Carl Freedman is a writer and professor of English literature at Louisiana State University who has written a number of important books on science fiction, American politics, and Marxist critical theory. In this conversation, we talk about his book American Presidents and Oliver Stone: Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema and go down the JFK assassination rabbit hole. How does Oliver Stone's hyper-stylized vision capture the psychedelic violence of a beautiful young celebrity president's savage murder in broad daylight? And how much can we trace a 21st century American political culture of conspiracy theories, true crime obsession, and spectacular public violence to the ritual bloodshed of November 22, 1963?

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