Blog Post #2 The Movie Titanic

In 1998 I worked in a two person office with my good friend, Sarah. She is a James Cameron and Leonardo DiCapprio fan who saw Titanic twelve times. I saw it twice and thoroughly loved it. Also at the time I was living with 2 other guys and lived 2 blocks from a theater, so when I got bored or they were too loud I would walk over and see it again. I was a fan of the Titanic in High School and even built a model of the ship. I could tell you all the facts, and my only criticism of the movie is that I wanted them to delve into the facts and the politics of White Star and why the ship sank.

My impression of the film was an overwhelming love for the story of Rose and Jack. Being an artist myself, the story of Jack was highly romantic and inspiring: his lifestyle, his carefree attittude, his experiences drawing. I loved seeing the ship, even if it was computer generated. And, let's be honest, seeing Kate Winslett in the nude was not the most unpleasant part of the movie. Knowing a lot of people who are Christians, I heard how raunchy it was and that there was an unneccessary sex scene. I just tuned these people out. I had drawn nude models in college and after two minutes the fact that they are nude is no big deal. You are learning to see forms, and draw negative spaces, and you realize it's just Sue, and she's nice and she comments on your drawings. Granted, I may have enjoyed the female models more than the male, but most people would agree the female body is more artistically designed than the male. In summary, I totally wanted be Jack, loved his character and every time I saw the movie, it was a wonderful escape for 3 hours, where I lived the life of Jack.

Enter my lovely wife Rebecca a couple years later, and we are on a date, driving in the country and this movie comes up. Rebecca is a nice Christian girl and, sometimes, I am a nice Christian guy. She comes from a nice happy, Christian home, I come from a very dysfunctional, highly non-christian home and had my experience with God later in life and am still kind of working on it. Her view of the movie was quite different. She described the scene with Kate as soft porn, found it offensive to women and questioned how I could enjoy it. At one point she even asked me, “What if it was your daughter? Would you enjoy seeing her topless?” I was at a loss because I loved this woman, but she made me feel like a dirty old man for seeing the movie so many times. I believe we reached an uncomfortable truce and moved on. But there was no way I could relate my experience seeing the film, and the scene where she is drawn, as very romantic (the artistic definition of the word), very tastefully done and not offensive at all. In all fairness, I would have my boys leave the room if the scene was on, but they are 5 and 3.

So there we were, two people who very much love each other, have so much in common, cannot wait to get married and start a family... and yet this movie, for 15 minutes one Sunday, divided us. Both of us from completely different backgrounds and experiences, both of us seeing two different things based on our social conditioning.