The myth of the American Dream
Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to depict the American Dream as anything less than fascinating. As a child, Kane was happy as we see in the scene where he is playing in the snow outside the family’s home, even though his parents owned a boarding house they were categorized low class. But all that changed for Kane, when Thatcher took him from this low class lifestyle, and placed in what only seemed like the American dream, a luxurious life. Overtime he finds that those materialistic things don’t make him happy and the exchange of emotional security for financial security is ultimately displeasing. The American dream becomes indented for Kane. As he grows-up, he uses his wealth and power to build and buy …show more content…
The scene in the newspaper office is a vivid example of the room being filled up with statues through out the film, to the point where the employees could barely move around. Bernstein said that they had multiple, duplicate statues of Venus (the goddess of physical beauty). He obsessively filled his estate with possessions, and at the end of the movie the camera pans across massive rooms that were filled with crates to show that he never even unpacked many of his purchases. Kane’s addiction to collecting is not that of a discriminating connoisseur but rather a symbolic gesture, to fulfill his happiness in other ways. Therefore spending money and having ownership of objects was trying to fill in an empty space. After his failure in the political field and with Susan’s opera career, Kane built his estate, Xanadu, to isolate himself and Susan from those who spurned his attempts at manipulation, and he fills the castle with inanimate objects. (Fig.1) He takes complete control over the world he’s built, and nothing could have challenged his authority in this world he built. Through his materialism Kane attempts to relieve the insults of the real world, where he couldn’t control his mother’s abandonment, Susan’s unsuccessful at opera career, the failure of his political career, and the hurtful opinions of his friends. He ends up at Xanadu alone, with his possessions as his only companions. The purchased goods Kane attempted to fill a …show more content…
This theme is the pursuit of perfection despite great success, of the emptiness of wealth, and of striving for an ideal world that may not exist. This is common in both worlds; with similar characters Gatsby and Kane demonstrate this ultimate American persona, this idealist, and conation for something they have never known. The art of cinematography; Citizen Kane uses incredibly creative camera techniques to tell an extremely moving story with interesting images, as well as focus on multiple plains of vision to allow the eye to focus on any character or object in any scene with complete clarity. In a similar way, the Great Gatsby captures a masterpiece of modernism, to make the experience of enjoying the piece of art more meaningful and personal to the audience, and both succeed in doing so within the means of the art
Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to depict the American Dream as anything less than fascinating. As a child, Kane was happy as we see in the scene where he is playing in the snow outside the family’s home, even though his parents owned a boarding house they were categorized low class. But all that changed for Kane, when Thatcher took him from this low class lifestyle, and placed in what only seemed like the American dream, a luxurious life. Overtime he finds that those materialistic things don’t make him happy and the exchange of emotional security for financial security is ultimately displeasing. The American dream becomes indented for Kane. As he grows-up, he uses his wealth and power to build and buy …show more content…
The scene in the newspaper office is a vivid example of the room being filled up with statues through out the film, to the point where the employees could barely move around. Bernstein said that they had multiple, duplicate statues of Venus (the goddess of physical beauty). He obsessively filled his estate with possessions, and at the end of the movie the camera pans across massive rooms that were filled with crates to show that he never even unpacked many of his purchases. Kane’s addiction to collecting is not that of a discriminating connoisseur but rather a symbolic gesture, to fulfill his happiness in other ways. Therefore spending money and having ownership of objects was trying to fill in an empty space. After his failure in the political field and with Susan’s opera career, Kane built his estate, Xanadu, to isolate himself and Susan from those who spurned his attempts at manipulation, and he fills the castle with inanimate objects. (Fig.1) He takes complete control over the world he’s built, and nothing could have challenged his authority in this world he built. Through his materialism Kane attempts to relieve the insults of the real world, where he couldn’t control his mother’s abandonment, Susan’s unsuccessful at opera career, the failure of his political career, and the hurtful opinions of his friends. He ends up at Xanadu alone, with his possessions as his only companions. The purchased goods Kane attempted to fill a …show more content…
This theme is the pursuit of perfection despite great success, of the emptiness of wealth, and of striving for an ideal world that may not exist. This is common in both worlds; with similar characters Gatsby and Kane demonstrate this ultimate American persona, this idealist, and conation for something they have never known. The art of cinematography; Citizen Kane uses incredibly creative camera techniques to tell an extremely moving story with interesting images, as well as focus on multiple plains of vision to allow the eye to focus on any character or object in any scene with complete clarity. In a similar way, the Great Gatsby captures a masterpiece of modernism, to make the experience of enjoying the piece of art more meaningful and personal to the audience, and both succeed in doing so within the means of the art