Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Stearmen]

Has there ever been a comedy about the Titanic? Raise the Titanic doesn't count, as it was unintentionally laughable.

While I can't recall a comedy specifically about the Titanic, the name Titanic has been used in hundreds of comedic references, usually referring to some unsafe looking machine, or a really bad voyage or trip.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Unsinkable Molly Brown" while not an out and out comedy certainly had comic overtones. And there have been many satires of the "Titanic" movie of the 1990s.

It's only eight years since the last "Titanic" survivor died -- I imagine that as we go forward and the actual memory of the sinking continues to be replaced by the Titanic as a pop-culture icon, we'll eventually get a wacky, goofball Titanic movie.

 

[Bushman]

Well, there was that one time...

It's more children's movie than pure comedy (but it is lighthearted with comedic levity), and just comes off as hilariously BAD. There's even a scene with a rapping dog.

 

[ChrisB]

we'll eventually get a wacky, goofball Titanic movie.

Some people will say that we already got one 20 years ago.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The sinking scene does play well with Benny Hill music added.

 

[GHT]

Why was Benny Hill so popular? Or is it me being a crusty old curmudgeon?

 

[Fading Fast]

Some people will say that we already got one 20 years ago.

I was 33 when that movie came out and it was another - jarring - signpost that I was completely out of sink with modern culture and tastes. I thought they had taken a historical story with incredibly real drama - largest ship in the world, speed record, captain with a flawless record, emerging technology and, to this day, debated reason for sinking - and sub stories - the uber-wealthy, the immigrants, the crew - that played out in a time the world was on the cusp of great upheaval - WWI, Russian Revolution - and converted it to a default and mindless anti-business (greed) trope with a Hallmark quality love story overlay (with even more the rich-are-evil tropes in the love story).

I saw it right when it came out and was horribly unimpressed as, for me, they pushed the history, mystery and technology into the background an opted instead for a standard Hollywood "the rich are bad / business people are bad / poor dreamers with artistic talent are good" hackneyed and two-dimensional story fully and thoughtlessly aligned to modern political pieties.

Then when it became a mega-hit, I knew, once again, that I was an outlier in our current zeitgeist. I've seen most of the Titanic movies and think the really good one has yet to be made.

 

[LizzieMaine]

To be fair though, a lot of the class-conflict trope built into the Titanic story goes all the way back to 1912. The very first book published on the sinking, a quickie exploitation book published a couple of months after the ship went down under the title "Story Of The Wreck Of The Titanic: The Ocean's Greatest Disaster" pins the blame for the sinking not just on the mendacity of the White Star Line, but on the whole "colossi striding the earth amidst decadent luxury" mindset that seemed to permeate that era. The book begins with these lines:

"As the Titanic drew away from the wharf to begin her only voyage, a common emotion quickened the thousands who were aboard her. Grimy slaves who worked and withered deep down in the glaring heat of her boiler rooms, on her breezy decks men of achievement and fame and millionaire pleasure seekers for whom the boat provided countless luxuries..."

A bit further on, after discussing the cut-corner approach to safety taken by the White Star Line, we find this statement --

"These murdered innocents were merely another instance of the innocent sacrifices offered to the god of commercial profit. Some day, it is written, we shalll cease this heathen worship; we shall demand proper precautions for our people, even though it be at the expense of a few paltry dollars. The time is now."

Those two themes -- class conflict and the sinking as the consequence of the hubris of wealth -- dominate the entire book. Not all the wealthy people on the ship are painted as scoundrels, of course -- the Guggenheims, the Astors, and the Strausses are praised for the dignity with which they faced death -- but the corporate interests responsible for designing, building, and outfitting the ship are excoriated thruout the volume for consistently putting profits before people. Bruce Ismay is widely portrayed as the main villian of the Titanic story but you can also argue -- and it was commonly argued in 1912 -- that the real villian was "that heathen worship" of commercial profit that drove White Star to operate the way in the reckless way which it did.

Beyond criticism of capitalism, there was also, in the wake of the sinking, a real sense that humanity needed to engage in a bit of deep self-criticism of its beliefs about man's destiny to dominate and control its own environment. Many -- possibly most people -- believed in 1912 that the destruction of the Titanic was an instance of direct divine punishment intended to remind humanity of its real place in the cosmos, and I think the movie really missed the boat, as it were, by not really exploring this point.

 

[Fading Fast]

While I have a different perspective on several of your points, I agree that the broad issue of class distinctions, corporate greed, profit-over-safety where all part of the Titanic story. What, IMHO, the '97 movie did was turn those complex issues into modern political tropes that perfectly aligned to how an elite part of our society likes to pitch their politics today. Those issues should have been explored in a 1912 context not simply in a biased, two-dimensional modern one.

And your point is spot on about the movie missing the "man astride the world" and "God's direct intervention:" they were left out because they don't align to today's pieties - way too "Goddy" that would be for our precious secularists.

If, as I believe did in Titanic, corporate greed came before passenger safety, then that should be front and center. But there is also a human nature angle - a captain with a spotless record becomes careless. Also, a possible weather angle - I saw a documentary arguing that weather conditions might have distorted both the ability to see the iceberg and for the California to see the Titanic when it went down. The story is very complex and no movie will capture it all - but it was clear what modern ideology was driving the '97 movie.

And as you pointed out, the feeling / belief that man, through technology, could control his world was very strong back in 1912 - much stronger then, than today where a large segment of the population believe our technology prowess has spun out of our control and is destroying our world. But that would have taken work, thought and effort to bring forward to a modern audience when serving up a the-rich-as-evil aphorism was so much easier and made all involved feel so smug and good about themselves (didn't Winslet's "rich" boyfriend run around with a gun shooting at the poor people - or at least at DiCaprio when he was threatened by Dicaprio - I haven't seen it in a long time, but it was something like that and it was stupid and insulting).

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's been a while since I saw the picture, but I think it was more the boyfriend's sinister manservant who had the gun -- a luger, no less. The boyfriend was portrayed as not even "manly enough" to do his own dirty work -- he had to have a skulking lackey do it for him.

I first saw that picture, by the way, with an audience composed almost entirely of thirteen year old girls -- who were, I suspect, its primary target audience.

I very much agree with you that that definitive "Titanic" movie has yet to be made -- one made for a truly adult audience with more levels of intellectual and historical nuance than we've ever gotten. For that matter, I don't think the definitive Titanic *book* has yet been written -- "A Night To Remember" is a good, readable, narrative account, but I've yet to come across a really scholarly, thorough exploration of the ship, the circumstances of its construction and operation, and how the sinking happened. In fact, in reading the book I quoted above -- which was thrown together out of newspaper accounts and sold door to door in small towns for a dollar a copy -- it's remarkable to me how little different it is in the factual information it contains from the more recent books I've read. It seems like no matter who's writing about the Titanic, the overheated newspaper articles from the spring of 1912 and the various self-serving books and articles written over the years by survivors will always be the primary sources.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm sure you're right on the manservant-gun thing - I thought I had an image of the rich boyfriend shooting at DiCaprio in my head (but it's been 20 years, so I'm sure I'm wrong).

And, heck, the movie was a hit with young teenage girls who go to movies (and see them several times in the theater) which is a heck of a lot more often than cranky, middle-aged men like me do.

This is a link to the weather story documentary (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...nk-due-to-mirage-caused-by-freak-weather.html - just hunted it out) I referenced above - it's an interesting idea. To be fair, other than a brief reference to a '92 British inquiry raising it, this documentary came out after '97. However, there were many theories and angles ignored in the movie that were well known in '97.

But possibly the worst thing about the '97 Titanic movie is that it's 20 years old which makes me 150 - how can it be that long ago.

 

[Zombie_61]

It's been a while since I saw the picture, but I think it was more the boyfriend's sinister manservant who had the gun -- a luger, no less. The boyfriend was portrayed as not even "manly enough" to do his own dirty work -- he had to have a skulking lackey do it for him...

There is one relatively brief sequence in which the "control freak fiancé" Cal (Billy Zane) is so angered that he takes his manservant's Luger and attempts to do his own dirty work, but he can't even do that right and misses every shot.

I can't recall where I read this, but the fictional love story was not much more than an attempt to sell more tickets to women because James Cameron believed they would not be interested in seeing the movie without that "hook". I liked the movie well enough the first time I saw it, but with every subsequent viewing that element becomes more and more annoying to me.

 

[Fading Fast]

There is one relatively brief sequence in which the "control freak fiancé" Cal (Billy Zane) is so angered that he takes his manservant's Luger and attempts to do his own dirty work, but he can't even do that right and misses every shot.

I can't recall where I read this, but the fictional love story was not much more than an attempt to sell more tickets to women because James Cameron believed they would not be interested in seeing the movie without that "hook". I liked the movie well enough the first time I saw it, but with every subsequent viewing that element becomes more and more annoying to me.

The scene you describe is the one I vaguely remember - he was almost drunk (or stumbling or something) and shooting at DiCaprio with no accuracy or control - at least that is my vague memory.

And, hey, kudos to Cameron - he saw the market and the hook and clearly got it right. Might not have made a movie for FL fans, but he made a movie that made a ton of money.

 

[ChrisB]

Actually I think he was using a Colt m1911 45 ACP.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Chris B is right: M1911 .45 ACP.


BTW... the very first Titanic feature film was a German propaganda film made in 1943 that really played the Anglo- American corporate greed angle for all that it was worth. Along with the 1953 film Titanic and the 1958 A Night to Remember, it's a must see, even in its abbreviated YouTube incarnation. The feature is particularly poignant in light of the German ship that is used in the film: the Cap Arcona was sunk a few days before the end of the Second World War by RAF bombing with a loss of life more than three times greater than Titanic (It was holding former concentration camp victims as prisoners.) It was, like Cameron's Titanic, the most expensive film production of its time- and it was pulled from distribution by Goebbels: by that time German civilians were subjected to continuous Allied bombings, and it was felt that a film featuring a mass loss of life would not be well received.

 

[ChrisB]

Some of the scenes from the 1943 movie were used in A Night To Remember: Shots of the ship underway in daytime as well as some interior scenes.

 

[Stearmen]

Chris B is right: M1911 .45 ACP.


BTW... the very first Titanic feature film was a German propaganda film made in 1943 that really played the Anglo- American corporate greed angle for all that it was worth. Along with the 1953 film Titanic and the 1958 A Night to Remember, it's a must see, even in its abbreviated YouTube incarnation. The feature is particularly poignant in light of the German ship that is used in the film: the Cap Arcona was sunk a few days before the end of the Second World War by RAF bombing with a loss of life more than three times greater than Titanic (It was holding former concentration camp victims as prisoners.) It was, like Cameron's Titanic, the most expensive film production of its time- and it was pulled from distribution by Goebbels: by that time German civilians were subjected to continuous Allied bombings, and it was felt that a film featuring a mass loss of life would not be well received.

Actually, no, the first movie about the sinking was Saved From The Titanic (1912), it was released a month to the day after the sinking. Staring Dorothy Gibson, who was an actual survivor and was on board the first life boat. She co wrote the book by the same title. As was the custom of the time, it was less then ten minutes long and very forgettable! Dorothy's carer went no where after that.

 

[Stearmen]

Always remember, more first class male passengers survived the third class children! On the other hand, as one historian noted, they were traveling in third class, but it was Titanic third class!

 

[Stearmen]

You cut me to the quick.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Has anyone looked into the theory that the Titanic sinking was faked up as an insurance scam, that the so called Titanic was actually the badly damaged sister ship Olympic disguised as the Titanic, it was deliberately scuttled, and the ship that was standing by to rescue the passengers and crew did not see the signal flares by incredible bad luck (there happened to be another ship between them).