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. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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