TITANIC II

Ah, the eternal dilemma... To post or not to post. There is, after all a slim chance that this might still be considered to be “too soon” but, what the hey, it’s not as if this stuff really reaches that many people, and my ire is mostly directed, as it usually is, at our beloved media who can hardly be shown off as pillars of the community when it comes to the issue of causing offence. If you are offended, then naturally, I’m sorry about that, but, well there’s only some opinions being spouted here, and you are allowed to disagree...


“It was just like the Titanic!” screamed the headlines of the Sunday papers after the cruise ship “Costa Corcordia” hit some underwater rocks and capsized last weekend, bringing to a brutal end a cruise that had barely begun, and taking some real human lives along with it, although, thankfully, far fewer than it might have done.

And yet, whilst it was a tragedy of course, it really wasn’t “just like” the sinking of the Titanic at all.

Nothing like.

After all, whilst on a simplistic level it is far too easy for news reporters (and others) to make the comparison, in reality the truth is very different because the Titanic sank hundreds of miles away from land after hitting an iceberg with an almost catastrophic number of lives being lost, whereas, despite the tragic loss of still far too many lives, 4000 people have survived this terrible event due in no small part, to the bravery and efficiency of the crew, and, perhaps in some small way because of the changes that were made to the rules and regulations about such things because of that enormous sacrifice made in the icy waters of the Atlantic nearly 100 years ago.

There were, naturally, some similarities, there always would be if any great vessel needs evacuating after being involved in a dreadful accident, and any loss of life in a maritime accident is of course tragic, and, whilst the full story has yet to emerge and the total truth about what went on in those dark waters will no doubt be mulled over in countless courtrooms and enquiries, many of the parallels and many of the differences will become clearer or foggier, depending upon how it goes and whose vested interests are being served best.

But, of course, as we approach the one hundred year anniversary this April of that fateful “Night to Remember” I suppose it does remain much on our minds, especially as James Cameron considers re-releasing his multi-Oscar® winning movie to once again torment lovers of decent script writing all over again, this time in 3D.

“How could something like this happen in these days of high technology and pinpoint satellite navigation?” many of us will no doubt be asking, grateful, I trust, that it wasn’t ourselves that were asked to man the lifeboats and leap out of our holidays and into the unknown darkness.

However, the more sensational headlines of the following days, ones like “Fighting for our lives!” don’t do much to conjure up memories of the dignified, measured calm we are always told existed on the Titanic, nor do tales of mothers “angry with the authorities” for not letting her know “officially” that her daughter was safe even though she had already been made aware of the fact, speak, perhaps, of anything other than how our blame culture has evolved across the past one hundred years.

But these are words spoken in anger and worry, and of course can be forgiven when we attempt to put ourselves in their shoes, but the fact that the reporters constantly need another angle, another quote, a way to make it relevant to their “local” audience with something that sometimes appears to be almost “gleeful relish” doesn’t speak too highly of our culture and how it works. Why must the news media always try to find a “local” victim to tell us the story of? Do they perhaps believe that we just won’t really care otherwise? Have we become so cynical a nation that we can only really have any empathy with a disastrous news story if it involves people from our own nation, or that we can only have any sense of understanding if we can be persuaded that “but for the grace of God” that’s a holiday that we ourselves might have been on? Is it really still true that foreigners “don’t count” to us? That if a similar ship had met a similar fate in the Philippines or somewhere further afield we would care that much less?

But then, it’s only our insatiable desire for information that they are feeding, so maybe they understand us only too well. After all, despite the fact that it’s all too easy to criticise a reporter for asking daft questions (My latest favourite being “Do you remember Woolworths?” asked as if it was a hundred years ago - maybe this Titanic thing is more prevalent than I thought...) when there are reports of people leaving screenings of “The Artist” because “It’s daft... There’s no words!” Perhaps they know that the next big thing that pushes this story from the headlines might very well seem a “smaller” story, but might seem closer to home, although the pictures will have to be pretty spectacular to trump those of a massive cruise ship listing at 45 degrees.

Or will they? Perhaps a Duchess in a new dress that shows off the smooth lines of a pert bottom, or some MP making an ass of himself, or an actor standing on a red carpet, or a sportsman punching the air after doing something sporty will be just interesting enough to replace those astonishing pictures and grab our short attention span once again and drag our fleeting interests towards the next big thing.

But I shouldn’t really be writing about this yet. It’s probably far too soon to be even thinking about such things when the bodies of the victims are still being pulled from the wreckage. It’s always difficult to know when it is actually the “right” time of course. Were eighty-five years enough for James Cameron to make his sensational tragic love story despite there still being survivors alive at the time? Is Pearl Harbour a suitable subject for “entertainment” seventy-one years after the fact? Can we really tell the tale of the bloody trenches of the First World War yet, or the horrors committed in the concentration camps during the Second? Was it right to tell the story of the Dam Busters within ten years of the ceasing of hostilities, or to weave tales about the brutal building of the Burma Railway? Is it reasonable to make movies about the devastation of the attacks upon the World Trade Center whilst families still grieve? Or to tell the dark story behind any of the gruesome murders that are splashed across the front pages of our newspapers whilst relatives still struggle to come to terms with the impossibility of their sense of loss?

Heroes and villains are already emerging from the story of this wreck. Eye-witness accounts of the unimaginable terrors are splashed across our hungry media but still we demand more and more of them. Hundreds of bizarre images culled from the cameras and telephones of those who seemed almost inexplicably capable of being calm enough to be taking the time to record their plight as they were “fighting for their lives” are plastered across screens and column inches as we seek answers and devour the words and pictures to try and make some sense out of something that seems to have been a senseless accident, although we struggle as a society to accept that such a thing as an accident can happen these days.

Somebody must always be held to account, somebody is always to blame and somebody, it seems, must always be made to pay.