Leonard Leff Responds to Robin Bates

Abstract

Irrespective of 'meaning,' [final] shot of sled gives many viewers a rush, I wrote in Reading (Film Quarterly, Fall 1985); does something to them. Those who study Citizen Kane must have been as delighted as I to learn what near-end of this picture did to college freshman Scott Bates in 1941: It was flaming consummation of sex and politics that had been looking for in movie theatres all our young lives. Robin Bates aptly concludes-and I agree-that studying audience responses like this reveals the multidimensionality of But whether a search for 'the real meaning' of Kane brings therapeutic force to revelation of Rosebud seems problematic. The question hinges upon audience. In Reading I stipulate a composite we modelled after Riffaterre's reader of 'Les Chats,' an 'we' alert to what one of cinema's most stimulating works does. Bates frequently employs term audience in his well-argued essay, and although he never defines it, he leaves little doubt that he also intends an informed viewer. Yet he hedges on just what an viewer knows and how an viewer responds. Also, I believe, he does not acknowledge multidimensionality of viewers. Bates, for instance, locates meaning of newsreel far... from real meaning of dream (18). Though a discussion of humor and satire as modes of discourse enters neither Bates's nor my own articles, it seems impossible to discuss newsreel sequence without reference to Welles's wit. The images of tremendous potency assembled by News on March reporter are not only phallic but funny; they at once imitate and deride montage a la Vorkapich. Citizen Kane, as academics occasionally forget, has a sophomoric exuberance. For example, shrewd Welles stages Thatcher's congressional appearance during News on March sequence, giving us sound motion picture footage from silent era; gulf between sense of title preceding Kane's funeral (Thompson calls it big and strange) and footage that contradicts it adds yet another grim joke. Puns litter film. Mudslinging (literally) brings Kane and Susan together. She invites him to her room, where he gets in hot water; later, he threatens to send his political enemy to Gettys, Sing Sing, but ultimately he makes Susan sing sing. A viewer as sharp as Bates-but as conversant with movie history as with Victorian pornography-would not have missed these points. (Their discussion would also have relieved some of heaviosity, vulvas as Lacanian lacks.)