by Neil Andersen
That Titanic is a box office leviathan is not as significant as why some people are viewing it repeatedly - as many as 40 times - making it an instant cult movie. There is a connection between size and success, of course, but hype and special effects alone cannot make a movie successful, as The Lost World and Batman & Robin have illustrated.
Repeated viewing suggests something more than a big splash. When we encounter a phenomenon of this size and intensity, it suggests that we think mythically. To be this popular, a story must be touching a mythic nerve, speaking to collective fears and desires. There must be an ecstasy that people are reaching while viewing that is well worth the price of multiple admissions.
The cult status of Titanic has gone beyond the movie itself. Not only are
there web sites, books and magazines galore, but the soundtrack has sold in
record-breaking numbers and is being used for Titanic parties, where the
participants listen, recall the events that accompany the music, and cry at
all the right moments. Collective weeping. This is not the passion of Jesus
Christ, but it is someone's passion, and I would like to suggest an
explanation.
I went to Titanic rather late in the game - eight weeks after it opened -
and the movie had had time to ripen culturally. It had already smashed all
the attendance records, was still ranked number one at the box office, and
been established as the favourite of female teens. I knew, therefore, that
I was seeing something more than a movie - it had become a cultural
experience, a ritual, a transcendence. I went with my antennae up, looking
for reasons for the audience response.
This movie is a coming-of-age story for young women. Rose's 1912 adventures
mirror many of the anxieties and choices that today's pubescent women are
facing: how to assert themselves; how to best exercise the privilege of new
opportunities for women; how to reconcile the feminist world they foresee
with the chauvinist one they might experience currently; how to forge
relationships with males that are equitable and nourishing for both
parties; and how to be feminist without simply co-opting male behaviours.
Not only does Rose encounter these anxieties, she faces them down, asserts
herself, and lives to tell. The framing of the story as a flashback allows
viewers to indulge Rose's dangers and abuses while knowing that she
survives them, living successfully to a 'ripe old age.' The flashback is an
important feature of the story because it provides a reassurance for female
teens who may be approaching the anxieties and thrills of feminism with
trepidation. The movie suggests, 'go ahead, you will be OK.' Rose sees her
life laid out before her: a series of dinners and teas filled with banal
conversations where she is the trophy wife of a self-centred male. She is
trapped into this lifestyle by her chauvinistic mother, who is selling Rose
off in order to prevent the family name from being besmirched with
proletarian stigma. "Do you want to see me working as a seamstress?" Both
Rose's mother and her fiancé don't give a damn that she dreads the
predictable and limited life of an upper class American. The disrespect and
ennui is enough to drive her to suicide.
Enter free-spirited Jack, the unfettered personification of free will who
does as he likes, when and where he likes, and who inspires Rose to do the
same. Jack shows Rose an alternative to suicide, empowering her to defy her
fiancé, her mother, and all the suffocating upper class rules of behaviour
that entrap her. Simultaneously, Rose is able to reject the oppressive male
egos of the ship's captain and manager, who represent male arrogance in
creating a ship that 'God himself could not sink.' Hubris for sure, and she
can sense it instantly. Titanic becomes the symbol of old masculinity - the
one that believes that man no longer needs God because his mastery of
technology will create heaven on earth. This is the turn-of-the-20th-Century
Futurist faith that believed technology would soon bring utopia rather
than unemployment, pollution, nuclear threats and germ warfare.
Jack is the new masculinity. He is sensitive, an artist, unimpressed by the
trappings of class but yet able to hold his own with the snobs. His whimsy
and spunk contrasts with the dull upper class cigar-and-brandy club, and
Rose finds him irresistible. And talk about erotic! He sees Rose naked
without making a pass! He caresses her body with his eyes and draws her
with charcoal. He doesn't mention sex! Female teens swoon at the thought of
a man this beautiful, this sensitive, and yet safe. There is a meeting of
the minds, and later of the bodies, but SHE initiates the sex. It is on HER
terms. And the sex is followed by an elaborate escape from authoritarian
men, mythically labyrinthian, where the two have to work together. In the
process, Jack and Rose become heroes in saving others. This escape is
Rose's transcendence to a new woman.
Jack does not survive the sinking physically; but mythically, he has
empowered Rose with a new energy and confidence. She marries him mythically
by taking his name, reborn into a post-Titanic world. And the ultimate
statement of liberation: even though she has the Coeur de la Mer diamond,
worth a fortune, she never cashes it in but returns it to Titanic just
before her spirit rejoins Jack. Using the diamond to finance her new life
would have been an acceptance of the dominance of men - her fiancé and all
those who would treat women as objects.
Working through this story, teen females can identify with Rose's
discomfort at navigating in a male world and having to choose between
autonomy and dependence. They feel her entrapped desperation when she
attempts suicide, and share her fearless flying when Jack supports her at
the bow of the ship. They see her reject her predetermined course for one
of charting her own, and they see the monument to male ego swallowed by
mother nature. Most importantly, they see her live long and prosper,
empowered by the love of a man, but not oppressed by men. She has
successfully sat astride of a horse rather than sidesaddle, followed her
heart, had grandchildren and maintained her poise and sense of humour. It's
not that Titanic sank, but how and why it sank. And who didn't. Rose's
success as a new woman is a beacon of hope and reassurance to anxious
female passengers voyaging in the movie to the 21st Century.
