Volume 28, Issue 3, August 2002, Pages 283–299
On #ThisDayInHistory in 1917, John F. Kennedy is born. Read More http://histv.co/1RuczNR via @History
Greater dead heroes than live husbands: widows as image-makers
Abstract
Before
public relations had form, a name or formal practitioners, before
visual images were created easily and indelibly with color photographs,
television and computer morphing, widows created heroic images of their
dead husbands. Widows as image-makers is both historic—Mrs. George
Armstrong Custer and Mrs. Robert F. Scott—and contemporary—Mrs. John F.
Kennedy and Yoko Ono among others.
The most successful wove
the ambiguities of their husbands’ deaths into enduring myths and
legends by adroitly using the mores, values, sentimentalities and dreams
dominant in their times and countries.
The myths of dashing
military leaders, pop celebrities and politicians—created, disciplined,
and relentlessly publicized by their widows—alter still, even swamp
reality. The widows insured that heroic veneration, honors, monuments,
and tendentious history would dominate, thwarting spoil sport
truth-seeking historians.
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Copyright © 2002 Published by Elsevier Inc.
