"'What would you like to have been?'
'Everything you hate.'"
-- Kane and Bernstein, Citizen Kane
It’s so easy to rip Kane a new one (like I just did) – he is
cocky even from the beginning of his newspaper career, and he tries to buy
women like he buys staff reporters. Giver her a picnic and a couple of dresses,
put her in a castle and she’ll love you forever. So much of his behavior is
derived from his unfounded ideas about the identities of the people around him,
and his total, most likely deliberate, ignorance of their true essence. But who
is Kane?
He is obsessed with defining the other, like he defined his
wives, defined his readers; but he also attempts to use his power, with almost
fanatical dependability, to define himself in the eyes of the other. The
opening short film about his life, a kind of obituary news clip that introduces
the audience to his story the way most Americans probably knew it, tells us
right off the bat, “Never was a private life more public.” Kane is in charge of
media outlets throughout the country, putting him in a unique position to
control all of the press surrounding his saga as a fortunate inheritor,
vehement newscaster, and passionate family man. He defines himself for the
world, leaving no room for second impressions. He also replicates these
attempts in his private life. He marries Susan Alexander, arguably, because,
despite his fame, she has no idea who he is and no preconceived notions about
his personhood. His relationship with her is his chance to start with a new
woman and a clean slate, an opportunity to make sure she sees him the way he
wants to be seen.
Kane’s efforts are largely a failure, and he himself is a
victim of the same phenomenon to which he subjects the people around him. He is
consistently forced to relinquish power over his own identification, and he is
never really given the chance to control the path of his own life – beginning,
of course, in his childhood. Much to his displeasure, his mother gives him away
to the custody of a bank, an institution known for a tradition of
disempowerment. Furthermore, while Kane’s enormous inheritance is largely
referenced throughout the film as a positive happenstance, in reality, Kane was
powerless to choose whether or not he actually wanted it. In a rare moment
where he betrays that he may regret his fortune, he admits, “I always gagged on
that silver spoon. You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might
have been a very great man.” His financial situation, something he did not
choose and perhaps does not even identify himself by, puts Kane in a position
to be judged not only by those close to him, but by the entire American
populous and beyond. And though he tries to use his money to help these people,
thereby ensuring that they see him in a positive light, he is ultimately unable
to connect with them in any genuine way. Whatever support he garners for
himself at the beginning of his career evaporates when his public image slides
downhill, and he can do nothing to stop it.
The press is a powerful symbol of Kane’s inability to shape
his own identity. Not even the audience is an exception – and it is important
to remember that, while we aren’t reading this story in the paper, we do see
almost the entire film through the eyes of a reporter. We don’t know Kane
better than anyone else, and our judgments of him are equally as unfounded –
with one exception. Welles treats us to what may be the most intimate secret of
Kane’s sad life: the significance of his last words.
Kane mentions “Rosebud” in his most vulnerable moments, when
his wife leaves him and again on his own deathbed, as a simple acknowledgement
of his powerlessness. It is a throwback to the promises of childhood and a
dream in which Kane is the richest man in the world, with the capacity to
control whatever he wants. It is also, however, a representation of his own
helplessness: even as his mother presents him with this fantasy, she throws her
child away, into the hands of an unknown and intimidating guardian, who will
have the influence to shape Kane’s identity as he matures. It is also worth
noting that “Rosebud” is perhaps the clearest demonstration in the film of
Kane’s inability to foster a genuine relationship with any of the people in his
life. Despite the apparently extraordinary meaning that this sled holds for
Kane, neither Bernstein, nor Leland, nor his ex-wife Alexander knows what he
means when he says the simple phrase.
The message, as I interpret it, is this: Only in a dream are
people able to define themselves; In reality, they loose this power, and their
words and actions are always up for interpretation. Our protagonist is no
exception, and that leaves Charles Foster Kane, like his wife, his readers, and
the woman with the white parasol, despite his wealth, to be no more or less
powerful than anybody else.
Something has been bothering me, so I’d like to finish this
post with a question. Who names his sled “Rosebud?” Doesn’t that seem a little
seasonally inappropriate? It obviously didn’t occur to any character in the film
that when Kane mentioned this springtime blossom, he might be referring to his
old winter sled. Thoughts?
