Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/21/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
wrote:
Now I could imagine wanting to know something
about Citizen Kane before
seeing it, but without having the central mystery given away. Happily,
[[Citizen Kane]] does a good job of that through careful writing. The
article makes clear that a mystery is central to the plot, and the plot
summary only gives away the goods at the end. You are unlikely to hit
the secret accidentally.
This is the kind of comment that reduces me to complete and utter
baffled disbelief: that the extraordinary cinematic experience of a
work like Citizen Kane can be reduced in some minds to a single,
rather hackneyed mcguffin, which if known in advance, in some way
"spoils" the film.
Good thing that's not what I meant, then. Or, looking back, even what said.
I'm not saying that it isn't worth seeing if you know. What I am saying
is that Welles carefully, beautifully used the power of a mystery to
create a deeper emotional engagement in the viewer. Citizen Kane's power
isn't the story told, it's in the telling of the story. The mystery is a
part of that. Without need or benefit, that experience was denied to me,
in a way that smidgen of care would have averted. Instead, I got to be
irritated at the revealer every time Welles gave another hint.
If Welles went to all that trouble to set up something, why exactly do
you feel empowered to undo it casually? From what I've read of Welles,
if some marketing hack had put a giveaway on the posters, Welles would
have ripped out and eaten his still-beating heart.
It seems to me that we can write a perfectly good encyclopedia while
still respecting the both the artist's intent and the experience of
readers. Our [[Citizen Kane]] article does that well, and without
spoiler tags. Why you'd have a problem with that I can't fathom.
We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to
that kind of
illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly
appropriate).
Do you find that insulting the people you disagree with helps you much?
Because it's not doing much for me, really.
William