Source:
The President's Funeral
Gleaves Whitney
Grand Valley State Universit7, 6/12/2004

In this heated conversation strongly reminiscent of the tragedy "Antigone", McNamara claims that the President's corpse belongs to the public, while Jackie fights for the privacy of the family. The closed casket would then be a black box, as it shields the body and the private from its public identity. Its retorique is "mourn the figure, not the man, which is our business". The fact that the President's face had undergone intensive plastic surgery that night to make it more "presentable" could have also been a factor in the decision to hide it.

THE EXHIBITED OBJECT: JFK'S HEAD