I must confess I don’t understand all of the fuss about the Titanic. I, like most Canadians have no direct ties to that disaster. Or at least I don’t think I do. Thirty odd years ago, my grandmother in one of her apparent lucid moments the summer before she died, told me that she had been on a ship that had rescued survivors when the Titanic sank. The topic came up in our conversation one day because she asked me to mail a letter to the Toronto Star. I had asked why she was writing to the Star and she responded by saying that she had been travelling from England and her ship had picked up some survivors. I never asked her what the name of her ship was, which is a pity because I have never been able to confirm her story. It seems far fetched and to the best of my knowledge it is not something that she talked about to a lot of people. Regardless of whether I have a tenuous connection to the sinking of the Titanic or not, I still do not understand what all the excitement is about.
I was listening to some news program the other day which provided a partial explanation for why so many people talk about the Titanic. It was suggest that it is now one of this culture’s points of reference. Some of the language (“going down with the ship” or “rearranging the deckchairs”) related to the story are now used to explain other events or at least to act as a form of short hand. Northrop Frye made the argument that 50 years ago almost all of our cultural references were related to the Bible. Everyone understood such statements as “walking on water” or perhaps even “road to Damascus”. That is no longer true. Our culture needs therefore to create other events that we can use as reference points. Hence the excitement over the Titanic.
This is not a complaint or a wish that we should go back to the good old days – I have never been convinced that those days were that good. But it is comment on society and its changing values and perspectives. If people were really interested in the class system of Britain that contributed to the disaster that would be perhaps useful place to start a discussion. I fear however that far too many people are drawing their knowledge from a Hollywood love story. One that could never have happened as my grandmother cross the ocean almost a century ago.
