CITIZEN KANE

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

Introduction

Citizen Kane is a very well known film directed Orson Welles in 1941, that is arguably the greatest American film in history according to some critics. Also, it got nominated for Academy Awards, winning an award for Best Writing. The movie got released by RKO Pictures. Citizen Kane got known for many elements, such as the amazing use of cinematography, including deep focus techniques and narrative structure. However, this essay will be focusing on a more psychoanalytic, Freudian point of view with reference to Freud's account of the Oedipus complex, also focusing on textual and visual evidence in order to try acknowledge why Charles Kane says 'Rosebud' on his deathbed. Welles uses psychoanalytic themes, combining a fictional Oedipal narrative with politics that will be discussed further. This film takes a Freudian reading of the 'American politics' at a time of crisis. Welles has stated his film as a 'Dollar Book'. The film's characteristics got influenced by a newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst. However, Welles decided to shift the film from focusing on Hearst, to a more general discussion, focusing on psychoanalysis and capitalism. Psychoanalytic themes concentrate on oedipal trauma and fetishism which then lead outwards, from the instance of one man, into wider issues of the political unconscious of the US. This paper will analyse the movie, Citizen Kane with respect to Sigmund Freud's theory of Oedipus complex.

In order to understand Citizen Kane, there are a lot of symptoms of the oedipal conflict and sexual difficulty which are quite obvious to acknowledge through a psychoanalytic theory, which got decoded throughout the essay to come up with why might Kane have said Rosebud in his deathbed (Young, 2001, pp. 51). To begin with, we have to understand a bit of background on Sigmund Freud and the Oedipal Complex. Sigmund Freud is well-known for founding the psychoanalytic approach to personality. His ideas have influenced many areas of Western life, including drama, theatre, literature, political campaigning, advertising and even religion (Fisher, 1995). One of the films that got influenced is Citizen Kane, which Welles himself, stated that it is a dollar book to Freud.

Oedipus complex

The theory of Oedipus complex was presented by Sigmund Freud. He was born in 1856 in Austria. He is one of the well known psychologists in the world. Freud was the founder of a psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic approach to psychology. He believed that the human mind was composed of three elements, the id, the ego and the super ego. He focused on the influence of the unconscious mind on behaviour. His theories have specifically focused on the developments of the human sexuality. Oedipus theory is also one of the same theories which talks about the development of human sexuality in human beings. In this theory, Freud talks about the development of sexual desires through different growth stages. This means that the sexual desire in children is the focus of this theory (Rosenbaum, 2007, pp. 218).

The term Oedipal Complex influenced by the mythical Ancient Greek story about Oedipal ...