Surfaces in Jackie : Representing Crisis and the Crisis of Representation

Jackie captures that disorienting period in the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in the days between the murder and funeral of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. Like Andy Warhol before him, Pablo Larraín dwells on the iconicity of Jackie O., regularly operating along the thin line between sincerity and cosmeticism. In ways very similar to No, the film implies that the life of government is a life of performance – success contingent upon presenting the most effective façade. This chapter argues that Larraín mobilizes the poetics at the heart of history, framing the representation of a real-life event as a negotiation between aesthetic experience and empirical veracity. This chapter argues that while developing themes locatable in Larraín’s earlier films, Jackie increases the self-conscious poeticism of these earlier films, reminiscent of Warhol’s sardonic take on American culture. As well as creating a dialogue between Jackie and Warhol’s series of silkscreens on Jackie O., the chapter discusses the film’s formal style, its subversive potential within the biopic genre, and the self-conscious impersonation-style of Natalie Portman’s performance.