draft notes 1.2

draft notes 1.2 lecture notes not for forwarding Fragment of Kane Kane collects: ‘Witness the repugnant spectacle of a blind lust for collection … Man envelopes himself in the odour of decay; through his antiquarian habit he succeeds in degrading even a more significant talent and nobler need to an insatiable craving for novelty, or [...]

Citizens: On Marx and Kane (talk abstract for 16.3.2012)

This is the abstract, or at least the opening move, of what I wil say at the “Marx at the Movies” conference at Uni of Central Lancashire in March. Citizens: On Marx and Kane. In reading Capital, if anything about beginnings should be considered necessary, it might be good just to start with what is immediately [...]

Kane Redux: ‘Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited…

What I figure is that pushing the analysis beyond the farrago of an imploding media empire is also an urgent task. Its not like we’ve never been here before: ‘Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited, never photographed, an emperor of news print continued to direct his failing empire, varyingly attempted [...]

KANE – 17 Jan 2010, 6:30pm Goldsmiths

As part of the preparatory materials for the Capitalism and Cultural Studies course I’ll be screening films on mondays, starting with Orsen Welles’ Citizen Kane – at 6:30 in the RHB Cinema of Goldsmiths on Monday 17th January 2010.

Orson

Notes for lecture one: How to start reading that rich book that is Marx’s Capital, of which an immense, even monstrous, accumulation of commentary on the Marxist mode of literary production appears to have already shaped its elementary forms? For all the interest in Marx, in the past and renewed today, it is at least [...]

Coleridge invents trinketization

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was ahead of the game in so many ways.  His other work is of course crucial, stuff about an albatross, and the opening sequence to the newsreel section of Citizen Kane. A massive influence and to be adored. This piece is a small fragment written around 1800. To a critic Who extracted a [...]

Welles Hearst Capital

In reading Capital, if anything about beginnings should be considered necessary, it might be good just to start with what is immediately at hand. There is much much discussion and theory about this, and its probably naïve to simply say that materialism might start with things themselves, but why not start with the objects, commodities, [...]

Kane’s Snow Globe

An object, collected by many, contemplated, pondered, shaken. It is not always frozen, its kitsch relevance to the everyday and its souvenir quality make it both domestic and profound, familiar, but also strangely remote. Miniaturized. I am fascinated by these domes, as have been many before – beginning again with the opening scene of Citizen [...]

why film students babble on about Orson Welles

‘I still wonder why film students babble on about Orson Welles … Even the worst films of Russ Meyer are infinitely more interesting than Citizen Kane’ (Waters 2005:12) I still believe we can learn a lot about the world as it appears to us today from an old movie from another time – Citizen Kane. [...]