29-09-2003 19:07									#1
	The Tragic Hero Put an end to popups!

Hopefully this isn't considered a spam, but I just watched Citizen Kane again so I'd have it fresh in my mind for a film class discussion, and I remembered that somebody on Poly had characterized him as a tragic hero like Hamlet or Oedipus. I have to sorta wonder why.

Tragic heroes generally are admirable people as a whole who lack sufficient strength to face their troubles and win, and this lack usually takes the form of a personality flaw. Kane's problem appears to be a personality flaw, but it's the wrong kind. I think of a "personality" as having two parts; one is the aggregate of urges that Freud classified as the id and superego, the giant mass of wanting to do this and fearing to do that, everything that our selves and our neighbors push upon us. The other is the ego, the part that consciously measures the desires and decides which one is boss. I'm just using the Freudian crap here because it's the best-known. Call 'em soul and spirit, or emotion and reason, or whatever.

Even the tragic heroes who most resemble Kane have flaws in the first part, the mind of desire. Somebody (Molly Bloom, I think) mentioned the Mayor of Casterbridge, and I suppose he'll do. The Mayor, whose name I can't remember because I read it about three years ago-Michael, I think, is in most ways a good and honorable man, and he knows what ought to be done, but he has an immense ego problem. He cannot stand to be less than the greatest, and he will die rather than be made a fool of, or even take a backseat to anybody. He is on some level aware of his temper problem, but can't ever *quite* control it as he ought, and spends his life in an unsuccessful battle with it that leaves him a penniless laughingstock.

Charles Foster Kane, on the other hand, seems to have his flaws in the second part. The conscious will that drives him has certain goals that it will achieve come hell or high water, and most everything he does is the drive of his own wishes. Perhaps I shouldn't even say his "wishes," because he forms his goals with no regard for sensible desire. He makes his bad decisions in advance, plans them well, and proceeds with them despite their obviously low chances of working. Susan Alexander can't sing, but he's gonna make her sing, because he's Charles Foster Kane, dammit, and what he says goes.

It's not like the Mayor's problem, either, because he never really tries to be anything other than what he is. Hamlet at least tries to be decisive, and Othello tries to get himself to see reason before the end. People go up to Kane, several times throughout the movie, and tell him what his problem is, and he just ignores it. Even if their advice wasn't spot-on, and as far as I can tell it was, he didn't even acknowledge it. He has chosen to screw up, because screwing up is his way of doing things and that's what matters. What's so tragic about that?

	29-09-2003 19:13									#2
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I think it is Carl Jung who divide a person's psyche into three parts: id, ego, and superego. Id is the subconscious, the source of animalistic urges. Ego is the self, the conscious. Superego is a bit like a person's conscience, it reins in those unethical and uncivilised behaviour.

However, I am more interested in psychology than psychoanalysis. A lot of this psychoanalysis sounds like pseudoscience mumblejumble.

Last edited by Urban Ranger on 29-09-2003 at 19:18

	29-09-2003 19:35									#3
	Remove this text

Tragic characters generally have some basic flaw - be it jealousy, pride, sheer bloody-mindedness or whatever...untimately their downfall has to be as a result of their own folly. If 'screwing up is his way of doing things' then this merely enhances his tragic status.
Trying to bring Freudian concepts into this is not really appropriate, when you consider many of the best tragedies were written long before he came along and pointed out the blindingly obvious. Splitting people's personality flaws into 2 groups like this to determine whether they are a truly 'tragic' character is ridiculous.

	29-09-2003 20:27									#4
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Is everybody gearing up for their AP tests, or what?

	29-09-2003 20:29									#5
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Kinda early for that aint it?

	29-09-2003 20:48									#6
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Is Chegitz on Apolyton considered a tragic hero -- you know, him wanting to save the world from the evils of capitalism, but he will never be able to do so??

	29-09-2003 22:35									#7
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Or will his participation in a capitalist society prevent him from living his socialist dream?

	30-09-2003 01:08									#8
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

The idea of the division of the soul isn't the invention of Freud and Jung. St. Paul talks about the three portions of a human being, body, soul, and spirit, for one; I'm sure I've seen the concept repeated in other philosophies or schools but I can't think where. Certainly it's not a new idea, that there are parts of the mind that dictate desire and others that choose between them. If you're suggesting that there is no difference between desire and will, your ideas are quite frankly a danger to society.

Kane's "character flaw" is IMO not a traditional character flaw at all. Passions like greed, lust, and pride act on a human being, but Kane's problem seems to be a basically perverse nature. His egomania isn't a defect within the superficial mind, but rather he almost IS the defect himself, if you see what I mean.

And is Kane heroic at all? He talks about stomping out corruption and so on, but he's by the film's own admission a man of many strong opinions, none of which he ever really acts on. He has a great deal of Control Freak in him too, with a fair share of vanity, stubbornness, spite and posturing. His bad traits outnumber his good ones.

	30-09-2003 01:19									#9
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quote: If you're suggesting that there is no difference between desire and will, your ideas are quite frankly a danger to society.