2 result(s) tagged “Propaganda”

When we say that a movie is more style than substance, we typically mean it derisively.

Oliver Stone’s JFK has a ton of stuff — with the director’s cut running nearly three and a half hours — that was mistaken for its substance. But the meat of the movie is its style, because it’s the fuel that made the film so combustible.

The movie was greeted with contentious debate upon its release in 1991, but Stone’s critics and supporters completely missed the boat by arguing about facts, theories, and cover-ups. JFK works not as an argument but as a style of argument — sly and forceful in equal measure — and an exemplar of contemporary propaganda.

I’m about 15 years late to this party, but I’ve always planned to write a lengthy piece on my love for Oliver Stone’s JFK. My point would simply be that whatever its failings as a credible history (or even a viable alternative history), JFK excels as propaganda, and should be studied for that reason. In a 1993 essay in The Atlantic, Edward Jay Epstein does a good job explaining Stone’s methods:

“The fictional O’Keefe’s story is supported by Ferrie’s fictional confession, which is then given weight by Ferrie’s fictional murder by the fictional bald-headed Cuban introduced in O’Keefe’s story. Since ... Oliver Stone’s audience is not apprised of the substitutions of fiction for fact, this cross-corroboration makes plausible ... the New Orleans plot.”