Citizen Kane and Tabloid Nation

CITIZEN KANE

The classic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), is probably the world's most famous and highly rated film, with its many remarkable scenes, cinematic and narrative techniques and innovations. Within the maze of its own aesthetic, Citizen Kane develops two interesting themes. The first concerns the debasement of the private personality of the public figure, and the second deals with the crushing weight of materialism or an idea of American Dream. Taken together, these two themes comprise the bitter irony of an American success story that ends in futile nostalgia, loneliness, and death.

Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to portray the American Dream as anything less than desirable. As a child, Kane is fully happy as he plays in the snow outside the family’s home, even though his parents own a boarding house and are quite poor. He has no playmates but is content to be alone because peace and security are just inside the house’s walls. When Thatcher removes Kane from this place, he’s given what seems like the American dream—financial affluence and material luxury. However, Kane finds that those things don’t make him happy, and the exchange of emotional security for financial security is ultimately unfulfilling. The American dream is hollow for Kane. As an adult, Kane uses his money and power not to build his own happiness but to either buy love or make others as miserable as he is. Kane's wealth isolates him from others throughout the years, and his life ends in loneliness at Xanadu. He dies surrounded only by his possessions, poor substitutions for true companions.

The movie also demonstrates social values and beliefs. Charles Foster Kane is shown in his three major stages of life as which show a significance transformation in his beliefs. As a young, energetic man, he believes in changing things his way for the better of the society. However, all of this changed though during time. Comparing the young Charles Foster Kane to the old is a remarkable one. Not only did his system of value change but also so did his whirlwind of energy that followed him. He bought into the newspaper business, and claimed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Which he even claimed and wrote on the first page of his newspaper the "Inquirer". This is just an example of how his values changed over time because as he got older and one of his employers who was a great friend of Charles wrote the truth about a play that he had saw staring Charles's wife at the time. Charles fired him because what he had said was the truth although, harsh, was fired. Surprisingly was that his friend wrote a letter back with the original copy of the letter Charles had printed in the newspaper. Almost to bring it back in his face to show how he has change and his system of values have decreased terribly. Beside the idea of age, Charles was a man who never showed compassion towards something and surrounded himself with "yes men" that would agree and do anything for Charles on a super fiscal note. Charles on the other hand blamed all of these upon the money he inherited. Even his dying words "Rosebud", demonstrates what he had, and lost, which was his childhood innocents. From that day forward he shielded himself away from people as he had with the slay from Mr. Thatcher. This is seen in the movie through its editing techniques. For example Charles and his wife Emily seen eating breakfast together. As time goes on they have grown farther and farther apart from each other which usually happened to Charles because of his inability to present emotion. The scene says it all by placing Charles and his wife at either end of the table so far apart to demonstrate their inability to communicate and Charles inability to care for something which he was unable to purchase.

Tabloid Nation

The book is based on the rise and fall of the Mirror newspaper, which remains such an integral part of 20th century British popular culture. Harold Harmsworth, who is the main character of the book, was born in Dublin 1865. He was an indifferent scholar he was educated at St John's Wood, a small, private day school in London. He developed an interest in journalism when he began editing the school magazine.
The book also mentions The Daily Mail which was the first newspaper in Britain that catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and cookery.

Reformation of Daily Mail from ‘a newspaper written by and for gentle woman’ to a normal daily newspaper was needed. Harmsworth wanted a change because as he said ‘women can’t write and don’t want to read’. Instead of writing about society he rather wanted the newspaper to be about something interesting and sufficiently simple.

The Daily Mail started the publication of serials. Personally supervised by Harmsworth, the average length was 100,000 words. The opening episode was 5,000 words and had to have a dramatic impact on the readers. This was followed by episodes of 1,500 to 2,000 words every day.

The Daily Mail was an immediate success and circulation quickly achieved 500,000. With the strong interest in the Boer War in 1899 sales went to over a million. Harmsworth encouraged people to buy the Daily Mail for nationalistic reasons making it clear to his readers that his newspaper stood "for the power, the supremacy and the greatness of the British Empire".

In 1903 Harmsworth produced the first newspaper, The Daily Mirror, aimed at women. Kennedy Jones was put in charge of the project and spent £100,000 in publicity, including a gift scheme of gilt and enamel mirrors. On its first day, the circulation of the Daily Mirror was 276,000. However, sales dropped dramatically after the initial launch and by January, 1904, circulation was down to 24,000 and the newspaper was losing £3,000 a week.