Today is the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, and even though it happened half a century ago, people are still fascinated by it. The images of that day - and images of the Kennedys in general - have become part of American folklore.

There have been many artistic takes on JFK's assassination, but in the music video world, the most interesting (and most well known) piece came just last year with Anthony Mandler's video for "National Anthem", by Lana Del Rey. Let's take a look!

The video starts off with an intro where Del Rey plays the part of Marilyn Monroe delivering her famous "happy birthday Mr. President" song at Madison Square Garden in 1962. It almost seems like we won't get a glimpse of JFK but then there he is in the audience, played by A$AP Rocky. And just when we think Del Rey is going to be Monroe for the video, suddenly she takes on the guide of Jacqueline Kennedy, and she spends the rest of the video in that role.

Framed in the context of JFK's death, most of the video is a sort of idealized look at the relationship between JFK and Jackie Kennedy, seen through the warmly colored glow of a 4:3 film frame. Thanks to the endless books about JFK we know this version is largely a fantasy, but the video does seem to acknowledge that by starting the video off with Monroe, who was one of JFK's many extramarital affairs.

One of most intriguing things about this video is the decision to cast A$AP Rocky as JFK. Lana Del Rey's clothing, the furniture - pretty much everything is vintage early 1960s, and then there is Rocky, who puts on some 1960s-style clothing but leaves the big chains and rings. While Del Rey seemed to really want to play the role of Jackie Kennedy, A$AP Rocky plays A$AP Rocky dressed up like JFK (one of the weirdest images is A$AP playing dice in what is supposed to be Kennedy's home office, something I'm fairly sure Kennedy never did). It's a style choice that seems very deliberate - if they wanted a JFK lookalike, they could've easily found one.

In an interview with MTV, Mandler sheds some light on the reasons behind the update to the Kennedy image: "We used the Kennedy framework to kind of implement this new Camelot, this racially diverse Camelot, this maybe socially diverse Camelot ... bringing it into the modern era, but still keeping that classic framework. There's a kind of micro-commentary of 'This is the new royalty,' you know, A$AP and Lana, trying to pick two people to maybe represent the next generation of something."

That concept of a framework rather than a reenactment explains some of the choices in the video, like putting Del Rey in a gold outfit in the motorcade instead of the famous pink dress she wore that day.

It also definitely says something about the legacy of the Kennedys that Mandler and Del Rey thought that a 2012 pop star audience would (maybe) understand the references that are made in this video. I suspect that largely has to do with Jackie Kennedy instead of JFK, who has been a style icon since the time she was the first lady and seems to have had some influence on Lana Del Rey's style.

The epilogue to the video is where we get a reenactment of the actual assassination, complete with a gun shot and a monologue by Del Rey. The whole video has framed the Kennedy relationship for us as more or less perfect, so it feels like the intention was to make the assassination scene have some more emotional impact.

I'm not sure if the video is successful in that area (for me, at least), but one thing it definitely does in make JFK seem like a complete badass. A$AP Rocky seems to have a lot of fun hanging around what is supposed to be the Kennedy compound, grabbing Lana Del Rey's butt and enjoying the Kennedy life. This part, I'm pretty sure, was not too far from the truth.

Adam Fairholm is the co-founder and lead developer of IMVDb. You can find him on twitter at @adamfairholm.