American Disasters – Page 5 – Just another My blog Sites site

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Commemorating the Titanic

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Steven Biel’s discussion on the ways in which the Titanic disaster was commemorated in the years and decades afterwards illustrates how people will inevitably manipulate disasters to their own agenda. Annelies also built upon this argument in her blogpost. As we saw in the first section of the book, feminists and other groups manipulated the narrative of heroism to support different social and political agendas after the disaster.

In the next section of the book, Biel discusses the ways in which the Titanic was commemorated. Through his discussion, it becomes clear that the Titanic grew to symbolize and fill the roles that people needed it to. Through the thirties some interpreted the disaster as proof that traditional gender roles and the doctrine of separate spheres should be maintained. Another conservative narrative that evolved out of the disaster interpreted the Titanic as a symbol of everything that was wrong with modernity. Biel states:

“The disaster, then, continued to do important, if sporadic, cultural work, from reminding men and women of their proper roles and responsibilities at the onset of the Depression to asserting racial equality and exposing racial injustice…” (Biel 139).

We can see this common theme of the manipulation of narratives after disaster stretch across all of the disasters we have studied. McCullough used the Johnstown flood to illuminate the disparity in wealth and the effects of unequal distribution of economic power. Likewise, with the San Francisco earthquake, we can see that ways in which middleclass businessmen and politicians manipulated the narrative to fill their economic and political agendas.

These disasters and the various ways in which they were commemorated suggest the heavy hand people have in the definition of disaster. In many ways, facts are never facts, as they will always be manipulated, intentionally or not, to fill an individual’s narrative. These unique narratives are what give each disaster meaning within the context of the time and what dictates the vivacity with which each individual disaster is remembered.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

A Distorted Disaster: The Titanic’s False Memorialization

In the 1950s and 60s, the world had just suffered what are, arguably, the two greatest disasters in history: World War II and the Holocaust. However, this period is notable in America for its obsession with the Titanic disaster, with the wide popularity of the book A Night to Remember and the growth of the THS (Titanic Historical Society). The juxtaposition of these events is hard to imagine: a global war that took the lives of tens of millions against a relatively small tragedy that claimed just over one thousand. Nonetheless, Steven Biel uses the word nostalgic quite deliberately in the second half of Down with the Old Canoe to describe enthusiasts. Like AJ notes, Americans in the post-war world felt as though they were losing track of their values in the era of “women’s lib” and the end of “the Edwardian Age” (171). They sought to replicate the chivalry and noblesse-oblige that had “disappeared” in years since. (147) The problem is, would any of these enthusiasts with Titanic nostalgia actually put themselves on the boat if they had the chance? Biel doubts it. Then what is the root of this fascination? I believe that it is a distorted memorialization of the disaster. When the iceberg hits, the enthusiasts loved to think that the rich and powerful gladly accepted their fate for the sake of women and children. In reality, however, they were just following protocol.

Like many other disasters, the Titanic gives us a unique insight in deeper human nature. This is why we find disasters fascinating, why billionaires attempt to replicate the journey, and why James Cameron is a household name. When the barriers of order and class are broken down, we can get a glimpse of true human character. On the Titanic, the face of fate and death, the men stepped aside and allowed the saving of women and children. Chivalrous, right? This is the common distortion of the Titanic’s final voyage. Biel’s sources focus on modern perceptions of the disaster, from prominent novelists and filmmakers to “buffs” who are well researched on the subject. Many enthusiasts, from teachers to novelists to soldiers, formed the Titanic Historical Society to emphasize the “devotion to duty” and manhood of the Titanic’s fallen passengers. (190) However, I believe it is false to associate the saving of women and children with male chivalry. The policy was already established- women and children first- so that men were not give the choice themselves in times of crisis. The decision was not theirs to make, and, for the most part, they followed this protocol. But is that necessarily chivalrous?

To Biel, the use of the Titanic as a display of Victorian character has subsided in recent decades. References to the ship have largely become either political cliches or anecdotes about James Cameron. But the “democratic grave” at the bottom of the ocean continues to fascinate us (45). According to Biel, there’s deeper themes to be found in the Titanic disaster than just “overconfidence in technology” or “the mistake of arrogance”. (217) It’s the revelatory power of the disaster into human nature that keeps us wanting more.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

The Cultural Impact of the Titanic

Overall, I liked Biel’s approach to the responses to the disaster, although I do not know if I entirely buy his argument.

Biel uses how the Titanic was popularly studied from the 1950s to the 1980s in order to analyze how people used the disaster to parallel it to their own lives. I am not quite sure if he is saying that he agrees with the movements, or if he is just quoting those who believed that the disaster reflected their specific time period, but I feel as though people used the disaster in ways they wanted to do so; the disaster did not necessarily have to do with all nuances that he mentions. Like jewarren I think that it is interesting how he talks about certainty and uncertainty, and how he parallels that to technology and the nuclear age. I definitely agree that before the first World War, Americans had a (false) sense of safety and security, and this disaster can parallel how Americans saw technology before and after the World Wars. I think that Biel’s arguments about masculinity, femininity, and the disaster are interesting, although I do not know if I entirely agree with him. His arguments seem a bit speculative, and I think that people used the disaster to describe the role of men and women in the Cold War period. I also do not know if I agree with his argument about the story needing to “have a happy ending” (219). As he talks about Carter and how his femininity showed, he also parallels that to Reagan and how the great feeling produced from the time period had to parallel the disaster and give proper roles of masculinity and femininity to it. People are still fascinated with the Titanic even though he says that it has had an ending. He does a great progression of cultural significance and how people responded to the disaster over time, but the arguments that he makes from his analysis seem a bit speculative to me.

P.S. Research Update: I have found four primary sources and one great secondary source for studying how classes perceived and were affected by the Sea Islands Hurricane. I feel much more confident about my body of resources, and I will now be able to move forward analyzing classes from this disaster specifically without using to much speculation or other disasters as examples and applying it to this one.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Titanic Remembrance through Recovery

Throughout Biel’s second part titled “Memories” I was particularly struck by the idea of recovery. While I believe in many of the narratives about Titanic fascination, something about the 1985 recovery effort seemed disturbing. In the past twenty years, the rediscovery of the Titanic has drastically altered public perception. Instead of remembering the tragedy, society seems to have depersonalized the loss of so many lives.

Living relatively close to Woods Hole, I find it very hard to imagine the entire world focusing on this small Massachusetts town. Robert Ballard represented the frontier of man, venturing into the unknown. The symbolic nature made this small town and researcher much more than they intended. Yet, should Ballard be elevated as an explorer, frontiersman, or simply an opportunist? Biel even makes Ballard out to be someone is troubled by his prolific success. The idea of using someone else’s tragedy into profit seems almost dirty and wrong. Nevertheless, society remains addicted to the Titanic. Based on the references to Titanic buffs, Titanic memorabilia, and even the recreation attempts today, we are drawn to it despite the catastrophic nature. The Titanic even has a permanent exhibit at the Luxor in Las Vegas, right next to the Jabbawockeez and Carrot Top. The Titanic has a cultural draw. Nevertheless, my fascination with the world’s obsession makes me wonder what is next. Are we drawn because of the length of time it took us to uncover the artifacts, the fact that we know so little about the ocean depths (more about space than the ocean floor), the popular appeal through the media (movies, plays, and books) or because it is the biggest failure of modern technology. As AJ notes Biel brings in every detail for metaphoric comparison. The promotion of the Titanic has historically been for significant promotion of policy change. However is it possible that our society sees tragedy and just tragedy and revels in uncertainty? There seems to be an eerie comparison between the mysteries surrounding the Titanic and the search efforts for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Certainly it seems that the uncertainty about location and the troubles can be related to the Titanic. The longer the mystery, the more interest grows. Similar to what Biel implies, maybe only when technology uncovers technology’s failures will we accept what happened.

On a side note, I thought Biel’s afterword about modern phrases about Titanic usage was very well thought out. Considering the word alone has “become a facile, all-purpose reference point for negligence, incompetence, obviousness, or futility” has Titanic fever spread because of the word or the tragedy. Had the Titanic been named something else, something more original and not a common adjective, would the word still live in infamy? The word has not changed definition, but through the negative connotations, now the word has a new meaning. Politicians, students, and professionals use the word often only as a negative word for size. Nevertheless, the word still has the same definition. Does this help with the memory of this tragedy or diminish the meaning? By only using the word “titanic” as a metaphor colossal failure, we not only ruin the word but disrespect the event.

Research Update:

As an extension of my blog post, I will update the progress of my final paper. After reviewing several primary and secondary sources, I was surprised at how accurate the preliminary damage reports were for the Great New England Hurricane. Nevertheless, my general thesis stands unchanged. Essentially, while the US Weather Bureau and the media overlooked this storm, ultimately nothing could have changed the destruction. The Storm was unlike anything that has ever hit the area and, in reality, nothing could have prevent the coastal destruction.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Contemporary Significance of the Titanic

In the second half of Down with the Old Canoe, Steven Biel concerns himself with the way the Titanic disaster has been incorporated into contemporary culture. Biel points out that after 1912 the Titanic disaster reappears in American culture in the 1950’s. Writers and artists from this time period triggered a renewed interest in the Titanic by producing works that incorporated the Titanic into the popular culture of the time period. Biel contends that the most significant of these works is A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. After the success of A Night to Remember, Lord’s book was adopted into a feature film. Biel argues that Lord intended for his novel to be a slight “political critique” and to challenge “the Cold War gospel of progress”(159). Again it seems evident that the Titanic disaster represents a form of disenchantment with technology. In 1912 the disaster represented people’s anxiety about modernity, and it is interesting to see how these same feelings are placed on technological advancements made in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The sinking of the Titanic represented an end of an era to some people and created nostalgia to a time where the future was not as frightening.

Additionally, I think the discovery of the Titanic and all that it represented in the 1980’s is intriguing. Biel argues that the 1980’s represented a return to the “frontier spirit” (what would Turner say?). He believes that Reagan and his economic and foreign policy initiates embodied an era of “individualism, adventure, expansiveness” (208). Therefore, the discovery of the Titanic in the oceanic frontier epitomized this era. Like dajames, I find it interesting that these sorts of beliefs existed only thirty years ago. This odd adoption of the Titanic by people that believed it constituted the general feeling of time continues the tradition set by everyone else since the disaster of assigning their own meaning and significance to the sinking of the Titanic. It does not surprise me, but furthers the argument that the culture meaning of the Titanic resonated inward.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Sunken Ammunition

As we discussed in class, this novel by Stephen Biel, a professor of writing at Harvard, deals not with how the Titanic went down and the details of its backstory but rather with the disaster as a cultural icon and how it has been used to address and promote all different kinds of ideological positions and issues. After getting through the first half of the narrative which illustrates the immediate reactions to the actual sinking of the ship; for example, the feminist and anti-feminist fight over the meaning of the protocol “women and children first” and whether or not it reflected chivalry or some other sort of stab at women. The second half of the book tags along with the first half and continues to speak of how different groups of people used the Titanic’s wreck as ammunition to prove several of their own theories, as well as, shine light and examine how the Titanic has been preserved over the years in several unique fashions.

Biel lays out for us many of the groups that used the Titanic as a means to address issues of the day. For instance, socialists, he claims used the sinking to attack the excesses of capitalism or the suffrage movement used it as a rally cry for support for the passing of the 19th Amendment as suffragists linked the sinking of the ship to God’s wrath. Biel continues to document how the Titanic was preserved and used as a platform by different groups to advocate and oppose things such as women’s suffrage, immigration, technology and safety protocol, disaster prevention, mainstream religion movements, civil rights activism and other issues of the day. He discerns that everyone found some sort of ammunition from the failure of the Titanic from poets, preachers and writers to reformers, racists and suffragists. One example in particular I found bold was, “I suggest, henceforth, when a woman talks women’s rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing more—just Titanic,” wrote a St. Louis man to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Biel, Down with the Old Canoe).

Continuing with the other part of the second half of the work, Biel discusses how the story has been preserved through other means in which he examines films (Nazi propaganda movie), novels (ex. Danielle Steel), interestingly music (Bob Dylan, African toasts and calls, working-class ballads against the rich) and also spends a good time on Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, as a combination of the book, TV show and film. I cant comment per say on the sources he utilizes because I have no familiarity with them and I believe that may be answered in our discussion in class, however, I do think that the strength of this well-researched book is precisely the presence and analysis of these poetry, songs, books, films, and cartoons illustrating the different aspects of American life that were affected by the Titanic or felt the need to use the Titanic as a means to some end. As we talked about in class, Biel doesn’t really give you a detailed lead up or background of the Titanic but I think he makes up for that with his writing skills and the usage of these attachments as a powerful claim that maybe even more important than the wreck itself, was the ways it was put to use by certain advocacy groups trying to promote the Titanic as a link or ammunition to their cause. I think amcarter is right when she says that the Titanic’s second wave is addressing the anxiety and culture shifting that is taking course. People are scrambling to use this as a device to get ahead.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Reaching Back

The second part of Down with the Old Canoe is an exploration of the second wave of meaning manufacture that occurs in the late 1900s. This is where Biel explores our contemporary understanding of the Titanic Disaster. The theme that threads these conceptualizations together seems to be this sense of nostalgia. These groups find themselves in a world radically different from the world when the titanic sank. Changes in culture, technological advancements, and even politics have occurred and Americans once again find themselves in a period of great anxiety. One of the great examples Biel utilizes to explain this impulse for nostalgia is the byproduct of the creation of the atomic bomb. With the creation of a device that can level whole cities in an instant leaving little or no survivors. To these individuals the Titanic represented a simpler time, a time when death left room for dignity and chivalry. Efforts to rediscover the Titanic, to complete its maiden voyage was more than just a misogynistic expression of masculine anxiety about changing gender roles, it was about getting in touch with a simpler past. Rediscovering the Titanic meant getting in touch with a past that didn’t include fears about instant nuclear annihilation.

It is true, as dajames has said in his post that the Titanic served as a vehicle for resisting communism, feminism, and the other isms that proliferated at the time. However, the rediscovery of the Titanic and the narratives that grew around it demonstrated an anxiety about the state of American affairs much like conceptualizations of the Titanic right after the sinking demonstrated their anxieties and struggles regarding the state of society as they knew it.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Research Update: The Influence of the Spanish Flu on American Education

Before our library session on Tuesday I had only been able to find newspaper articles mentioning school closings and a few deaths. These were useful in helping me make the argument that the Spanish Flu had a short-term effect on schools and American education, but they got very repetitive and did not help me make a point about long term effects of the flu. During and after the library session, I found many more newspaper articles and annual reports suggesting more diverse effects of the flu on schools. For example, there may have been debate about teachers’ salaries during forced furloughs. Some teachers were asked to serve as nurses during their time off. Students were encouraged to spend their time outside, and in the South this often translated to working outdoors instead of keeping up with studies. I think that I will be able to find evidence that there were at least a few long-term effects of the flu in various school systems across the country because some of my secondary sources on the flu briefly mention them. I will try to contact my secondary sources’ contacts and also historians/archivists at Davidson, my high school, and various public school systems.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Blame it all on Carter: Political Timing and the Discovery of the Titanic

I would like to begin by acknowledging Molly’s point from last week. At first I staunchly believed that the Titanic had absolutely no intrinsic meaning and it was an entirely blank slate. I found Molly’s argument that the disaster did have inherent personal meaning to those on the Titanic and those directly affected by it to be very convincing, and she has totally changed my mind on this issue. I do think that while the personal meaning of the disaster is important to those directly affected, I think that it is significantly less important on the broader scale of historical memory than perceived cultural meanings, which affect millions of people. In Part II of Down With The Old Canoe, I was personally disturbed by the intense neo-conservative and misogynistic cultural meanings placed on the re-discovery of the Titanic.

Biel frames the search for the Titanic with the Carter Presidency and quotes a variety of sources that essentially tear down president Carter as a weak minded liberal who is essentially the worst thing someone can be- a woman. Aside from the being incredibly simple minded, its shocking that these things were published a mere 40 years ago. Biel also discusses Clive Cussler’s book, Raising the Titanic!, which framed the search for the Titanic as a struggle against communism, liberals, feminism and government regulation. What I thought was interesting was that while the book was a bestseller, the movie was “a big-budget Hollywood flop in 1980” (Biel 202). In the four years between the publishing of the book and the making of the movie did American cultural thought shift to reject Cussler’s reactionary views? If so this is great proof of the inherent lack of meaning that disasters have in terms of national culture as a whole.

I am curious if the Titanic had been found in the late 90s if it would have been framed differently by the media. Biel raises a question similar when he muses on how the discovery of the Titanic might have been framed differently if the French found it. During the late 90s the American economy was having a surge of growth under a liberal president, Bill Clinton. America was also the undisputed world power after the fall of the USSR. How would society react to the discovery during this time? Would it have been framed in terms of a different social issue? Or would it just have been less culturally prominent and only important for historians and disaster lovers?

April 6, 2014December 16, 2020

Research Update and Addition to March 10 Blog Post

Research Update

I’m looking at the 1886 Charleston Earthquake. Right now, I’ve found quite a few newspaper reports on the disaster. They contain interesting points that seem to relate to larger themes about the earthquake. For instance, the newspaper article I analyzed for suggested that Charleston was ready to rebuild immediately after the disaster. The city also wanted to assure outsiders that the economy—primarily port-based shipping—was not damaged by the earthquake.

Underneath all this optimism though, there are some hints at racial tension. The paper linked an incident of a landlord evicting a tenant for not paying immediately after the earthquake to race; the tenant happened to be African-American. This ties into what I have seen in secondary sources about the earthquake exacerbating racial tension. I also found this to be a theme that runs across many of the disasters we have studied. Like Biel suggests, disasters don’t necessarily cause societal change, but they do reveal fissures in society.

There are primary sources like diaries that I have found about the earthquake. Unfortunately, some of the diaries are not digitized. I’d have to travel to actually access them. I’ll continue searching though for primary sources I can actually read.

Addendum to March 10 “Fire and Water: Comparing the Great Chicago Fire with the Johnstown Flood Blog Post:

As for comparing the lack of crime in Johnstown with the crime in Chicago, I think there may have been several reasons for the differences. First, Johnstown was basically inaccessible after the flood, whereas criminals could get into Chicago. Second, the flood may have permanently destroyed things of worth in Johnstown. For instance, safes could have been buried under flooded houses by the water. The fire, on the other hand—while it obviously burned many things—left more valuables like safes out in the open; in fact, it made it easier to open them. Finally, Chicago has more wealth than Johnstown did. Johnstown was primarily a lower class town, so there would have been less to steal in Johnstown than in Chicago.