Titanic - 100th Anniversary of The Disaster
- Thread starter JRS
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I must be the only one to whom this whole thing feels rather morbid.
It was a landmark event in history. Just as when we study the Civil War here in the U.S., we learn the lessons from these tragedies, and the details that surround them are fascinating to study. Those people are long since dead, even the survivors have now all passed on. There is nothing morbid about it, really. It has become our history, and it is wise to study that history.
Studying history is one thing. I think we should do that. It just feels like it's been romanticized to a point where I don't think the approach a lot of people take to it is really history anymore.
I think a lot of the attention the ship has has been somewhat retroactive. Prior to the accident much of the attention placed on these ships was on the Olympic which had been launched first. The "unsinkable" claim is something that has been blown wildly out of proportion after the ship had been lost yet hardly thought of before.
I think Hollywood and the innate tendency for people to sensationalize in every kind of media to touch the subject have created al lot of myths that came into being in the wake of the accident.
I think Hollywood and the innate tendency for people to sensationalize in every kind of media to touch the subject have created al lot of myths that came into being in the wake of the accident.
I must be the only one to whom this whole thing feels rather morbid.
It was a landmark event in history. Just as when we study the Civil War here in the U.S., we learn the lessons from these tragedies, and the details that surround them are fascinating to study. Those people are long since dead, even the survivors have now all passed on. There is nothing morbid about it, really. It has become our history, and it is wise to study that history.
Studying history is one thing. I think we should do that. It just feels like it's been romanticized to a point where I don't think the approach a lot of people take to it is really history anymore.
How has the Titanic's disastrous accident been romanticized?
I must be the only one to whom this whole thing feels rather morbid.
It was a landmark event in history. Just as when we study the Civil War here in the U.S., we learn the lessons from these tragedies, and the details that surround them are fascinating to study. Those people are long since dead, even the survivors have now all passed on. There is nothing morbid about it, really. It has become our history, and it is wise to study that history.
Studying history is one thing. I think we should do that. It just feels like it's been romanticized to a point where I don't think the approach a lot of people take to it is really history anymore.
But if the romantic aspect of the storytelling attracts people who might not normally take an interest in a serious, clinical retelling of the sinking of the Titanic, and if even a small percentage of those people are encouraged to learn more on their own about Titanic's history, isn't that better than those people not taking an interest at all?
Plus, it's been a hundred years. What's the appropriate length of time when you can start romanticizing stories set amidst deadly or controversial historical events? Thermopylae (300)? The Third Servile War (Spartacus)? The First War of Scottish Independence (Braveheart)? The Burning of Atlanta (Gone With the Wind)?
Isn't it kind of fetishizing history and limiting your fictional possibilities to say that anything where numerous people died or places were destroyed can only be treated with the utmost seriousness and accuracy indefinitely from the time of the event?
Of course there is still more to add.
The arrival of the RMS Carpathia on scene to rescue the survivors and her arrival in New York on the 18th April
And I see it how one wants to define "romanticize" which can have two definitions, really. One, of course, having to do with love and, well, romance and the other having to do with the more "classic" definition of the word.
And when you're talking about a fairly Victorian era filled with top hats, corsets, the rich being glamorous, the poor being utterly down-trodden, a ship that was the biggest and "best" of her time and everything involved with Titanic it's easy to see how it's "romanticized" in the classical way.
It's also a story that sort-of tugs on even present-day sensibilities when it comes to social and class division, the drive forward almost recklessly (many of the things that could have saved much more of Titanic's crew weren't used out of either ignorance, going further than one should with current knowledge, out-dated practices and general short-sightedness) and not to mention just the emotional pull it'd has on people who picture themselves in that situation.
A situation where one moment you're enjoying the luxuries of the grandest ship in the world (and even Titanic's third-class accommodations had a degree of "luxury" to them), asleep warm in your bed and then the next moment in a struggle for your life in a situation where you stand a 50% chance of dying (going by the number of people aboard and a the life boat capacity). Families ripped apart in tragedy, and in the end 1500 people die.
Yes it's a tragic story, very tragic, but it can have a certain, "classical" sense of romance to it just given all of the elements in play there. And, yeah, I'd say 100 years is plenty of time to add even more modern "romantic" ideas to it among other things given that any few remaining present-day survivors of the ship where children or babies at the time -and thus don't likely remember much if anything of that night. Or, more likely, any "personal contact" with the tragedy is removed by a couple of generations.
(Checking, the last Titanic survivor who'd have any memories of the night died in 2005 -she was 5 when the ship sank. The two other younger survivors were less than a year-old and thus not old enough to form memories (or meaningful memories.) The youngest passenger on the ship - Millvina Dean - died in 2009. She was nine-weeks old when the ship sank.)
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I have sod all memories of when I was five. I think my first day of school would be the only surviving memory (that I can place in that year).
Then again, something as traumatic as that would likely leave a lasting memory, especially with people hammering you about it year after year.
(the Titanic, not my first day of school...)
I can remember sitting on a bull ant nest when I was four. That was pretty traumatic (I was bitten about 40 times).
I think the last survivor with memories remembered her father managing to put her in a boat as it was being lowered. Irt was the last time she ever saw him as he went down with the ship.
I've plenty of memories from being 4/5 (that's usually pre-school or kindergarten age).
Nice graphic on it here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ng-drama-ITV-present-cut-away-guide-ship.html
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