File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9801, message 201


Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 14:33:40 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: M-I: Titanic


The Titanic

As my post on the economy would have made clear I went yesterday to see the
blockbuster the Titanic.  List members will be aware of my taste in movies.
 I very much enjoy the vulgar popular epics that Hollywood has spawned and
I then assuage my socialist conscience by giving them a Marxist analysis
after I have pigged out on all the popcorn and the chocolates and lemonade.

I went with my younger son and my niece. She bawled her eyes out but the
surprising thing was that I did not even raise a sniffle.  I who sobbed
through every episode of Michael Landon's syrupy 'Highway to Heaven' tv
series could not even manage a single tear.  Partly I think because the
film was just too corny and over the top even for someone like me.
Moreover some of the final cameos of the diaster either made me want to gag
or just did not work for me.  Thus the sight of an old couple clinging
together on a bed while the waters rose around them was beyond kitsch.  

Similarly the mother telling her two about to be drowned young children of
the Tir Na Nog (The Land of the Young in Irish mythology) brought to mind
Oscar Wilde's response to the death of Little Nell in Dickens - The Old
Curiosity Shop.  For Wilde that was the most amusing thing in all
literature.  He could not read it without howling with laughter.   

One wonders what the great wit would have made of the Titanic.  Mind you he
would I know have been captivated by Di Caprio.  Definitely Oscar's type.
However I feel like me that he would not have believed it possible that
anyone would have let Leonardo freeze to death.

But apart from all the extreme vulgarity and the often quite silly
melodrama, the film did have  an impact on me.  This was I suppose partly
due to the marvellous special effects.  But there was also a distinct
element of social class which I think lifted this film above the ruck of
Hollywood movies.  Certainly for me the consideration of the role that
social class played in the text was ample justification for all the guilty
pleasure I got from going to the film.

Now the world of the Titanic is a class based world.  There are quite
clearly defined stratifications among the passengers.  The heroine, Rose
Bukater, comes from the upper class.  Her family is broke but she is about
to be rescued by marrying money in the form of the villainous Cal Hockley
(Billy Zane).   Among the first class passengers there is an Astor and a
Guggenheim. There is also a nouveau riche woman, Molly Brown (Kathy Bates)
whom the others dislike for her common touch.

The hero, Jack Dawson (Leonardo Di Caprio), is an artist who won a ticket
on the Titanic in a game of cards.  Naturally he falls in love with  Rose,
and the film tells of the triumph of their passionate and wildly foolish
romance.  But it is the particular spin put on the love affair that is
worth commenting on.  This is straight out of Romantic ideology.  Thus love
represents liberation from the stuffiness and artificiality of the
bourgeoisie.  In one sequence Rose watches in horror as a little girl is
taught how to sit up straight at table and how to fold her napkin. This is
straight out of Wordsworth's 

"Shades of the prison house close around the growing boy"

In another sequence Jack teaches her how to spit and she uses this new
skill to great symbolic effect later in the film. 

The film is then a celebration of what Yeats termed the "wasteful virtues."
 The primary value is above all that of a passionate engagement with life.
"Make it count", is Jack Dawson's motto and he certainly does that. Mind
you besotted and all as I was I still have to say that IMHO Leonardo di
Caprio is not quite up to the role of artist-adventurer. 

There are other artists in this film and their construction tells us a
great deal I think about the writer and director's (James Cameron)
intentions.  There is the architect of the Titanic Thomas Andrews (Victory
Gurber). He is presented as man of vision who could have produced a perfect
ship but was forced to compromise by his masters.  

Significantly when we first meet Rose as a very old woman, she is making a
pot.  She has it seems spent a life time in passionate creativity.  Then
there are the musicians who play on while the ship is going down.  Their
dedication to their art comes even above the fact that absolutely no one is
paying any attention to them.  Audience is nothing here.  Art is everything.

Then there are paintings by Picasso, Monet and Braque that Rose has
purchased in Paris.  These represent the forces of the avant garde artist
who wishes above all to "epater le bourgeois".

If the artist-type is the true hero of this film then it is hardly
surprising that the lower orders are presented primarily from the outside.
They are seen in the end mainly as victims. Though the film does not punch
home the fact that most of the 1500 who perished were working class people. 

There is though a sequence featuring the lower orders that is especially
worth commenting on. It follows a rather tense stuffy dinner where Jack is
invited to the first class dining room to tell his tale of how he rescued
Rose.  Afterwards he invites her to a "real party" and we see an Irish
party among the steerage passengers.  The lower classes then are shown as
having more fun.  They drink, arouse, sing and dance.  The upper classes
smoke cigars, sip brandy and talk about shares and politics.

I am not sure what to make of all this.  I am opposed to seeing the working
class as victims.  But I also reject their romanticisation.  The truth
about the working class is not that they are much more fun than the
bourgeoisie but that they work on the world and thus are ultimately
humanity's best hope for progress and change.  Still better to be
romanticised than persecuted I say.

My final word on it all is that the film is a testimony to the inadequacies
of Romanticism as a social doctrine for ultimately we are offered only an
aesthetic critique of capitalism.  In this schema capitalism is wrong not
because it is inefficient or wasteful or morally repugnant but rather it is
to be condemned because it stifles the creative impulse.  It prevents us
from following the wasteful virtues and leading foolish passionate lives.  

Moreover because it is a romantic text the film's opposition to the
bourgeoisie is ultimately false.   Romanticism exists side by side with
Capitalism and as Marx said they are doomed to travel together through
time.  Theirs is indeed a relationship which is duplicitous in that it
seems to be oppositional but in reality is based on mutual need. Thus the
Bohemian/artist needs the Philistine to feed his sense of outrage and
superiority.  Likewise the Beautiful Soul would be lost without the Ugly Soul.

The film could have told a tale of how the working class were betrayed and
slaughtered because of the machinations of the ruling class.  In the
present conjuncture this would have been a story with contemporary
relevance.  Instead it chose to follow the path of Romanticism and whinge
about how difficult it is to lead the life of a beautiful soul.  




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