Media Worlds Essay

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ZIEGLER

Media Worlds

"Exploring sites of memory:" the Kennedy assassination

According to Barbie Zelizer's review article entitled "Exploring sites of memory," "public history emerges simultaneously from the commonplace and mundane, the eccentric and comic, the background of the everyday, and the splendor of life on high" (Zelizer 1999:202). There is a collective memory that shapes our individual memory, and vice versa. While Ziegler's review is applied to a book on recent French history, her analysis is equally trenchant within an American context. Take, for example, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is a public memory of record. But for many Americans of an earlier generation it is also a very personal memory. Most people who grew up during the early 1960s say that they know exactly where they were when Kennedy died, and have a very vivid visual picture of what transpired.

However, the public nature of this 'memory' likely shapes the way this memory is recollected.

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The fact that it is supposed to be such a historical incident causes people to single out this memory vs. other important memories of public note. When the culture collectively goes over and over an incident, forcing people to re-experience the event, their personal memories take on a collective character. With the view of an outsider who did not experience the Kennedy assassination personally, it is hard for me not to wonder if there might be some memory alteration taking place. There are so many similar features to the accounts that I have heard, such as walking around in a daze, watching Walter Cronkite on television, and having school or work cancelled, it is hard for me not to wonder if the collective memory has shaped or subtly altered individual recollections.

Because of the presence of television, public memory has been further interfered with -- unlike personal incidents in individual history, the entire….....

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