Zapruder Film - Cultural Effect

Cultural Effect

The film's 1975 broadcast on Good Night America ignited widespread public distrust in the findings of the Warren Commission. Perhaps the most controversial effect was the suggestion that an assassin or assassins other than Oswald were involved.

The film has been featured in films or other media, such as the Oliver Stone film JFK, which used the clearest copy of the film available to the public prior to the late 1990s. For example, after the final shot, Jacqueline Kennedy can be seen mouthing what appears to be the words, "Oh, my God!" A closeup from the portion of the film showing the fatal shot to Kennedy's head is also shown in the Clint Eastwood film In the Line of Fire.

Some critics have stated that the violence and shock of this home movie led to a new way of representing violence in 1970s American cinema, in mainstream, in particular indie and underground horror movies.

Actor Freddie Prinze was fascinated by the Zapruder film, and watched it frequently in the time leading up to his 1977 suicide.

In the 2004 revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins, the film was projected onto Lee Harvey Oswald's white shirt during the climax of the show.

Australian Television personality Andrew Denton's production company is called Zapruder's Other Films Pty Ltd, whose logo is a line art reproduction of the Bell & Howell camera Zapruder used, with smoke rising from the lens as if it were a barrel of a gun.

In 1994, the Zapruder film footage was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry.

Author J. G. Ballard, in his typically obsessive writing style, focuses on Kennedy and the Zapruder film in a number of his works, such as The Atrocity Exhibition.

Abraham Zapruder is sometimes presented as an ancestor of all citizen journalists.

In the Don DeLillo novel Underworld, there is a screening of a bootleg copy of Zapruder film, at which the film is played over and over on multiple televisions at varying speeds.

The music video of Lana Del Rey's "National Anthem" shows a sort-of re-enactment of the Zapruder film.