TITANIC (1997)

(December 1997, U.S.)

For most of my blog posts, I usually re-watch the film I'm going to write about in order to gain a fresh perspective. I hardly needed to watch James Cameron's TITANIC again. I've seen it many times, and it was recently aired on Showtime for a month, so I was constantly catching bits and pieces of it here and there. Instead, I chose to watch the 1958 British film A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, and realized that Cameron (to his discredit) adapted many of the same camera shots, as well as numerous pieces of dialogue. However, regardless of any similarities or discrepancies between Cameron's film and the multitude of Titanic films that came before it, it's the TITANIC this generation of film fans has come to love the most, over and over again. I'm no different.

TITANIC - you've seen the film, you know the flawlessly-crafted story, you thought all of the performances were top notch, you love that it won Best Picture of 1997, you know that James Cameron was "King of the World", and if you're a red-blooded heterosexual male like I am, you probably built up many fantasies around seeing Kate Winslet naked for the brief moment we were treated to it during the sketching sequence...

(sorry. Couldn't resist. She was HOT!)

So what I'd like to try and do is discuss TITANIC just a little outside of the box, so to say. I'd like to take James Cameron's epic film and describe the social relations and conflicts on their socio-economic levels. Don't think I can? Stay with me a while and we'll see...

TITANIC was released after months of delay and high anticipation that it would be the most epic event in the world of film entertainment, as well as bringing new depths to the common disaster film. On its surface, it's a spectacular disaster film, as well as a heart-touching love story between two young adults who meet on the legendary ocean liner just days before it would meet its fate when colliding with an iceberg. It's a grand film of not only scale and size (like the ship itself), but also a breakthrough technological effort in the world of film sets and CGI. My post, however, is meant to focus more on not only the love story aspect of the film, but its depiction of social class relationships and conflicts aboard the great liner. Much like traditional travel even of today, one's place aboard the ship is solely dependent on what class level each passenger falls under. Aboard the RMS Titanic, one's class level is bought and paid for as commonly as any other commodity. Those of high end wealth and privilege are in the financial position to buy the best the ship can offer, whether it be their stateroom, the food they’re served, the deck level of the ship they're permitted to occupy or even the right to take part in the Sunday church services. Those who cannot afford such luxuries of the ship are placed in third class and must dwell within the ship's depths, grouped together like filthy rats.

Cameron makes a deliberate effort to distinguish both classes by first depicting the very elegant dinner of the first class passengers with all the items of the table in their proper place and the very fine food and drink they will dine on. Third class passengers, on the other hand, eat cheap food, drink cheap beer and dance themselves into exhaustion. These two distinctions, by comparison, not only depict the level of what is considered entertaining for each social class, but also makes a point that the third class are apt to loosen up and enjoy themselves more than the stuck-up first class. The love story of the film takes place when Jack Dawson (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) meets Rose DeWitt Bukater (played by Kate Winslet). Jack is a third class passenger, while Rose is a first class passenger. Jack is alone on the ship, while Rose is flanked by her fiancée Cal Hockley (played by Billy Zane) and her mother Ruth (played by Frances Fisher), both people of upper crust breeding who make no secret of looking down on and even despising the lower class elements that occupy the same ship as them. Even the employees of the ship are not exempt from their "holier-than-thou" attitude, as they are considered nothing more than mere servants in life who don't deserve equal respect. Because of Jack and Rose’s social class differences, it seems highly unlikely that the two of them would ever even meet because they're expected to occupy their own portions of the ship.

Through luck or perhaps even fate, they do meet when Jack saves Rose's life from an aborted suicide attempt on her part. Her stuck-up fiancée Cal, while outwardly grateful to Jack for saving Rose's life, dismisses the efforts of this lower class individual by simply paying him off with a twenty dollar bill. Rose, on the other hand, while being of the same upper crust breeding, is drawn to Jack's free spirit and apparent lust for life's daily pleasures. This is an unavoidable attraction for Rose because we learn that she is a prisoner of her own life of stuck-up privilege, as she is expected by her mother to marry Cal as a matter of convenience that will ensure her family’s name and security in high society's social order. Rose, by all practical definition, is a mail-order-bride, bought and paid for by a man who believes he can possess anything he wants in life simply because he has the means to do it. Jack, while falling for Rose, is not immune to the realities of their class levels and financial positions in life. By the time ship collides with the iceberg and destiny, the love story takes full effect as Jack and Rose come to realize that disaster and the potential for one’s own survival will make their love for each other stronger and more dedicated. Indeed, as the ship is in the process of sinking, Rose is forced to make the choice of possibly surviving with the rich man she doesn’t love, but who will give her everything in life, nonetheless, or the choice of possibly dying with the poor man she truly loves.

Indeed, in TITANIC, love does triumph above all others, which is why perhaps I still consider it the greatest love story every put on screen. But it's when the ship is slowly and progressively meeting its doom that we come to realize just how far and to what extent the order of social classes will take its toll. Early in the film, we learn that there are not enough lifeboats to accommodate every passenger aboard the ship should they be required. When the time comes that they are required, it's not necessarily the traditional law of "woman and children first" that comes into play, but rather the more socially-accepted law of the time when first class women and children shall come first. The notion of all human beings having their own right to survival has just gone out the window simply because many of the ship’s first class passengers shall be deemed "the better half", as Cal puts it. Even Rose's mother is not shy about blatantly asking if the lifeboats shall be seated according to class. This is not only the social order of Cameron's film, but also the historical order of the time it actually happened. Many of the seven hundred plus survivors of the RMS Titanic were of the first class passengers and the social order of the time simply had the odds of survival stacked higher in their favor. The film deems this order as seemingly acceptable by not only the first class, but among the third class passengers, as well, because they don't think to question the injustice of it. When asked by her little girl what is going on, her mother, a third class foreign immigrant tells her that the ship is calling upon first class passengers to the lifeboats first and then will eventually be getting around to the third class passengers, and that they’ll want to be ready to go. Her facial expression, however, tells us that she knows differently and that she, her children, and all the other third class passengers are likely going to die.

Upon watching TITANIC, audiences are likely to walk away with only the gratification that true love did, indeed, triumph above all odds and that even though Jack Dawson did die in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, Rose never let go of his love and his memory. While not as gratifying on the level of pure entertainment, it might also be deemed necessary to realize that such social class orders of the time not only defined who had the right to live and who had the right to die, but also that time and change would inevitably pass laws of travel that would not only provide enough lifeboats on luxury ocean liners for all passengers concerned, but perhaps even do away with factors of class existence and class conflict that would decide a person's ultimate fate in the face of disaster.

TITANIC won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1997. I loved the film immensely, but I personally thought L.A. CONFIDENTIAL should have won instead. But that's me!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Cal Hockley (to Rose): "Where are you going?! What, back to him?! To be a whore married to a gutter rat?!"
Rose DeWitt: "I’d rather be his whore than your wife!"