Watching Titanic for the first time in 2024 is depressing, but not in the way you think

Shocking, I know. Titanic is a classic and I love movies - How could I possibly have avoided it all these years? More importantly, WHY? Well, it boils down to two things. First of all, the movie’s older than I am, so I missed the initial hype. More importantly, though, I was traumatised by a different movie about a sinking ship - the Lusitania I think? - when I was in middle school and I still haven’t recovered. Ever since then, I’ve been terrified of drowning to the point that it gives me panic attacks.

Needless to say, Titanic wasn’t at the top of my watch list.

Recently, though, the film was recommended to me on Netflix. Given that it’s been just about a year since the awful submarine incident, I have no intention of going swimming any time soon, and I’m feeling bored and masochistic at the moment, I decided to finally take the plunge... And ended up feeling super depressed.

I was initially planning on giving a timestamped play-by-play of my reactions to the film, but that plan was soon derailed. The first problem was that nothing really surprised me - I can’t imagine anyone with an internet connection doesn’t know about Jack and Rose, “draw me like one of your French girls”, or the famous theory that Jack could have fit onto the door as well. More importantly, I started having a panic attack as soon as the ship hit the iceberg.

So yeah, the ending was awful and depressing for me just like it was for audiences back in 1997. If I’d seen it in theatres, I would have run out sobbing long before the film was over. What was surprising though, was how Titanic made me feel depressed just 45 minutes in, long before the ship was hit. It wasn't because I knew the character’s terrible fate, but because I realised my own : modernity's isolation.

After Jack saves Rose and they talk on the deck about Rose’s anxiety about the gilded cage that her mother and fiance were trying to put her in, I was rolling my eyes. It felt so unrealistic - who would share their whole life story like that with someone who was basically a stranger? But when I thought about it… He saved her life! She had nobody to talk to! Of course she would talk to him! The only reason it seemed crazy to me was because I live in the time of smartphones and social media.

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Why talk to a cute stranger when you can cyberstalk them, fall in love, find their red flags, and fall out of love all without ever talking to them?

Even if we don't know exactly why, everyone knows that social media has ironically enough only driven everyone further apart. Gen Z, which began around the time Titanic came out, is said to be one of the loneliest generations, and it seems true to me. If I feel anxious about my future like Rose or if I were stuck on a boat for 5 days the way she was, I would just scroll through social media to avoid my feelings and pass the time. On all the flights I’ve taken, I've never wanted to chat with my seatmate - if they even tried, I'd think they were insane.

Who knows how many amazing people and experiences I’ve missed as a result.

It’s more than just the isolation though - when I think about it, social media drains the passion out of life. I thought Rose and Jack’s immediate obsessive devotion for each other was impossible, but imagine if you met someone amazing and knew you only had 5 days before you’d never see each other again. Nowadays you’d just hope you found them on Tinder or ask them for their phone number and never text them again once the conversation fizzled out a week later. There’s no sense of pressure or rush, no excitement.

It’s more than just romance, too. When Jack gets on the boat, they’re going on a grand adventure the likes of which I’ll never know. He’s going back to a country he hasn’t seen in however long. He doesn’t speak to his family on the phone every day. At the end of the film, the people looking for the Heart of the Sea say they’d never heard of them.

Imagine living a life where you could be born and die and do anything you want in between without anyone knowing or any kind of certainty. That kind of freedom, feeling like “the king of the world”… It’s unthinkable nowadays.

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I wish I lived in a world where I felt the fear and joy of facing the unknown and all its infinite possibilities every day, but that's no longer possible.

I can’t help but imagine what Titanic would be like if it were made today. Would they take out all the passion for the sake of believability? I know for sure there would be at least three other “disaster romance” films that tried to replicate Titanic’s commercial success without any thoughtful themes like class differences. Maybe they’d even try to make it a franchise!

I doubt anybody in the audience would have felt this way back in 1997. Not even 30 years later and we’ve lost so much... I shudder to think what will happen in 30 more.

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