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Why do girls like Titanic so much?
The film made almost two billion dollars when it was released in 1997, making it the highest grossing movie in history at the time (the previous record was Jurassic Park at only $900 million).
Why? What made it special? It’s a perfectly fine movie I guess. The effects were well-done and innovative. But otherwise it seems like a pretty generic disaster/romance film. There’s an old /tv/ meme about “movies women will never understand”. Presumably there are also “movies men will never understand”. I know many women consider Titanic their favorite film of all time, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man say that.
Take a second to think about it. This is actually quite surprising. Big machines, transportation technology, humanity fighting nature, honor, these are all male-oriented interests. I find that these themes make the film tolerable to watch, but why would adding them to a romance make the film so popular amongst women?
What am I missing here?
Rose is a super relatable character for girls and women, one with whom they can identify strongly. And what’s not to like?
You get awarded luxuries for merely existing, like an expensive necklace and a voyage on the world’s largest ship. Ugh, the stupid shiplet is only 880 feet though, not even 1,000 feet. At least you get to stand and sit around the boat looking cute each day, with your cute dresses, cute gloves, and cute hats. Yay! But you feel sad, because life is so exhausting, your rich handsome fiancé gives you the ick, and you just can’t even anymore. You’re in the midst of considering whether to throw yourself overboard, when a Manic Pixie Dream Chad (MPDC) shows up out of nowhere to rescue you and sweep you off your feet. You cuck your fiancé with MPDC because why not? Girls just want to have fun, teehee. Plus, your stupid fiancé deserves it for being a jealous and controlling jerk. He and MPDC fight over you, which is literally the worst because you definitely hate drama. But then the shiplet hits an iceberg and starts sinking (you knew it, this totally wouldn’t have happened if you went with a real ship). MPDC sacrifices his life so you can live. Awww, how sweet of him. Your (ex-)fiancé survives but later on commits suicide. Oh well, it’s like whatevs. With both MPDC and fiancé gone, you eventually branch swing onto a husband, with whom you have children and grandchildren. You return to the wreck site as a centenarian, wistfully fantasizing about your fling with MPDC and throwing the necklace (now a priceless artifact) into the ocean like Willa yeeting the iPad in Succession. lol, whoopsie.
In contrast, Titanic is a horror film for men. It's Male Expendability: The Movie, where not even Manic Pixie Dream Chad was immune to male expendability. Who do men have to relate to?
The guy who froze to death hanging onto a door, submerged in frigid waters? The guy who brought his fiancée and her mother onto the maiden voyage of the world’s largest ship, only to get cucked in return? The guy who free-fell when the ship broke in half and went vertical, clanging against a propeller along the way? The guy who eventually dedicated his life to alpha-widowed Rose? The nameless hordes of men who waited on the ship as it sank, listening to the string quartet play their last set while the women scampered off with the children onto lifeboats? At least door-popsicle-guy had the fresh memories of smashing sweet seventeen-year-old redhead puss as a morale boost in his waning moments.
For men, there’s also the meta-horror that women consider this a great love story. Five minutes of Alpha >> lifetime of Beta.
Isn’t this, to some extent, just a way to rationalize your own ephemeral relationships with women as meaning something and to justify your own aversion to settling down, though? It seems a little self serving.
I doubt most men think in terms of experiences as "meaning something," especially those who grok "five minutes of Alpha/lifetime of Beta"-type aphorisms.
Are you, personally, the alpha in this scenario?
My use of “Five minutes of Alpha >> lifetime of Beta” should be parsed as a descriptive 1) “women will often have a larger part of their mind- and/or heart-share allocated to fleeting moments with (a) past Chad(s) than her longtime partner Brad” rather than a prescriptive 2) “it’s better to be the five-minute Alpha than the lifetime Beta,” for variants of the saying are generally used along the lines of 1). As we saw in Titanic, the five-minute Alpha died young, childless as a human popsicle, his Alphsicle corpse to serve as chilled chow for deep-sea fish and bacteria.
The point is that most men would find it horrifying, the prospect that they’re second, third, or n’th place in their girlfriends/wives hearts, that they hold but a peasant’s garden plot in their girlfriends/wives’ “emotional landscape,” as @Hoffmeister25 put it above. Hence why I mentioned “Five minutes of Alpha >> lifetime of Beta” alongside a 4chan screenshot (a most rigorous and sophisticated citation) about Rose thinking of Jack instead of her husband and children on her possible deathbed, in a post where the second half is about Titanic being a horror film for men.
My personal circumstances are largely irrelevant to the commentary. If we accept the premise that I have an aversion to settling down, it wouldn’t be any more relevant to a discussion on men finding it horrific to be n’th place in their girlfriends/wives hearts, than if we accept a premise that I have an aversion for going on cruises to a discussion on men finding it horrific to drown/freeze in icy waters as a part of an anonymous, forgotten horde while the women flee.
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