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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 22, 1963
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The importance of November 22, 1963, in American history does not need to be explained. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, ending the era of Camelot and forever altering the course of American politics, history, and culture. But it’s the way that the Kennedy assassination has reverberated through popular media that interests this column. In particular, television. TV was the first venue for the JFK assassination to make its mark. Throughout his storied, respected career, Walter Cronkite would never made a more indelible impression than in the moments following Kennedy’s death.
As time passed, and as Kennedy’s death became less immediate, television found its ways to play with the history and iconography of it all. Quantum Leap jumped Sam Beckett into the middle of that fateful day in Dallas. Any show that dealt with the 1960s in American ultimately grappled with JFK in one way or another, with Mad Men as an obvious example.
After a while, and certainly around the time of Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, the assassination itself took a back seat to the conspiracy theories surrounding it. Which made it a perfect fit for a show like The X-Files. In the episode “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man,” it was revealed that our shadowy, smoky friend was the man who really shot Kennedy.
Oliver Stone’s film ultimately became the subject of lore and iconography itself, as the Seinfeld episode “The Boyfriend” showed:
And so the JFL assassination reverberated and continues to reverberate through culture. Coming to Hulu in February — on President’s Day — is the J.J. Abrams-produced adaptation of Stephen King’s 11.22.63, an alternate-history fantasia of, yes, the JFK assassination. And on we go.
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
