PicoBlog

i think loving Titanic (1997) is the only ethical american patriotism. i don’t understand how you could watch a 3-hour historical romantic epic by a canadian filmmaker about a class-stratified irish-built boat sinking somewhere between london and new york without tearing up and humming “God Bless the USA” over top of the french-canadian academy award-winning best song that plays as the credits roll. that’s Hollywood, that’s America, that’s life. Titanic is about wealth, hubris, youth, boats — so was the boston tea party. makes you think. 

Titanic is also about hands. Titanic is about james cameron’s freak nerd obsession with the historical Titanic (we should give more freak nerds who are also storytelling geniuses a billion dollars to make love-and-action-packed meat and potatoes out of those obsessions); one of his methods of conveying how much he knows and cares about Titanic is showing her to us through Rose Dewitt Bukater Dawson Calvert’s sense memory. the story we’re told is filtered through Rose’s experience — and how does she recall that experience? through touch. first, through refamiliarizing herself with the artifacts Bill Paxton and his fellow modern pirates recovered from her stateroom in pursuit of that really big diamond. she tells Bill Paxton (and us!) a painful story she’s never told only when she’s presented with physical evidence that it actually happened. Old Rose lets out the sweetest little gasp when she picks up the handheld mirror she owned on Titanic; the feeling of it dignifies her memory, her love, and her tragedy. 

while Rose’s story is conveyed to us mostly through literal, exhaustively historically accurate depiction, i imagine Rose tells the story in the Bill Paxton frame narrative by moving her hands from one artifact to the next, feeling the sensations the young version of herself felt the last time she touched them, letting them jog her repressed memory. one of the artifacts is her butterfly hair clip, which we see her hold onto up close in the present about an hour and a half before we see the younger Rose remove it from her hair so Jack Dawson can draw her like one of his french girls. these parallel shots of Rose’s hands help us understand that the butterfly hair clip she holds so carefully in the present reminds her of what she calls the most erotic moment of her life. maybe this was simply pro-artifact propaganda james cameron used as leverage to manipulate producers into allowing him to personally comb the wreckage of the real Titanic as many times as he wanted, but i choose to view the hands romantically.

because Rose’s hands remember more than the feel of an object — they remember the feel of Jack Dawson, who now exists “only in [her] memory.” Rose’s incredible sense memory gives great romantic power to the specific details she can recall about her entire voyage. “it’s been 84 years,” she says, invoking a sense that’s not touch, “and i can still smell the fresh paint.” we know this trip was significant to her long before the ship started to sink, for reasons larger and more profound than the freshness of paint. but she remembers everything, because forgetting one detail would mean forgetting some moment of her precious time with the boy she loved so much. this conceit also allows james cameron to get as detailed and nerdy with his Titanic recreation as he wants. it is romantic that Rose can remember everything perfectly, even after all this time; it’s also convenient that her memories are as vibrant as cameron’s vision for the film. 

there are so many close-up shots of Jack and Rose’s hands in Titanic. there are even hands beautifully drawn in Jack’s sketchbook: 

minutes before their first kiss on the bow of Titanic, Jack and Rose experience their first intentionally romantically intimate touch — their hands intertwined, moving over one another, as the sun sets. 

james cameron’s own hands famously appear in Titanic — his hands stand in for Jack’s while he draws Rose like one of his french girls. as the deeply caring architect of this narrative and creator of these characters, it makes sense to me that cameron inserts himself into his own hand motif. Jack draws Rose beautifully, because he loves her, and Jack can literally only love Rose by james cameron’s hand. they are both saying: i care about remembering this enough to depict it exactly as well as i love it. Jack is thinking about Rose; cameron is thinking about Titanic. 

i do not believe it is a coincidence that the Titanic sex scene begins with Rose saying “put your hands on me, Jack,” and that rather than showing us their intimacy, cameron chooses to show us Rose’s hand pressed against a steamy window in the heat of their passion. 

an ancient geocities article i found about hands in Titanic points out that the hands are symbolic even beyond imagery and memory: “Jack and Rose are always safe, as long as their hands are together. In the gymnasium, when Jack is pleading with Rose to break free, he shows his emotion by tenderly stroking her face,” the author writes. “Contrast it with Cal. He expresses his feelings for Rose by giving her the necklace… And what is the only way Cal is able to keep the lovers apart? By cuffing Jack's hands behind his back.”

sometimes i hate talking about Titanic, because it is so popular and nearly-universally seen that people think their nitpicky criticisms are smart and interesting. they’re usually not. let me address a bunch of them: he couldn’t have fit on the door frame, they tried. they scream each other’s names all the time in the end because of course they do?! do you think you would’ve been able to keep track of your people on a sinking ocean liner?!?!? billy zane plays a cartoon villain with a gun because that rules, what’s wrong with you? Rose throws the heart of the ocean away in the end because its value is meaningless compared to true love and emotional closure. do you really want to see the “Rose sells the diamond for a zillion dollars” movie??? no!!! you don’t!!! i promise you don’t!!! 

the one i hate most, though, is, “uhhhhhh, why does she say she’ll never let go if she immediately lets go of his hand and lets him drop into the water???” first of all, shut up. it’s a metaphor. he is dead already, and he made her promise to survive, and her repeating that important phrase back to him stands in for her promise to survive. reframed in the context of the hands motif, though, it makes even more sense that she says she’ll never let go as she’s physically releasing his hand. “i’ll never let go” dignifies a spiritual sensation of touch that lingers long after the physical has gone. Rose will never forget Jack Dawson, and that includes his touch, and that includes his hands.

hey guys. thanks for reading. i rebranded??? so that my substack doesn’t have the word “tautology” in the title. do you guys like the new name. it’s from That Thing You Do! (1996).

i am *so* unemployed and broke. if you liked this and want to throw me some money for a coffee my venmo is @Sarah-Leiber, or you can subscribe using the button. i would love and appreciate you and draw your hands lovingly forever. love you.

ncG1vNJzZmirkaeuqbbAnmWsrZKowaKvymeaqKVfpXy1tdOapaKbXZ7Abq3BqKytZZiWu6W%2F