jfk

I used to love going to the airport. It used to be the prelude to an adventure novel. I was embarking on the Airbus A380 to a pirate’s island; readying myself for a scavenger hunt in the dreamy Abomey, Benin; preparing for a historical trip to see the wonders of Turkey; or flying across the Atlantic to the city that never sleeps.

The scene: John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 28, 2017. In an instant, “scores” of people are trapped in airports across the country. Disorder reigns as family members wait outside of security cordons to find out the fate of their loved ones. The scene is unreal—it feels like the onset of a national crisis. And the situation at hand is neither an accident nor a pandemic virus, but a poorly implemented executive order signed by President Donald J. Trump.

We know the feeling: Traveling is stressful. Tear-inducingly enough, the most daunting feat is the initial step of getting to the airport. To alleviate some of your travelling woes, Spectrum considers the pros and cons of going via cab versus bus to LaGuardia and JFK.

Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived is a film in an intellectual mode that enjoys sporadic vogues—the alternative history. Recent films have posited realities in which the Confederacy won the Civil War, and in which George W. Bush was assassinated—these are reminiscent of those programs that crop up on the History Channel, showing how life would be had the Axis triumphed. Though the style and subject matter are different from the latest novel I've been reading, Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, its recasting of history remains the same, and 2008 seems to be a counter-historical moment.
The film—which is currently playing at Film Forum—centers around the question of whether, had he not died in November, 1963, John F. Kennedy would have prevented the disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War. Unlike the fibrous History Channel, the documentary is educational in the best way, efficiently running through the events of Kennedy's short presidency to make the case that he was fundamentally a pacifist, unlike his successor. I thought I knew about Kennedy, but I was surprised to learn that Kennedy had sent over "military advisers" to Vietnam but resisted sending troops. In fact, he apparently resisted war in the face of countless opportunities for war—in Vietnam, in Cuba, in East Germany. (I also had thought that, this being counter-history, some of the footage was staged. It took me some time to realize that this was not an impersonation but Kennedy's real accent. Crazy!)
Similarly, American Wife sets up an alternate version of the Bush presidency, using as a lens the life of Laura Bush—referred to in the book as Alice Blackwell, wife of Charlie. The book reconstructs the life of Mrs. Bush (she smokes pot once!) and the administration of her husband, leading to the moment in alternate-2006 when the First Lady apologizes to a Cindy Sheehan figure and declares that the troops need to come home from Iraq. Obviously, this is fantasy, but like the prematurely ended Vietnam War of Virtual JFK, it's a history that could have happened.
One wishes that Virtual JFK had a bit more to say about its subject matter. While American Wife takes 500-some pages to arrive at the spectacle of a publicly antiwar Laura Bush, Virtual JFK spends a brisk 80 minutes drilling through the various incidences where JFK indicated an aversion to the Vietnam conflict. These instances are compelling—one often forgets how close to war America came during the Cuban Missile Crisis—but don't really illuminate much about how Vietnam from 1963 onward would have been different under President Kennedy.
Further, the film doesn't really try to clarify its own vision of history. In a manner both frustrating and gratifying (it can be refreshing not to have everything spelled out), the film moves from the familiar, staggering footage of the shooting into reality—the escalation of the war under Lyndon Johnson. One expects a specific hypothesis of what the rest of the 1960s would have been like, but what one gets is the dry facts—LBJ's decision, with the freedom control of Congress affords, to continue the escalation of an increasingly doomed war.
There is no way to know how history might have gone. The film's opening declares that had Cleopatra's nose been a bit longer, Marc Anthony would not have fallen in love with her, and then—what? Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" would sound different, but what would be missing? What would be added? Perhaps the best alternative the film provides is between the JFK press conferences that close each of the pre-assassination vignettes, jaunty even in crisis, and the dazed LBJ press conferences where the president seems diffident. "I have tried to explain this," he tells a housewife who has written him a letter, sounding Bushesque (or Blackwellian).
Close to the end of American Wife, the First Lady flashes back to a conversation held in alternative-election night 2000 (which, coincidentally, still hinged on Florida). Governor Blackwell believes he has lost the election and tells his wife that it's unimportant. He thinks he has dodged a bullet. "What if Gore won in 2000?" musings are so far out of fashion as to seem archaic, but one ponders them as the bombs dropping on Vietnam play in reverse, and the screen fades to black. The lights didn't even come on in my screening room, more likely a Film Forum foible than an aesthetic choice. I walked into dusk, wondering if I should finish the Sittenfeld book on the train, thinking about JFK's reliance on diplomacy. A newsstand on Houston Street had Sarah Palin on every magazine cover. Seeing Kennedy on-screen today seems the ultimate in counter-history. But history happened, and is happening. Perhaps, then, judging by the applause and nods of assent in lower Manhattan when I saw Virtual JFK, the film is the ultimate in denying the present.