Citizen Gates — Part 2 The divorce of Bill Gates, of course, | Professor M

Citizen Gates — Part 2

The divorce of Bill Gates, of course, amplifies the irony of putting-family-first listed fourth. But this quirk alone is just an hors d’oeuvre meant to prepare you, my connoisseur reader, for the main course.

Movie aficionados might have seen what’s coming. The word citizen in the title points to Citizen Kane, a 1941 movie widely considered the greatest film ever made. Not to reveal spoilers, let’s just say that Citizen Kane is about a life journey of a person who acquired extreme wealth.

Parallels between Bill Gates and Charles Foster Kane exist. For one, journalists have used the name Xanadu to call Gates’s Washington-state mansion. Xanadu refers to a similarly extravagant estate of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane.

— One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble. Paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace — a collection of everything so big it can never be cataloged or appraised; enough for ten museums; the loot of the world. Since the Pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself.

The above is a description of Kane’s mansion. Its splendor, though, is no match to the $127+ million Xanadu of Gates.

With this similarity based on observables, I’m curious about a few things. First, has Bill Gates seen Citizen Kane? Second, what does Gates think of others referring to his home as Xanadu?

Why am I curious? Well, because I think it’s mean to call someone’s home Xanadu if you watched Citizen Kane till the end and bothered to understand it. We don’t see journalists call some tycoon’s luxurious yacht Titanic. It’s bad taste. We all know what happened to Titanic. The tragedy of Titanic is the central part of its story (and name), whereas its opulence is just the backdrop.

Unlike Titanic, with its highly observable sinking of thousands, Citizen Kane shows the less observable sinking of one. The tragedy of Xanadu is the central part of its story (and name), whereas its opulence is just the backdrop.

I’m also curious if Gates has a rosebud; and if he does, what is it? (If you don't follow this last sentence, you need to watch Citizen Kane till the end and bother to understand it.)