providing me with practical ways to translate my interdisciplinary interests into pedagogies and museum theater pieces. Such work continues to inspire me.

I also want to thank all of the people who have helped me conduct my research over the past year. Beth Kerr of the Fine Arts Library was consistently helpful in supplying any and every book not located in the library. I am indebted to Liza Talbot of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library for her extensive knowledge of the

Kennedy assassination files; each and every suggestion fundamentally elevated my research. Additionally, I want to thank Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, who helped me work through and realize the complexity of affect theory. Many of her notes given on a seminar paper find their way into this thesis' argument. v Lastly, I want to express my gratitude for those who supported me emotionally throughout the process. To my PPP cohort for always listening. Specifically, Christine and Alexis who both provided me with deeply insightful notes and suggestions and, most importantly, always present shoulders to lean on. To Karen for her unwavering hospitality. To Celina for truly making Austin home and "supporting this family." To

Christian for the consistent love and support. To my mom for quite literally everything, but for the sake of this thesis the steady stream of "energy balls." And finally, to my dad for inspiring me then and motivating me now. Thank you for starting it all.

vi Abstract

Save Kennedy, Save the World: The Performance of the Popular Historiography of the Kennedy Assassination in The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald

Kara Alana Mavers, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

Supervisor: Charlotte Canning

This thesis explores the performance of popular historiography of the Kennedy assassination as provided through a 2017 mock trial by Citizen’s Against Political Assassination, The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald. Popular Kennedy assassination historiography functions as a mythology of American culture, underscoring Manichean themes and symbolically represents a loss of American innocence. Dramaturgically reading popular Kennedy assassination history as myth alongside a 2017 mock trial highlights the ways citizens use theater to actively and affectively write history. As such performance studies, dramaturgical analysis, cultural studies and affect theory helps elaborate on the subjective and cultural dimensions of performed historiography in Texas V Oswald and other pop culture iterations.

vii Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Introduction...... 1

Description and Significance ...... 12

Literature Review...... 16

Methodology...... 22

Chapter Breakdown & Conclusion ...... 25

CHAPTER 2: Reading CAPA’s Mock Trial: How the Courtroom Dramatizes History ... 28

Courtroom as Setting...... 34

The Actors...... 37

Putting History on trial ...... 41

Touching History: Inter(in)animation in Texas V Oswald...... 53

Conclusion...... 65

CHAPTER 3: Kennedy Assassination Popular Historiography ...... 67

You’ve Heard of the Kennedy Myth, But What About the Assassination Myth?.... 71

JFK as History on the Kennedy Assassination ...... 82

Conclusion ...... 88

CHAPTER 4: Conclusion ...... 90

Bibliography...... 96

viii CHAPTER 1: Introduction

I became a historian because of Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. While this statement might incite audible gasps from practiced historians; such a reaction is, to some extent, well warranted, as JFK is synonymous with conspiratorial conjecture and fantastical historiography of the Kennedy assassination. However, my early exposure to a

film that so thoroughly engaged in restaging the history of the Kennedy assassination captivated me. I was fifteen years old when my dad showed me the film for the first time and being that it was his favorite movie, he curated an eight-hour long viewing and discussion that took place over two nights. The experience was thrilling, mainly because, of my father's passion to teach Cold War history and delve into the injustices of the assassination. It was as contagious as Stone's explosive film. I remember these moments so specifically: my dad would pause a scene to explain, my ears would perk, and heart would race, with every new detail I felt something. Intrigue. Passion. Suspense. With every new detail I felt like I was solving a mystery.

Our mutual fascination with how the film JFK told history fostered a relationship of teaching, learning and camaraderie between my dad and I. However, it also sparked my own deep obsession with JFK's history and legacy. I was moved. I started to deeply care about modern US history in a way that I did not understand. I felt like I knew a secret about the Cold War that not even my history teachers would discuss. My fascination with Kennedy's history drove me to get a degree in US history, but as a

1 practicing historian, I came to terms with the complexities and nuances of Cold War history and JFK's lasting legacy. Yet my contact with conspiracy-theorist-rage fostered my interest in understanding how historical performances, like JFK, become ways of remembering and reimagining popular histories like the Kennedy myth. For such performances facilitated similar emotional reactions for both my father and me decades apart. The performed history of the Kennedy assassination espouses the ways popular narratives emotionalize history in a way that maintains the impassioned interests of amateur historians, like my father, years later.

Thus, the performance of history matters to the ways one understands how history is made and consumed by the public. As a discipline, history often symbolizes true stories about the past. Yet, historiography proves such popular understandings to be erroneous, as historian Michel-Rudolph Trouillot succulently writes, "words are not concepts and concepts are not words," and the "ambiguity," in this relationship demonstrates "the ways in which what happened and that which is said to have happened are and are not the same may itself be historical."1 Historical narratives define, claim and erase; therefore, historiography is a subjective practice. Such a claim positions the historian as an integral part in the history making process, as "the historian meets the double demand of expressing what existed beforehand and filling lacunae with facts."2 Consequently,

1 Michel-Rudolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 4. 2 Michel De Certeau, The Writing of History, Trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 12. 2 history exists as a product of a historian's interpretation and narrativization, always functioning in relation to the present moment and "presuppositions."3 Even more so, the popularizing of narratives for mass consumption through performance, like the Kennedy assassination, further elaborates on the subjectively cultural dimensions present in history as myth. The performance of history provides a distinct snapshot that captures the ways these subjectivities exist in history, "[p]erformances about historical events reveal ideological preferences and position within the specific social and the cultural context in which they have been created and performed."4 Ultimately, to understand history is to understand the moment in which it was written and/or performed.

The use of public performance as a historical method informs the work of the US based political non-profit organization Citizen's Against Political Assassination (CAPA).

CAPA's move to interrogate the history of the Kennedy assassination through a publicly performed mock trial, The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald, fundamentally expresses the ways performing history, both interrogates the past and represents contemporary desires. As seen in both JFK and Texas V Oswald, Kennedy assassination historiography functions as an explicit example of how history is consumed and generated en mass. As such, it begins to take the form of popular history--myth. To explore CAPA's return to this historical moment further contributes to the transformation of history into myth,

3 Ibid., 23. 4 Freddie Rokem, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre, (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000) 24. 3 further suggesting the porous nature of historical construction. This construction is ripe for symbolic appropriation that speaks to national values and tropes.

Since its founding in 2016 CAPA has intentionally worked to raise awareness about the dangers of political assassination by focusing in, in particular, on the lasting injustices of the Kennedy assassination. CAPA's website defines their key mission as:

"We oppose the use of political assassination as a means to obtain or maintain power and are committed to support those who determine the truth, seek justice and educate people on the dangers assassination poses to our society.”5 Despite CAPA’s website detailing other famous cases of assassination, their primary focus is on the ambiguities of the

Kennedy assassination, and its legacy of unresolved feelings towards the Warren Report.

CAPA argues that the Warren Report, the 816 page document detailing the finds of the

1963-64 investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy, is "invalid" compared to how "[m]ost people believe with good reason that one man alone could not be responsible for these crimes," and by so doing elevates the voices of popular dissent.6

Ultimately, it is CAPA's contention that: "The truth remains hidden as long as the government records on these assassinations remain sealed from the public."7 In order to uncover this truth, CAPA's website lists a series of things they must do, which includes:

"Analyze the new records and educate the American people," "engage in a public/media

5 Citizens Against Political Assassination, "Mission Statement," (2017) Website. http://capa-us.org/capa- mission-statement/. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 4 effort," "Find the historic truth," and "Seek Justice."8 Therefore, it is important to understand that CAPA intentionally turns to the mock trial as a way to actively do the tactics listed above. Texas V Oswald, as a form of public performance, is implemented to allow CAPA to reexamine the 1963 ballistics and forensic findings with "twenty-first century techniques," through the performance of legal formalities. By so doing, CAPA seeks to as to ascertain a truth they feel has been hidden.9

The 2017 Texas V Oswald is not CAPA's first mock trial on the Kennedy assassination. In fact, CAPA’s co-chair (and Texas V Oswald defense attorney)

Lawrence Schnapf wrote upon CAPA’s founding in 2016, that one of their many intentions is to hold a “series of mock trials at leading law schools around the country to eventually file a petition for a court of inquiry in Texas to expunge

Oswald’s arrest,” they are intentionally using the mock trial in order to enact political change and correct the historical record.10 In addition, CAPA's website lists various ways for members to get involved through volunteering on various committees and paying dues to help with lobbying.11 All of these opportunities are meant to facilitate the political work they are trying to do. Like lobbying, mock trials function as a means to generate political change by addressing the public, in

8 Ibid. 9 Citizens Against Political Assassination, "2017 Events," (2017) Website. http://capa-us.org/events/. 10 JFKFacts, “From Citizens Against Political Assassination, Lawerence P. Schnapf comment,” (April 30, 2016). Website. http://jfkfacts.org/citizens-political-assassinations/. 11 Citizens Against Political Assassination, "CAPA Committees," (2017) Website. https://capa-us.org/capa- committees/. 5 the hopes of garnering support through the legal presentation of argument and evidence; which ultimately re-turns to this history to re-open the case and seek resolution. For CAPA to emphasize the public performance of the mock trial denotes the power of the mock trial as a tactic in which citizens can tap into the political and cultural saliency of legal processes for political resolve.

CAPA, in collaboration with South Texas College of Law-Houston, held

Texas V Oswald on November 16th and 17th 2017, as an active means for Law students and JFK enthusiasts alike to return to and reinterrogate the history of the assassination. The CAPA website advertised to, "fans of history and courtroom drama will be treated to an insightful and entertaining mock trial," espousing how both, the entertainment and the education of the event are of a similar draw.12

While the total number of CAPA members is unknown or if they are marketing to a specific demographic, the website is intended to perk the interest of those who already know about the Kennedy assassination. Interestingly, the mock trial was proposed without any particular anniversary or commemorative act, ultimately suggesting the popular draw of the Kennedy assassination history alone.

This 2017 return to the Kennedy assassination history highlights how, despite the Warren Report's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to assassinate President Kennedy, many Americans remain unsatisfied. Since the

12 The State of Texas v. Lee Harvey Oswald (2017, Houston: South Texas College of Law Houston), Website. http://www.stcl.edu/home/state-of-texas-v-lee-harvey-oswald-nov-16-17-2017/. 6 Report's publishing in 1964, the assassination has remained a consistent source of historical re-negotiation. Even beyond CAPA's 2017 mock trial, there have been numerous historical reiterations of the Kennedy assassination, as portrayed in movies, television shows, revisionist histories, and conspiracy theories; of which have sought to engage a public that ranges from the generally interested to hardcore conspiracy theorists. The argument for further discovery portrayed in both CAPA's mission statement and various popular culture imaginings, points towards a distrust in government transparency, ultimately naming the federal classification of JFK assassination evidence as proof of a history withheld.

Writing on the 1991 film JFK, film scholar Robert Burgoyne observes,

"[c]ertainly JFK questions history both as a mode of knowledge and as a means of understanding the present...it also affirms a desperate need for history as the foundation of national identity."13 These present-day popular culture iterations, like JFK and Texas V Oswald, become a means by which American citizens actively work to resolve a history they feel unresolved. How then does the CAPA mock trial fit into this narrative of popular culture negotiation? And most importantly, why use a mock trial to discuss a moment 54 years later?

Mock trials, and more specifically a re-enactment of a historical trial, provide a unique combination of honoring the past and renegotiating history

13 Robert Burygoyne, "Modernism and the Narrative of Nation in JFK," Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 96. 7 within the present. In the past mock trials have been a way to publicly demonstrate an active interrogation of history or political agendas; their function is for the public. In particular, the CAPA trial provides an opportunity to re-do the past in order to find truth in the present. The usage of twenty-first-century technologies and forensic practices supplied through advances in computer simulation tests and photo/X-ray reconstruction, suggests the potential for a more accurate conclusion--one that would contradict the Warren Report. The intentional employment of the mock trial allows CAPA to proverbially take the history to court. As performance scholar Rebecca Schneider writes in Performing Remains,

"...the experience of reenactment is an intense, embodied inquiry into temporal repetition, temporal reoccurrence," as such it provides a stage "where then and now punctuate each other."14 CAPA's employment of a mock trial calls on the principles of live theater to invite a public audience to see, learn, and participate in history.

CAPA is not the first to employ the theatrics of the mock trial as a means to present a particular political point to an audience. Historically mock trials have been used as performance strategy implemented by various political organizations to assert a particular academic, political and cultural objective. Scholars highlight how, as a public performance, mock trials actively engage audiences in the

14 Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment, (New York: Routledge, 2011), 2. 8 processes of learning through the 'simulation experience' in courtroom processes, and as such, they uphold the authoritative space of the courtroom's claim to legal authority.15 Their usage became exceptionally popular in the early 1900's, particularly in response to fascist and communist political agendas, as they effectively "[deployed] the spectacle of legal formality," in order to foment support/opposition.16 Particularly important, the usage of mock trials as a means to address and engage the public.

Such scholarship keenly denotes them as a form of political theater, as they expressly attempted to use legal discourse and practices to effectively argue for/against their political point. Historian Elizabeth Wood demonstrates this point in her work on the Soviet Union's usage of mock trials "as a vehicle to publicize the regime's claim to a revolutionary commitment to women's participation and equality."17 Woods elaborates on how as a theatrical strategy, mock trials helped

Soviet women realize and reaffirm their newfound status as a citizen within the new Communism regime through embodied practice. Woods also writes about

Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks' usage of mock trials as a form of Agitprop

15 Dylan Troxel, "Staging a Mock Trial: Educating Nurses on the Importance of Documenting Critical Values"Nursing for Women's Health 16,no. 3 (2012): 243 - 246. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-486X. 2012.01736.x, 244. 16 Louis Anthes, "Publicly Deliberative Drama: The 1934 Mock Trial of Adolf Hitler for "Crimes against Civilization", The American Journal of Legal History 42, no. 4 (1998): 391-410, doi:10.2307/846041, 391. 17 Elizabeth Wood, "The Trial of the New Woman: Citizens-in-Training is the New Soviet Republic." Gender & History 13. no 3. (2001): 524-545, 525. 9 Theater to interrogate their political message and argue for their legitimation.18

Further, legal historian Louis Anthes writes about Arthur Garfield Hays-Counsel's, a member of American Civil Liberties, employment of mock trials as a means to access "legal formalities to engage public attention concerning the rise of German fascism" and further "dramatize publicly the Nazi threat by using the symbolic threat of law."19 Anthes article suggests that mock trials were used to access the stage of authority, as well as access the drama (or more aptly emotion) of theater.

Each historical example highlights how mock trials were deliberately enacted as a means to address and teach the public through the simulation of processes and authority of the legal system.

Additionally, current education scholars have demonstrated how mock trials function as a powerful pedagogical tool for their employment of embodied and dramatized ways of learning and engagement.20 Such scholarship emphasizes that "expertly conducted" trials "raised important points of general principles

18 Elizabeth Wood, "The Trial of Lenin: Legitimating the Revolution through Political Theater, 1920-23." The Russian Review 61, no. 2 (2002): 235-48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3664282, 238. 19 Anthes, "Publicly Deliberative Drama," 402. 20 See: Ahmadov, Anar. "When Great Minds Don't Think Alike: Using Mock Trials in Teaching Political Thought," Cambridge Core: PS: Political Science & Politics 44, no. 3 (July 2011): 625-628. https:// www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/when-great-minds-dont-think- alike-using-mock-trials-in-teaching-political-thought/337819070E2C97D274DED751F2780A4D/core- reader; Troxel, Dyan. "Staging a Mock Trial: Educating Nurses on the Importance of Documenting Critical Values"Nursing for Women's Health 16,no. 3 (2012): 243 - 246. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-486X. 2012.01736.x. 10 about reasoning and the particular skills of lawyers and historians."21 Recognizing the similarities between historians and lawyers helps to make distinct connections between the practices of questioning evidence and claims. Mock trials allow for the first-hand experience to draw these connections, as participants are cast in-role and allowed to practice these processes first hand. As legal scholar David Sherrin further elaborates, "[b]ias and credibility are crucial concepts not only in the historian's work but perhaps even more for a lawyer. In short, mock trials incorporate all of what great social studies teachers look for--claim, counterclaim, selection of evidence, use of evidence, perspective, and sourcing/bias--as put it into a tantalizing package."22 Therefore, mock trials are an effective pedagogical strategy for engaging students in the processes and skills of arguing a case through evidence as well as. In that sense, they ask the audience to participate in the process of critical analysis and evaluation through the 'simulation experience' of courtroom processes.23

Therefore, the usage of mock trials is a means to actively put issues on trial to actively engage the public in questioning current political and cultural events. As historical and contemporary pedagogical scholarship highlights mock

21 Gary Slapper, "History on Trial." The Journal of Criminal Law 79, no. 6. (2015): 375-377. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0022018315615466, 376. 22 David Sherrin, "A Day in Court." Education Digest 82. no 8 ( 2017): 28-37. EBSCOhost (accessed March 21, 2018), 30. 23 Troxel, “Staging a Mock Trial,” 244. 11 trials are a means to democratize knowledge or esoteric ways of knowing, by teaching and realizing these processes for the public. The usage of a mock trial to explore (or re-explore) a historical event, further complicates and binds the relationship between historiography and law as it pertains to democratizing historical memory. For CAPA to employ the mock trial as a strategy to reexamine the Warren Report invites a public audience to participate in the Kennedy assassination's memory and historiography.

The fact that a public audience attended this 2017 mock trial demonstrates the particular popularity of this moment as it pertains to feelings of injustice. The

Kennedy assassination holds a prominent place within national American popular memory, one that remains affectively unresolved and, therefore, in need of constant renegotiation. In particular, the Kennedy assassination historiography is a specific case of mythologized history. As such Oswald V Texas suggests CAPA's intentionality in how the Kennedy assassination history addresses a particular public to re-examine and re-negotiate this history.

DESCRIPTION AND SIGNIFICANCE

Asserting that Texas V Oswald is a form of theater solicits the age-old dramaturgical question: Why here? Why now? These questions frame the way this thesis will explore the reasons CAPA chose to use a mock trial to generate a participatory

12 experience with history--one that is both embodied and affective. By dramaturgically analyzing the 2017 CAPA mock trial, I will seek to answer: How is the mock trial a means to find this emotional and historical resolution? How is the act of reenactment a mode of participating in history and therefore a performance of citizenship? How is the act of reenactment as a mode of participating in history a performance of citizenship?

Historical mock trials allow for a re-turning, a re-doing, and a re-negotiation. Ultimately,

I argue that CAPA's usage of performance (through the mock trial) exemplifies the substantial role the Kennedy assassination plays as a popular myth within American historical memory.

Therefore, the primary question I will answer is: why re-enact the Kennedy assassination trial again and again? Popular mediums such as film and television have portrayed the conspiratorial nature of the assassination multiple times over. The History

Channel alone has dedicated seven specific programs to Kennedy and his assassination in the past seven years (in comparison, there is only one program about Lincoln's assassination).24 Recent scholarship on the assassination in popular culture follows the effects of Oliver Stone's 1992 film, JFK. In "Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of

History: Oliver Stone's Docudramas," media and culture scholar Marita Sturken recognizes the role of Stone's docudrama in popular culture history as one that asks the

24 "List of Programs Broadcast by History (TV Channel)," Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Acc. October 21, 2017, April 5, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_programs_broadcast_by_History_(TV_channel). 13 viewer to "participate in a speculation about history."25 As such it reorients a practice of mistrust based in ways of knowing history. Why do Stone and CAPA return to this history? Ultimately, Sturken suggests, "[t]he assassination of John F. Kennedy has been read in retrospect as a primary moment in America's loss of innocence. It is mythologized as the moment when the US went from a nation of promise, good intentions, and youthful optimism to one of cynicism, violence, and pessimism."26 It is a history already steeped in emotion, which begs to be repeated.

As a form of public performance, the mock trial provides an active, embodied way for actors and spectators to participate in making history through repetition. While the CAPA trial does not explicitly detail itself as a form of theater, the theatricality inherent in its public display of history and engaged audiences espouses a spectacle to be viewed. Specifically the form of the mock trial functions to implicate the audience as the jury, allowing them to actively participate in the re-negotiation of legal arguments and subsequently examine the historiography of the Kennedy assassination. While suggesting that the re-enactment pays tribute to the Warren Commission, CAPA simultaneously places the Warren Report on trial to interrogate the potential for a corrupted government conspiracy. The theatricality of this public display within CAPA's mock trial generates an

25 Marita Sturken, "Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone's Docudrama." History and Theory: 36, no. 4 (1997): 64-79. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/stable/2505575, 74. 26 Ibid., 72. 14 embodied and personal experiencing of history--both a history already made and in the making.

The embodied engagement with history that occurs for both performers and audience members during the reenactment generates an affective relationship between a past historical moment and the current time. This thesis is interested in the ways theater functions as a tool to engage history on an affective and emotional level. Theater's currency is emotion; as theater scholar Erin Hurley writes, one of "the first way[s] in which theater and feeling are fundamentally tied: the extra-stimulating stimuli of the theatre directly address feelings (emotions, moods, affect, sensations) and, in so doing, draw[s] out extraordinary affective response."27 Therefore to assert that CAPA's mock trial employs theatricality refutes its claim to pure reason (or reason that belies emotion) as the theatrical experience of embodied engagement generates affective and emotional side effects. Reading CAPA's mock trial as theater denotes the affective and emotional intimacy many feel towards the Kennedy assassination.

In this thesis, I will look at the practice of historical re-enactment employed in the theater of the CAPA mock trial. Doing so will help discuss the broader ramifications of the JFK assassination within cultural memory. The public performance of the mock trial allows for a renegotiation of and engagement with a dramatic moment in history. As such the public performance highlights the ways history lives in the present moment,

27 Erin Hurley and Anne Bogart, Theatre & Feeling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 23. 15 particularly as it pertains to how individuals personalize national narratives. Presently, the

Kennedy assassination stands in popular discourse as a moment of loss that prefigures a historiography riddled with contradictions, and such produces an inherent emotionality that affectively connects the past moment and present-day researcher. This emotional intimacy generates the desire to return to this history in order to find resolution. In this thesis, I will explore how the theater of CAPA's mock trial functions as "form of catharsis in which historical moments achieve a kind of narrative closure through their replaying. It is not clear, however, whether reenactment constitutes an erasure and smoothing over of the past or whether it can be an active engagement with the past."28 Such an exploration intentionally underscores the ways re-enactment provides an emotional release through historical renegotiation. Ultimately, Texas V Oswald is a keen example of how the performance of history offers a glimpse into larger trends in how history is constructed and consumed by and for the American public as an affective and reasonable experience of the past.

LITERATURE REVIEW

My thesis' attention to the mock trial as a mode of public performance used to interrogate history draws from Rebecca Schneider's Performing Remains and Suzan-Lori

Park's notion of "Rep&Rev". Schneider's Performing Remains examines the cultural and

28 Sturken, "Reenactment, Fantasy and the Paranoia of History," 74. 16 political ramifications of historical reenactment as mode of history making; as such she defines the term "inter(in)animation " to describe the practice of re-enactment that

"engages the tangled temporalities and crisscrossed geographies that interanimate a

United States imaginary."29 The notion of "inter(in)animation," aids in the examination of the various ways history tangles itself in the present through CAPA's mock trial, as the history of Kennedy assassination was used as legal evidence to argue for a new revision of the Warren Report in the present. Where Schneider looks exclusively at Civil War reenactment, this thesis will focus on the mock trial as a divergent mode of performance to interrogate history, one that does not seek to exclusively recreate, but rather revise. The courtroom begets a performance of "legal formality,” allowing individuals (i.e. lawyers and expert witnesses) to argue their stance through fact-based evidence, and by effect generate a reasonable and respected conclusion through the confines of legal discourse.30

To compliment this notion I call on playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and her theory of "Rep

& Rev," which refers to the ways that Parks writes history into her plays as a form of repetition that seeks to revise the narrative of African Americans in American history.

Parks poses the question, "How does this Rep & Rev--a literal incorporation of the past-- impact the creation of the theatrical experience?"31 In conjunction I posit how does the re-turning to history, as conceived in Park's plays, interrogate and revise history for present day circumstances, particularly in the usage of a mock trial? It is also important to

29 Schneider, Performing Remains, 7,3. 30 Anthes, "Publicly Deliberative Drama," 391. 31 Suzan-Lori Parks, "from Elements of Style," The America Play and Other Works, (New York: Theatre Communication Group, 1995), 10. 17 point out that Parks is specifically using theater to expose the violence of erasure within

American history, whereas CAPA is employing reenactment to return to a legal case they feel is unresolved; while injustice might be argued by CAPA it cannot be compared to injustices of white supremacy manifested in American history, of which Park's plays seek to upend. My choice to place Parks in conversation with Schneider is intended to elucidate on the mock trial as a pertinent performance method for facilitating a particular re-casting and re-interrogation of history; one that blurs the borders between history/ present or time/space through the confines of legal discourse and in so doing purposefully re-writes history through performance.

Further, I will draw from performance theories of Diana Taylor and Joseph Roach who both elaborate on the ways that ritual and repertoire are acts of embodied historical preservation and interrogation. Such scholarship asserts the importance of studying performance as a form of embodied and emotional knowledge. Diana Taylor's The

Archive and the Repertoire argues against the authority of the archive as a colonial practice and instead considers the repertoire as performances that "[enact] embodied practice/knowledge“ to reject ephemeral disappearance, and ultimately maintain and transfer history through embodied performances.32 In particular, this thesis calls on the performative function of Taylor's repertoire as it "allows for an alternative perspective on historical processes," and therefore highlights the ways that performance as, "[e]mbodied

32 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, (Durham: Duke University, 2003), 19. 18 and performed acts generate, record and transmit knowledge."33 Fundamentally, Taylor supplies this thesis with performance theory necessary to implicate the active embodied practice of reenactment in the mock trial as a way to understand the process of historiography.

Similarly, Joseph Roach in Cities of the Dead, argues that "culture reproduces and re-creates itself by a process that can best be described by the word surrogation," wherein the practice of surrogation is enacted through ritual performances as a means to find

"satisfactory alternatives," that allows "[performance to] aspire both to embody and replace," loss.34 Although Roach focuses in on ritual performances from the Mardi Gras festival in New Orleans, his argument towards cultural preservation (and, therefore, the reiteration of history) through performative acts, like Taylor, centers the body as active historiographers. Roach also recognizes the emotional connection attributed to participating in or viewing the act of surrogation; "the very uncanniness of the process of surrogation, which tends to disturb the complacency of all thoughtful incumbents, may provoke many unbidden emotions, ranging from mildly incontinent sentimentalism to raging paranoia."35 In many ways, Roach is describing the affective potential in embodied history, present through ritual performances and reenactment, which will further be elaborated on in this thesis.

33 Ibid., 20-21. 34 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2-3. 35 Ibid., 2. 19 By centering the body in relation to history, I will further explore the affective ramifications of the embodied experience of reenactment. Therefore, I turn to affect theorists Brian Massumi and Sarah Ahmed to explore the political dimensions of affective experiences, to ultimately argue re-enactment produces an emotional pull of history for individuals (i.e., citizens). Such a supposition has been prompted through the understanding of the reason/emotion dichotomy of knowledge through historiographical discourse, however as Erin Hurley writes in Theatre & Feeling: '"While we must bear in mind emotions' cultural variability, we might also note that the emotions in this view act as a bridge between body and mind, between sensation and evaluation, and indeed between individual and group."36 Affect theory provides a method to assess emotion's saliency as evidence of an individual's connection to their history, which manifests itself in the political dimensions of reenacting a certain moment in history. Brian Massumi's body of work provides a structure for understanding the political dimensions of affect, as he writes in Politics of Affect: "Affect is proto-political."37 Specifically, this thesis calls on Massumi's understanding of affect as a bodily experience of interaction and transmission through the relationality of encounter. Further Sarah Ahmed's Cultural

Politics of Emotion underscores the emotional stickiness of encountering history, to ultimately suggest the ways affect ties itself to political and cultural identity formation, to stress the affective power of historical reenactment as a mode of political and cultural

36 Hurley, Theatre & Feeling, 20. 37 Brian Massumi, Politics of Affect, (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015), ix. 20 learning. Specifically, for CAPA's mock trial, this thesis is interested in the emotions of paranoia and fear supplanted by a history suffused with conspiratorial inferences. How does a history that feels unresolved to so many, generate emotions of fear and paranoia through conspiratorial practices? How does reenactment seek to emphasize or soothe such emotions?

Finally, I refer to popular culture theory as outlined in Roland Barthes'

Mythologies and reevaluated in Manuel Peña's American Mythologies, in an effort to contend with the popularity of the Kennedy assassination within US history and memory.

In Mythologies, Barthes examines the appropriation of popular items (ie myths) that render them culturally relevant, in the sense that to read these objects is to read the culture that made them popular, wherein he writes: "[a]ny myth with some degree of generality is in fact ambiguous, because it represents the very humanity of those who, having nothing, have borrowed it."38 As a foundational text in cultural studies,

Mythologies has been used as a pragmatic way of analyzing culture, whereby cultural scholar Manuel Peña more recently has elaborated upon Barthes' semiological practices relocating them in modern American culture. In American Mythologies, Peña examines myths from "Obama's Death Panels" to big rig trucks in a way that emphasizes "myth [as] a discrete element of ideology," underscoring the political ramifications of popular

38 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Richard Howard & Annette Layers trans., (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 272. 21 culture in America.39 Peña's work supplies this thesis with an American cultural examination that aids in providing a semiological reading of American myths. In particular, this thesis' attention to the repetition of the JFK assassination in present-day reenactment, begs the question: Why turn history into myth? Does reenactment contribute to myth-making? What does this history as myth tell us about American culture? Peña and Barthes work help to establish a semiological practice to examine the JFK assassination as myth, one that carries ideological consequences.

METHODOLOGY

In order to underscore these ideological consequences, I place this scholarship in conversation with CAPA mock trial, positioning the mock trial as a site of both affective and cognitive engagement with history. To do this I will work with performance studies, affect theory, historiography, and popular cultural studies to emphasize the ways performance allows individuals to engage with history. Specifically, I will analyze the historiography of the Kennedy assassination as a mythologized history alongside the form and function of the mock trial, as means to examine the ways that re-enacement contributes to present-day cultural portrayals of history. To conduct this analysis, I will use the performative method of dramaturgical analysis as outlined by Charlotte Canning in On the Performance Front. Canning's dramaturgical method suggests "keep[ing] the

39 Manuel Peña, American Mythologies: Semiological Sketches, (Burlhington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2012), 6. 22 process of historical construction in the foreground," thus, allowing a multi-dimensional process to read and analyze multiple things at once.40 Furthermore, dramaturgical analysis contributes to interrogating the historiography of the JFK assassination within

American history. Further, aligning Canning's dramaturgical analysis alongside the historiographical theory of Michel De Certeau helps to interrogate the place of this particular history within current political and cultural discourses.

The process of dramaturgical analysis helps to navigate my close reading of the

CAPA mock trial. My incorporation of dramaturgical strategies that view this mock trial as a form of theater helps to frame the various spaces this performance takes up: the world of the mock trial (how the participants and CAPA members construct their arguments), the world of the viewer (as an assumed 2017 American citizen), and the world of the subject matter (the 1963 assassination). I will describe, analyze and interpret the theatrical elements, performance space, and characterization (or lack thereof) of the mock trial to underscore the theatricality of the event as a public display of historical re- enactment. Further, these interpretations will contend with how the theatrical elements contribute to the presentation of CAPA's argument, thus seeking to answer the question of why CAPA chose to use a mock trial as a means to uncover the truth they feel withheld.

The employment of a dramaturgical analysis provides a means to closely read the

40 Charlotte M. Canning, On the Performance Front: US Theatre and Internationalism, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2015), 10. 23 theatrical performance of the mock trial alongside JFK assassination history, to interpret the ways this history is performed in the present day popular memory.

To analyze the cultural dimensions of the Kennedy assassination as popular myth,

I will further employ dramaturgical analysis as well as implement the semiological process conveyed in Barthes' Mythologies and elaborated on in Peña's American

Mythologies. Semiology will be particularly relevant in guiding a close reading of how the history of the JFK assassination has been conveyed, taught and perpetuated through mediums of mass culture, such as movies, television shows, and conspiracy theory forums on the internet (i.e. blogs). As such I will compare and contrast the signs, themes and symbols portrayed within various popular culture narratives of the assassination, as a means to elucidate on the cultural relevance of this history in popular memory. While this thesis does not intend to cover the vast array of conspiracy theories or historical narratives, it does seek to compare the various forms used, and arguments conveyed within popular cultural artifacts, to provide an analysis of the ways popular media functions to mythologize history, while subsequently portraying American culture. Using semiology to read JFK's assassination as popular culture alongside Canning's dramaturgical analysis, I intend to read the mythologized history of the Kennedy assassination as one that evokes themes and tropes of American identity as espousing its cultural and political saliency of today.

24 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN & CONCLUSION

The introductory chapter of this thesis will work to expand upon the theoretical and methodological frameworks needed to locate the 2017 CAPA mock trial within a longer history of JFK assassination popular culture. Doing so will help elucidate on how this moment in history has lodged itself in American memory. This chapter will analyze the historiographical representations of the Kennedy assassination as performed history alongside prominent popular cultural artifacts to analyze this moment as a form of historical myth in the subsequent chapters.

The second chapter will dramaturgically analyze the Texas V Oswald as a performance in historical reenactment, one that returns to Kennedy assassination history through various arguments for and against the Warren Report's findings. This chapter will explore how the employment of theatrical elements as a strategy to assert legal authority in the re-negotiation of history, particularly a history that remains historically and emotionally unresolved. Specifically, I will examine the setting, characterization, and mise-en-scene of the performance, to elaborate on how CAPA is asserting a contemporary lens to affirm their authority in re-examining the Warren Report. The legal framing of this historical reenactment provides an opportunity for CAPA to present various arguments for or against the Warren Report and in so doing, helps elaborate on the popular historiography of the Kennedy assassination. Further, this chapter will engage with performance studies and affect theory to center the individual's embodied and affective 25 experience as a means to further democratize historical memory to the practice of the citizen. Understanding the purpose and form of the mock trial as theater highlights the current political implications of this history within today's context, and therefore realizes the ways history enacts current discourses. Ultimately, this chapter addresses how theater, with its inherent affective dimensions, demonstrates the ways people feel the history of the Kennedy assassination, and in so doing contributes to the larger historiography.

The third chapter elaborates on the popular historiography of the Kennedy assassination as myth. Employing Barthes' Mythologies alongside a dramaturgical analysis, I explore the cultural themes and tropes that weave themselves through the myths of the Kennedy assassination. As such I contend with how the assassination has been written as myth, in that it upholds Manichean themes propagated through Kennedy's image of American goodness and conflates his death with America's loss of innocence.

Texas V Oswald gives keen focus to alternative historical narratives that aid in contradicting the Warren Report, therefore denoting this history's unique historiography that contends with both conspiracy theories and popular culture renderings. In particular, the usage of the film JFK as evidence in the prosecution's argument against Lee Harvey

Oswald. This chapter will seek to answer: How is history being used to argue against preconceived understandings of the assassination? Why is it important to publicly make these arguments through the live stream? What does this public performance of history tell us about the popular memory of the assassination? To answer these questions, I will

26 analyze the defense and prosecution’s arguments against the Warren Report's findings and popular conspiracy theories. In particular, this will draw comparisons between the mock trial and the popular film JFK. Both instances highlight how the form of art/performance engages with history in an effort to renegotiate historiography. This chapter seeks to understand how American citizens, not historians, use public performance in an act to re- vist and re-do history.

Ultimately, by analyzing the 2017 CAPA mock trial, this thesis will explore the ways performance allows American citizens to embody and participate in the construction of history. The Kennedy assassination history becomes a popular culture artifact that, due to its affective stickiness and cultural resonance, maintains its place within the American popular conscious. Furthermore, the history's enactment of

Manichean tropes and themes functions as a tangible history that many can easily understand and argue. Therefore the returning to the Kennedy assassination becomes a battleground through which current political discourses can be argued and explored.

27 CHAPTER 2: Reading CAPA’s Mock Trial: How the Courtroom Dramatizes History

On their website, CAPA explicitly defends their focus on the Kennedy assassination as a pillar of their political objectives:

Some people may feel that there is no purpose in working to solve murders that date back fifty years, but we know there is no time limit on the truth and no statute of limitations in a murder case. Until we face the truth about the assassinations of our political leaders we cannot hope to move toward a viable democracy in this country, nor prevent such assassinations from happening in the future. No other event has changed the shape of the future in the same way as the assassination of President Kennedy and we can wait no longer for a solution. We must act now.41

Such a claim argues for the necessary and pressing need to re-turn to and re-occupy the past in order to make a better future; a future that designates itself to "viable democracy," predicated on finding the truth about the Kennedy assassination. This point intimately binds the image of Kennedy as president, his subsequent slaying, and the institution of

American democracy. Accordingly, it becomes imperative for CAPA to understand the truth about the Kennedy assassination to fix and guard American democracy. To uncover the true history of the Kennedy assassination is, therefore, an act of saving US democracy. The urgent tone further directs the reader's attention to the active process of re-negotiating history; for it is only as CAPA suggests through "fac[ing] the truth about

41 Citizens Against Political Assassination, "Mission Statement," (2017, Houston: South Texas College of Law Houston), Website. http://capa-us.org/capa-mission-statement/. 28 the assassinations," which "date back fifty years," that we can move on. To "act now" centers the viewing/reading audience in present-day circumstances while facing them towards the past record (the 1964 Warren Report) to better the future. The mock trial, then, becomes a site where one can "face" history through the practice of historical reenactment.

The publicly performed mock trial, The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald, provides an active and embodied opportunity for citizens to participate in renegotiating this history. Where the mock trial, as a form of re-enactment theater, functions as an explicit example of the active ways in which citizens use performance to return to history in order to actively "[do] things, not [think] things."42 This "doing things" through performed reenactments is best argued by the editors of Historical Reenactment: From

Realism to the Affective Turn, Iain McCalman and Paul A. Pickering who write,

"[r]eenactments open up possibilities that allow history to be, as is its want, unfinished business," and therefore, "[reenactments] are also quite useful in getting to the heart of those events from the past that appear to be left outstanding in the present."43 Further,

Joseph Roach's notion of surrogation, which is defined as the ways "memory, performance, and substitution" facilitate how "culture reproduces and re-creates itself," guides my evaluation of CAPA's intentional returning to this moment in order to

42 Iain McCalam and Paul A. Pickering eds, Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 81. 43 Ibid., 61. 29 interrogate history for contemporary usage.44 While Texas V Oswald never actually occurred, the present day usage of legal formalities to revisit the Warren Report's case conflates the performed with the authentic, as Roach states, "[a]t these times, improvised narratives of authenticity and priority may congeal into full-blown myths of legitimacy and origin."45 In the case of the Kennedy assassination, the reenactment of two opposing views of the Warren Report allows for the surrogation of political and cultural discourses present in Kennedy assassination history to raise pertinent questions about the power of the state from the past, into present-day circumstances. CAPA's mock trial is participating in this legacy of dissent against the Warren Report, wherein the mock trial as a public performance finds another way, a more literal way, of putting the Report on trial.

CAPA's attention to the fallacies of the Warren Commission is not new. Historical and/or legal revisions of the Report, as well as countless conspiracy theories, have contributed to an abundance of popular JFK assassination historiography that largely focuses on the Report's limitations. As early as 1966, just two years after the Warren

Report was published, criminal investigator Mark Lane published Rush to Judgment, a step-by-step indictment of the Warren Commission on the basis of sloppy and biased work. Lane's book initiated a legacy of dissent, which by 1994 scholar Theodore Kovaleff notes, "the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has already been the subject of over two thousand books, innumerable articles, panels, radio and television discussion

44 Roach, Cities of the Dead, 2. 45 Ibid., 3. 30 shows, and movies."46 Ultimately, I suggest that CAPA's mock trial is participating in this legacy of dissent against the Warren Report, wherein the mock trial as a public performance finds another way, a more literal way, of putting the Report on trial.

The employment of the courtroom space, legal decorum, modern-day aesthetics, and engagement with history frame CAPA's primary agenda of uncovering the truth about the assassination. Therefore, it is imperative to point out that this mock trial and its participants are not fully re-doing history, but rather re-visiting to revise. As such, it theatricalizes itself similar to how Suzan-Lori Parks' employs the practice of "Rep&Rev," as she writes history into her plays and in order to revise the historical record.47

Performance scholar Rebecca Schneider elaborates on the idea of "revision" within her work Performing Remains, as she examines Civil War reenactors, "who fight not only to

'get it right' as it was but to get it right as it will be in the future of the archive to which they see themselves contributing."48 The mock trial becomes a site where past events and contemporary participants collapse into one another. This juxtaposition highlights the desires citizens have to participate in historical renegotiation of the Kennedy assassination record for present-day usage.

46 While 1994 is a seemingly innocuous year, after Stone's JFK premiered in '92, the mid-90's saw a rise in interest on the Kennedy assassination, so much so that Kovaleff felt inclined to write about it. Theodore P. Kovaleff, "JFK Assassination Books." Presidential Studies Quarterly 24, no. 4 (1994): 901-10. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/27551348, 902; March 26, 2018 serach on Amazon.com by myself, https:// www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kennedy+assassination +. 47 Parks, "from Elements of Style," 10. 48 Schneider, Performing Remains, 10. 31 Asserting that CAPA's mock trial employs performance to re-turn to history draws further attention to the ways individuals engage with and, ultimately, feel this history through the affect of the past. Texas V Oswald invites both participants and viewers to engage with the assassination's history through the embodied and affective experience of theater. Understanding, that "[a]ffect is only understood as enacted," helps to center the personal, bodily experience facilitated through the embodied participation of a public performance.49 Affect and the emotionality inherent in this complex term is vital to understanding the reasons why people re-enact the same history, particularly a popular history, over and over. The performed re-enactment of the Warren Report's argumentation is a means of exploring and interrogating history through theater and as "feeling provides theatre's raison d'etre," the mock trial's proximity to theater lays bare the feelings and emotions within the assassination's history.50 However, where historical authority rejects the subjective and the emotional, (as seen through historical theorist R.G. Collingwood's usage of reasoned reenactment) affect theory and performance studies allow for an interjection and critique of such assumed authority, contending that the theater of Texas V

Oswald exposes the inherent personalization and emotionality of popular historiography that is intimately tangled within American culture.

This chapter will examine how CAPA's mock trial functions as a means to invite

US citizens to participate in the renegotiation of assassination history through the active

49 Massumi, Politics of Affect, vii. 50 Hurley, Theater & Feeling, 4. 32 and embodied performance of legal formalities. Reading Texas V Oswald as one reads theater; I will dramaturgically analyze how the setting, characterization, and mise-en- scene contribute to the portrayal of legal authority. Texas V Oswald presents a specific site of theater negotiating with the popularity and inherent emotionality of the Kennedy assassination historiography of the Kennedy assassination within contemporary American culture. Further, the mock trial as a theatrical performance focuses in on the emotionality of embodied participation, and in so doing invites affect studies to interrogate the ways personal experience and emotion integrate into the historiography of the Kennedy assassination. By centering the affect of making history, I assert that the performance form of the mock trial aims to reject the emotionality inherent in any theatrical production by tapping into the cultural authority of legal formalities and in so doing elevates CAPA's efforts to re-historicize the Warren Report's findings. Using performance studies, affect theory and dramaturgical analysis to read Texas V Oswald as a form of theater further elaborates on how theater democratizes history through a public and participatory performance; it is through this public performance that CAPA presents

American citizens with the opportunity to actively re-turn and re-negotiation the assassination history.

33 COURTROOM AS SETTING

Vital to CAPA's re-negotiation of history is the placement of the mock trial within a literal courtroom. The courtroom helps to frame audience expectations of legal formalities and emphasizes CAPA's claim to authority--as the courtroom symbolizes reason and justice in contemporary American society. Legal scholar Pnina Lahav explicitly defines the role of the courtroom as "the centerpiece of the concept of justice, the core of the idea of due process. It is meant to enforce the rule of law, to guarantee that justice is not only done but also seen."51 For CAPA the placement of their mock trial in a courtroom supplants the cultural capital of this setting: the implied voice of authority reached through the process of reasoned, legal argumentation.

CAPA's courtroom is unremarkably mundane. It is styled in an early 2000s aesthetic choices of light pine for the judge's bench and jury stand, grey walls and muted purple carpet. Importantly, it is perceived as aesthetically closer to modern day courtrooms than those from the 1960s. Visually, it is clear, CAPA is not trying to actually recreate or imagine Texas V Oswald; instead, it is firmly placing this trial within a modern day context. The usage of a giant projection screen appears commonplace to modern day viewers, as it helps visualize the lawyer's points by providing large-scale visuals on

PowerPoint slides; however, such technology further distances this present day trial from

51 Pnina Lahav, "Theater in the Courtroom: The Chicago Conspiracy Trial." Law and Literature 16, no. 3 (2004): 381-474. doi:10.1525/lal.2004.16.3.381, 391. 34 the past its recreating. Visually, the projections assert the superiority of contemporary technology, and in so doing emphasizes why this present day reenactment can help correct the record. Such an assertion is particularly relevant because much of CAPA's reason for return surrounds archaic and remedial forensic and ballistic technology of the mid-twentieth century that contributed to the Warren Report's fallacies.

While CAPA does not call Texas V Oswald a theatrical performance, the intention to return to the historical record of the Kennedy assassination through the actual confines of the courtroom demonstrates the importance of visually realizing the setting. Wherein, the literal usage of an actual courtroom, provided by South Texas School of Law

Houston, extends the performance into realism (asserting this to be a learning experience for law students) and emphasizes the performance's parameters to the audience. As performance scholar Campbell Edinburgh argues in Theatrical Reality, the space of a theatrical setting is vital for audience reception, wherein "not only is space dependent on human structures of understanding, it also shapes such understanding," therefore suggesting the space becomes a lens through which an audience is informed of expectations and interpretations.52 Furthermore, Edinburgh elaborates,

...the way in which theater space is conceived and experienced dictates its authority over our understanding of the actor, the text, and the set. Theater space is not something passively understood--it is lived. Its

52 Campbell Edinburgh, Theatrical Reality: Space, Embodiment and Empathy in Performance, (Chicago: Intellect Ltd., 2016), 17. 35 symbolic and communicative function is actively realized through the uncanny experience of perceiving the material as symbolic.53

What then does it mean to have a reenactment enter the courtroom? How is the courtroom compliment historical authority? Edinburgh elaborates the ways in which a site-specific theatrical space can help frame an audiences' expectations and subsequent interpretation, or as he refers to this experience of learning, as the "reflexive movement between concept and percept."54 For a site-specific performance like Texas V Oswald, the courtroom space implies a particular set of expected behaviors and series of events (plot) that are dependent on legal formalities.

Historically, mock trials provided a tool for political and social movements seeking, "law's dramatic effect," in order to foment political support and consolidate power.55 The employment of court proceedings, legal discourse, and professional behavior functions within a mock setting, denotes the "theatrical and emblematic dimensions" in that "[it] stages and disseminates, it reasons and transmits, it is legal and literary."56 Mock trials are a tactic of persuasion through their proximity to the law and legal authority. It is therefore essential to consider the linkages between historical authority and legal authority, through the studying of evidence. The claim to authority

53 Ibid., 17. 54 Ibid., 18. 55 Anthes, "Publicly Deliberative Drama," 394. 56 Peter Goodrich, "Screening Law." Law and Literature 21, no. 1 (2009): 1-23. doi:10.1525/lal. 2009.21.1.1., 3. 36 propagated through setting the trial in the courtroom helps CAPA claim historical authority in its re-vision of the Kennedy assassination record.

THE ACTORS

As the courtroom setting signifies a space for reason and justice, the performances of the judge, the lawyers, the jury and the expert witnesses conform to expected and appropriate behavior or decorum within legal proceedings. Elaborating on Lahav's

"Theater in the Courtroom," I will explore the various participants within the court proceedings, particularly as they act out/perform assumed courtroom behaviors.57 The performing roles within CAPA's mock trial are not referencing specific historical peoples, but rather are characterized through the position's general status within the courtroom. In particular, CAPA frames the mock trial as a learning experience for South Texas School of Law Houston students, to denote the actual performance of proper decorum from the actual lawyers and the actual judge. The Kennedy assassination becomes a case for these twenty-first century practicing lawyers, judge, jury, and students to explore, practice and learn the proper affective performances of those within the courtroom. However, where these various performances diverge from the norm draws particular attention to the overall agenda of individual participants as well as CAPA's reason for orchestrating Texas

V Oswald.

57 Lahav, "Theater in the Courtroom." 37 The performance from CAPA's jury maintains the truest to life behavior of any of the parts played in the mock trial. As Lahav writes of a juries behavior: "[j]urors use their eyes and ears, absorb the information, deliberate, and make decisions; but in the courtroom, they are silent participants."58 Within the two-day mock trial, the jury was never heard from and rarely seen by the live streaming audience. The only time the camera would show the jury was when the judge directly addressed them to explain the perimeters of their job--to listen, reason and decide Oswald's sentencing based on his status as innocent until proved guilty. Their conformed behavior illustrates the prominent status they played within the mock trial, (which mirrors the vital role any jury plays within a courtroom) as they are expected to empathize and reason their sentencing. As such they are the primary audience for the lawyers, as they must be convinced through the evidence and argument. In many ways, the jurors not only represent the peer constituency of the defendant but also epitomize the viewing audience. Wherein maintaining silence elaborates on their function as witnesses. The practice of listening suggests the absorption of evidence, which the jury will later meticulously deduce and reason out their conclusion. While it is unclear how this jury was selected, volunteered or assigned, or even if they received the typical voir dire, they are still expected to uphold the status of silent witness. Furthermore, their prior knowledge of the Kennedy assassination is unknown. Instead, as a live stream viewer, it is assumed that they are

58 Ibid., 419. 38 unbiased jurors that represent those watching within the performance itself, and they speak on behalf of and decide on the state of Oswald's current historical reputation.

While the jury's performance upheld conventional courtroom behavior, the judge's duties were adapted to fit the needs of the mock trial. The acting judge verbally justified such adaptations as an effort to facilitate an expedited process for this two-day mock trial into a useful experience. Before the trial begins the judge, played by Harris County Court judge the honorable Jay T. Karahan, details how this trial will be different: the lawyers will not be able to object throughout the testimony, nor will they have time for extensive cross examinations or rebuttals. This did happen throughout the trial, such as when defense lawyer Lawrence P. Schnapf used argumentative and unsubstantiated evidence to argue a point, and Judge Karahan had to stop and explain how the testimony was faulty but lacked the power to correct the record.

CAPA did not need the judge to play real-to-life overseer, but instead function as a symbolic stand-in needed to construct the proper imagery within the court. As such the judge dressed in the traditional robes, a uniform that signifies reason and decorum within the courtroom.59 The costume aids in visually signifying Judge Karahan's role as

"administer [of] justice equally and fairly" and therefore taps into the cultural authority given to such a position.60 CAPA's choices exemplify the symbolic usage of elements

59 Ibid., 429. 60 Ibid., 433. 39 within court proceedings, in order to access the authority of the courtroom, while not actually administering a lengthy trial.

Finally, there is the role of the defense and prosecution lawyers who, like in real courtrooms, take up the most space through their opening statements, witness examinations, and closing statements. Their function is to supply the argument. In the case of the mock trial, it is to return to the historical record of the assassination and call witnesses according to their case. The prosecution, represented by practicing lawyers Gus

Pappas and Amanda Webb, argued to uphold the Warren Report's findings to make the jury (and audience) believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Oswald was involved in the shooting. In many ways, their job appeared a lot more difficult than the defense's, because of the contested reputation of the Warren Report. To support their case Pappas called only one witness Lucien Haag, a criminalist who has contributed numerous articles and TV interviews defending the potential of the Carcano producing a magic bullet. In comparison, the defense council called nine expert witnesses, more or less emphasizing the abundance of dissenting opinions. What becomes abundantly clear through the witness examinations and opening statements is that both council teams employ and argue against Kennedy assassination popular historiography, ultimately repeating argumentation already heard.

While seemingly a trite point, it is vital to underscore that the participants of this trial did not experience the assassination or subsequent investigation. Instead ,they

40 personalize their commitment to the mock trial's agenda by highlighting their own emotional motivations for participating. Lead prosecution attorney Gus Pappas, early in his testimony states (and restates throughout the trial) that his participation at this event is of personal interest since his father witnessed the assassination. Furthermore, the defense attorney for day two, Lawrence P. Schnapf cites his 20-year exploration into Kennedy's assassination and placement on the CAPA board as reason for his participation. Even day- one defense lawyer Robert K. Tanenbaum, while stating his lack of prior interest, recommends that the "information is compelling."61 These current practicing lawyers are volunteering their time to participate in this event and in so doing highlight the current draw of Kennedy assassination history. Additionally, it is imperative to highlight that the participants of the mock trial do not identify as historians. Raising such a point alludes to the status of each participant as a citizen, since most of the history used in the trial comes from popular historical discourse of films or books (usually shrouded in conspiratorial injunctions). The historiography of the CAPA trial, therefore, lends itself to the layperson and ultimately provides a stage for the democratic renegotiation of the historical record.

PUTTING HISTORY ON TRIAL

The performance within the courtroom space is intended to signify an intentional returning to the historical moment of the Kennedy assassination, to reexamine and

61 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 17, 2017: As spoken by Robert Tanenbaum. 41 reassess its status within a modern-day legal lens. The usage of argumentation, evidence and the legal processes facilitated through the frame of the mock trial and elaborates

CAPA's choice to employ such a performance tactic as a means to interrogate the history of the Kennedy assassination. While specific roles diverge from their expected status and performance, the role of the lawyers still maintains the overall agenda of argumentation needed to interrogate and examine the history. Using present-day technologies, post-1964 findings, and quotidian, modern-day dress establishes a mise-en-scene that places the performance further in the realm of citizen; allowing the spectators to observe them as representatives of themselves. Visually and performatively there is no effort to create an illusion of reenacting the past, rather the reenactment is in the argument alone, since the evidence, expert witness' testimony, and lawyer's argumentation reenact previously made arguments.

Therefore, the purpose of the mock trial becomes less a form of historical mimicry and more of a conversation with the past in the present day. Performance scholar

Lisa B. Cumming contends with how repeated performances provide a re-occupation of the past through performance in Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance. She explicitly examines presidential candidate Robert Kennedy's 1968 tour of poverty- stricken areas of Eastern Kentucky, as a successful performance of empathy (as

Kentuckians often remarked how they felt seen and heard by a politician), ultimately proving profitable for the politician. Cummings highlights how contemporary politicians

42 have repeated Kennedy's route to deliberately associate themselves with this effective use of empathy; "[r]epetition in this sense offers us a chance not to revive the past, but to enter into a dialogue with and about that past, engaging history to consider where we have been, where we are now, and where we might go in the future."62 I contend that the

CAPA mock trial functions similarly, as this performance deliberately engages US citizens in dialogue. As the mode of the mock trial allows citizens to view lawyers actively arguing for/against the historical record and as such becomes a tactic to democratize notions of historical authority.

The prosecution team most pertinently refers to historical records from the official archive as they argue to uphold the Warren Report's findings--Oswald acted alone to assassinate Kennedy. A combination of current testimony from present-day criminalist

Lucien C. Haag, visual images from the infamous Zapruder film and forensic evidence cited in the Warren Report are called upon to uphold the single bullet and lone assassin conclusion. Prosecution attorney Pappas uses his opening statement to create a timeline, putting Oswald on November 22, 1963 in possession of a Mannlicher Carcano rifle, on the third floor of the Texas School Depository, as having enough time to get across town to his rooming house to eventually murder of Officer Tippit and finally get arrested at the movie theater. Pappas' opening statement purposefully undermines the popular conspiracy theory that Oswald was a patsy, calling on this particular theory to suggest its

62 Lindsay B Cummings, "Repetitions: Empathy, Poverty, and Politics in Eastern Kentucky." Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 81. 43 absurdity: "makes no sense," and his "guilty behavior argues against [being a] patsy."63

While giving an overview of the evidence and timeline, Pappas conveniently outlines the historical case against Oswald for those who might not be familiar.

Even as the prosecution upholds the authority of the Warren Report as the official record, by merely entering into conversation with the defense's argument, ultimately undermines the contentions raised. The most explicit example is the prosecution's singular expert witness, Lucien C. Haag, whose work as a criminalist has helped to support the Warren Report's findings that Oswald shot the president alone with three shots from the Mannlicher Carcano rifle. Haag's testimony surrounds his personal testing of the Carcano rifle. Intersecting physical science analysis and ballistics studies to test for distance, accuracy and wound type, Haas concluded this particular gun has unique characteristics that suggested "interesting reconstructive questions" to the "behavior of

[this] unusual bullet and gun."64 The evidence Haag found through firing tests argues that the style of the Carcano bullet, with its pointy tip and brass full metal jacket, can "easily can go into two people,"(i.e. Kennedy and Connally).65 Haag goes on to explain that the style of bullet can further explain the entrance and exit wounds as well as the traces of lead found in the autopsy, and proclaims there is "no ballistics mysteries."66 To uphold

63 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 16, 2017. 64 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 16, 2017: As spoken by Lucien Haag. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 44 this evidence he uses slides to illustrate the movement of the bullet, X-rays of Kennedy's skull with white matter that suggests the bullet entering from the back of the head and the effects on each bullet. Haag explains that it is highly reasonable that Oswald only shot three shots from the Texas School Book Depository, two of which hit Kennedy and

Connally. As it is clear from the prosecution's evidence that Oswald purchased the

Mannlicher Carcano and accompanying bullets, the prosecution case, like the Warren

Report's, depends on proving that only three shots were fired and that they came from the

Texas School Book Depository.

While Haag did not literally recreate the shooting of a Carcano from the sixth floor into two people, he relies on "analytical" observation of studying of the Zapruder film, autopsy records and X-rays, and his personal experience shooting a Carcano.67 Haag argues much of his point through his first-person experience, having personally tested the

"structure and behavior" of the Mannlicher Carcano and 6.5 millimeter bullet.68 In fact, he emphasizes his personal experience by noting that because this is such a rare gun and he is one of the few people to shoot it, definitely the only person in this courtroom, then he is particularly privy to the Carcano bullet's "behavior." He further contends that the

FBI had "no idea how [this] bullet performs," and that it "easily can go into two people."69 His tests specifically look at the movement of the bullet to see the probability

67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 45 for the magic bullet theory through contemporary ballistic studies. Unlike most Kennedy assassination enthusiast, Haag sits on the unpopular side that supports the Commission's findings. Calling back to Kovaleff's 1994 review of Kennedy assassination scholarship, only one out of the eight books supports the Report’s conclusion: Gerald Posner's Case

Closed. Similarly, the prosecution only called one expert witness, while the defense had nine expert witnesses of various backgrounds, further highlighting the balance of evidence and argumentation as anti-Report. It is, therefore, no surprise then that Haag's testimony relies heavily on his personal experience with the Carcano rifle. His dissection of the velocity, "behavior" and potentiality of the 6.5 mm full-metal jack bullet, ultimately claims there are no "ballastic mysteries," because it is a "stable bullet," as " it's muzzle velocity is "corrective" when it hits flesh.70 Further, he strongly denounces any shooter from the grassy knoll as "beyond absurd."71

Like any legal case, the defense team studies the same evidence, however, will draw different conclusions. For one to argue that Oswald was the lone assassin, it becomes imperative to prove that the shots came from the sixth floor of the Texas School

Book Depository, that Oswald was the one firing the gun, that only three shots were fired, and that the magic bullet theory is possible--as this is the Warren Report's conclusion.

Yet, as Kovaleff states, "[s]adly, the [Commission] was shoddy, its product badly assembled, leaving its conclusions poorly based, providing opportunities for anyone

70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 46 seeking a headline, a movie or a book contract to offer a 'new and startling revelation.'"72

Mark Lane's 1966 book Rush to Judgment makes a similar claim: that the investigation was rushed to seek a particular end, to frame Oswald, rather than letting the evidence guide the conclusions. Many of these dissenting works take a similar stance as they frame any and all evidence from the Commission, Dallas Police and Parkland Hospital doctors as fabricated or manipulated, but always, ultimately, flawed. The point being that if those in charge of the investigation might have participated in the assassination, consequently suggesting that nothing from these institutions can be trusted. Therefore the defense, like the dissenting opinions before them, frame this careless work as intentional.73

While most, if not all historical texts or legal records are subject to deep scrutiny, the Warren Commission's faulty work renders the Report in a particularly vulnerable position to be attacked. As historiographer Michel De Certeau writes of historians (or in this case lawyers examining history), "any reading of the past--however much it is controlled by the analysis of documents--is driven by a reading of current events...

[readings] are haunted by presuppositions, in other words by 'models' of interpretation."74

While De Certeau suggests it is human nature to read evidence through the lens of the

72 Kovaleff, "JFK Assassination Books," 902. 73 My reference to 'similar stances,' is based on the some of the most famous early dissenters of the Warren Report, these include Lane's Rush to Judgment and Jim Garrison's trial against Clay Shaw, as well as his books A Heritage of Stone (New York: Penguin Publishing, 1972); On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988). later Oliver Stone would partially adapt the later to argue the same position against the Warren Report in his film JFK (Burbank: Warner Brothers, 1992). 74 De Certeau, The Writing of History, 23. 47 present, he further contends that history can tell us just as much about the current state of affairs as the past. What does this mean for the Warren Report then? Since the defense counsel and previous dissenting voices used their concurrent readings to argue all, not some, of the evidentiary findings, testimonies, and tests were false. Reading any and all

Warren Report’s conclusions as false further complicates this notion of subjective historiography. Where the major breakthrough is not how the evidence was used in the case, but why it was done so sloppy, many begin conflating accidental with purposefully ignored, manipulated and/or fabricated evidence. For in this reading of the Report lies a cultural and political thread of distrust for federal and local institutions, as it invites the citizenry to uncover the corrupted nature of governmental institutions, by doing the work of the criminalist or the historian to maintain its purity and truth. Journalists played a particularly key role in remembering and archiving the Kennedy assassination, as journalist Barbie Zelker describes "[m]uch of what we remember as the assassination story has emerged at different points in the tale's retelling, because authority is shaped at many points in time. Patterns of authority are worked out in collective memory, where take on specific preferred forms that are determined by their retellers."75 Here Zelker calls attention to how re-telling the assassination becomes a way for citizens to actively participate in undermining corrupt governments through the authority of shared memory.

In Zelker's argument the journalist, and later the scholar or lawyer, each holds a particular

75 Barbie Zelker, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3. 48 point of view of the events, which contributes to an ongoing discussion of the Report's validity, and ultimately maintains the importance of knowing the assassination's truth.

A prime example of divergent points of view is in the various readings of the

Zapruder film, as its contested imagery illustrates the ways individuals analyze and interpret a piece of evidence from the assassination differently. The Zapruder film is demonstratively vital to the history of the assassination, as it is referenced by any and all examinations of the assassination. As a private citizen, Abraham Zapruder produced the only filmed evidence of the assassination. The Warren Report and all subsequent analyzes demonstrate how the Zapruder film, even with frame-by-frame depictions, supply visual evidence for either side. As Haag rightfully states, "people see what they want to see," implying a level of truth to how the frames of the film have been interpreted in a variety of ways.76 No one can conclusively state at what point in the film Kennedy was hit by the fatal shot, at what point in the film Connally was shot, and, most importantly, the direction from which the bullets came. The defense Counsel Robert K. Tanenbaum uses his opening statement to oppose Oswald as the lone assassin, using posters of enlarged images from the Zapruder film to argue against the direction, timing, and probability of three shots being fired from behind.77

In order to establish the impossibility of one single shooter at the Book

Depository, Tanenbaum uses his opening statement to analyze the Zarpuder film frame-

76 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 16, 2017. 77 Ibid. 49 by-frame and set up a timeline of when and where the bullets hit. Doing so, Tanenbaum calls into question the legitimacy of the Warren Report, which had used the same visual evidence to conclusively say Kennedy and Connally were hit from behind. The tone of

Tanenbaum's address is one of disbelief in the face of injustice, often sarcastically implying anyone who believes the Report to be naive, as "governments never lie."78

Tanenbaum does not focus on Oswald's activities of that day, as Pappas did; instead,

Tanenbaum argues that the shots specifically came from the grassy knoll. He calls explicit attention to the movement of Kennedy's body in the Zapruder film at the moment the fatal shot hit (a similar argument made in JFK) to state that the "backward snap," that everyone should obviously see, "never happened [the Commission] would like you to believe."79 Like Lane and other dissenters, he cites Lee Bowers' testimony and similar arguments set up in the film JFK.80 Ultimately, contending that not all the shots came from behind and therefore Oswald could not logically be the shooter or, at least, not the only shooter. Tanenbaum ends his statement by asking, "why would the Committee lie?" ultimately re-asserting an argument already argued, that corrupt government agencies-- from the Dallas Police Department to Vice-President Johnson--are implicated in the assassination.81 Posing a rhetorical question invites the audience to draw their own

78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Bowers' testimony in Lane's Rush to Judgment outlines how Bowers saw men identifying themselves as secret service behind fence at the top of grassy knoll. While the Warren Report does not include Bowers' testimony in full for their conclusions, Lane and Garrison emphasize his testimony. 81 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 16, 2017. 50 conclusions and through the act of merely questioning the validity of the Report undermines the very authority of the government.

As seen in Tanenbaum's opening arguments, the defense attorneys unlike the prosecution, have a diverse and elaborate foundation of source material to pull examples and evidence from, allowing the defense to re-establish and re-argue many of the dissenting opinions on the Report. Where the prosecution consolidates their argument based upon the validity to evidence supplied in the Warren Report, the defense has over

4,000 various arguments against Oswald being the lone assassin.82 What is fundamentally important about the defense's case is that they are pulling from years of work interrogating the believability and efficacy to the Commission's work, therefore highlighting how their performance within the mock trial is one in which they participate in the embodied reenactment of these dissenting arguments on a public stage. CAPA's mock trial provides another platform in which these dissenting opinions can be re-argued through embodied participation.

The theatricalization of CAPA's event further emphasizes the tonality of conspiratorial conjecture, which surrounds many of the narratives against the Report, but in a public forum. Specifically, Tanenbaum's opening statement conveys an elevated tone of exasperation in response to the obvious nature of falsified or misleading evidence in the case against Oswald, for Tanenbaum states, "facts are stubborn things, however you

82 Amazon "Kennedy Assassination Search," (Accessed March 6, 2018), https://www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kennedy+assassination+. 51 want things to be facts still stand."83 His statement is expressed in a slow and methodical tone, highlighting the clarity of the point. Such a performative moment becomes even more noticeable when his voice gets louder, and his tempo gets faster, in an effort to exclaim the absurdity to the Report stating " don't listen to me, don't take my word for it."84 The rhetorical mode presented in the mock trial invites the audience to come to their own conclusions to participate in the understanding about the truth of the assassination.

Yet, the rhetorical mode is not new to literature debunking the report, Mark Lane employs such strategy through text, by asking his readers to consider the lengths the Commission took to make Oswald the lone assassin. Ultimately, this calls into question the notion of the magic bullet theory, "for what is the conclusion when this is denied?"85 Much of

Lane's Rush to Judgment expresses a tone of exasperation and anger in regards to what is deemed flagrant miscarriage of justice, often ending each chapter with a similar contention: "The Commission thus rejected the testimony of its only witnesses, misrepresenting the likelihood of their not having seen what in fact they said they saw. It showed here as elsewhere a tenacious loyalty to its theory in defiance of eyewitness testimony."86 What becomes clear in this comparison is that where Lane is relegated to the pages of a book, the lawyers in the mock trial can embody such emotionality.

83 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 16, 2017. 84 Ibid. 85 Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment: A critique of the Warren Commission's Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald, (New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston, 1966), 69. 86 Ibid., 147. 52 Similarly the film JFK establishes a tone through cinematic techniques. These various reexaminations of the Warren Report are particularly crucial to understanding how, why and in what ways the history of the Kennedy assassination gets disseminated and consumed by the public; however, more importantly, it elaborates on why CAPA uses a public performance as another means to return to this history.

TOUCHING HISTORY: INTER(IN)ANIMATION IN TEXAS V OSWALD

"The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy November 22, 1963, was a cruel and shocking act of violence directed against a man, a family, a nation, and against all mankind."--The Warren Report, "Summary and Conclusion," 1.

From the first sentence of the Warren Report to the theater of Texas V Oswald, it becomes indelibly clear how emotional this history continues to be portrayed. Nations mourn, particularly over the loss of leaders; however, the conflation of Kennedy with ideas of goodness "against all mankind," only further emphasizes the ways Kennedy (and his death) has been solidified into American popular history.87 Therefore, the reenacted history of the Kennedy assassination, speaks more to the present day--the contemporary needs, wants and interests of the Americans viewing and participating in the mock trial-- than it does the history of the event itself. Rebecca Schneider, in Performing Remains, defines the ways that reenactment highlights the ways the "then and now punctuate each

87 Warren, Earl, et al. The Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 1. 53 other," through the term, "inter(in)animation."88 This term becomes particularly important to understanding the intimacy of history and self when performing or viewing a historical reenactment, wherein the connective tissue becomes the embodied, emotional experience. Schneider continues: "The stickiness of emotion is evident in the residue of generational time, reminding us that histories of events and historical effects of identity fixing stick to any mobility, dragging (in Elizabeth Freeman's sense) the temporal past into the sticky substance of any present," therefore establishing the reenactment as a stage for collapsing temporal distance.89 Schneider's inter(in)animation provides a means to elaborate on history's emotionality as evidence towards popular historiography.

CAPA's usage of public performance allows the intrinsic emotional and affective results of theater to permeate the history being told. Beyond, the usage of emotionality conveyed in the lawyers statements, the literal re-occupation of the historical space generates an experience of inter(in)animation, which allows the body to interact with history, and in this case historical argumentation. The body and its interaction with history fostered through embodied enactment allows one to affect history whilst being affected. Theorist Brian Massumi understands affect to be the intensities of relation, and in particular, focuses on bodies in relation.90 For Massumi and his fellow affect theorists, feelings and emotions sit within the context of affect, allowing them to be understood as

88 Schneider, Performing Remains, 2, 7. 89 Ibid., 36 90 These ideas appear in both Brian Massumi, Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Massumi, Politics of Affect. 54 "a recognized affect, an identified intensity," thus contributing to the emotional performance of the lawyers or the personals stories relayed to the audience.91 These emotional responses become important for contributing to the record and developing a particular experience for those viewing. Affect further recognizes how intensities exist beyond human interaction, as The Affect Theory Reader describes: "affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body (human, nonhuman, part-body, and otherwise), in those resonances that circulate about, between, and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds, and in the vary passes of variations between these intensities and resonances themselves."92 The concept of inter(in)animation exposes a history steeped in affective and emotional components and suggests how the mock trial is a site where past and present touch (affect) one another.

The understanding of affect since the affective turn has helped move scholarship away from the positivist sentimentality that upholds a dichotomy of reason versus emotion. Affect, as outlined by Rebecca Schneider, has contributed to the reexamination of historical reenactment as a means to feel history. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s' theorization on 'texture,' in Touching Feeling, elaborates on the related conceptualization of touch and feeling as she, like Massumi, focuses in on the bodies systems of reception through the notion of "Texture," which, "comprises an array of perceptual data that

91 Massumi, Parables of the Virtual, 61. 92 Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth eds., "Introduction," The Affect Theory Reader. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 1. 55 includes repetition," that "[e]ven more immediately than other perceptual systems, it seems, the sense of touch makes nonsense out of any dualistic understanding of agency and passivity; to touch is always also to understand other people or natural forces as having effectually done so before oneself, if only in the making of the textured object."93

Therefore, texture allows one to see the ways feelings contribute to knowledge, and therefore rejects the reason/emotion dichotomy. Calling on the texture of the past, I argue that CAPA's mock trial functions as a means for its participants to feel and touch the past.

This understanding of affect stresses the inherent emotionality of the history--of which many participants use to justify their place within the performance. Affect also finds itself in the ways individuals engage with and enact the historical argumentation for or against the Warren Report to ultimately push against the existing record in order to effect change. CAPA's returning to this history in the present moment allows them to leave their mark, to touch the history that has emotionally touched them.

The trauma conveyed within the primary source documents written in the immediate aftermath, particularly newspaper and magazine articles, of the assassination contribute to the lasting emotionality found in the history and memory of the Kennedy assassination. Narrativization becomes a tool for memorializing and remembering this history, as historical theorist Hayden White writes, " [t]he historical narrative does not reproduce the events it describes; it tells us in what direction to think about the events and

93 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, and Performativity. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 14,16. 56 charge out thoughts about the events with different emotional valences."94 While it is not unfounded to read the assassination as a tragedy, the personalization of narratives encoded in the journalists telling/retelling of the moment provides another layer of emotionality. Therefore, the innate drama of the moment of assassination employs a language of rupture: "The events of these [two] days were witnessed with shock and disbelief by a Nation grieving the loss of its young leader."95 Further, one Washington DC newspaper article wrote in the aftermath of the assassination: "It was one of those lovely late fall days, this November 22, ... It was, indeed, calmer in Washington than usual, for the President was out of town on a three-day trip. That always relaxes the executive branch...Then, without warning the thunderclap."96 The consistent usage of a tone of shock and surprise illustrate the unsuspecting nature of the event.

Primary source coverage of the assassination highlights the indispensable role that journalists played in constructing the lasting memory of Kennedy and his death.

Journalist Barbie Zelker outlines how journalists approached writing articles on the assassination, through tactics of synecdoche, omission and personalization.97 In particular, this tactic of personalization lays claim to the emotionality of the event, while

94 Hayden White, "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact," Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978), 91. 95 Warren, "Foreword," The Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, xi. 96 "Disbelief, Then Shock, Shatters Quiet Confidence of Calm City," Confidential File: Box 39: FG 635 President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (folder 4). 97 Zelker, Covering the Body, 37-44. 57 also providing cultural authority to the telling of this history. Zelker's focus on Walter

Cronkite's infamous tear-filled announcement of Kennedy's death illustrates how journalists who participated in the collective national feeling were acting with professionalism.98 Cronkite's emotion makes him an honest and sincere witness to the event, despite not having been present in Dallas; but his emotion becomes a part of the archive. Personalization became a means for journalists to convey and participate in national feeling, while ultimately infusing emotionality into the archive.

Like the journalists claim to personalization in their writing and authority to the history, the CAPA participants use personal anecdotes to justify their authority to tell the history. For prosecution lawyer Gus Pappas, he shares his father's memory of the assassination, to highlight his personal interest in the story. Day one defense attorney,

Tanenbaum, while not having a personal connection to the history prior, discusses his interest in the history now that he has participated. The most personalized story is

Lawrence P. Schnapf whose claim to Kennedy history authority comes from his years as a CAPA member. Schnapf, while a practicing lawyer, is the only participant to deviate from courtroom decorum, and present out of turn and therefore inappropriate argumentation, of which the judge asks the jury to disregard.99 This particularly dramatic moment within the seemingly anodyne trial, suggests the slippage of temporal and spatial distance between the history and the present, which exposes the emotional residue of this

98 Ibid., 81, specifically the section on Cronkite. 99 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 17, 2017. 58 history. For it is where the mock trial's legal formalities digress from the norm that the subjective intention of CAPA comes out. As the performance space becomes a site to place themselves within the historical record as they push against the existing record--the

Warren Report. CAPA's mock trial seeks to provide a stage of reason and authority against the Warren Report, however its reliance on emotionality found in the national affect of the history and personal stories of sadness, only further reinforce, "The stickiness of emotion [as] evident in the residue of generational time, reminding us that histories of events and historical effects of identity fixing stick to any mobility," wherein

"live bodies are the means by which the past and the present negotiate disappearance

(again)."100

The CAPA mock trial is participating in the performed historiography of the

Kennedy assassination that allows theater to spotlight the affective dimensions of this history within national identity. Here the theorization on emotions as the "soft touch" of nation-making, by theorist Sarah Ahmed, functions to introduce the ways that emotion plays a fundamental role in connecting self to history and self to the nation. Ahmed argues, "emotions work to shape the 'surfaces' of individual and collective bodies. Bodies take the shape of the very shape of the very contact they have with objects and others," in the case of the Kennedy assassination, the persistence of images and stories from the day suggest the ways the tragedy of the assassination invites Americans to feel alongside one

100 Schneider, Performing Remains, 36-9. 59 another.101 The process of collective feeling, as it relates to a national icon or a historical moment functions as a participatory action of national inclusion. The conflation of

Kennedy with American idealism and Cold War superiority only makes this historical affect more potent--as the myth is more easily disseminated, consumed and understood/ felt. Thus, "[e]motions are relational: they involve (re)actions or relations of 'towardness' or 'awayness' in relation to such objects," to put the Warren Report on trial is to place oneself into relation with to the history through a public performance,

(inter(in)animation) highlighting the ways that the performed history allows present days citizens to feel and participate in nation.102

Yet, it is not just the emotion of loss conveyed in CAPA's mock trial, as the usage of the courtroom generates emotions of doubt and paranoia in the face of injustice.

Conspiracy theories of the assassination have fundamentally contributed to the emotionality of the memory and mythologizing of the event, as it is clear that many of the questions raised by the paranoid readings of the Report highlight bigger questions about governmental power and citizen responsibility. Jim Garrison in JFK (as written by Oliver

Stone) states, "[i]s a government worth preserving when it lies to the people? It's become a dangerous country when you cannot trust anyone. When you cannot tell the truth."103 In many ways, CAPA's returning to the history seeks to work out this very question since to

101 Sarah Ahmed, Cultural Politics of Emotion. (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 1. 102 Ibid., 8. 103 Stone, JFK. 60 prove the Report wrong would suggest corruption at the highest level. However,

President Johnson specifically sought to avoid such distrust and unease from the

American public;104 his focus became publishing a report that was "[a]s quality as it can, as speedily as it can," in order to quickly regain a collective calm during the Cold War years.105 The immediacy of Mark Lane and Jim Garrison's 1966 investigations fundamentally undermined the overall intention of Johnson and the Commission, as they disrupted governmental authority by claiming such shoddy work was intentional. The legacy of distrust and paranoia found in these early works has fomented into the present day urgency to return to this history as a means to find closure.

While interpreting evidence is a prerequisite for any historian writing history and/ or lawyer trying to argue their case, CAPA's re-enactment of argumentation surrounding the Warren Report highlights the affect of interpretation. In particular as defense lawyer,

Tanenbaum concludes, "this evidence needs to be looked at."106 The overindulgence of biased readings has fomented an emotional historiography of the assassination. In particular, the stipulation within President Johnson's Executive Order 11130 that reads:

"The Commission is empowered to prescribe its own procedures and to employ such

104 Collection of Telephone Conversations: #52, #116, #121, #135, #185 & #201, Recordings and Transcripts of Telephone Conversations and Meetings, LBJ Presidential Library, accessed February 22, 2018, http://discoverlbj.org/ 105 Telephone conversation # 201, sound recording, LBJ and ROBERT STOREY, 12/1/1963, 1:05PM, Recordings and Transcripts of Telephone Conversations and Meetings, LBJ Presidential Library, accessed February 22, 2018, http://discoverlbj.org:443/item/tel-00201. 106 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 17, 2017. 61 assistants as it deems necessary," does little to assuage theories of conspiracy and cover- up.107 In fact, the dry "legalese" of many of the official documents from the Commission, generate open interpretation by lay-people's readings, as such it contributes to the always evolving interpretations of the Report and its various documents.108

Historiographical discourse eschews emotion-laden interpretative readings to emphasize reasonable scholarship. Yet, as I have previously argued the affective dimensions of historical reenactment highlight the ways history enters the realm of emotion. Even Schneider contends with the hierarchy of knowledge within historical reenactments as a mode of embodying a moment in history, "[b]y this account, touch

('visceral'), and affective engagement ('emotional'), are in distinction to the

'analytical.'"109 Schneider comments on the work of historian R.G. Collingwood, who famously coined the notion of reenactment as a way to reasonably study and decipher history. For Collingwood reenactment is viewed as a tool to be used by a historian to link a historical subject's thought and action, however as Collingwood scholar William H.

Dray writes of Collingwood's work, "[t]he historian [sic] 'penetrates' to the inside of the event itself to discover the thought which it expresses. Put in other language, historical understanding of an action is said to be achieved without subsuming it under empirical

107 "Executive Order 11130" Special File on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Box 2 Folder: Assassination-Forming Warren Commission, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library: Austin, TX. 108 Peña, American Mythologies, 83. 109 Schneider, Performing Remains, 35. 62 generalizations or laws."110 For Collingwood the usage of reenactment by a reasonable historian gives way to an understanding of people throughout history, for reenactment functions as a tool to connect people throughout history. What Collingwood recognizes is the humanity of history. Yet, his attention to reason undermines the potential to understand emotion as a mode of knowing. Schneider, as a performance scholar, intervenes this historiography to highlight, "affect as inquiry."111

However, it is evident that CAPA does not identify their mock trial as employing theatrical/performance practices or even affect as inquiry. I believe that their intentional framing as a mock trial, works like Collingwood's form of reenactment, to undermine affect as a way of knowing. The purposeful placement of this reenactment within a courtroom and usage of participants as actors helps to establish this as a performance using legal formalities in the renegotiation of believed past injustices. Performance studies allows for a reading of CAPA's mock trial as a performance, in a way that does not undermine the emotion/reason dichotomy in fact, as performance scholar Diana

Taylor writes, "[r]ecognizing performance as a valid focus of analysis contributes to our understanding of embodied practice as an episteme and a praxis, a way of knowing as well as a way of storing and transmitting cultural knowledge and identity," and as such realizes performances potential to do history and elucidate on "scenarios that make up

110 William H. Dray, History as Re-Enactment: R.G. Collingwood's Idea of History, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 50. 111 Schneider, Performing Remains, 2. 63 individual and collective imaginaries."112 Further, a performance lens focuses in on the inherent humanity of doing such a history, and therefore claims the intimate relationship of reason and emotion in forms of knowing. The affective dimension of returning to this history (again) in 2017 only emphasizes the role of affect in maintaining popular interest, particularly as it relates to the assassination as symbol for loss of innocence. A re- enactment is a way for individual lay-people to participate in renegotiating the unsatisfied conclusions of the Report. Through the affective mythologizing of this moment, citizens are invited to participate in figuring out the truth. This notion is best exemplified in another one of Garrison's famous lines in JFK, "If you let yourself be too scared then you let the bad guys take over the country, don't you? And then everybody gets scared."113 In such a statement, Garrison establishes the role of the citizen as saving the nation from fear; as he relegates those searching for truth as good and those obstructing this truth as bad, associating conspiracy theorists with Kennedy and therefore American goodness.

CAPA highlights the various ways that citizens challenge the Warren Report, like

Garrison, to ultimately protect their country from "bad guys."

While CAPA facilitates multiple ways to engage with the Kennedy assassination on their website (listing various books, articles, and events) their usage of a mock trial denotes the potency in how public performance/theater generates new understandings and ways of engaging the public in the history of the Kennedy assassination. While being a

112 Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 278. 113 Stone, JFK. 64 singular moment in history, the mythologizing of the post-assassination history highlights the larger implications of this moment in American culture. Kennedy as a symbol for

American goodness lasts into the present, as the mystery of his assassination affectively moves people to try and fix the record. CAPA as a political organization stands against all presidential assassinations, but their keen attention to the Kennedy assassination, as exemplified through their mock trial, only further underscores the popular place of this assassination with popular history as a symbol for all assassinations. Reenactment provides a space for inter(in)animation to occur, where citizens can practice their democratic rights to stand against to injustice and affect the record, in the same way, the history has emotionally affected their lives.

CONCLUSION

This chapter began by thinking through Oswald V Texas as a performance of history, asking the question why use performance to reexamine the Kennedy assassination? These points address the emotionality inherent in how certain histories get personalized to various communities and how this personalization inspires a re-turning to the history. Further, it understands the ways that performance becomes a tactic in which citizens (who feel personally affected by this history) contribute to how the Kennedy assassination is seen, remembered and negotiated based on contemporary needs and desires of these communities. Performance studies, dramaturgical analysis and affect

65 theory provide a keen way to observe how CAPA is doing history and the ways that history is itself a vital part of national, cultural identity.

Reading performance as a form of historiography allows one to see the inherent subjectivities that guide our understanding and construction of any narrative, and therefore denies the authoritative truth relegated to history. To take the Kennedy assassination and put it on trial, suggests a history of unresolved injustices. The inherent theatricality of the mock trial elaborates on the emotionality of returning to history through embodied participation, as illustrated through the performance studies concepts of Roach's surrogation and Schneider's inter(in)animation. In particular, the usage of the mock trial to renegotiate the history and memory of the Kennedy assassination evokes the active ways citizens address their own history. Theater in this case becomes a way of teaching, learning and affecting historiography.

Yet, why return to this particular history? What about this history begs to be repeated? The next chapter will address why this particular history continues to be repeated by historians and citizens alike. Ultimately suggesting that the popular historization of the assassination has contributed to a cultural myth, in which citizens can easily access and argue ideological and cultural saliency in contemporary American society.

66 CHAPTER 3: Kennedy Assassination Popular Historiography

In 2010 singer-songwriter Erykah Badu released a music video entitled "Window

Seat," that evokes the symbolic historiography of the Kennedy assassination. Filmed in cinema verite, the camera follows Badu walking through Dealey Plaza as she strips down to her bare skin. While the central focus of the camera stays on Badu, all around her masses of people appear unwavering and unresponsive to her nakedness. When she reaches the infamous place of Kennedy's assassination, she is shot by an unseen assassin surrounded by a crowd of people. Her naked body falls to the ground as blue liquid seeps from her head to spell out "groupthink." As the camera pans over her body, she speaks

"they play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand."114 While Badu is not directly commenting on the assassination, her recreation of the visual symbols of the

Kennedy assassination taps into the cultural capital of assassination history. "Window

Seat," is a keen example of the Kennedy assassination within contemporary American culture and as such it highlights how the assassination has become not just shorthand for loss, but more prominently a symbol for looking closer at injustice. CAPA's mock trial also accesses cultural themes and symbols of suspicion rendered through the popular historiography of the assassination; the myth and symbols of this popular history,

114 ErykahBaduVEVO, "Window Seat," Erykah Badu Perf., YouTube Video, April 2, 2010 https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hVp47f5YZg. 67 therefore, function as fodder for the drama within CAPA's courtroom as well as defines their reason to return.

The prominence and popularity of the assassination within popular mediums, like film and television, is fundamentally important to understanding the place of the assassination's history within American popular culture. To highlight the popularity of this history, a simple search of the term "Kennedy assassination" on Amazon.com yields

4,000 various documentaries, films, television shows, and books.115 Most of these works contend in some way with the fallibility of the Warren Report and emphasizes how the public is exposed to discourse surrounding the assassination. In 2013, a Gallup Poll showed 61% of Americans believed Oswald did not act alone.116 Further political scientists Patricia Felkins and Irvin Goldman have written, "[t]here was and continues to be an insatiable, emotional need for information, explanation, and eulogies," which elaborates on the emotional reasoning facilitating the prevalence of popular iterations of the history.117 The sheer weight of these examples elaborates on how emotional desire keeps people re-turning, re-examining and re-asserting this history that ultimately, conveys the intimacy between this moment in history and the American public.

115 Amazon "Kennedy Assassination Search," (Accessed March 6, 2018), https://www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kennedy+assassination+. 116 Art Swift, "Majority in U.S. Still Believe Kennedy Killed in a Conspiracy," Gallup. https:// web.archive.org/web/20160801184321/http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed- conspiracy.aspx, (accessed March 6, 2018). 117 Patrica Felkins and Irvin Goldman, “Political Myth as Subjective Narrative: Some Interpretations and Understandings of John F. Kennedy.” Political Psychology, vol. 14, no. 3, 1993, pp. 447–467., www.jstor.org/stable/3791707, 449. 68 Further, the history's affective intimacy helps explain the Kennedy assassination as myth. The myth of the assassination is ripe with Manichean themes of abuse of justice that are easily conveyed to and grasped by American citizens. Its pervasive presence within popular mediums of entertainment allows individual to readily access and understand this history. The tangible affect of popular culture only aids citizens in participating through feeling alongside the historical narrative--personalizing it, while nationalizing themselves.

The various ways the Kennedy assassination is remembered in popular culture underscores the ideological implications popular history plays within American national memory. Specifically, this history's intimacy helps explain the Kennedy assassination as myth. Centering the notion of popular culture as ideological purveyors in a capitalist society, culture studies scholar Manuel Peña translates Barthes' semiological work, which was intended for French popular culture, onto the cultural landscape of America. Peña makes the point, early in his argument, that "French and American capitalism (and therefore class breakdown) [are] very similar," therefore highlighting the central role capitalism plays in manifesting popular culture.118 This point also argues that due to its intimate relationship with class stratification by way of materialism, popular culture carries with it ideological implications; "myth hides nothing; its purpose is to distort and displace the original signage and make it serve its own motivation."119 Furthermore, the

118 Peña, American Mythologies, 6. 119 Ibid., 16. 69 metalanguage of myth created through the signification of signs works, as Peña states, to

"either [deflect] its meaning [sic] or [appropriate] it by converting its message into a

'uniaccentual,' class-neutral discourse based on a distorted conception of what constitutes democracy, freedom, social responsibility and egalitarianism [sic]."120 In the case of the

Kennedy assassination, such a myth sets the citizenry ideologically at odds with the

American government (Warren Report), as is the case in CAPA's mock trial; this symbol of the concerned citizen inspire feelings of national inclusion. To put the Warren Report on trial (again) is to enshrine, further, the popular historiography of the assassination, wherein performance functions to provide an intimate space for American citizens to access, participate and feel this national popular history--personalizing it, while nationalizing themselves.

This chapter will first explore the Kennedy assassination as popular history--one that sits in the national conscious as myth and therefore is steeped in cultural symbolism.

Using dramaturgical analysis alongside Barthes' iteration of semiotics, I will explore how the historical narrativization, found in both public forums on the internet and the national archive at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, contribute to a mythologyzing of history for popular consumption. Semiotics guides the interrogation of these themes and symbols present in popular narrativization as culturally relevant; "myth prefers to work with poor, incomplete images, where the meaning is already relieved of its fat, and ready

120 Ibid., 19. 70 for signification."121 Additionally, I will place CAPA's mock trial alongside Oliver Stone's historical docudrama JFK to analyze how historical reenactment provides an accessible space for citizens to engage with the symbolism and themes present in Kennedy assassination popular historiography. I argue that the performances re-enacted by both

CAPA and JFK convey a legacy of embodied dissent against the Warren Report. Doing so highlights the present day desires of US citizens to continually return to the historical record in order to actively revise the record to fit contemporary needs. Understanding the

Kennedy assassination, as represented in CAPA and JFK, to be a form of popular history not only justifies the consistent re-turning to but also becomes a performance that emphasizes cultural themes of good vs bad and loss of innocence. By defining the

Kennedy assassination as a popular history, and therefore myth, I contend that it speaks more to ways this history sits within the American conscious, expressing more about why this history gets retold over and over, and less about the event itself.

YOU’VE HEARD OF THE KENNEDY MYTH, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION MYTH? "You save Kennedy's life you make the world a better place." Episode 1, Season 1, 11-22-63

CAPA's mock trial highlights the significant role the Kennedy assassination plays within American popular history, as its narrativization in both the public and official archives contribute to mythologizing tragedy, victimization, and uncertainty. In particular,

121 Barthes, Mythologies, 237. 71 the actual moment of assassination has been rightfully distilled into a symbol of a traumatic loss of good by an unknown evil. However, beyond this moment of tragedy, the historiography of the assassination's aftermath conveys larger cultural fears of a loss of innocence instigated by a corrupted, all-too-powerful government. It is the lack of closure felt from the Warren Report's shoddy work and unfinished narrative due to Oswald's early death, that I believe to be the reason so many return: the Kennedy assassination myth symbolizes a fallible and/or corruptible government.

The narrativization of the assassination on popular public forums, specifically the public record found on the internet, highlights how the event is symbolized and remembered, as a mythologized battle between good and evil. Focusing a dramaturgical reading on the top three search results of "The Kennedy Assassination" in Google illustrates a specific public archive through which anyone who chooses to can engage. In particular, Google provides easy access to understanding popular consumption since its results are ordered starting with the most visited. Google's top three search results,

History Channel, Wikipedia, and The Kennedy Presidential Library each frame their history through their site's format and content, all of which narrativize the setting, plot, and characterization to ultimately construct this as a moment of good versus evil.

However, indelible to any mention of the historiography is the importance of understanding the Cold War context in which the assassination and investigation took place, as well as how Kennedy propagated his status as a diplomatic, dove Cold War

72 warrior.122 The language surrounding Kennedy conflates his status as president with the nation, therefore recognizing him as the literal embodiment of American Cold War superiority. His death only worked to solidify that status.

Within the public record each website immediately details the setting and plot of the event within their first couple sentences: placing Kennedy in Dallas on November 22,

1963, where he was shot while moving through Dealey Plaza at around 12:30 pm.123

Dramaturgically the initial outlining of time and place further denote the through line of action of this plot, one in which unsuspectingly November 22 became a day of assassination. In each description of Dealey Plaza it is illustrated as a stage once reserved for joy and friends gathering that quickly turned to a setting of utter shock and despair.

Photographs of Main Street show a pleasant setting of green grassy patches, clean sidewalks and brick buildings--it is an image of American prosperity.124

Yet, the primary similarity in each narrative is the characterization of Kennedy-- like Dealey Plaza-- as unsuspecting victim and Oswald as villain. While Kennedy was indeed a victim to this violent act, the correlation between Kennedy and Dealey Plaza,

122 This notion is raised in Felkins and Goldman's “Political Myth as Subjective Narrative: Some Interpretations and Understandings of John F. Kennedy.” 123 The websites being summarized: "November 22, 1963: Death of the President." November 22, 1963: Death of the President. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. ; "John F. Kennedy Assassinated." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. . 124 "Assassination of John F. Kennedy," Wikipedia. 73 further embellishes and emotionalizes Kennedy's role as victim, and in doing so heightens Oswald's villainous demeanor. Narrativizing history functions to "familiarize the unfamiliar" when writing history, as Hayden White contends past "events are made into a story by the suppression and subordination of certain [events] and the highlighting of others," and as such "the historical narrative does not reproduce the events it describes; it tells us in what direction to think about [them]."125 Characterization functions in a similar way as historians inject meaning into historical people, as they "do not have built into them, intrinsic meanings" rather it becomes the historian's choice to frame history and peoples meaning to contemporary audiences and as such highlights history as culturally subjective.126 For each website to maintain the heroic imagery of Kennedy by emphasizing victimhood, suggests the relationship between victimhood and goodness within American culture. On Wikipedia, the link connecting the assassination page to

John F. Kennedy's personal page provides a clear destination for more details of

Kennedy's life--military service, famous speeches, important programs he created--and strengthens his iconography as American hero.127 Further, the presidential library captures the excitement and popularity permeating from the crowds waiting to see

Kennedy in Dealey Plaza, as well as later at his funeral. But more importantly, the library

125 White, "The Historical Text and Literary Artifact," 86, 84, 91. 126 Ibid., 85. 127 "John F. Kennedy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Apr. 2017. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. . 74 paints him as a family man: giving details of Jackie Kennedy's attendance in the motorcade and his children at his funeral procession.128

Both the public and private archive characterizes Oswald on the other end of the spectrum, detailing him as a lone-gunman, with a solitary lifestyle, violent past, and communist beliefs. Wikipedia's link to Oswald's separate page explains his personal history of military service and defection to the USSR, his communist sympathies and organizing, as well as details of his activities on November 22, 1963, suggesting a clear link between his past and his presidential assassination.129 Similarly, the History Channel website gives explicit details of Oswald's past, making the assassination seem inevitable.

The narrative framing of Oswald as a communist is also found in the inclusion of black and white portraits, such as Oswald staring straight into the camera as well as his mug shot. Each photo of him tightly frames his face as he looks directly at the camera. The images are ominous, intimidating and menacing, as they all read as mug shots.130

Comparatively, Kennedy's numerous portraits included in each website, feature him glancing off into the distance. Assumed to be presidential portraits, they frame Kennedy's broad shoulders as he leans closer to the camera, capturing an image of intimacy between him and the audience. What is fundamentally important in each photo is the direction of

128 "November 22, 1963: Death of the President." November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. 129 "Lee Harvey Oswald." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Apr. 2017. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. . 130 Ibid. 75 Kennedy's line of sight, which is always directed into the corner of the frame; the soft upward gaze appears to face the horizon, symbolizing his attention to the future. Such reoccurring imagery reinforces his connection to ideas of hope and progress through his notions of the "New Frontier."131 Another prominent image used within the websites is the famous photo of Kennedy and Jackie is the back of the in open-top convertible waving at crowds of supporters. In fact, many photos memorializing November 22, show

Kennedy in a swarm of people, waving and smiling. Such images convey him as of the people, thoughtful and kind. This visual narrative establishes a Manichean lens to rid the story of complexity and uphold the themes of good versus evil as housed in the same notions of social vs solitary. It works to further encode the dichotomous characteristics with popular tropes for US values, and were particularly salient in the Cold War theatre of Democracy versus Communism.

Manichean characteristics are also clearly articulated within the official archive of the assassination at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, The Special File[s] on The

Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Within these six boxes are clippings from newspapers, diary entries, White House memos and correspondences between Johnson his cabinet and the would- be-members of the Warren Commission. These artifacts detail the moment in question and, in particular, elaborate on notions of Kennedy as a symbol of goodness, and highlight the unexpected loss. Furthermore, the single file designated to Lee Harvey

131 Felkins and Goldman, “Political Myth as Subjective Narrative," 447. 76 Oswald only elaborates on his loner and evil status. Reading these files as one would analyze a play or a performance only helps to understand the subjective construction of the archive, which works to narrativize the history similar to how the popular record does. In both cases the history is reduced to myth, which allows it to easily translate to the national audience.

Similar to the characterization seen in the websites, the Johnson files designate great effort to construct Kennedy and Oswald as good versus evil. Documents dated closer to November 22, 1963 include newspapers that immediately detail Kennedy's place within American history. Such articles include: "Disbelief, Then Shock, Shatters

Quiet Confidence of Calm City," which blatantly states, "[y]et at a moment such as this no American can escape the truth that the Presidency, and the man who holds it, embodies both the nature and the spirit of the American Nation. He is after all, the only truly national leader our system provides."132 Another article is also just as deliberate in its conflation of Kennedy's rhetoric with identity, in "Kennedy, at 43, Was Youngest Man

Elected President," Washington Post staff reporter Edward T. Folliard writes,

"[Kennedy's] style, his manner of dealing with the great issues of the times, was sharply different from that of his predecessor," which speaks of how he was honest with the

American people, unlike Eisenhower's blind optimism.133 Even Johnson writes a year

132 Confidential File: Box 39: FG 635 President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (folder 4) The Washington Post, dated November 22, 1963 section title "Disbelief, Then Shock, Shatters Quiet Confidence of Calm City" 133 Ibid., Section title "Kennedy, at 43, Was Youngest Man Elected President" 77 later on his remembrance of the events from November 22 for the Warren Commission, but takes time to define Kennedy's character; "I found it hard to believe that this had happened. The whole thing seemed unreal--unbelievable. A few hours earlier, I had breakfast with John Kennedy; he was alive, strong, vigorous. I could not believe now that he was dead. I was shocked and sickened."134 These trends of thinking about Kennedy as young, viral and, above all, America (not just American) further construct Kennedy as, not merely a man, but an idea. Wherein Oswald fills in the opposite end of this

Manichean spectrum.

Oswald is designated one folder in Box two of The Special File[s] on The

Assassination of John F. Kennedy, and one chapter in the FBI's discovery booklets. In both cases, he is described as being a loner and documented communist sympathies and actions. Within the exhibits provided by the FBI it is clear that he held firm Communist beliefs, as highlighted in his own writing (as seen in his hand-written autobiography). By underscoring Oswald's allegiance to Communism (so much so that he defected to the

USSR only to return because he was unsatisfied) facilitates the understanding of

Oswald's villainy within American history. Through his relatively small folder, Oswald gets reduced to a symbol of anti-Americanism. The documents characterize him as all things un-American: loner, Communist, violent and unsatisfied and as such, pushes

Kennedy ever more into the symbolic embodiment of American goodness. Yet, what

134 The Special File of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Box 2 "Warren Commission-President's Statements." 1964. 78 becomes particularly remarkable is how little evidence was used to draw these conclusions, and how that translates to another essential element of the mythology of the

Kennedy assassination, which I define as the loss of innocence.

The heavy reliance on Kennedy's conflated image of American goodness contributes to the assassination myth as a story about how an unexpected loss manifested the downfall of trust in the American government. Both the public, online record and the federal, official archive highlight the ways in which various dissenting arguments have contributed to the historical narrative of the post-assassination history. Within LBJ's

White House Files there are various documents dedicated to tracking dissenting opinions from famous conspiracy theorists, to book reviewers and journalists. New Orleans

District Attorney Jim Garrison (the lead character in Stone's JFK) is given a file, which includes pedestrian responses to Garrison's famous case against the Warren Report, these are letters that are written directly to President Johnson: "I am very distressed that Jim

Garrison has not been able to bring his case to trial," and "I am deeply disturbed about the tactics used to discredit DA Jim Garrison of New Orleans."135 These quotes taken from letters written in 1967, highlight the legacy of the Johnson administration in handling censorship and post-assassination memory, one where Garrison was getting prominent support by American citizens by contesting the Warren Report. In 1968 a man named

135 White House Confidential Files, Box 47: Garrison, James (Jim), December 29, 1967 letter from Mrs. Alfred L Albott; January 31, 1968 letter from Merle M. Singer. 79 Robert Drobot in Santa Clara, California started a petition to have all classified documents on the assassination released, in his letter he writes,

It is apparent the federal government and or President Johnson has done little or nothing to assist Mr. Garrison in his investigation...If the federal government is confident that the murder of President Kennedy was the work of a mentally unbalanced warehouseman, making the evidence available to Mr. Garrison would and should be a routine matter...I do not intend to imply that there is a federal conspiracy to cover-up the assassination but at the same time the actions of the President and the federal agencies involved are highly questionable.136

Drobot's quote exemplifies the suspicion felt towards the Johnson administration, a feeling that was not as blatantly present during Kennedy's term. The public record on the assassination further denotes how dissenting opinions, usually from conspiracy theorists, have contributed to public memory of the assassination, as Wikipedia's introductory paragraphs notes, "Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios."137 While a seemingly innocuous statement, such a sentence written early in the webpage's introductory section only further underscores the ways that conspiracy theories or dissenting opinions have contributed to the greater narrative of the assassination. The assassination history gets distilled into the myth of uncertainty, which further emphasizes the differences between the Kennedy administration, as a beacon of democracy and

136 White House Confidential Files, Box 47: Garrison, James (Jim), January 15, 1968: "Petition started in Santa Clara CA by Robert E Drobot" 137 Wikipedia, "John F. Kennedy," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy (accessed March 11, 2018). 80 citizen participation, against the Johnson administration, as shrouded in corruption and mystery. This uncertainty, conveyed through the dissenting voices, places the assassination myth as a loss of innocence and goodness as Johnson takes over the presidency.

In particular, it is the post-Kennedy administration history that contributes to the narrative of loss of innocence. As Peña points out in his chapter, "Obama's Death Panels," the speed at which the recent myth of "death panels" took hold in contemporary

American history "demonstrated just how easily cultural conflagration can be lit, especially in these times of economic hardship and lightening-quick internet communication."138 To translate this to the myth of the assassination directly calls into question the "hardship" created by the escalated occupation in the Vietnam War, which

American public viewed through the proliferation of at home television sets. To say the least, the violence of the Vietnam War in conjunction with the fallible Warren Report, only aids in constructing the post-Kennedy era as untrustworthy and corrupt. The quickness of escalated occupation in Vietnam, post-Kennedy, appeared to have been

Johnson's own doing and disassociates early involvement with Kennedy. The history of mass dissent against the Vietnam War is only a small sample of how the late 1960's were marked with distress regarding the abuse of power and loss of innocence of America as the purveyor of goodness throughout the world.

138 Peña, American Mythologies, 93. 81 The usage of the courtroom and legal performance helps to re-visit the history with an agenda to re-negotiate the "injustice" of this event within the present day context.

While the CAPA lawyers recognize that they are returning to a popular history, they evoke a longer history of ideological dissent and cultural significance. Returning to

Burgoyne's statement about Stone's JFK, "[c]ertainly JFK questions history both as a mode of knowledge and as a means of understanding the present. However, by focusing obsessively on a historical event, it also affirms a desperate need for history as the foundation of national identity. It has been said that 'The interrogation of history is a stage in the search for identity.'"139 Burgoyne suggests that each of these reenactments of history highlight is the ways that popular history is mythologized and personalized; therefore, to re-tell such history speaks more to present circumstances than past actualities.

JFK as History on the Kennedy Assassination

One of the most, if not the most, prominent examples of the popular narrativization of the Kennedy assassination is Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. Stone based his story on real-life New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who famously brought the only known case involving a conspiracy to kill the President to court. The film follows Garrison as he works through the Warren Report's 1964 findings, uncovering

139 Burgoyne, Film Nation, 96. 82 missing details, overlooked evidence or ignored testimony, in an effort to convey the incomplete Report and corrupt Federal Government. The film received heightened popularity and was credited with inspiring Congress to pass "President John F. Kennedy

Assassination Record Collection Act of 1992," which would release official and confidential documents about the assassination from the National Archives by 2017. JFK played an indispensable role in reviving interest in the assassination in the 1990s and has since maintained its authoritative voice in all things Kennedy, which can be seen in

CAPA lawyers' usage of JFK anecdotes as points of argumentation.

Throughout the mock trial, CAPA calls on JFK's argumentation as evidence of a new historiography, purporting that the argument made by Stone is more substantial than that of the Warren Report and therefore provides evidence by which average citizens can use to revise the historical record. It is important to understand Stone as a citizen, like the

CAPA lawyers. While participating in historiography, Stone is not held to the standards of professional historical discourse. Instead Stone is driven by a personal passion and obsession with distorted histories, even going as far as to claim the overall agenda of JFK as related to this interest in the "distortions of history, with the power of mass illusion" that was fueled by both "a passion and a love for the man [Kennedy] and the time, as well as an honest sense of outrage and shock at the dissident material about the assassination that I'd been reading over the years."140 In both cases, Stone and the CAPA lawyers

140 Oliver Stone, "A Filmmaker's Credo: Some Thoughts on Politics, History and the Movies." Mass Politics. Editor Daniel M. Shea. (New York: Worth Publiers, Inc., 1999), 135, 138. 83 identify with a history that is personal to them, further illustrating the intimate relationship between Kennedy's history and present-day CAPA participants.

In Stone's JFK the lead character, Jim Garrison, expresses a similar tone of disbelief and distrust for governmental authority. The character of Jim Garrison is inspired by the actual actions taken by then-DA of New Orleans, who was one of the earliest and loudest voices to argue against the Report and would become the only person to try a case as a conspiracy. The film JFK is significant in JFK assassination popular historiography as it marks an uptick in conspiratorial literature in the 1990s, as outlined by Kovaleff's review. Yet, what scholars deem particularly important to the film JFK, is the way it artfully establishes an affective tone of distrust and questioning, wherein the ultimate source of evil is the government.141 Through the retelling of Garrison's story, we see his personal life come under attack for trying to find the truth. The musical score, fast-paced editing, and acting choices elaborate Garrison's personal fears throughout the movie, while affectively moving the audience through moments of suspense. Stone intentionally generates an affective experience that like Kennedy, Garrison and the viewer become implicated in an unsafe world, wherein knowing the "truth" is dangerous.

141 This point is based on the culmination of scholarship featured in this thesis: Burygoyne, Robert. "Modernism and the Narrative of Nation in JFK," Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Butler, Lisa D., Cheryl Koopman, and Philip G. Zimbardo. "The Psychological Impact of Viewing the Film "JFK": Emotions, Beliefs, and Political Behavioral Intentions." Political Psychology16, no. 2 (1995): 237-57. doi:10.2307/3791831; Sturken, Marita. "Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone's Docudrama." History and Theory: 36, no. 4 (1997): 64-79. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/stable/2505575. 84 Such a suggestion surrounds much of the popular discourse related to conspiracy theories on the Kennedy assassination. As Burgoyne notes "[t]he debate over Oliver

Stone's JFK has been framed to date largely within the discourse of historiography, with greatest attention being paid to issues concerning the limits of fact and fiction and the erosion of the presumed boundary between documentary and imaginative reconstruction."142 Burgoyne effectively demonstrates how history is used in the film to both access dominant American historical discourses, while subsequently undermining its historiography. As he notes the "obsession" over the history of the assassination gets both represented in "a traditional view" which includes a "unified and fixed historical reality" that has the potential to "be recovered were it not obscured by willfully deceptive stories," while simultaneously being undermined, as history is also presented in an

"'epistemic murk,' [of] unstable discourse of fact and fiction, truth and illusion."143 The film is at once disorienting and reifying. The editing and cinematography aid Stone in visualizing this 'episteme murk' as the usage of rapid montages with authentic and fabricated photos as well as scenes of hypothetical events are juxtaposed with character's verbalizing certain points. It becomes difficult to decipher between real and fake.

An example of such a fabricated scene is Stone's depiction of someone creating the infamous image of Oswald holding the Mannlicher Carncano rifle. The movie displays the image of vague hands cutting out a picture of Oswald's face and gluing it on

142 Burgoyne, Film Nation, 88. 143 Burgoyne quoting Hayden White, Film Nation, 96. 85 the picture of another man's body--a man holding the rifle. As such, the mind draws various conclusions about the evidence used to convict Oswald; yet, this argument is itself made-up, unsubstantiated and conceived in the mind of Stone. Within the Warren

Report the photo of Oswald holding the rifle is tantamount to their case against him. To claim that a primary piece of evidence, is not just false, but purposefully fabricated in order to frame Oswald stresses corruption. In subsequent scenes Garrison and his team of lawyers notice that the shadows on Oswald's face do not match the shadows on the ground--clues of corruption. Even later in the film, scenes of LBJ agreeing to the assassination, to give them their "damn war," help to link the assassination to the highest federal position.144 These images, sounds, and feelings are experienced in such a way that allows the viewer to draw conclusions based on the narrative structure of the film. The experience of viewing the film and feeling its emotional journey only further personalize the effects of this history in the audience. These feelings become a call to action, to unearth the corruption.

CAPA's mock trial is one of the ways citizens respond to this call to action.

Responding to the affect used in JFK to promote a particular opinion on the assassination, CAPA's defense team engages the viewing audience through fear, by questioning the supposed implications of if the Commission was an evil source of unchecked power. CAPA often calls on the findings established within Garrison’s trial in

144 Stone, JFK. 86 JFK referring to the film either directly or in repeated argumentation. As Tanenbaum points out in his opening testimony, Garrison uncovered evidence tampering as early as

1974.145 Calling on both Garrison's published work and scenes from JFK helps to link

CAPA into the larger legacy of legal argumentation against the Report. The defense attorneys, like Stone's JFK before them, are participating in a pattern of dissent view that perceives the shoddy work of the Report to be intentional. Thus, CAPA provides a contemporary space for citizens to engage with the ongoing search for "truth" about the assassination and work against corruption that undermines democracy.

What is made indelibly clear in scholarship pertaining to the effects of Stone's

JFK on the nation, is the ways that the emotionality of this history was/is felt; as Stone's

"film exerted a strong impact on the emotions of viewers [sic]. After viewing JFK, people felt more angry, more fearful, more energized, and less hopeful than the comparison groups who had yet to view it."146 In particular, psychologist Lisa D. Butler et. al. writes that the cinematography and editing most particularly generate an affect of paranoia, which gives way to conspiratorial gestures of distrust.147 For CAPA to call on the narrative and evidence from JFK is to participate in a similar legacy of paranoia and distrust, wherein the defense attorney's performance relies on convincing the jury to

145 Citizen's Against Political Assassination, Texas V. Oswald, November 16, 2017. 146 Lisa D. Butler, Cheryl Koopman, and Philip G. Zimbardo. "The Psychological Impact of Viewing the Film "JFK": Emotions, Beliefs, and Political Behavioral Intentions." Political Psychology16, no. 2 (1995): 237-57. doi:10.2307/3791831, 244. 147 Ibid., 254. 87 distrust the Report, through emoting suspicion. Cultural scholar Marita Sturken writes in

"Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone's Docudramas" that the elements of docudrama, used by this "cinematic historian," confound fact and fiction, reenactment and fantasy," while becoming the "primary medium through which viewers' desires about history are satisfied."148 To suggest that one is emotionally satisfied through the blending of fact and fiction, demonstrates the malleability of history in order to suit the desires of the populace. For the reenactment conceived in JFK and participated in within CAPA's mock trial, "provides the spectator with an experience of the past, one of duration, identification, and emotion, of both anxiety and pleasure...these cinematic representations can stand in for the real."149 Such a point further underlines the personal, emotional connection one has with one's history.

CONCLUSION

Each of these instances--popular internet histories, records at the National

Archive, JFK, and CAPA's mock trial--highlight how the history of the Kennedy assassination gets told and re-told on various platforms to reach various public audiences.

In each case the mythologizing of Kennedy assassination into a tale of good vs. evil and a loss of innocence is constructed through the popular historical retelling. However, the

148 Sturken, "Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History," 71. 149 Ibid., 73. 88 greater narrative that is constructed through each of these disparate popular iterations conveys the meta-myth about that speaks to present day circumstances, in every instance the through line expresses suspicion and paranoia towards an all too powerful government. As myth, the Kennedy assassination becomes a shorthand or anecdote of a democratic government run amuck, gaining too much power and being too secretive to the American people.

To return to the assassination, through the public performance of a mock trial or contributing to the Wikipedia page, helps to uncover the larger lessons conveyed within his myth, that citizens must practice their democratic right to keep a check on governmental institutions. CAPA's 2017 mock trial expresses this entirely, as its usage of examples from popular conspiracy theories to JFK plot lines denote an emphasis placed on dissenting voices rather than those in support of the Report. Therefore to signify the symbols and themes of the assassination elaborates on pertinent ideologies that persist in contemporary American culture. For popular historiography becomes a way for citizens to use and employ history in order to service their own ideological convictions. Having a myth about a force of good against evil that ultimately ends in a loss of innocence, helps to reach larger audiences who easily identify with such culturally American ideas.

89 CHAPTER 4: Conclusion

Like the CAPA lawyers and the assassination's reporters, I began this thesis with my own personalized claims of Kennedy assassination history; it is a marker to the transcendent, tangible emotion of the assassination and popular historiography that drew me in so many years ago. I too am participating in the emotional current of this history passed from my father's interests to mine. I find myself returning to this history over and over, no longer guided by feelings of suspicion, but rather questions of how these feelings moved me so. It sparks my interest in the ways history functions as popular culture, fomented through the affect of historical performances. As such it speaks to how history can transcend temporal distance through myth. Kennedy and his assassination maintain its presence in contemporary popular history through its ability to speak to present-day concerns and fears of the role of government that continues to exist.

As an organization intent on confronting past assassinations to ensure an efficacious democracy, Citizens Against Political Assassination and their mock trial The

State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald, employ theater as a tool for taking action to re-visit and re-historicize a past assassination. The public presentation of theater invites disparate participants and viewers to actively engage in an embodied experience of history. As such, theater provides a means for individuals to participate in remembering and

90 remaking history, "theatre, by performing history, is thus re-doing something which has already been done in the past, creating a secondary elaboration of this historical event."150

Playwright Susan-Lori Parks literalization of this idea through "Rep&Rev," highlights how theater, like history, must pay attention to how the narrative form informs content;

"[a] playwright, as any other artist, should accept the bald fact that content determines form and form determines content; that form and content are interdependent."151 CAPA's choice to engage with the history of the Kennedy assassination through the public performance of the mock trial, elaborates on how the performance type informs the argument. Using a mock trial to interrogate the history of the assassination specifically frames this as a history of unresolved injustice.

The mock trial functions as the ideal mode of performance for CAPA to represent their assertion that the Kennedy assassination remains a historical injustice. Taking this history into the courtroom, CAPA participants are able to return to the case against

Oswald as the lone assassin. Using their historical distance, which suggests subsequent evidentiary findings and technological advancements, the lawyers reexamine the Warren

Report--either arguing for or against it. The act of putting the Warren Report on trial exemplifies the notion of past injustices and the belief that the Report is fallible. The sheer realization of this performance as it actively engages with the Report within the

150 Freddie Rokem, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), 6. 151 Parks, "from Element and Style, 7. 91 present day courtroom supplies the space to allow American citizens to return to and revise history.

The Kennedy assassination and theories of conspiracy have been the topic of popular history since as early as 1966--two years after the published Report. Narratives of dissent arguing for the Report to be an incomplete and corrupt document, permeate the popular historiography of the assassination, and have helped crystallize this history into a myth of American culture. Within the mythologizing of this history, Kennedy gets distilled into the idea of American goodness; wherein, all complexities are stripped from his biography in order to conflate his loss of life with the loss of American loss of innocence and goodness within the late 1960's. This loss of innocence is further elaborated on within the various dissenting voices, such as those of Mark Lane, Jim

Garrison, and Oliver Stone, which have contributed to this historiography from 1966 until the present day. The popular forms in which these voices choose to convey their history denote the ways in which assassination history gets sensationalized to be consumed en masse. While the reality of the assassination is indeed a spectacle of heightened trauma, the framing of the assassination as an unfinished case due to the Report's shoddy and/or corrupted work, steeps the assassination myth in feelings of suspicion. In such mythologizing the Report, as a product of the Warren Commission, symbolizes the federal government, wherein any distrust of the report exemplifies distrust in the entire federal government. It puts itself at odds with Kennedy, and his embodiment of America.

92 While seemingly contradictory, the Warren Report gets moved into another oppositional point to Kennedy/America on the Manichean spectrum.

CAPA capitalizes on these residual and lasting feelings of paranoia that permeate the affect of Kennedy assassination history. The theater of the mock trial becomes a tool through which citizens can participate in feeling the texture of the past and therefore push against these feelings of suspicion. The participants within Texas V Oswald highlight how

"[t]he performing body is established as dialectical. The man who walks across a space that has been specifically labeled a 'stage' becomes an aesthetic object as well as an experiencing subject," meaning they become a conduit of emotion and transmitter of knowledge to those viewing the trial.152 The CAPA lawyers perform in the expected behavior of a profession lawyer would, presenting argumentation and conforming to legal decorum, conveying the reality of the performance; however, moments where the lawyers share personal anecdotes, historical anachronisms as evidence and/or digress from legal decorum convey slippages between the past and the present, performed and real, and subjective and objective history. As such it is through the lawyers body that both CAPA participants and viewers experience the history of the Kennedy assassination.

Understanding the mock trial to be an embodiment of history, elaborates on the affective components of historical reenactment, particularly as a practice of national feeling. As a tactic for engagement, the mock trial invites lay-people into the discussion

152 Edinbourgh, Theatrical Reality, 10. 93 of historical injustices, through viewing the lawyer's arguments alongside the jury. The trial's focus of Kennedy assassination history through the legacy of dissenting opinions of the Warren Report provides a space for American citizens to participate in the renegotiation of history. As historical theorist Michel De Certeau notes, history is myth in that it "makes a social identity explicit... in the way it is differentiated from a former period or another society."153 The popularity of the Kennedy assassination as a myth that represents the fallibility of authoritative institutions literally democratizes the practice of knowing and making history. Further, the emotionality present in the mythologizing of this history allows for the participants to collectively feel history, sticking together through the 'stickiness' of emotion.154 Like history, affect facilitates inclusion into the nation-state. CAPA presented an opportunity for both.

The contention that citizens are making history through their participation in

CAPA's mock trial is contingent to understanding that performance is itself history. To perform the injustices of the Warren Report only highlights how the history of the assassination gets embodied and written. Historian Collingwood famously suggests the role of reenactment in deciphering the connection between thought and action by historical figures. While Collingwood rejects the emotionality inherent in theatrical reenactment, in place of reasoned reenactment, I contend that emotion is ever present in

153 De Certeau, The Writing of History, 45. 154 Ahmed, Cultural Politics of Emotion, 78: "The response to terror becomes a way of strengthening the bonds of the nation and the global community of free nations: the wound of terror requires 'sticking together' (coherence) and using the values that made the Unites States and democracy 'strong'." 94 the writing of history. The mock trial only emphasizes this emotionality through its form of theater. Yet, CAPA further tries to distance them from theater, by entering the courtroom. The courtroom becomes a space to claim authority through legal formalities.

The performance of legal formalities allows citizens to lay claim to the authoritative voice of historians. As such the mock trial becomes the means through which CAPA contends with Kennedy assassination historiography, in a way that allows citizens to renegotiate the history and therefore enact citizenship.

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