'11.22.63'

America Needs A Do-Over

It's probably easier to pitch a show set in the 1960s after the success of 'Mad Men'. It means that for better or for worse, the 1960s has passed from being a part of memory into being history. This show tries to bring forward the key polemic of the 1960s, the Kennedy Presidency and its aftermath. This is an altogether contemporary attempt to grapple wth the political climate of the 1960s in a way that elucidates the first cause that created our contemporary world.

The more interesting thing might be the motivation for doing such a show, in as much as we try to tussle with the logical train of historic events. Upstream to all of this is the notion that had Kennedy lived, the Vietnam War may have been avoided, and so our hero 'Jake Amberson' must take on the daunting task of trying to stop the assassination of JFK.

The show based on Stephen King's book, is an attempt to give America a do over from that terrible moment in Dallas. It means you get your spoiler alert right here. Don't read on if you hate spoilers.





What's Good About It

It alludes to many, many films of the last 30years. There are moments of 'Back to the Future', 'Terminator' and 'Peggy Sue Got Married', without actually stealing shots. It's quite exquisite how those moments come and go. In that sense it has a lot in common with 'Stranger Things' and its nostalgia for the 80s. This one has nostalgia for the time-travel-nostalgia movies of the 80s.

The performances are quite interesting in this series. James Franco, it turns out, is an excellent guide to thread us through the story points of the assassination as well as give us a sense of Texas in the 1960s. Affable yet sardonic, Franco has the rubber mask of the comedian as well as the right kind of intensity to be the leading man in a thriller. Because his track record of films is so diverse, recognising him isn't a hindrance to following him in the story. It's in stark contrast to a star like, say Tom Cruise, who keeps playing leading men who have a singular talent. You see Tom Cruise on screen, it's shorthand for Hollywood-Guff-to-follow.

The extraordinary performance of Daniel Webber as Lee Harvey Oswald is breathtaking. It is one of the more extraordinary performances of anything you will ever likely see. It evokes all the footage extant of Lee Harvey Oswald as well as the Gary Oldman performance from 'JFK'. It is as if Lee Harvey Oswald has become a character like Henry VIII or Hitler where actors compete to portray and show off their chops. If so, Daniel Webber's performance is one for the ages.

The production design is excellent as it goes through the styles and fashion beautifully. It's quite amazing how well they achieve the period look.

What's Bad About It

Maybe the conception of the JFK assassination is too steeped in the years of conspiracy theories. Every twist in the pot involving Lee Harvey Oswald seems like something we should know and control. Yet Lee Harvey Oswald is not a celebrity or even a fully fleshed out person we can know about in history - he is more a cryptic cipher for a terrible event we cannot comprehend or explain.

The whole series also trundles along without giving a thought to what the alternative might have been like had Kennedy not been assassinated, until very late in the piece. Considering saving President Kennedy is the big challenge of the story, you would think the characters would engage in thinking a bit more deeply about what the ramifications of such an act might be.

The series also makes a point of not submitting to a historic determinism, which is important so that Jake's mission is meaningful. At the same time, it is fatalistic about what the meaning might be. It doesn't address the conspiracy, having worked off the theories about the conspiracy, and then posits a rather bleak view about preserving the meaning of the Kennedy presidency. In that sense it's not logically or philosophically consistent within itself; Not that it detracts from the fun of the series.

What's Interesting About It

Nostalgia for the 1960s is one thing, but why do we want to go back there to change things? The John F. Kennedy Assassination marks a turning point in America that has left a scar on the public consciousness. Not for nothing did Oliver Stone's 'JFK' make the case for there being a deeper inspection of the evidence. This series might be the first since Stone's 'JFK' to dig around a bit deeper.

What it shows us is quite interesting.

Kennedy Assassination As National Trauma

It goes without saying that the Kennedy Assassination is the biggest national trauma of the USA in the 20th Century. Pearl harbour comes close and 9/11 certainly marks the big trauma for the new millennium, but in terms of the inexplicable nature of the assassination as well as the character of Lee harvey Oswald, it has left a gaping wound that begs to be staunched or covered. There is no satisfactory 'why' as a way of explaining the event and the rest of it is the endless parsing of 'how' such a thing could happen. The lack of a satisfactory answer has bred the industry of conspiracy theories.

The problem with the Warren Commission is thus twofold - it is too banal an explanation, and it is therefore too short of meaningfulness that the nation can move on. Hence the open invitation to imagine what you could do go back in time to stop the assassination. Even if Stephen King rejects all the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy Assassination and embraces the Warren Commission's report, he is at the coalface of all the people trying to parse meaning from the event. In that sense this story stands as a companion piece to Don DeLillo's book 'Libra' which sought to portray Lee Harvey Oswald as a character.

"I Believe Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone"

That would be a quote from Kevin Costner's character Crash Davis in 'Bull Durham'. I bring that up not because of the irony where Costner also played Jim Garrison who showed otherwise in Stone's 'JFK', but also because Oswald acting alone is the litmus test for whether one is a conspiracy theorist or not, when it comes to the Kennedy Assassination.

In a break from other works that would try and find the other parties, Stephen King has taken the high road and worked with the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald acted alone. It makes for a simpler story sit defuses the need to go down all the rabbit holes, but it also means preventing Oswald from shooting saves JFK, and so the premise of the story is sustained. If the conspiracy stood - that is to say Oswald did not act alone as conspiracy theorists claim - then stopping Oswald means nothing. Somebody else takes the shot in his place, and then stopping Oswald solves nothing. Thus in a mirror image of the conspiracy theory, the story implicitly and explicitly rests on the conspiracy theory not being true.

It's kind of funny to be watching this in the wake of seeing 'Snowden' by Stone. I'd really like to read Stone's feedback on this series. He may actually be the person who enjoys it the most or hates it the most.

There is of course the scene in Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall' whereby Woody's character Alvy Singer is castigated by his second wife about using his suspicions of a conspiracy to avoid having sex with her. The entire series seems to be a great effort to prove Alvy Singer wrong.

Return Of The Repressed Anima

Science Fiction has a unique trope; it can be described as a mash up of a Freudian concept with a Jungian concept, and it is the return of the repressed who happens to be the anima. The psychological aspects of the series point to this notion whereby in his distress at his divorce, Jake regresses to a state which is served by a comforting nostalgia where he can indulge in fantasies that include saving the day and killing bad people. In that fantasy, the repressed figure returns to complicate the psyche's response, and this is the mother according to Freud. Except, a better way to understand it is that it is the anima who has been repressed who returns.

Sadie, like so may other science fiction female characters before her is the anima to Jake. What's interesting about Sadie is perhaps that she fits so well in the 1960 landscape with her platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, she looks like Eve Marie Saint in 'North by Northwest' as well as Kim Novak in 'Vertigo'. The Hitchcock vibe hits a fever pitch in the last episode when Jake and Sadie race against time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald. Hitchcock of course was very interested in the return of the repressed mother, and so took great pains to construct his plots around the Freudian concept.

In that Hitchcock-ian section, the characters killed by Jake also return to haunt him - there is Harry's evil dad, there is Sadie's evil ex-husband, and Bill from Kentucky, all the characters who died along the way and Jake essentially represses so he can continue on his quest to stop Lee Harvey Oswald.

The reason we can see the feminine as the anima as described by Jung, rather than mothers as proscribed by Freud is because they form a dynamic relationship with the protagonist. An early example might be Rotwang who creates the robot in 'Metropolis', in the image of his dead wife, but quickly shape shifts to look like Maria. Equally, Rachel in 'Blade Runner' is created in the image of a dead daughter to the tycoon Dr. Eldon Tyrell. As with these characters, Sadie steps in to fill the void not once, but thrice. First, as the new love Jake finds in 1960; second as the returned dead in the second 1960 Jake re-sets to; and third, as the woman who complements the dance of death, at the end of the series.

Sarah Gadon's performance as Sadie is one of the most haunting things you will see.

The Unspeakable Irony

Stephen King being the horror writer that he is, can't resist two bits of irony that are notable. The first is that the world the ensues a saved JFK, gives way to a disastrous George Wallace presidency which plunges the world into chaos and the post-apocalyptic world to which Jake returns. The other, is that in a bid to pin the whole blame of the assassination on Lee Harvey Oswald, he is forced to portray the FBI as largely incompetent. In real life, Lee Harvey Oswald claimed he was the patsy. In King's telling, it is the FBI who are the patsies, and necessarily so because it can't be the Secret Service or the CIA given that he is adhering to the Warren Commission.

King lays the blame at the feet of the FBI, for in his view expressed through Jake, it was the FBI's job to keep an eye on their target, Lee Harvey Oswald. It's an interesting telling because it echoes the terror stories we are seeing around the world today where suspects fall off the watch list and then go on to do terrible things. King may very well be right, in which case no amount of money or competence is going to solve the problem of lone nut gunmen, past present or future.

I guest it does bear asking, what good the FBI is if it can't follow up on a guy who puts it into writing and submits to them that he's going to shoot he President. At the end, the entire series posits that the Kennedy Assassination is not worth worrying over. That seems rather ironic at the end of 8 great episodes on the trail of the assassin.