Rethinking Titanic

[I first wrote this in... hmm, maybe 2002? earlier? I dunno. It's been sitting in limbo on my computer for some time, but I've decided to give it a place to live on the blog. Because reasons.]

NOTE TO TITANIC FANS: You may not want to read this. It's not pretty.

When first released in 1997, Titanic broke all kinds of box-office records. This love story between two people of different social classes, set aboard the world's most famous doomed luxury liner, seemed to resonate with audiences all over the world. Moviegoers watched the three-hour film multiple times in first-run theatres (some of them quoting lines right in sync with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio), teenage girls designed their prom dresses after post-Edwardian fashions, college students were compelled to change their majors. Most of Western society was seduced by Titanic; nobody seemed surprised when it swept the Oscars in 1998.

And I have to admit that, at least for a while, I was seduced right along with them. The movie does have its problems -- it's big to the point of being overblown, riddled with tired love-story clichés, and there's one hour of '70s disaster movie plopped right in the middle of the romance. And yet, somehow, the whole appears greater than the sum of its parts. While you watch it, the film works. Your understanding of reality is temporarily placed on the back burner while you are immersed in James Cameron's vision of 1914.

All this, despite the utter odiousness of Rose DeWitt Bukater.

It's true. When you step out of the narrative spell and really think about it for a minute, Rose is one of the most selfish characters ever articulated in cinema. We are clearly meant to identify with Rose and sympathize with her situation -- trapped in a rigid upper-class society, she yearns to be free but seems unable to break the chains of her social strictures. Yet Rose begins as a wholly self-centered creature, and remains so throughout the film. As my sister likes to say, "it's all about her."

From her earliest recalled memories as a 17-year-old girl, Rose is spoiled, self-involved and bitingly sarcastic to all around her. Brooding on her impending loveless marriage to Cal, a wealthy cad (and trust me, they would so deserve each other), she feigns boredom when first faced with the size and grandeur of the Titanic. All she can see is a prison ship, leading her away in the chains of unhappy wedlock. Rose has nary a good word for anyone, tartly smarting off to her mother, her fiancé, and the other wealthy passengers in first class. As we soon discover, Rose has been urged into this marriage by her mother, a widow trying to conceal her penury, who is saddled with her late husband's remarkable debts (Rose's selfish gene seems to have been passed down by both parents). Yet far from owing any real sense of duty to her mother, Rose soon decides to commit suicide rather than marry her odious fiancé. She is only pulled from the brink by Jack, who actually does have a strong sense of duty -- willing to save a total stranger from the icy water, even if it means risking his own life.

Once Rose falls for Jack, she flouts her mother and societal expectations to do just as she chooses with him. She even has him sketch her in the nude -- outrageously, while still wearing her fiancé's engagement gift around her neck. Then she further slaps courtesy and decorum in the face by taking Jack's sketch and presenting it to her fiancé as a gift. As the ship sinks, Rose makes the conscious choice to walk away from her family and friends forever in order to go with Jack. Yet Rose's selfishness extends even further, allowing her to discard the man she ostensibly loves in order to survive. When they find a piece of ship buoyant enough to hold one or the other of them, but not both, Rose does not behave as you would expect a woman in love to do -- wouldn't she have preferred to take her chances in the icy water, rather than watch her lover freeze to death beside her? Yet this latter is precisely what she chooses, and her lover excuses away her self-serving behavior even as he perishes. Rose's utter lack of principles is neatly summarized in her final scene with Jack. Only an instant after she promises, "I'll never let go, Jack," she in fact does let go, so Jack's frozen corpse can sink slowly and prettily into the depths of the Atlantic.

After her rescue, Rose continues to walk her chosen path of pure self-involvement. She never again attempts to contact her penniless mother, preferring to let her believe "Rose DeWitt Bukater" perished aboard the ship, and leaving Mom to her own devices. Rose marries a man without ever revealing to him her past life, and (as intimated in a sweeping series of black-and-white photos) continues to do exactly as she chooses for years. At the end of her life, when the salvage crew brings her back to Titanic, she gets to spill the beans about the whole event without betraying even a glimmer of guilt about her choices. Finally, the coup de grace -- rather than bequeathing the priceless Coeur de la Mer to her granddaughter, or giving it to Brock, the man who's spent years of his life and millions of dollars searching for it, she carelessly tosses the necklace into the ocean. She even gets to die warm in her bed, just as her sacrificed lover predicted she would.

Yep, it's all about her. And, human nature being what it is, chances are good that you were rooting for the selfish brat all through the narrative. Perhaps that is really what makes Titanic so remarkable as a film -- it features a thoroughly unlovable character who makes you care about her anyway.