I saw Bob Dylan as part of the Americanarama Tour last week in Atlanta. I wrote this last year for an event on the occasion of Bob Dylan's birthday. I previously wrote about Dylan here.
This is not going to be your standard celebration of the greatness of Bob
Dylan. On the occasion of Bob's birthday, I'm not here to give you something
you're probably read a hundred times about all of his folk anthems, or his artistic
fearlessness, or his political significance. I don't really care, and I'm not
interested if you do care, about how his music has made the world a better
place or given it meaning. If it has, you probably haven't been paying enough
attention to what his songs actually say.
You see, Bob Dylan was not the voice of my generation. Not at first, anyway.
A little background, and then maybe you'll understand. I was born in 1970, the
year Richard Nixon entertained Elvis Presley in the White House. When I was
born, Bob Dylan released his "Self Portrait" album, the most
universally loathed release of his career. He was in a creative slump and
unsure of himself after producing a string of seminal albums, any one of which
would have been enough to cement anybody else's career. A myth
endures that Dylan was intentionally trying to sabotage his image at this
point, to demystify himself from the folk god, then rock god, he had become. He
was a married father trying to turn a page.
By the time I was conscious of him about 15 years later, he was charitably
called a legend, which is a polite way of saying what he called
himself later - "a worn-out star." He had just alienated many of his
most ardent fans with a trilogy of uncompromising Christian albums, and he was
settling into a string of late eighties works with a bloated band and
lackluster songs. My high school classmates used to give their best imitations
of his portion of "We Are the World."
And to top it off, frankly, he annoyed me. I was a child of the eighties, which
meant that I grew up viewing the sixties through a jaundiced eye. Dylan,
frankly, symbolized everything I detested about the Baby Boom generation -
its endless self-celebration, its elevating pop culture to the status of
religion, its obsession with refighting the same political battles over and
over. Besides, the guy had a voice like a rusty chainsaw running out of gas.
So I politely declined in the fall of 1990 when Dylan came to Tuscaloosa to
perform at homecoming while I was a student at the University of Alabama. I
rolled my eyes as I heard friends talk rapturously about hearing him sing
"Tangled Up In Blue" and thought to myself, yeah sure. Ban the
Bomb. Make Love, Not War. Blah blah blah.
I really knew it all, didn't I?
Almost immediately after that, two things happened. First, I began to really
discover Bob Dylan. Not the legend that I was already sick of hearing about,
but the actual artist. And second, Bob started yet another career renaissance,
the most improbable of his life.
My first actually appreciation of Bob's music came when I played
"Subterranian Homesick Blues." To any kid who grew up listening to
rap music, what Dylan is doing here doesn't sound all that unfamiliar. But his
word play, his inventiveness, the slick way he carelessly tosses off the words
gets under your skin. It stays with you. He seems to be saying, as every kid
ever born says at a certain age, "They really don't care all that much
about us, do they?" When you're a certain age, you don't care who
"they" are. "They" is shorthand for the whole world.
But Dylan didn't stay in his 20s forever, and neither did I. It's amazing how a
public figure can grow in your estimation the longer he stays in the
public eye. Dylan simply wore out my generation, giving hundreds of live shows
a night all over the world in what became known as "The Neverending
Tour." Then, there was his health scare in the late 90s when he hovered
near death for a while, only to emerge with his most celebrated album in years,
"Time Out of Mind."
In one of those quirks of fate he is famous for, Dylan followed that up with
an even better work, "Love and Theft," which appeared on music
store racks on Sept. 11, 2001. I was on vacation at the beach, but when I saw
the Towers fall and heard him sing, "High Water Everywhere," you
didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing that day.
A few years later, here he was again with "Modern Times." But Dylan
was true to form, peopling his songs with characters waiting on trains instead
of sending out tweets and status updates on Facebook.
In these three albums, it would be easy to say that Dylan cemented his
status as rock's elder statesman, passing judgment as he always has on a world
gone wrong. But that is also one of those too-easy labels, like calling him the
spokesman for his generation. Yes, of course, "Blonde on Blonde" or
"The Basement Tapes" are worth hundreds of listens on your turntable
or iPod, but Dylan sounds like a man who actually knows what he's talking about
in "Ain't Talkin'."
He's experienced life. He's not singing some borrowed thoughts from some old
bluesman. He's been kicked to the curb by his best friends and he's come back
to name a few names. Perhaps the best statement you can find is his
Oscar-winning "Things Have Changed." In its lyrics, he trots out the
Bible, the jitterbug, a gallows, but he's never sounded so current. People are
crazy and times are strange, but he, like us, has seen it all before, and
he is bound for something eternal. "Don't get up gentlemen," he
cautions, "I'm only passing through."
If you live long enough, you're bound to see anything. When I first encountered
Bob, he was famously squeamish about interviews and somewhat aloof from his
fame. Now, Bob Dylan has done a Victoria's Secret commercial. He recorded an
album of Christmas music that sounded at the same time like an elaborate prank
and the most fun he's had in years. He hosts his own radio show, but declines
to play his own songs. He has passed seven decades and shows no sign of slowing
down.
And me? I'm forty now, about the age he was when I formed my first wrong-headed
assumptions about him. But I see him now as a man who isn't content to be
what other people expect him to be. He isn't interested in celebrating the
past. Even when he performs the songs people never tire of hearing him sing, he
changes the arrangements to make them almost unrecognizable. Though he borrows
from virtually every source, he manages to create something original and
lasting.
A survey recently showed that one in seven people think the world will end in
their lifetimes. So maybe at last I can recognize Bob Dylan as
the voice of my generation. And every other one as well.
There's nothing to worry about, he says, tongue firmly in cheek, because it's
all good. The answer is...well, you know the rest.
George Orwell’s “1984” is a
best seller again, thanks to revelations of government surveillance and the
perpetually American belief that there is a movement afoot to subvert the
nation. This instinct is one we inherited from the Founding Fathers, and it has
largely served us well. It keeps large scale political movements from holding
onto power longer than a generation. We get suspicious easily, and in Orwell’s
20th century novel of totalitarianism, we have a brilliant story
that caters to our fears, entertains us, and at the same time confirms our
darkest suspicions.
Like many of my generation,
my first exposure to the novel was in the year “1984,” when western democracy
took the book off the shelf, looked around the landscape, and patted itself on
the back when it did not see a figure comparable to Big Brother. But Orwell
wasn’t necessarily interested in giving us a blueprint for how an all-encompassing
dictatorship might happen if (or when) it does – his work’s power lies not in
its ability to anticipate those fears to their logical conclusion. Instead, he
may have inadvertently stumbled onto the logical end, not of totalitarianism,
but unlimited freedom.
In “1984,” Oceania exists
because of a great war, which has wiped away the previous governing powers and
replaced them with an emergency government. The regime must have a perpetual crisis
in order to continue its existence. The nation is ruled by a charismatic
leader, and certain kinds of conduct are forbidden in order that the state
survives. Citizens are constantly watched for disobedience (not only by a secret
police but by each other), and that vigilance later escalates into a search for
mere unorthodoxy at every level. Class or individual distinctions are seemingly
wiped out in order to blend everyone together, and technology is used to keep
the state in a position of power. Scarcity and want are repackaged as privilege
and prosperity. History is controlled, even language is controlled, and there
is always an enemy who must be defeated. There is enough here to make the
easily fearful on either the left or the right in 2013 America suspicious.
Winston Smith’s life has been
copied in various works of dystopia that followed – there is a minor character
who mimics the rhetoric of the leader. There is a forbidden book that hints at
another way. The hero is allowed to entertain the idea that the world might be
rescued, or at least, his world. And that world turns at the moment the hero
asks the unthinkable question, “Am I happy?”
Thomas Pynchon points out
that one of the parlor games of “1984” is looking at the current landscape of
this or that society and pointing to what Orwell got right, and what he didn’t
anticipate. We have to remember that Orwell didn’t set out to write a
definitive critique of totalitarian communism – he was a far-left socialist.
What he was interested in was the ability of modern society and ideology to go
a long way in wiping out the ability of the individual to define himself. When
the novel opens, Winston Smith indulges in perhaps the most subversive thing he
can do, outside of his affair with Julia – he begins keeping a diary. Why is
this subversive? Because the individual cannot define events, or his own life,
in a state-controlled environment. That is the sole privilege of the ruling
power. What Oceania attempts to do is wipe out the individual, systemically at
first, and if that proves unsuccessful, eventually through torture and
brainwashing.
While Orwell got the
technological aspect of the “Big Brother” state correct – in its ability to
define the past and watch its citizens – there were a few things he didn’t even
bother worrying about in his pitch-black future. For example, ethnic tension
seems absent. The Party, we are told, has people of virtually every class in
its ranks and leadership. But any government that encompasses multiple
ethnicities and cultures will always feel tension, especially in the central
question of who is making the decisions. What Orwell needs for his dystopia to
work is a very docile populace, but he can get that, since he’s its creator.
Also absent is religion – any
religion. Instead, devotion is poured out to the state. It is a feature of
leftish visions of the future that religion is easily disposed of. The idea behind
it is that enlightenment rationalism will eventually triumph and people will
understand that the faiths they cling to are as vain as those of our ancient
ancestors. One paradox of totalitarian cultures has been that, no matter how
hard the state presses, the pressure tends to make faith even more passionate.
Christianity survived in Shogunate Japan for centuries despite the best efforts
of the executioner, and the church thrived in Communist China even in the
crucible of the Cultural Revolution. One can make a case that Christianity
surviving the Inquisition in any recognizable form is as much a facet of the
faith as the zealotry that inspired the evil in the first place. A completely
atheistic Oceania assumes a great deal of the people Winston Smith puts his
faith in – the proles. Faiths all over the world do not survive on the hopes of
intellectuals or party functionaries, but on the rank and file, the workers;
the people who make our societies, free and enslaved, work. The state, any and
all states, eventually prove themselves poor repositories of our dreams. The
closest the language of “1984” ever gets to religious devotion is during
O’Brien’s torture of Winston. Consider:
“The command of the old despotisms was ‘Thou shalt
not.’ The command of the totalitarians was ‘Thou shalt.’ Our command is ‘Thou
art.’”
Only later does O’Brien
inform Winston that “God is power.” By this time, the use of the word “God,”
even by the state torturer, seems utterly subversive.
But another faith is absent
from “1984,” and that is the defining characteristic of democracy, socialism,
communism and even fascism: faith in the inevitable triumph of human
civilization. All governments are based on narratives, and the stories they
tell must be hopeful in order to keep the population convinced of the state’s
viability. Think of any speech by any president – even Jimmy Carter’s notorious
“malaise” speech ends with a ridiculous flourish calling on Americans to say
something good about the country, and to renew the nation’s spirit. Orwell’s
vision of the future is not hopeful and does not end on a happy note – Winston
is happy, but he is happy because he has totally surrendered to Big Brother and
the idea of Big Brother. He knows that with this triumph, he no longer has to worry
about running afoul of the state. Think again of O’Brien’s words:
“The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very
close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their
own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized
power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there
lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like
that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing
it. Power is not a means; it is an end. … the object of power is power.”
At any moment in a democracy,
there are millions of people who feel out of power. They can respond in many
ways – contempt for the ruling party, belief in the opposition (or anger at its
powerlessness), pessimism that the current rulers are changing the country
beyond salvation, or optimism that the nation is too strong to be destroyed.
Indeed, there may be the temptation to feel all of these emotions
simultaneously. That is why “1984” continually finds enthusiastic readers, no
matter who is in power.
But the work is pliable
enough to give comfort and warning across the political spectrum. Take the
three slogans of the Big Brother regime – War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance
is Strength. If you do a quick Google search, you will find all three slogans
used ironically in blogs, tweets or postings against each of the last three
presidents of the United States.
Modern governments all over
the globe convince themselves that a constant state of preparation for war is a
deterrent to war, even as they are already engaged in war. The idea of finding
freedom in complete obedience is, curiously enough, a religious idea, borrowed
from Christianity with the state replacing the divine as the seat of devotion.
The third slogan is more pertinent to our time – the idea that not knowing the
whole truth, or even a partial truth, means that you rely totally on another to
tell you that which you need to know to survive. What should be frightening to
modern society is that, in our society which thrives on information technology,
such a thing is already happening.
Think about it – how many
people, on both left and right, rail against the news media for hiding the
truth about this or that issue? But when they look for information to back up
their opinions, they invariably turn to the same news media, which presumably
can’t hide everything from those clever enough to see through it. Ideologies
have now caught on to the idea that by having networks of bloggers, news
services, polling services and other information networks, they can perpetually
create a narrative that reinforces their beliefs, regardless of the facts. What
results is a society where people never recalibrate their ideas based on new
information, but instead explain away challenges as being extraordinary. Where
no one ever wins an election or an argument, because whoever wins is
illegitimate. Circumstances that might otherwise contradict their most closely
held beliefs are instead examples of how right they are. In “1984,” the
citizens engage routinely in conspiratorial thinking – trying to pick out the
real news behind the fake, and interpret the real aims behind this fact’s
prominence and that one’s obscurity. “What is the design behind the news? Where
are we headed? What don’t they want us to know?”
Orwell’s great fear is of a
society of automatons – incapable of thinking or feeling for themselves, eager
to believe whatever is fed to them and unconscious of a common past or future.
His great mistake was in probably believing the state was necessary to make
this happen. There are now more ways than ever before for human beings to
define themselves, a power that was unthinkable in the past. In modern society,
people can differentiate themselves by fashion, by material wealth, by speech,
by their sexual preference (and even their gender), by transcending class, by
gaining fame or infamy, and by isolating themselves from it all. There is
belonging available to virtually every role through communication. Every avenue
is available, with only a little effort and luck. This is what almost total
freedom looks like, on a scale even Orwell would have found unlikely.
But how many of your friends’
Facebook statuses look exactly the same? How many times do they share with you
the same images, videos, or faulty facts? How often do we dismiss a certain
piece of news because it does not fit into our neat ideological categories? How
many tweets do you read that seem like an untold number of other tweets? How
often do the same stale jokes clog up your phones from people who have all
convinced themselves they are original, funny, and utterly unique? The danger
of modern society may be not of automatons created by the state, but created by
the culture, who all look utterly alike while they are all the time convinced they
are different. Add to that an atmosphere of cynicism and irony, where even the
worst news about society gives us new fodder for snarky comments, an atmosphere
where history is dismissed as irrelevant, the product of a conspiracy. Where
people stay in barely defined roles or avenues handed to them by their politics
or culture because they do not believe there is any way to something else. Suddenly
you don’t need Big Brother watching you – “1984” is within you.
A cynical, slightly silly old man sits in a nursing home,
begging a reporter for a cigar. He is, as a long-time friend remarks, suffering
from old age, “the only disease you don’t look forward to being cured of.” And
in the middle of answering the reporter’s questions about events in the now
distant past, this elderly veteran of New York’s 19th century
newspaper wars says, almost offhand, “Of course, a lot of us check out without
having any special conviction about death, but we do know what we believe in.
We believe in something.”
The speaker is the ancient Jed Leland, and like many of his
fellow characters in “Citizen Kane,” Leland’s observation says a lot without saying
much of anything tangible. The underlying statement seems to be a recurring
theme in the film – the passage of time, and the humility it forces on us all. But
it also illustrates the multiple meanings that we as individuals perceive,
ascribe and sometimes force onto our lives and the lives of others. What do we
believe in, assuming we believe in anything at all?
“Citizen Kane” routinely makes it onto lists of the greatest
films ever made, and just as routinely sits at the top of most of them.
Entertainment Weekly was the latest this month, calling Orson Welles’ immortal
first movie the greatest motion picture ever. There are many reasons for this –
its use of cinematography, its rich backstory and the identification we as film
buffs feel in associating its title character with that of Welles, and his
contemporary inspiration, William Randolph Hearst. But I don’t wish to write
about “Citizen Kane” in those terms, since this has been done much more expertly
and much more extensively by people who can devote insight into Gregg Toland’s
images, or Bernard Herrmann’s score. Instead, I want to pay attention to the
story, strangely enough perhaps the least appreciated of all of “Citizen
Kane’s” many fascinating aspects. One might ask, even though there is no overtly
religious content, if “Kane” is the greatest Christian movie ever made. As I’ve
stated before, the absence of Christ from a work of art can also attest to His
presence in the world. What does the fictional life of Charles Foster Kane say
about Him?
Kane (Welles) is a newspaper tycoon, a man who owns an
empire of newsprint at the turn of the century in America, and parlays his
personal fortune into fame and power. He is a uniquely American success story –
his wealth built on a gold mine that providentially fell into his family’s lap.
And so Kane rises from poverty to the pinnacle, nearly parlaying his yellow
journalism into a political career. However, his affair with a singer (Dorothy
Comingore) hastens his downfall, and his megalomania results in him leaving
behind two wrecked marriages, his only heir dead, his life lasting long enough
to see most of his wealth and power stripped away, until he is almost totally
alone. His last, enigmatic word on his deathbed, “Rosebud,” sends a reporter,
Thompson (Wiliam Alland) on a quest to unlock its meaning. Though he doesn’t
learn what “Rosebud” was, we the audience do. But we are not fully sure what it
really means. There is a sense when viewing “Citizen Kane” that while we may
understand the story in part, like a single human life, there is something that
we are missing which keeps drawing us back. We feel that just because a
particular life, a particular story, has been recognized in part, that does not
mean that it has been fully understood. The film is, as Jorge Luis Borges
declared, “a metaphysical detective story.”
‘Who do men say that
I am?’
We know that when Welles first began casting about for
stories to film, one of his first ideas was adapting Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of
Darkness,” but with a twist – the camera would be the narrator, and we would
view everything from the perspective of Marlow, whose face we might never see.
“Kane,” though, is this concept in reverse – we view the life of Kane but not
over his shoulder. Instead, we view it through the lives of friends, business
associates, and those who perhaps knew him best. The question of “Rosebud”
gives us a mystery, and a window into the man. These “witnesses” to Kane’s rise
and fall are his guardian Walter Thatcher (George Colouris), his business associate
Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), his friend Jed Leland (Joseph Cotten), his
second wife Susan Alexander, and his butler (Paul Stewart). But because Welles
allows each different witness to tell the story in part, we see different
facets of Kane. He’s the same man, of course, but we understand him in a more
fully-formed way.
Take Thatcher for example. When he first encounters Kane,
his charge is a boy, unaware that his mother has signed him over to a bank, in
effect. From their first meeting, Thatcher sees Kane as a bad seed, and he is
made complicit in the boy’s flowering. As we continue with Thatcher’s story, we
see the old banker as perhaps feeling misunderstood, or even cheated by how the
boy turned out, yet Kane is unapologetic toward him. Because he is suddenly
wrenched from them, Kane is forever left as a boy straining to regain his
forgotten toys, left beneath the falling snow. He wants new buildings, new
passions, new objects of love and new worshippers. Later on, when Thatcher
confronts the young Kane in the newspaper office, we see Kane as a great figure
– full of wit, and willing to pick a fight. He perhaps cares about people and
his power enough to seem a responsible fellow, even as he picks a fight that he
hopes will develop into a war for the sake of his circulation numbers. We see
Thatcher shaking his head at a familiar argument he has probably had thousands
of times with this willful little boy, now fully grown and playing havoc with
the economy.
That makes us feel for Kane only a few minutes later when we
witness one of his humiliations. It is in 1929, when Kane is humbled by the
Depression, that he declares, in front of his old guardian, that if he hadn’t
been very rich he “might have been a really great man.” Thatcher seems
surprised that Kane doesn’t believe he already is, and genuinely interested in
knowing what Kane would rather have been. Kane’s answer, as might be expected,
is in a way affectionately poisonous to his old guardian. That animus is all
the two of them have ever known of each other.
Thompson next goes to Bernstein, who is the most loyal to
Kane of all the people the reporter interviews. For this reason, it is
Bernstein’s sequence that allows us to see Kane at his most favorable. Bernstein
is a money man, but he doesn’t see the mere accumulation of wealth as a great
accomplishment. Bernstein obviously sees Kane as a remarkable man whom he had
the pleasure of serving. Remember it is Bernstein who recounts the moment of
Kane’s Declaration of Principles, his version of the Shema , his one
commandment– I am the publisher, and you will be my people. There were things
about him unpleasant, but he did great things. Bernstein seems to be the only
character who feels comfortable enough with who he thinks Kane was. For him, the
inexplicable was a part of Kane’s character.
Leland’s entry into the story is necessary for two reasons –
to give insight into Kane’s marriages, and insight into how Kane treated his
friends. Leland is like Kane, in that he grew up in privilege, though his
family lost everything. And Leland is in his youth an idealist, which is what
draws him to his friend Charlie. Many years later in the nursing home, the old Leland
is still bitter about Charlie’s failure to live up to his best hopes. That is
why he begins the story of Kane’s fall.
But their relationship is a complicated one. For example,
why does Kane finish Jed’s scathing review of Susan’s operatic performance?
Because he still feels for his friend, and he wants to rekindle his friend’s
hero worship. Writing such a review would be true to their younger selves. But
if that’s the case, why does Kane then fire Jed even though it is he who
finishes the review? Because he has to – his own employee can’t show up his
wife. Kane tries to buy off Leland’s favor to no avail. Leland responds by
sending him back the Declaration of Principles, as worthless as the torn-up
check. What is the Declaration now? “An antique,” Kane declares, as he knows about
himself what Jed later says, that he never had a conviction except himself.
Susan’s story takes up half of Jed’s recollections, and her
piece dominates the final part of the movie. Her story, consequently, is the
most important in unlocking the mystery of who Kane is. Kane meets Susan on his
way to a warehouse to see relics from his past – the antiques from his mother.
He is alone on this personal “sentimental journey,” when he first encounters
his future second wife. Who is Kane? Well, she doesn’t know who he is – this
means she’s simple. He seems flabbergasted that she likes him, even though she
doesn’t know who he is. (Is Kane talking about the private man, or the public
one?) But it is telling that the first time we see the snow globe that inspired
Kane’s final word, it is in Susan’s apartment on their first meeting.
There have been intimations of a Freudian connection here,
that Susan in some ways reminds Kane of his mother.We know from Jed Leland that Kane knew
immediately what kind of woman she was – a less educated, presumably more
pliable mate. But he sees in her simplicity something he has been aching for,
and he begins making her over into what he wants. This brings up an interesting
question – does her innocence attract Kane and simultaneously make him want to
transform her into something like himself? Why does she have to be an opera
singer, and not just a singer? Because he’s Charles Foster Kane. How can his
wife be anything other than just as grandiose as he? Her greatness reflects
back on him. It is telling that later, when Kane frantically claps after her
first performance, he stops just at the moment when the spotlight finds him. In
the end, Susan too wants love on her own terms, just like him. That is what
drives her away.
‘Who is the real
Charles Foster Kane?’
Using the storytelling devices of montages, flashbacks and a
non-linear timeline, we assemble a rough sketch of who we think Charles Foster
Kane was. But one of the reasons the film continues to work 70 years after its
creation is that the film doesn’t really answer definitively that question. In
fact, we aren’t even sure whether Kane is a good man who goes bad, or a bad man
who only wanted to fool people into liking him. In the original trailer for the
film, Welles tells the audience that he doesn’t know what to tell them about
Kane. He is “a hero, and a scoundrel, a no-account and a swell guy, a great
lover, a great American citizen, and a dirty dog. It depends on who’s talking
about him.” He invites the audience to decide for themselves.
“Love is not the subject of ‘Citizen Kane,’” Welles said,
many years after the fact, a surprising statement for multiple viewers of the
film. It seems to us that the film, if it’s about anything at all, is about the
pursuit of love. It is possible Welles meant romantic love, which is certainly true. Kane doesn’t seem to burn
with romantic passion for his women as much as he burns with an unfulfilled
longing. Does he need his mommy? Kane does seem starved for mother love. His
father felt he needed “a good thrashing,” but his mother curiously decides to
show her devotion to him, to protect him, by sending him away.
The word “Rosebud” sounds feminine, but it is later revealed
to be the name of Kane’s childhood sled, left back in Colorado. So it is
revealed as a childish thing, a sentimental thing, but that endears him to us,
in that we realize how far away Kane possibly traveled from the thing he missed
most – the person he could have become if he had never left the security of
Mrs. Kane’s Boarding House. Welles said the “longing for the garden,” for the
untroubled past, was a common trait of humanity and civilization.
But that explanation of “Rosebud” doesn’t ultimately satisfy
us, because “Rosebud” seems to be so much more than just the name of a sled, or
a time of life. For example, what is “Rosebud” to Kane when he says it? Is it a
memory, or a plea, or question, or a statement? What if Kane had said, for
example, “Jesus,” on his deathbed. We might wonder at the context. Religious
affirmation? Profanity? Request for salvation? But by saying “Rosebud,” he
seems to be saying something more than just the name of a sled. Can “Rosebud”
explain the beginning of the picture and the end, with Kane an almost godlike
figure ruling over a rotting empire, deciding what is truth and what are lies,
who is celebrated and who is ignored? When
he tells Bernstein (and Thatcher) that he might have been a really great man,
he obviously isn’t talking about his wealth or power. He means greatness in a
moral sense, and this has eluded him.
‘He got everything he
ever wanted’
Jesus’ own statement about greatness – “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20:26)
– indicates how things might have turned out for Kane. If he had meant his
principles, if he had been the figure in his campaign speech, then maybe he
would not be the hollowed, broken figure at the end of his life. We learn more
from the man who breaks him, Boss Jim Gettys (Ray Collins). There is nothing
personal about it; Gettys is merely interested in survival. He just wants to
destroy Kane before Kane destroys him. You can see a creeping admiration for
the publisher, even in his contempt, because he gives Kane an opportunity to
save himself. But Kane choses “the love of the voters” rather than the security
of his family, and he loses both. Gettys understands something else about Kane through
his decision to press on– his arrogance, as personified by his affair with
Susan. He knows that Kane will need “more than one lesson” to understand what
he is throwing away. Kane appeared to be a servant, but he is revealed as
something else – a man pursuing his own reflection in the crowds that cheer him
on. He believes he can tell them what to think.
Kane’s death at the beginning of the picture establishes a
pattern – of limited time. Thompson has a deadline to make in discovering the
meaning of “Rosebud.” He must talk to Kane’s associates, all of whom are old.
(Except for Thatcher, who is dead, and his memories are found among his
papers.) When Thompson sits with Leland, Leland tells him this young doctor of
his wants to “keep him alive.” Leland frustrates this by wanting cigars. He is “cursed”
with memory. He seems to regret Charlie dying alone, but it doesn’t keep him
from rendering merciless, bitter verdicts on his friend’s life, because time
has run out on them all. And there is perhaps the most poignant moment in the
film, which has nothing to do with the larger story - the speech by Mr.
Bernstein about memory:
“A fellow’d remember a
lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day back in
1896 I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there
was another ferry pulling in, and on it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A
white dress, she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for
one second. She didn’t see me at all. But I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since
that I haven’t thought of that girl.”
It’s interesting that Bernstein’s version of “Rosebud” is
again a feminine image. But he is telling us about the problem of time, how it
runs out, and how the human heart holds onto moments that are inexplicable even
to itself. Happiness may only last a fleeting second, in a crowd, never to
return. It is delicately feminine in its makeup, but mercilessly masculine in
its advance. “Citizen Kane’s” use of time – jump cuts, montages, time lapses – all
underline the brutality and the fragility of time. We only get a little while
to do what we think is right, and not much more of an opportunity to make
things right.
At the picture’s end, one of the reporters standing among
Kane’s artifacts wonders what all of it is worth. “Millions,” Thompson says,
“if anybody wants it.” Left unspoken is that if no one wants it, it’s all
worthless. It is almost impossible to watch the film without remembering other
words of Jesus – “For whoever wants to
save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.What good will it be for
someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone
give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26) This is the other
unspoken theme of the film, the idea of value and meaning. What will we give up
to get back our souls?
We begin by searching for the meaning of “Rosebud,” but the
real question being asked is what does Kane’s life mean, with all the striving,
bellicosity, anguish, perfidy, humiliation and celebration? We sense the
meaning is in the flames that consume his sled. Rosebud is junk to be discarded,
as the butler nearby casually smokes a cigarette, unaware of its meaning. The
music is like that of a horror picture. The moral is that the things most
important to us may be worthless to the rest of the world, or in the greater
scheme of life. The world often misses the point of our lives, as do we. The
missing piece in all the jigsaw puzzles is ourselves, to invest them with
meaning. But we ourselves search for meaning, because the picture the puzzle
forms is still incomplete.Thompson
doesn’t find the missing piece, but neither did Kane.
I remember the first time I saw “Citizen Kane.” Even already
coming to the picture knowing that “Rosebud” was the name of his sled, I walked
away from the screen with an incredibly hollow, nameless feeling, terrified of
what my life might become if I was too careless. It is fitting that Kane’s
cherished memento, stripped of value by his death, is consigned to flames. Kane
has lost his life, forfeited his soul, and all that is left behind is a vast
collection to be sold off or destroyed. Just a stack of jigsaw puzzles, and a
parade of mirrors stretching out into infinity.
That's the question that some are asking after the premiere of "Man of Steel." Within a few hours of the film's premiere, some news sites were already pointing to allusions to the Christ story in the latest take on the 75-year-old superhero. Others pointed out that Warner Bros. was using subtle marketing to make the connection. It isn't something the director Zack Synder is shying away from either. In an interview, he is quoted as saying:
"Making him Jesus is a mistake, but allowing people to have a
conversation about whatever relationship they have with the Jesus story
through the movie is undeniable in the material, and if you don't
include it in the film, then you're really sort of denying the mythology
that is Superman."
1978's "Superman: The Movie" was the child of many screenwriters - Mario Puzo, Robert Benton, Leslie and David Newman, but traditionally Tom Mankiewicz bears most of the credit for shaping what director Richard Donner called an unfilmable script into what became the first two Superman pictures. It was Donner's film that was the first to tie the Superman legend to the Christ story, and Mankiewicz's decision to do so.
The pivotal scene in the 1978 movie comes when Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve), for reasons he cannot explain, has traveled to the North Pole, heeding the call of the mysterious green crystal that was within the spaceship that brought him to earth. Clark hurls the crystal into the water, and it creates the Fortress of Solitude. Inside, Clark converses with a recording of his long-dead father, Jor-El (Marlon Brando).
For his journey to earth, Jor-El prepared lessons for his son on the laws of space and time, on earth culture, philosophy, physics, etc. Within the Fortress, this ghostly presence begins to instruct Clark on his true identity as Kal-El, the only survivor of the destroyed planet Krypton. Just prior to Clark's return to humanity, Jor-El warns him that he is "forbidden" to interfere with human history, but that his leadership should stir humans to do so. He then reveals his ultimate aim for his son:
"Live as one of them, and discover where your strength and your power will lead you...They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you - my only son."
I remember the thrill - and the simultaneous feeling that something had been violated - that ran through me when I sat in the theater at the age of eight and recognized immediately who we were really talking about here. Where Christ had walked as one of us, was one of us, Superman was meant to lead human beings to find the good within themselves. But Christ leads us to seek within ourselves Himself, though we cannot find Him without His action, not ours. I had a feeling that both Jesus - and Superman - had been taken in an unexpected direction. It was my first, and not my last exposure, to the Christ figure outside of church.
In Gerard Jones' "Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book." the author states how Superman, indeed most of the iconic comic characters of the thirties and forties, were the brainchildren of Jewish boys and men. Superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, lost his father in a murder. So the picture of a man invulnerable to bullets was more than fantasy for him. And the evolving story of Superman's complicated identity - his being the inheritor of a vast, ancient civilization, a traveler representing a disappeared way of life, indestructible, a man of tomorrow who carries within his blood the remnants of the past - all of that sounds very Jewish. And also, very much like Christ.
Synder's "Man of Steel" carries on this part of the Superman mythos, and in a much better way than Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns." The movie is, for the first hour-and-a-half, very clever and very visually breathtaking. The Kryptonian sequences and the evoking of its culture are wonderful, and the device of Clark's emerging consciousness of his past and his destiny are told well in a manner much like Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins." (Nolan conceived the story along with David Goyer and produced the movie.) The movie suffers from an, at times, overly serious tone, and lacks the sense of easy humor and "aw shucks" entertainment that made the Donner film so enjoyable. The ability to destroy an entire city in CGI, or depict epic fistfights between superpowered beings, has become so obligatory in summer movies that the last thirty minutes play in a loud blur and lack a certain satisfaction. Knowing it took 12 years to build Freedom Tower after the 9/11 attacks, I silently calculated how many centuries it would have taken for the city of Metropolis to rebuild itself after General Zod's attack before Clark comes looking for a job at the Daily Planet.
But Snyder's Superman doesn't stray far from the Metropolis Gospel. Once again, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) entrusts his son to earth as his planet dies. And he has safely recorded enough of himself so that his son, at the proper time, will discover his identity and his mission. When Kal-El (Henry Cavill) does stumble on the truth, he must deal with the conflicting sense of mission - honoring the Kryptonian father who sent him, and the human father (Kevin Costner) who knows that the moment humanity discovers Clark Kent, both it and he will change.
When General Zod (Michael Shannon) emerges from his exile and wandering the universe, he demands Earth turn over Kal-El to him. This presents the Kryptonian son of Kansas with a problem - does he reveal himself at last, to face whatever happens from that moment forward? Once this is done, he can never drift back into anonymity. This isn't a small problem. After all, we learn that Clark lost his earthly father as Jonathan died trying to prevent him from revealing himself.
So Clark, in needing to talk to someone, goes to a church. He consults a young priest, revealing himself as the object of the planet's concern. Is it the right time to do this? The priest tells him simply that he will have to have faith to move forward. In case the point is lost, the camera reveals, right over Clark's shoulder, the stained-glass portrait of the Son of Man.
And so, at last, we see Superman revealed, in cape and suit, surrendering to the U.S. Army in order to preserve the human race. This is Christ's sacrifice, though without a crucifixion once Superman steps onto Zod's spacecraft. When Superman calmly informs the military and scientific observers that their drugs and weapons cannot harm him, how can we not be reminded of Christ's words to Pilate before the Cross: "You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above."
It is only in sacrificing himself that Superman discovers his destiny, as we expect him to. And that too is a Christian motif, since how else can we identify with the Savior unless we are willing to sacrifice who we are, and for those who do not know Him?
Buy my book, "Brilliant Disguises," for .99 cents here. Available in all e-formats. Buy my book, "The Uncanny Valley," for $5.99 here. Available in all e-formats.
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