As we are wrapping up Citizen Kane, I am unclear on certain aspects of the movie. I may be over-analyzing the insignificant, but I could not help but wonder about the light bulb that flashed momentarily after the scene directly following the multitude of newspapers that highlighted Susan Alexander's ironic singing "success". This rapid flutter of Inquirer titles from all over that country raved of her stunning performance was immediately brought to a halt by a momentary flash of a light bulb that dimmed to the point where all we can see are the stems of the bulb, or the wiring, and then....darkness. Does this serve as simply a transition or perhaps there is symbolism involved here. i would suspect that the dimming bulb foreshadows her dimming "career" and essentially her fate because what awaits her is misery and darkness.
Watching Citizen Kane, I have thought greatly of the idea: does money, fame, and your self-conceived image bring you happiness? In today's society many can argue that this is so. Movie directors have taken this to a whole new level nowadays. In National Treasure, Nicholas Cage is the hero who did not stop at anything to accomplish his pursuit of a far-fetched clearly fictitious plan to find a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. He ends up with fame, fortune, and of course the girl! Does this perceive the exemplar of society or was this just another so-called "popcorn flick" made to placate the masses into believing in "fairy tales", happy endings and secret treasure hunts. Same goes for all movies with predominantly cliche plots and happy endings? Is this what we expect? The classic good guy bad guy scenario....good guy always wins, bad guy always loses. Unfortunately in life, we can't often draw a parallel. There is no clear cut definition of good/bad people and there are inherently no happy endings. Rather... what brings happiness to you is another's demise.
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Irina, I do not believe that you are overanalyzing the lightbulb scene as I personally when I saw it believed that it was the in fact that the dimming of her career. Despite all of the positive headlines, her career would not and did not last. I was going to make my own post on it, but now that you did, I will just agree with your post and not make my own post around that thesis.
ReplyDeleteGreat! I'm glad you that you agree and sorry I stole your thunder with my post. It's a good point though.
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