Re: kate and sick ideas

[rhogan@chaph.usc.edu (Ronald Hogan)]

Andrew David Simchik hath written:
>In the words of Hugh Carney Resnick:
>>As Jeffrey C. Burka once wrote:
>>>And then there was somebody else here (it gets complicated)

>>>>     For example, Peter Gabriel has a disturbing, haunting
>>>>     song called "Family Snapshot," which tells a story in the first-person

>>>The song is about a lonely little boy whose parents are approaching divorce.
>>>The 'assasination' takes place in his mind, a game he plays, like "Cops 'n
>>>Robbers" with his toy gun.

>>	IMHO, it not just any assassin, it's none other than Lee Harvey
>>Oswald. "The Governor's car is not far behind, he's not the one I've got
>>in mind." 

>He probably had Oswald in mind when writing the images, but whether
>he intended it to specifically portray Oswald is another matter. 

I think that's probably the closest to the truth.  The line about the
Governor's car would imply Oswald, but then Hugh said he wasn't sure--
probably remembering that Kennedy was in the governor's car.  The line
on Oswald, from those who buy into the lone nut theory--

aside-- I don't really care who killed JFK.  People say Oswald couldn't
have done it because it's unthinkable for one small man to kill a great
man like Kennedy.  I like to think of it as an extreme example of both
the democratizing process and of existentialism in  action-- or as a stunning
avant-garde gesture.  If I remember correctly, the Paris a-g used to herald
Gavril Princip as a hero (bonus points for the first correct ID of Princip).
I find it all too easy to believe that one man can plunge the world into
chaos.  Whether that's what happened or not remains a mystery-- and perhaps
that it is the greatest effect of the JFK shooting-- to point out the enigma
that is history-- the ultimate unknowable event.

Anyway, the standard take is that Oswald was doing it for the attention-- I
don't think his parents were divorced, though I could be wrong--and while
"all you people in TV land / I will wake up your empty shells" fits,
some of the other details ("the streets are lined with camera crews",
"I've got my radio") don't seem to fit.  But as has been noted by Drewcifer,
the important thing is not who the protagonist of Family Snapshot "is," but
what he means.  Towards those ends, a juxtaposition:

If you don't get people you learn to take, and I will take you-- Gabriel

It is hardly surprising, when stars offer themselves so lavishly for
consumption, that some fans will take the invitation literally.
Like Mark Chapman.
After all, the only plausible way to "consume" people is to annihilate them.
-- Fred and Judy Vermorel, quoted in Greil Marcus, Dead Elvis

What this has to do with Kate I have no idea, but I felt like getting it
off my chest.  So am I saying that mass culture killed Kennedy?  I don't
know.  Mass culture, the military-industrial complex, whatever, does it
matter?  Like the subtitle of Dead Elvis, the literature around Kennedy's
death has become "A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession," the nightmare I'm
trying to awake from.

I will say this:  Family Snapshot made me realize the essential humanity
of Lee Harvey Oswald, even if the song isn't about him, in the exact same
way that Cloudbusting made Wilhelm and Peter Reich human beings to me.

And maybe that's what it's all about.

Ron Hogan