MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

A narrative analysis was conducted of news media coverage of Rosemary Kennedy from the day she died in 2005 to the present. In all, 43 articles, accompanying photographs, and audio segments (as well as accompanying transcripts and text) were analyzed. Texts reveal that Rosemary Kennedy was included in family activities, hidden away, packaged for public performance, hidden away again, horribly damaged by the lobotomy ordered by her father Joe, reintegrated into the family, and finally repackaged as an inspiration, a “catalyst for change throughout the world for people with mental disabilities,”(Mizoguchi & McNeil, 2016). She should be the tragic hero of this narrative, but she is not. She was made into a role model, but even that origin story was attenuated by the back and forth over whether Eunice Kennedy Shriver was inspired by her to launch Special Olympics. Books by Larson (2015) and Koehler-Pentacoff (2015) have filled the information gap, but we came away from these texts with the impression that Rosemary was still “the problem,” as Haller (2010, p. 40) might note, something that they had to overcome, to make the most of, even if that meant completely altering who she was.Thomson (2001) might argue that Rosemary Kennedy was once and will likely always be an example of the exotic rhetoric – a curiosity whose true self was never made available for public consumption. The Kennedys then turned her into a role model – and attempted to persuade us in perhaps the most positive possible terms that they had been “rescued” from her learning difficulties, her angry outbursts, and her flirtations. Rosemary, however, was never rescued.