Titanic – Page 2 – American Disasters

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Gendering Human Responsibility

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The portion of the Steven Biel reading that was particularly interesting to me was his description of the ways in which different narratives developed regarding “male chivalry” after the Titanic’s sinking. This discussion relates directly to my research on the various portrayals of male heroism as a result of the Titanic for my final paper. My research has led me to read various newspaper articles from the days and weeks after the Titanic sinking, most of which exuberantly praise the men who died on the ship as a result of the “women and children first” philosophy.

Biel’s discussion makes is obvious that the narrative of “male chivalry” was by no means uncontested. The ways in which the same narrative regarding male heroism were manipulated after the disaster of the Titanic is what makes the study of gender relations during this time period so interesting. The perspective from the Progressive Women’s magazine is particularly interesting as it makes no attempt to negate the male’s “chivalrous” end, but instead points out the absence of male chivalry in life (Biel 104-105). This narrative calls out the concept of human responsibility in disaster, which we have discussed repetitively in class. However, this narrative takes the additional step of gendering the term, and instead of blaming human error, it specifically targets male error as the cause of the disaster. These women’s interpretation of the male sex’s guilt in the Titanic is related to Molly’s previous post about the ways in which the people in charge are primarily responsible for the disaster.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Distinction between Cultural and Individual Significance

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.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

The Gospel of Wealth

While reading part 1 of Down with the Old Canoe by Steven Biel, I was struck by the intense moralization that the titanic caused. It was especially striking that while mainstream newspapers saw the Titanic as a symbol of fearless chivalry and as the justification of wealth, many American pastors saw this a a sign of God’s punishment for mans excess and hubris. This leads me to agree with Wells’ post that the Titanic crash had no inherent meaning, but it was a blank slate for people to project meaning onto based on the emotions they were feeling at the time. Of the meanings that people projected onto the disaster, the one I found to be most interesting and controversial was the idea that the noble wealthy men sacrificed themselves for the sake of the poor and the immigrants, but that these “underclass” citizens were undeserving.

The idea that the wealthy are inherently moral seems strange for this time period. As the nation shifted from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, more Americans started viewing large companies as bad for society and the wealthy as immoral and only looking out for themselves. Why then is an entire segment of society seeing the Titanic as a validation for the wealthy. At first I assumed that all of the newspapers reporting these stories would be from places like New York, where the readership was the industrial elite, but newspapers from all over the country were reporting this very story. On page 43 Biel quotes a Denver columnist who writes about the “disease-bitten child whose life is at best less than worthless, goes to safety.” What was in my mind the most interesting paradox was that for many the wealthy proved their right to live by dying, while the poor showed they were fit for death by living. There is a certain chivalric notion to that statement that I think one would be hard pressed to find in our modern era. Speaking of the modern times, I was trying to imagine a newspaper running an article like the Denver paper did in our time, and at first I thought it could never happen. As I thought more about it, the way most American newspapers report on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have a similar tone. While I think it is important that we hear about and honor our dead soldiers, far more innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians have been killed in the conflict and that is often not reported on, and when it is it is more of a side note.

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.

March 8, 2014December 16, 2020

Pompeii, Hollywood, and the Great Romance of Disaster

What is so romantic about impending disaster? In Hollywood, the combination of budding romance between star-crossed lovers and mass destruction has proven to be dramatic gold. James Cameron’s tale in Titanic of class-defying romance and inevitable heartbreak proved to be not only a huge success at the box office, but among critics as well. Titanic’s acclaim (and its monetary success) was certainly not ignored, and its strategy has been emulated numerous times. Pompeii, the new film from Paul W.S. Anderson (yes, the Resident Evil franchise director), undoubtedly reflects the ‘Jack, Rose, and rich snob’-style love triangle, with a disaster conveniently located to level the playing field and unite the true lovers.

The plot here shouldn’t surprise anyone. There are three main (heavily archetypal) characters: Milo (Harrington, the subjugated but suave slave/gladiator with a soft side for the ladies), Cassia (Browning, the aristocratic young beauty who despises her patrician peers), and Corvus (Sutherlund, the cruel politician with no empathy who wants to take Cassia as his wife). Vesuvius, of course, provides the convenience of destroying the class and social barriers preventing Milo and Cassia from riding off into the sunset. As John noted previously, Carl Smith emphasized how this destruction of barriers often horrified the upper classes, while many common people reveled in the anarchy.

The audience gets two major satisfactions from this kind of storyline. First, the Romeo and Juliet story provides catharsis, as it allows true love to emerge over seemingly insurmountable barriers. Second, the audience witnesses the downfall of corruption and egocentrism (a slave-owning society that values hedonism), exemplified through particular characters, who are often quite wealthy. If everyone thought that Corvus or Cal Hockley were great guys, then the star-crossed romance would have less punch. In other words, the disaster destroys both class superiority as well as the boundaries preventing “true love” from being achieved. Time to grab some popcorn.

January 24, 2014December 16, 2020

Old Disasters, Modern Metaphors

Before walking into the Gallery room for the State of Emergency, I noticed a strange work on the left side of the entrance hallway to the VAC. The black and white etching, called And the Santa Fell a Week Later, first appears to be a sort of ship sinking in icy waters, but closer inspection reveals that it is a kind of UFO crashed in the snow. The artist, Wisconsite John Edward Paquette, entered the piece into the first Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition in 1972, although he never fully explained his work or its objectives. The title, according to the placard, refers to how NASA astronauts typically use the callsign “Santa Claus” to identify potential UFOs. And the Santa Fell won a Purchase Award at Davidson and is now a permanent work in the college’s catalog. Regardless of the origin or the intentions of the etching, it can doubtlessly be interpreted as a disaster.

The viewer can utilize various clues to build an interpretation of Paquette’s work. The scene shows a small column of cavalry investigating a crashed object in a frozen wasteland. Using the horsemen as a scale, I noticed the immensity of the ship- one that could capably store thousands of people. The very first image that popped into my mind was the Titanic sinking in the North Atlantic. I’m not sure what led to this mental connection. Was it because AMC just had a marathon of the movie last weekend? Or does the image of any ship facing a vertical demise immediately remind me of the Titanic? As Paquette never fully explained the argument of his work, we are only left to the details and our interpretations. As a work from 1972, the Titanic, as well as UFOs, had both become established parts of American folklore. However, I believe that the Titanic imagery is more important and prevalent than the use of the UFO. In my opinion, Paquette is making a contemporary argument about the state of America at the time of his work.

Marston noted how disasters are often utilized as tools of “inflated dramatization” in modern media, and I believe that Paquette uses this idea in his work. In the 1970s, the United States was struggling with unemployment, oil embargoes, and defeat in Vietnam. There was a crisis of trust and leadership, as highlighted with the chaos in the Nixon Administration. Despite its past victories and technological advances, the nation found itself vulnerable and susceptible to setbacks. Common clichés concerning the Titanic include how the ship was perceived to be invincible by its backers, only to find that there were internal faults that they had overlooked or underestimated. The same story, arguably, could be used for Vietnam-era America, and Paquette uses the memorable image of the Titanic’s stern slowly descending into the ocean as the powerful analogy. The “advancedness” of the UFO’s structure symbolizes the material strength of the US military, while the ship’s demise reveals its overconfidence. Paquette’s symbolism reveals power of using historical disasters (especially well-documented ones) to construct contemporary arguments and metaphors. These kinds of disasters create emotional responses in our psychological interpretation of art, whether we notice them or not.

January 15, 2014December 16, 2020

Disaster in History: Social Injustice

History is something that is vital to human evolution however is not concrete. Disasters in history have created must contention between various views. Main topics of debate are how to study the history of American disasters. When defining “disaster” one must consider the platform in which they are arguing. Is a disaster created supernaturally? Or is it caused by man? Maybe both?

Jonathan Bergman points out how “disaster offers a unique lens with which to examine history” (935). Early beliefs of disaster may see it as a force beyond the power of man or nature but created through a higher being (God). As that is an early thought to the approach of how to define disaster one can see how the models have evolved to incorporate other factors. Worster formed a strong opinion that disasters are “work of man not nature” (937). His example was the Dust Bowl that occurred during the same time period as the Great Depression (1930s). The Dust Bowl can be argued that the land was overused and thus drying out the nutrients in the soil. However, there were also a multitude of natural events that multiplied the effects of man.

While those are only surface examples of how a disaster can be defined, the argument that I found the most accurate is his approach to studying disasters in American history. How Bergman points out how a disaster is caused and the effects that the disaster has both socially and economically in society. Bergman cites Karen Sawislak’s novel and ideas about the Great Fire in Chicago of 1871. In her argument she finds how “‘social difference’ shaped the ‘destinies’ of those affected by the fire” (938). This was shown in the efforts of rebuilding and how social disorder ensued. This aspect of social hierarchy is also shown in Kenneth Hewitt’s article when he addresses the Titanic. After the disaster of the Titanic, while there were more poor people on the ship more of the wealthy were able to survive due to their status they were able to get preferential life boats which ultimately saved their lives. How society reacts after a disaster ensues, whether it is a plague, a hurricane or a human error, is a way to analyze the faults in the system. The argument that I found to be the most convincing was Stephen Biel’s explanation of a disaster. According to Biel the meaning of disaster “can be found not only in cultural and political ideology, but in the evolution of relief regimes, engineering principles, and the news media” (939). This point felt the most persuasive because looking at the response or preparation of a disaster can help to advance society. I agree with the notion that disasters can be both “destructive and constructive” by regulating society naturally and manually.

Each “disaster” must be viewed an analyze on a case by case basis. There is no true way of distinguishing an exact formula of what a disaster is or how it can be prevented.