The Top Levels of Citizen Kane

The Simpsons episode “Rosebud” acted like a great Cliff notes. Burns left his bear behind to which his father yelled out, “Do you want your bear, the symbol of your lost youth and innocence?” Burns telling Smithers, dressed as a bear, “Stop this grotesque charade!” Burns gets caught in the sandbox with Maggie Simpson trying to get the bear. I’m not sure, but I think this was meant as an allusion to Kane’s relationship with Susan Alexander. Also, Homer’s punishment is to push a large wheel while being whipped in a basement. The wheel has a pole in the center that rises to the cafeteria, and is in fact the center pole on a spinning dessert tray. Lenny and Carl walk by the dessert tray in the cafeteria. Lenny asks how the tray works to which Carl replies, “Who cares?” Once again, I’m not sure exactly how this relates to Citizen Kane, but it is such a good illustration. Could it be a symbol of how Burns/Kane is able to control everyday life behind the scenes? There is the mention in Citizen Kane about yellow journalism, like what happened just prior to the Spanish-American war. He used his newspaper empire to make his wife appear to be a premier opera singer and it turns out she hated her performances and even opera more than her critics.
Another allusion to Citizen Kane is the Batman movie with Michael Keaton that was made by Tim Burton. The movie starts with the new District Attorney Harvey Dent in a large assembly hall that looks just like where Kane gave his speech for governorship. There is the same large picture, the same large group of smiling and clapping aristocrats, and the speech is nearly identical. The only change is that instead of attacking a political boss, he is attacking an outright criminal boss, who happens to run Gotham City. The movie also contains swirling newspaper headlines. As in Citizen Kane, Batman is the subject of the movie, but the story follows Alexander Knox and Vicki Vale the two reporters trying to track down his existence. As Vicki Vale says (to Batman) something along the lines that “They say you do terrible things, that you’re a bad man”
“Charlie wasn’t brutal, he just did brutal things”, stated Jed Leland. Mr. Leland says that if he wasn’t Charlie’s friend then he was the closest thing Charlie had to a friend. Later we see when Mr. Leland asks to be moved to the other office away from Kane, how he is the only one to write a bad review of Susan, and how he is the only one to be fired. Yet, he sends Kane his old Declaration of Principles after being fired.