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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?
So, this used to be my favorite movie for years. I think I imprinted strongly on it because I saw it for the first time at age 8 and it was probably one of the first movies - along with Jurassic Park, which also had a profound effect on me at the time - I saw with actual dramatic stakes and spectacular visuals. (It’s also the first nude scene I saw in a movie, which probably contributed to my very positive first impression of it.) I also acknowledge that I was (and still am) a pretty low-T guy, and that my tastes and proclivities largely tended toward the feminine during my formative years.
Other commenters’ cynical and acidic takes on the film’s central romance are basically completely accurate; if you’re a man who is neither as virile and charming as prime DiCaprio, nor as rich and ambitious as Cal, the entire Rose plot is pretty blackpilling. It sucks to know that probably the best that most guys could ever hope to be is the nameless schmuck who later picked up those guys’ sloppy thirds, never being featured onscreen or even apparently occupying much of a place in Rose’s emotional landscape at all, despite being the father of her children. Far more realistic is being one of the innumerable guys who died horribly in frozen water, or just ended it all quickly by leaping off the deck. Me personally, I’d probably end up like poor First Officer Murdoch, gunning a man down in a panic and then offing myself.
The film really is a testament to the awesome power of artifice, spectacle, and aesthetics. On some level, nearly every modern person who appreciates Titanic does so because the world it depicts - no matter how much the nihilistic Hollywood shitlib James Cameron tries to paint it as stuffy and doomed - is glamorous, confident, impeccably classy, and features exclusively high-quality white people. Even the poorest people on the ship are charming European immigrants, with no signs of criminality or dysfunction, dancing a sprightly Irish jig. The music is lush and gorgeous, the effects are stunning, the sets and costumes are incredible. The emotional/ideological soul of the film is utterly poisonous and it doesn’t even matter, because the experience is so beautiful and tragic. (See also: Harry Potter)
The Titanic sank in 1912, two years before Europe destroyed itself spiritually and emotionally in WWI (from which it has yet to recover). I suppose one could make the argument that the Titanic represents the height of human civilization, a world where officers would lower partially empty lifeboats into the ocean because letting men get on would just be improper wouldn't it? All without a hint of irony.
Right, when I watch Titanic now, I weep not for charismatic hobo Jack Dawson, but for the quickly-impending self-inflicted implosion of European society - in which the vast majority of the people involved were hapless victims cast into destruction by the hubristic and unnecessary decisions of a sclerotic and insulated privileged class which had outlived its usefulness - that the film implicitly depicts. It’s grotesque what happened to those unsuspecting families on the Titanic, just as it’s grotesque what happened to the countless men who were slaughtered in the World Wars. At least on the Titanic, most of the men responsible for the disaster - Captain Edward Smith, Thomas Andrews - suffered the consequences themselves (although not the man arguably most directly responsible, J. Bruce Ismay, who escaped on a lifeboat and lived another twenty-five years). Most of the men responsible for the World Wars did just fine for themselves afterward.
I used to love WWI/WWII movies when I was younger, it scratched that Star-Wars-esque heroism itch. Now I avoid them unless I'm willing to end up demoralized watching Hollywood dance on the grave of Europe. Some are really good and worth watching like Dunkirk, but it's a genre where my interpretation of the films has radically changed from adventure-heroism to tragedy.
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