Life reported the ‘megalopic’ audience felt the glasses were uncomfortable and the feature, based on a true story about man-eating lions in Africa, was ‘dull’. But the photo itself transcended the specific occasion it showed. As Princeton University’s Caitlin E Ryan writes in the book, it “reflects the central role that popular entertainment, and Hollywood in particular, played in constructing the magazine’s cohesive vision of American identity at mid-century”. It is no surprise, perhaps, that a section of the photograph became the cover of a 1983 edition of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Defining the 60s
The 1960s presented a multitude of political and cultural moments for Life to interpret. In 1961, President Kennedy announced part of his Cold War strategy and the magazine responded to the call, expressing the view in June of the same year that it felt the goals of the US were ‘to win the Cold War’ and ‘create a better America’.
Two years later, Kennedy was assassinated. Life had had a close relationship with the Kennedys, documenting John and Jackie’s courtship and wedding as well as the presidency. Life also published Theodore H White’s famous interview with Jackie, the interview in which the Kennedy myth of Camelot was born (and which the magazine would help sustain with its many commemorative pieces and books over the years).
In 1968 things seemed to reach a fever pitch. There was growing anger with the war in Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated in April and protests broke out across the US. Election campaigning was underway when JFK’s younger brother and 1968 presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of a hotel. Photographer Bill Epperidge, who had been following Kennedy’s campaign, captured the busboy Juan Romero cradling the Senator. In October at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest. John Dominis snapped the photo for Life that showed Smith and Carlos standing, heads bowed, gloved fists in the air, against the jet black of the sky.