The Theatricality of Libra: Violence vs Spectacle

When I started to read Libra, one of the most prominent thoughts in my head was something along the lines of “this reminds me of a theater play.” Lee Harvey Oswald (and many of the characters) were depicted as very dramatic and intense characters who seemed to be acting and writing for a larger audience ( evidenced by fake historian Nicolas Branch). All the people in the book, Lee especially, seem to be garishly acting for a bigger cause; the scene where I was most reminded of this was when Win Everett was making materials for the murder, like a backstage techie, and how the trio of “planners” meticulously set everything up so everyone could be prepared to act– characters like Raymo and TJ Mackey are very two–dimensional and typical of like a mobster movie, creating a compelling and interesting backplot that could or could not be true, because DeLillo doesn’t exactly say. It reminds me of theater, where actors have to act more enthusiastically or emotionally in order to express emotions to the audience-- and it's extremely difficult to tell who's real and who's not, which adds to the ambiguity of it. The characterization of Jack Ruby mirrors that of Lee Oswald, following the typical plot of the troubled “loser” lone gunman exactly– Delillo plays into all these movie tropes and proves how we have objectified this incident to the point where it begins to turn into fiction, and creates heroic or typical characters within the plot that in my opinion highlight our objectification of spectacle. All this made me wonder if DeLillo is somehow attempting to suggest something here, presenting the JFK assassination and those behind it as this form of theater and suggesting that modern media could revolutionarily turn political violence into spectacle, performance, and narrative rather than truth. Since this novel represents the first time that video footage captured an assassination, an assassination of one of the most beloved presidents, public uproar occurred promptly. A lot of conspiracy theorists dreamed of finding the video footage, captured by a member of the public, as a way of figuring out exactly what happened. It was the first time people in our society had the power to replay and go back to this insane event, signifying the beginning of a new era in media and how people looked at things. 

People had already come to the motorcade to be entertained, and to see the president; but to see the president in person being shot twice violently, like some graphic scene from a horror movie, is both terrifying and entertaining because there is an immediate investment in finding out who did it. Conspiracy theorists looked over it in so many different ways, and there is no limit to the amount of speculation one can make about it; there are too many coincidences happening at once, and it becomes incredibly interesting to think about. However, just like a good piece of cinema, this shocking development becomes more of a spectacle, essentially objectifying Kennedy and kind of dismissing his death in light of figuring out who did it and what really happened. If this is a theater play, it is clear that the audience is also actively involved and participating and debating, and the public becomes part of the spectacle--like how anyone in the audience could be a part of the plot because it's a conspiracy, and we don't actually know but can only speculate. 

This book definitely follows that idea, and I think it shows some postmodernist ideas in that this very real form of history can become theater and even fiction rather than truth, which absolutely changed the modern view of the government and what they might hide. It is absolutely up for debate that the plot with Lee did in fact happen, because it all lines up and there are a ton of coincidences according to DeLillo, but we don’t actually know a ton about the JFK assassination so it’s hard to really know. But I think a broader point he makes is the way that this caused a view of public violence as more of a spectacle, because it creates an entryway for questions of who committed the murder. De Lillo says that there’s more to the spectacle than just the assassination portion, and is detailing that throughout the book as he shows that everyone involved is acting.