This summer provided me with the opportunity to read a lot of interesting books that I might not have thought to pick up otherwise. One of these was Alexandra Zapruder’s Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film. The Zapruder Film was, as the book’s title implies, a roughly 26-second-long film-based video, originally created in 1963 by Abraham Zapruder, who was an immigrant to Dallas, Texas from Ukraine. His film is famous for being one of the most complete video recordings of the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy. Since its creation, the Zapruder Film has been the subject of intense ethical and legal debates due to the nature of its acquisition by various media companies, including, initially, LIFE magazine. While Alexandra Zapruder’s book, published in 2016, does chronicle the history of the tape and of what happened to her grandfather and their family after the tape was investigated and bought from them, it does little to answer such insoluble questions as “Who owns a historically or culturally significant public moment?” and “What rights should creators of historical records and their families be granted?” In fact, it only seems to stir up even more debate.
The handling of the Zapruder film as depicted in Alexandra Zapruder’s book was deeply disappointing and, at certain moments, disturbing. Throughout the second half of the book, I found myself siding with a member of the public who wrote to LIFE: “Money cannot buy everything; it certainly should not have bought the Zapruder film” (Zapruder, 2016, p. 188). While $150,000—the sum which LIFE paid for the film—is a lot of money, both in 1963 and today (even without considering the facts that this would apparently equal somewhere around $1.4million today, and, when the film was resold by the Zapruders in 1999, it went for $16million), I did not find the initial purchase of the film to be entirely ethical. Abraham Zapruder was deeply traumatized by what he had seen and was still trying to come to terms with the weight of the event in question when LIFE approached him just days after the assassination. It’s possible that he would have accepted any amount, signed any agreement, or followed nearly any suggestion.
It’s also difficult to say whether the amount paid for film was fair as there was nothing of its kind to compare it to (as the author herself notes, the only comparable events, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, did not come until later in the decade). Not only that, it is impossible to place a monetary value on such a singularly horrific moment. Nevertheless, once the deal was made, legally, the film was out of the Zapruders’ hands. Ethicality, again, is another layer that should have been more carefully considered. After the transference of ownership, the creator or donor (if they are different people) of an item, or their estate if they are no longer living, should at least maintain some say in what is done with the item, especially one as monumentally significant as the Zapruder film. Even in times when the film belonged to agencies outside the family’s control, they should have had a vote, or potentially veto rights, when it came to decisions on use and distribution.
Despite what we’ve learned from the Zapruder case, however, ownership of public moments, and the right to use or show recordings of these events in one’s work, remains highly controversial. In May of 2022, the creators of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the latest of the franchise’s live action spin-off series, received backlash for featuring recordings of real-life protests in its series premiere. In one scene, Captain Christopher Pike addresses the world leaders of an alien planet on the verge of a global nuclear war to discuss Earth’s own history with global war and near self-annihilation. At the same time, he shows the citizens of this fictional planet footage from Earth taken in the years supposedly leading up to its Third World War. This footage included, but was not limited to, a video of a 2013–14 uprising in Ukraine, followed by another video of protests at the U.S. Capitol.
Since its inception in the 1960s, Star Trek has always been about testing social boundaries, and has advocated strongly for peace and equality and a hopeful future while also warning viewers about the destruction humanity could bring upon itself if we do not stop our current violent behavior and overcome harmful prejudices. Nevertheless, the decision to show actual footage of recent real-world violence was, understandably, controversial, especially given the context in which this footage was being discussed.
Personally, I do not disagree with the Strange New Worlds creators’ decision to include this kind of footage in this scene (though, I should note that I would very likely feel much differently if they had used footage of a moment when someone was killed on camera, like in the Zapruder Film). It was a bold move, and it got a lot of viewers’ attention as images they recognized, like American and Ukrainian flags, and protest signs featuring phrases about recent and current world leaders and global issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic flashed across the screen. But the use of these videos, as well as the subsequent backlash, also brings into question the matter of who has the right to show and discuss these kinds of public historical moments. As a historian and a writer, and especially as someone who works in such close connection with an academic library in Florida in 2023, the answer to that is, of course, anyone. Regular citizens have just as much right to these moments as governing officials and news corporations do; to say otherwise would be censorship, which hinders learning, growth, creation, and the ability to strive towards peace and unity, things which are all crucial to the continued development of our culture and society, and of forthcoming generations of leaders, thinkers, and artists.
Portions of this blog post originated in an essay I wrote for Prof. Mackenzie Beasley’s Preservation and Digitization of Audiovisual Materials (LIS 7506) course, which I took earlier this summer through LSU Online.
Twenty-Six Seconds by