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Friday 22 November 2013

JFK - The End of a Dream, the Beginning of a Fantasy



According to comedian Robin Williams, "If you remember the '60s, you weren't there". However, it seems that the majority of people who were old enough to remember can tell you where they were when the news came in that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the current president of the USA, had been shot in Dallas, Texas. Whether or not this fact is always true is just one of the controversial points that is now part of the JFK legacy. This incident seems to have crystallized the dark cynical twist that much of the '60s optimism brought. Heroes of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and JFK's brother, Robert, would both also meet their ends by the bullet of lone lunatics. The appearance of more freedom for a youth that had seen their parents fight a bloody war would find themselves being conscripted into a 10 year war that would end in defeat. The '68 Summer of Love and the peaceful hippy movement that drove it would yield an ugly child in the form of the Manson Murders. The Beatles' psychedelic melodies were somehow checked by the dark foreboding of The Doors. However, like a prophesy of what was to come - the dream and the apparent destruction of that dream.