Island
Living 31: Golden Boy as Camera Fodder
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
No one paid
closer attention to the media feeding frenzy surrounding
the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. than Steven Brill.
In his analysis of the press coverage of that event
in his new magazine, Brill’s CONTENT
("Curiosity vs. Privacy," October 1999),1
the eponymous periodical’s chairman and editor-in-chief
considered and critiqued the media's increasing
intrusion into private life generally and their
especially aggressive behavior toward what we might
call “the high-profile children of tragedy”
-- such as the offspring of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
in the immediate aftermath of J.F.K. Jr.'s demise,
along with his wife and sister-in-law, in a plane
crash this past summer.
In drawing a
proposed line between the permissible and the impermissible,
Brill wrote eloquently of what he saw as abuse of
press privileges in the publishing of pictures of
Schlossberg’s children made in public during
that family crisis. Living up to its own proposed
standards of responsibility, his magazine blacked
or whited out all portrayals of those youngsters
when they reproduced magazine covers that, Brill
argued, used inappropriate depictions of the Schlossberg
kids en route to funeral services and other family
events related to this private loss.
As a contrary
example of an appropriate press image of an orphaned
child, however, Brill suggested the iconic 1963
image of J.F.K. Jr. -- then three years old, and
known to the world as John-John -- saluting his
father's passing coffin. Brill referred to this
as a "famous and clearly newsworthy camera
shot."2
Methinks he missed his own point, and failed to
to note some remarkable irony in this situation.
A moment's reflection
on the part of anyone who knows anything at all
about the behavior of small children leads to the
inevitable conclusion that saluting the boxed-up
and invisible dead as they're wheeled through the
streets on parade is not the spontaneous behavior
of three-year-old boys. It's especially untypical
of three-year-old boys brought up in peacetime and
not subjected to the routine rituals of military
funerals in war-torn countries (in which case they
might come to mimic, if not comprehend, such gestures).
It would not
be the impulsive act of of a normal three-year-old
child of unfamous parents whose father had been
murdered or died from other causes. Nor would it
plausibly be the instinctual response of a child
that age whose famous father had been assassinated,
enacted entirely of his own volition while standing
in a funeral cortege surrounded by thousands of
adult strangers after several days of total chaos
in his immediate environment.
What three-year-old
child does that, precisely on cue? (We know it's
on cue because, watching the videotape closely,
we can see some hand -- his mother's? -- pushing
him forward a step or two just as the casket passes.)
What child snaps to attention at just the right
moment? Why, a child who's been very carefully coached
to give a command performance in the public eye.
For what reason
would someone rehearse that with him? Not for the
purposes of personal grief management; what consolation
to a bereaved and bewildered toddler in a ritual
act whose significance he can't possibly understand?
No, John-John was trained and then prompted to salute
for the cameras, according to a script, on an occasion
of public myth-making, in the service of adult others,
for motives that had nothing whatever to do with
his own emotional needs of the moment.
Appropriate
and news-worthy? Or simply the logical extension
of a golden boy’s childhood of public service
as camera fodder? It should give Steven Brill, and
the rest of us, pause.
Because that
was the story of J.F.K. Jr.'s life. Before the Kennedys,
no family in the public eye -- excepting a few show-biz
families like that of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson,
who brought their children into the act, something
we always forgave theater folk -- had ever exploited
its children so ruthlessly to gain and maintain
public favor. For presidents, indeed for politicians
generally, the occasional planned photo op with
the family was the rule; just about anything else
on the part of the press was clearly off-limits,
and widely understood as such.
From the start
of J.F.K.'s presidential campaign until his death,
the Kennedys granted license to Jacques Lowe and
other photographers to roam not only the motels
and busses of the campaign trail but, after the
election, Air Force One and the White House grounds
and offices and corridors -- and, beyond that, the
private areas of the White House, the private "compound"
of the family's New England home base, the entire
clan's private sailing boats and beaches -- for
the express purpose of providing images of Kennedy
backstage and family life to a hungry media and
an infatuated international audience. In doing so,
they effectively erased the line between public
and private in the media, and in the mind(s) of
the citizenry -- perhaps permanently.
The kids were
so charming that we hardly noticed. This was all
done in the name of a new informality and openness
and youthfulness. (Given what we know now about
the secrets of Camelot, the motives may have been
less wholesome.) Certainly the public lapped up
pictures of Caroline and John-John, and the Kennedys
saw to it that a steady supply of such photos were
provided. Much of their popularity hinged on the
image they projected of themselves: he virile, she
fecund, the two of them in the prime of their lives
-- happy, child-centered parents, part of that larger
but no less child-centered extended family of theirs.
And they projected that image by such methods as
giving press photographers (among other representatives
of the media) free access to their kids, as if that
were the most natural thing in the world.
Coincidence?
You decide. But if you want to locate the exact
time and place at which, by example, the right to
privacy of the children of the rich and powerful
was surrendered willingly by the trend-setting leader
of the free world and his fashionable spouse, you
need look no further than "the first hundred
days." And if the rights of the children of
the rich and powerful got swapped off for celebrity
and influence and media attention and votes, you
can imagine the trickle-down effect on the rights
of the kids of the unrich and unpowerful.
So there's a
direct line we can trace between the Kennedy family's
manipulation and exploitation of little John-John
in 1963 for the purpose of generating iconic images
for the media to engrave in the public consciousness
and the same media's feeding frenzy over the sad
but hardly tragic death of that same boy, grown
to manhood under a relentless spotlight, in an unfortunate
plane accident thirty-six years later. Cause and
effect. And that's the irony of it.
Or, to quote
another sage about another Kennedy's death, just
the chickens coming home to roost. The real tragedy
here is that they brought it not only on themselves
but on all of us.
1
Vol. 2, no. 8, pp. 98-103, 109, 127-29.
2
Ibid., p. 101.
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©
Copyright 1999 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
By permission of the author and Image/World
Syndication Services,
P.O.B. 040078, Staten Island, New York 10304-0002
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