Re: A Century Later and The Titanic Hasn't Lost its Grip on Us
Your son is wrong on both. The most expensive first class tickets were for the two Parlor suites (as seen in the movie Titanic) which were about $5k (about $80k in today) and that was only one-way. The third class were not kept below, but information was not as quickly or effectively disseminated, 47% of the women and children in third class made it to the lifeboats and survived (this was a higher percentage than the first class male passengers at 31%).
As I've said, Cameron's film is "history" primarily in its extraordinarily accurate recreation of the ship and what life was like on it. As to the realities of the disaster, there are wide gaps. 100 years later and cops in London generally aren't armed, yet Cameron has a teen age steward not only armed, but shooting passengers. He absolutely smears Mr. Murdoch, who certainly made an error in judgement in turning the wheel hard over and reversing the engines. But Cameron has him shooting passengers, taking a bribe and generally behaving like a swine, not one atom of which comports with survivor testimony. And for those, like Cameron, who keep flogging the class distinction chimera, it's worth repeating over and over the fact that 3rd class women and children had a better chance of surviving than 1st class men.
As I posted earlier, it's really a shame that this film, like Stone's "JFK", has become the template which millions of us who aren't fascinated by these tragedies use to make our judgements about what "really" happened. In Stone's case, it's just about everything claimed. In Cameron's it's what he included and what he left out: Californian, Carpathia, etc. Cameron, as I've posted, recreated exactly the carpeting in the First Class dining room. How could such attention to detail leave him willing to smear a hero (Murdoch) who gave his life trying to help passengers get off safely in the boats? Surely he should have had as much desire to treat Murdoch accurately as he did in the carpeting. Evidently not. A real shame.
What films like "Titanic" and "JFK" in theory accomplish is to interest folks in the subject enough to get them to want to know more and to do some reading. And I'm certain that happened in both cases. However, these were two magnificently made, enormously entertaining films which probably induced far greater numbers into thinking how accurate they were. Ironically causing their misrepresentations to be unnoticed, ignored or excused by credulous people. My niece, her husband and I saw "Titanic" together and many of the scenes were just stupifying, particularly the getting underway sequence, and especially the engine room. And all that life aboard ship stuff. I found myself saying "look at that," more than once. Yet once the collision happened, I found myself telling them that didn't happen and that didn't happen quite a lot.. Cameron had a great opportunity, $200 million dollar budget, and he really missed his chance. He wasn't making a documentary, but it seems to me he had a responibility to tell the truth and not make up stuff. The truth of that story is enough to make it "a night to remember." Wallace Hartley and the other musicians continuing to play in the face of certain death. Hundreds of crewmen who labored on, keeping her floating with the lights on as long as possible, also in the face of certain death. Mr. and Mrs. Strauss. Benjamin Guggenheim who was adamant that no woman was going to die because he got a place in a lifeboat: "We have dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." The steward who gave Minnie Coutts his lifebelt and said: "There madame, if you are saved, pray for me."
BTW, your contributions here have been terrific, having at least one Titanicophile among the posters made my decision to start this thread worthwhile. Thanks.
