Story, Enunciation, and Citizen Kane

I found myself really drawn into the ideas presented in the he readings we did on the concept of cinema as an ideology as described by Camolli and Narboni and narrative enunciation by Metz. In my opinion he readings seemed dense and repetitive when I read them through the first time with little knowledge of what the cinema scholars were referring to. After lecture when Negar cleared some of the overwhelming material and helped us focus on the main points, I developed a much better idea of their arguments and I have decided to devote this blog entry to sharing what I learned and how we can apply it to our study of Citizen Kane.

Like just about everything else worth analyzing, movies develop meaning on multiple levels. Art is a product of people. And people are products of their era. Thus, art, namely films, carry a weight of their time whether the moviemakers intend for it or not. Films are categorized by through ideologies derived from their story’s meaning as well as the discourse theories. In the reading, Camolli and Narboni explain how films had become an issue of politics in both story and discourse. They weighed their critique of them based on the ideologies presented in both contexts. Good films were counter-ideological in both story and discourse.

Metz’s argument is drawn from the linguist Emile Benveniste. Although it seems much more complex, his concepts are very similar. The reading indicates that Metz believe film interacted with society in two modes of communication. His terminology referred to story as narrative and discourse as enunciation. Beyond their narrative stories, generally the part on which people focus, movies also possess enunciation of cultural codes and conventions. He found that the audience’s primary identification is with the level of production and that the narrative was the secondary mode of identification. He presented the idea that the impersonal enunciation of film is the marker of reflexivity, as on this level, the film reflects on itself and its time of production. With enunciation, the film carries information about the industry, technology of production, screenwriters, etc.

Using Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane to demonstrate these ideas, we can see that the goodness of the film thrives from being counter-ideological in both its story and discourse. The film was extremely innovative and for its time and self-reflective on many accounts. This is demonstrated in the stories ability to show the passage of time using stage make-up and set designs. The cinematography of Citizen Kane brings to life the enunciation of the cultural context of the film. Many scenes reveal the states of political affairs and corruption in the era without trying to. Below is the sequence from the film that contains examples of these theories.



People watch movies for many reasons, but as students of film, I think it is important for us to see movies in the context of their time of release and political or cultural message in addition to their narratives.