Titanic: Sharing the Boat and Never Letting Go of Humanity

Episode Transcript

Episode Page with Pictures

Episode Host:

Jennie Ziverk Carr

Co-Host:

Sarah Woolverton-Mohler

Screen Cares host Jennie describes how seeing the record-making blockbuster Titanic 5+ times in theaters with her mom, when she was younger, shaped her appreciation of film, material culture, and the importance of embracing our role in Humanity. Co-host Sarah asks illuminating questions that help the Screen Cares team reveal the film's significance as more than a heartthrob romance. Exploring the legacy of Titanic the ship and the juggernaut of a film casts a light on what it means to be a responsible human, the power of artifacts and ruin, and our power to choose what items and practices best serve us and help us decide what we need to let go. 

• This episode of Screen Cares discusses social responsibility and the tragedy of Classism aboard the RMS Titanic in 1912, but class, poverty, and indifference still cause immeasurable harm in our modern world.
  • Learn more about classism-and what can be done to end it- by checking out this List of Organizations Working to End Classism so we can all "share the ship of humanity" better-together. 

Screen Shares Rating: 

• Buddy Screen
  • Great to watch with a friend who appreciates humanity, but will also eye roll and cry in equal measure throughout the film's many timeless and sometimes cheesy moments. Be sure it’s a friend with whom you feel comfortable watching nude scenes and steamy models-t fords. 
• Family Screen 
  • Works if you can get over the hinky bits. I recommend a mandatory snack break when the drawing pencils come out. Can spark good convo about responsibility to others.

Screen Sparks:

1. What role would you have played on the ship?
   1. Would we keep playing as the musicians
   2. Would we read our children a bedtime story
   3. Would we fight for a newfound love?
   4. Would we push people away from our own lifeboat or help them in like unsinkable molly brown?
2. Is never letting go always a good thing? 
3. Can you think of any modern movies that so effectively marry cinematic spectacle and humanistic narrative? 
4. Class and artifice are not real, but the outcomes are. Social injustices resulted in very real atrocities. Those people did not need to die. Reminds me of a song I like by Lead Belly a folk blues singer born in 1888 “We’re in the Same Boat Brother”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxPdl4f7RYE So the question is…are we doing any better sharing the boat as humanity today?

Bonus Material-Links Referenced during the show:

• Read all of the summaries, trivia, and media on the Titanic IMBD page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/ 
• Article about how My Heart Came to be the earworm we can never let go: https://www.ment