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Hopefully this isn't considered a spam, but I just watched Citizen Kane again so I'd have it fresh in my mind for a film class discussion, and I remembered that somebody on Poly had characterized him as a tragic hero like Hamlet or Oedipus. I have to sorta wonder why.
Tragic heroes generally are admirable people as a whole who lack sufficient strength to face their troubles and win, and this lack usually takes the form of a personality flaw. Kane's problem appears to be a personality flaw, but it's the wrong kind. I think of a "personality" as having two parts; one is the aggregate of urges that Freud classified as the id and superego, the giant mass of wanting to do this and fearing to do that, everything that our selves and our neighbors push upon us. The other is the ego, the part that consciously measures the desires and decides which one is boss. I'm just using the Freudian crap here because it's the best-known. Call 'em soul and spirit, or emotion and reason, or whatever.
Even the tragic heroes who most resemble Kane have flaws in the first part, the mind of desire. Somebody (Molly Bloom, I think) mentioned the Mayor of Casterbridge, and I suppose he'll do. The Mayor, whose name I can't remember because I read it about three years ago-Michael, I think, is in most ways a good and honorable man, and he knows what ought to be done, but he has an immense ego problem. He cannot stand to be less than the greatest, and he will die rather than be made a fool of, or even take a backseat to anybody. He is on some level aware of his temper problem, but can't ever *quite* control it as he ought, and spends his life in an unsuccessful battle with it that leaves him a penniless laughingstock.
Charles Foster Kane, on the other hand, seems to have his flaws in the second part. The conscious will that drives him has certain goals that it will achieve come hell or high water, and most everything he does is the drive of his own wishes. Perhaps I shouldn't even say his "wishes," because he forms his goals with no regard for sensible desire. He makes his bad decisions in advance, plans them well, and proceeds with them despite their obviously low chances of working. Susan Alexander can't sing, but he's gonna make her sing, because he's Charles Foster Kane, dammit, and what he says goes.
It's not like the Mayor's problem, either, because he never really tries to be anything other than what he is. Hamlet at least tries to be decisive, and Othello tries to get himself to see reason before the end. People go up to Kane, several times throughout the movie, and tell him what his problem is, and he just ignores it. Even if their advice wasn't spot-on, and as far as I can tell it was, he didn't even acknowledge it. He has chosen to screw up, because screwing up is his way of doing things and that's what matters. What's so tragic about that?
Tragic heroes generally are admirable people as a whole who lack sufficient strength to face their troubles and win, and this lack usually takes the form of a personality flaw. Kane's problem appears to be a personality flaw, but it's the wrong kind. I think of a "personality" as having two parts; one is the aggregate of urges that Freud classified as the id and superego, the giant mass of wanting to do this and fearing to do that, everything that our selves and our neighbors push upon us. The other is the ego, the part that consciously measures the desires and decides which one is boss. I'm just using the Freudian crap here because it's the best-known. Call 'em soul and spirit, or emotion and reason, or whatever.
Even the tragic heroes who most resemble Kane have flaws in the first part, the mind of desire. Somebody (Molly Bloom, I think) mentioned the Mayor of Casterbridge, and I suppose he'll do. The Mayor, whose name I can't remember because I read it about three years ago-Michael, I think, is in most ways a good and honorable man, and he knows what ought to be done, but he has an immense ego problem. He cannot stand to be less than the greatest, and he will die rather than be made a fool of, or even take a backseat to anybody. He is on some level aware of his temper problem, but can't ever *quite* control it as he ought, and spends his life in an unsuccessful battle with it that leaves him a penniless laughingstock.
Charles Foster Kane, on the other hand, seems to have his flaws in the second part. The conscious will that drives him has certain goals that it will achieve come hell or high water, and most everything he does is the drive of his own wishes. Perhaps I shouldn't even say his "wishes," because he forms his goals with no regard for sensible desire. He makes his bad decisions in advance, plans them well, and proceeds with them despite their obviously low chances of working. Susan Alexander can't sing, but he's gonna make her sing, because he's Charles Foster Kane, dammit, and what he says goes.
It's not like the Mayor's problem, either, because he never really tries to be anything other than what he is. Hamlet at least tries to be decisive, and Othello tries to get himself to see reason before the end. People go up to Kane, several times throughout the movie, and tell him what his problem is, and he just ignores it. Even if their advice wasn't spot-on, and as far as I can tell it was, he didn't even acknowledge it. He has chosen to screw up, because screwing up is his way of doing things and that's what matters. What's so tragic about that?
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