Meaning? – American Disasters

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Distinction between Cultural and Individual Significance

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I disagree with the notion that the sinking of the Titanic has no intrinsic meaning, as Dan suggests that Wells has argued, and I’m worried that as our society is exposed to more disasters, we become increasingly numb to the significance of individual human lives and stories. Although I agree with Wells’ point that Biel believes and argues that the sinking of the Titanic was only culturally meaningful “in that it reflected the social and ideological complexities of a particular historical moment,” I think that from the individual triumphs depicted we can divine some small, personal hints of significance inherent in the disaster itself.

As Biel points out, activists for all issues skewed perceptions of the accounts to suit their agendas. This manipulation of facts for the purposes of activists is the subject of Biel’s chapter entitled, “The Rule of the Sea and Land.” My favorite example of this lies in Biel’s depiction of female activists claiming heroism “at the expense of men whose class and ethnic origins were suspect” (55). The women claimed they had to demonstrate physical strength to row their own lifeboats. Here Biel invokes thoughts of Social Darwinism by insinuating that women felt they had to put down other marginalized groups in order to gain any credence in mainstream society. This Social Darwinism may or may not have been noticed by those present on the boat, but Biel certainly makes the case that activists and journalists imposed it on those who were present.

By discussing and condemning the manipulation of heroic deeds before actually discussing the deeds themselves, I think Biel minimizes these deeds’ significance. Although racist and elitist, Andrews seemed proud that she had played a part in her own survival. For her, the sinking of the Titanic was significant. Yet Biel focuses less on Andrews’ perception of the disaster, and more on the public’s perception of it. As his title, Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster, suggests, Biel focuses more on reactions to, rather than personal victories within the disaster. This is where the conflation between cultural and individual significance comes in. It is easy to forget an event’s significance to individuals who participated, especially when compared with it historical and cultural significance. It may even seem too easy an argument to make—of course this event was meaningful for those who experienced it. But I don’t think that suggests that the event had no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. The meaning was more personal than it was cultural, and it makes sense that Biel did not find that meaning, since his intent was to provide an account of only the cultural history of the sinking of the Titanic.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Mining for Meaning in the Depths of the Ocean

Steven Biel’s Down With the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster, asserts that the historical value lies in the ways in which we understand and use the disaster. Biel points out that the Titanic in and of itself, the sinking of a single steamship in the middle of the ocean which in reality did not yield any great policy changes regarding ocean safety, was not actually significant. What was significant, according to Biel, are the ways in which Americans used the Titanic to understand their current anxieties about the world in which they lived. Biel stresses that the Titanic did not flip the switch from enchantment with technology to disillusionment with progress. He emphasizes that it did not signal the end of a happier simpler period. Biel describes the current state of unrest within American society which existed prior to the sinking. It is the way that each of these groups used the Titanic to extract lessons and advance causes that were already near to them which made the Titanic an irreplaceable part of American Culture. It was the way the Titanic served as a powerful metaphor for groups all across American society, groups like women’s suffragists, African Americans, the wealthy, and even traditionalists.

This view of the Titanic allows us to interrogate why we feel that the Titanic signified a simpler time. It allows us to understand more fully the state of American Affairs. It allows us to see the multiplicity of meaning that was invested in the sinking. And it allows us to think critically about this event. Like Wells mentions in his post, there is no true, universal, and singular meaning that arose from the deep waters into which the Titanic sank. The meanings manufactured were as diverse as the tensions experienced at the time. This makes the Titanic more than just a powerful metaphor, but a literal archaeological site for some of the greatest issues of the early 20^th century.

March 31, 2014December 16, 2020

A Gordian Knot or a Web of Lies?: Steven Biel and the Meaning of the Titanic

As we’ve already encountered thus far in the semester, disasters often yield a variety of interpretations. From Father Pernin’s account of the Peshtigo Fire to the “seismic denial” of San Francisco’s leading capitalists, personal motives—whether economic, social, political, or religious—tend to color descriptions and blur otherwise clear observations of human catastrophe. For some, this phenomena would seem a real thorn in one’s side, obscuring the facts of a disaster. But for Steven Biel, it presents an exciting opportunity: the chance to disentangle a web of intersecting, conflicting, and overlapping personal stories, to make sense of a “diversity of meanings” (118). In Down with the Old Canoe, Biel tackles and interprets this web for himself and—as Dr. Shrout so often encourages us to do in class—”parses out” its various strands to weave a single, intelligible reading.

Well, not really. In reality, the various interpretations of the Titanic were a lot more convoluted and tangled-up than one might think. The disaster itself, Biel writes, was “historically not intrinsically meaningful,” and whatever historical meanings it did offer were “neither simple nor universal” (8). The conventional narrative of chivalric, first-cabin males was nothing but a “myth” in that it “located a disturbing event within routine structures of understanding” (24). The conventional religious interpretation, likewise, owed its existence to the “familiar moral vocabulary” of Protestantism (65). Convenience—whether in the form of a convenient gender or class hierarchy or a convenient religious language—it seemed, determined the Titanic’s various meanings.

But in nearly every instance, ideology also shaped interpretation. Biel notes that just as the conventional narrative reinforced conservative race, gender, and class hierarchies, so too did it undermine ‘traditional values.’ Feminists, for instance, “turned the chivalric myth against itself” (105). Socialists treated the Titanic as a symbol of Capitalism itself, the iceberg as the imminent threat of Proletarian revolution. African Americans, meanwhile, stripped the conventional ‘myth’ of its racist connotations to endorse a message of “universal brotherhood” (109). Such a ‘diversity of meanings’ suggested that, despite their advocates claims to timeless truth, interpretations were themselves products of their own time, rooted in an equally tangled social, political, and ideological web. The America of 1912 was “contested terrain” (100). It found itself at the ‘watershed moment’ of a revolutionary, transitional period of American history: the Progressive Era.

As disappointing as it may be to realize that even Harvard’s own Steven Biel can’t find the ultimate strand in this tangled web, the one and only absolutely without-a-doubt true meaning of the Titanic disaster, Biel’s point is an important one. The Titanic was certainly meaningful, but only in that it reflected the social and ideological complexities of a particular historical moment. As Biel points out, the Titanic really “changed nothing except shipping regulations” (24). Instead, it was the disaster’s role as a sort of blank canvas for American society that created the Titanic‘s meaning.

So, perhaps Nate should consider revising his statement from last week. He claimed that when people attempt to interpret human catastrophes, they tend “to skew their own interpretation of what happened,” thus obscuring the real meaning of the event itself. But what if a disaster, as Biel would suggest, is not ‘intrinsically meaningful’? Well, then it would seem that treating its various ‘meanings’ as a tangled web is futile. Maybe it’s more useful to think of them as a Gordian Knot. Just cut through it all and realize, like Biel did, that ‘meanings’ are historically constructed.