One of the things that struck me most about Citizen Kane was its deep criticism of how marketing has influenced our ability to engage in sincere political protest. Kane bought the newspapers in order to speak for the voice of the working man, as he put it. However, in doing so, and having his angle for each take, he took the idea of genuinely promoting the lives of working class America and effectively commercialized it. He turned it into a product that could be bought and sold through his newspaper, and arguably in doing so actually took a lot of the bite out of any real progress for working class Americans. We see this all the time in our modern neoliberal society, wherein Companies control the language of protest through commercialization. An excellent example of this was during many of the protests following Trump’s election, particularly those in early 2017. Images of the late Carrie Fisher dressed as Princess Leia, and of the “Starbird” symbol used by the Rebel Alliance of the same franchise were used to protest Trump’s statements, particularly those against women, and used as a rallying cry for a similar sort of Rebellion against his policies. While I myself am a huge fan of Star Wars, there is something I find quietly disconcerting about the fact that the symbols of a workers revolution are being given by a massive employer, and something that I think is paralleled with Kane’s newspaper claiming to speak for the workers while also benefiting massively from their employment.