I was in need of encouragement with my American cultural journey after The Catcher in the Rye, and Citizen Kane gave it in bucketloads. It started slow – and black and white is kind of an instant turn-off for those of us brought up with full color – but by the end I was hooked. Even the ‘dollar-book Freud’ plot enabling device of Rosebud didn’t bother me – after all, the movie needs some reason to carry on.

Had a quick look on the internet about it – plenty about parallels with a certain Mr Hearst (who would doubtless be all but forgotten now if he hadn’t raised hell about the slanderous nature of the film) and with Orson Welles himself; as he said ‘I started at the top and worked my way down’. I’m surprised there isn’t more about Mr Kane as a metaphor for America. After all, the ‘founding principles’ of the paper are openly compared to The Declaration of Independence, and as Kane starts his fall those same principles are sent back to him, as a reminder. The rural log cabin start, the sudden prosperity, the break with the mother (or mother country, in the case of America), the desire for free speech and democracy above all, the aquirement of allies and wealthy, powerful friends and precious objects; and then the slide down as, still rich, Mr Kane loses friends and influence, remembering at moments of crisis what was most important to him at the beginning, but never reaching to regain the arcadia. The symbol of Kane as America is not a perfect fit – I can’t see how forcing someone you love to do something they are not suited to could be transferred to America – but I like it the better for that. Imagery can get a little too neat sometimes, and whatever Kane did or did not represent, first and foremost there was a story to be told.

I had been talking with Isaac about the books I’d read so far before the movie. Because of that, one quote in particular made an impression on me;

A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows – his own.

I haven’t read so much American literature so far, but a central theme seems to be the desire to be loved, admired and successful – but not a desire to love, or to admire, or to aid another in their success. I guess that’s fairly true of most modern literature. It is an interesting contrast to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter where the central character kept quiet for the sake of the man she loved. I also wonder if ‘love on my terms’ is necessarily bad, at least if the terms are reasonable. Few would advocate a woman standing by a man who beat her, for instance. Yet for all that, there is something cold and ruthless about such a demand. I wonder why that theme has recurred – I’m guessing it was just a central concern of the first part of the 1900’s in the US, although I suppose it could just be chance.