Tag Archives: Tacky Titanic

Etiquette in Titanic movie; Tacky Titanic Alert;Titanic Wreck Footage

 

Poster Advertising Vinolia Otto Soap for Titanic
Image:Public Domain

Expert: “Titanic” Shows 1912 Era Etiquette Accurately
TechnoTrenz, 31 Jul 2022

In June 2022, Meier spoke with V?nity F?ir ?bout the ver?city of the m?nners depicted in well-liked movies ?nd TV shows like Tit?nic. Be?umont Etiquette, ? business owned by Meier, provides ?dvice ?nd instruction in proper Continent?l Europe?n, British, ?nd Americ?n m?nners. When it comes to depicting m?nners of the er?, “Tit?nic is one of my f?vorite movies,” Meier s?id. It tr?nsports us to 1912, The m?nners you displ?yed in public ?nd in society reve?led your fin?nci?l status ?nd level of education, as well as whether you were wealthy or not.

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Video-It’s Back! Giant Titanic Inflatable Slide
Daily Mail, 31 Jul 2022
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1300364/Thrill-seeking-GIANT-Titanic-inflatable-grabs.html?page=

There are no words adequate to describe what I think about this.

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Vessel Sinks But Not Spirits At Cardboard Boat Regatta
Yahoo News, 31 July 202

A small vessel sunk in Lafayette on Sunday, flanked by pirates and a small whale watching craft. The captain, Carter Aram, 20, and his first mate, Harper Arenson-Pie, 16, never abandoned their ship, despite only a mangled duct tape hull left to cling to by the time they returned to the ladder at the shallow end of the pool. “I sunk with pride,” said a breathless Aram, after competing against two other teams during the maiden cardboard boat regatta at the Great Outdoors Water Park. The lifeguard knew the irony of naming his boat “Titanic 2.”

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Titanic Wreck Bow
Image: Public Domain (NOAA-http://www.gc.noaa.gov/images/gcil/ATT00561.jpg)

Footage Shows How Different The Titanic Looks After Over A Century Of Erosion By The Sea
TimesNowNews, 31 July 2022

The eerie footage, posted on TikTok and other platforms, showed the vessel’s rusted icicle shapes that have formed on the hull. Background voices of the expedition members suggest even they were both happy and pleasantly surprise by what they saw. “Wow. Did the lights just go off? It didn’t sound like anything, but it went darker on the right side. Starboard side,” a man is heard saying.

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Titanic Explorers Lose Light As They Search Through Wreck In Terrifying New Footage
LadBible, 30 Jul 2022

After a short while, the video begins to make more sense and we see what looks like the top portion of the boat accompanied by a central anchor. All of a sudden, the light begins to change and a strange fog appears at the left hand side of the video. One of the voices can be heard saying: “Wow. Did the lights just go off?” to which someone else replies: “It didn’t sound like anything, but it went darker on the right side. Starboard side.”

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Unique Titanic Collectors’ Items On Sale At Torquay Museum
Torbay Weekly, 29 Jul 2022

Meanwhile, the Titanic exhibition will allow visitors to see artefacts from the ship, explore Torquay’s connection to the Titanic and learn about the people that travelled on board. Alongside these latest exhibitions comes brand new stock in the gift shop.

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Stuck In Time: Inside An Abandoned Castle Owned By Titanic Victims
New York Post, 27 Jul 2022

Ramy Awad, an urban explorer living in New York City, set out to central France to document an abandoned 19th-century castle, which he claims was once home to victims of the Titanic disaster. The result? A TikTok video that has already garnered more than 10.2 million views in which Awad gives viewers a tour inside the castle, which features fully furnished rooms with vintage rugs and furniture, wooden panels, built-in bookshelves and bed covers.

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The Debate Continues On Whether To Laugh Or Not At Events Like Titanic

Photo: Public Domain (publicdomainpictures.net)
Photo: Public Domain (publicdomainpictures.net)

Many years ago I was in an office building in which a crazed man gunned down people several floors above. It was a terrible event and local media (and later national as well) all reported on it. Many months later an employee of the firm circulated a memo that, in part, made fun of the event. I was one of the few who challenged him about doing it, others simply ignored it or threw the memo into the trash bins. He got indignant, as I recall, when challenged about using the event as a joke (and using office resources to do it). At any rate, it forced management to put an end to sending out personal interoffice correspondence without approval. That was in the days before the Internet, email, tweets, and other social media that now permeate our world.

The events of 9/11 were seared into many who saw what happened that day. To this day the national media hides some of the more graphic sides, namely of people throwing themselves out of buildings since the choices was either burning/choking to death or a quick end by leaping out of the building. Then Mayor Rudy Giuliani recalls hearing this thudding sound outside of the building he was in. It was the sound of bodies hitting the ground. Now you can find this information, some are included in documentaries or in still photographs from that day. But generally media avoids showing this because of how awful it was. Few jest about what happened and jokes about 9/11 are generally avoided. And comics who go that route take a serious risk of alienating their audience and ending gigs lined up.

Titanic, because it has become iconic, has its own special place in history and culture. 1500 people died because the British Board of Trade never bothered to update regulations on lifeboats and because of complacency. Captain Smith never considered icebergs a problem and despite ice warnings, moved Titanic through an ice field at night when visibility was limited due to lack of moonlight and binoculars for the lookouts. So many what ifs can be pointed out that could have changed the outcome that night. Whole families were lost and families separated forever. What ought to have been a glorious day of celebration when Titanic arrived in New York was one of great sadness when the survivors came ashore. And the only thing left of Titanic were the lifeboats.

That happened in 1912, 101 years ago. Last year saw a major remembrance of the sinking and how still Titanic is part of our culture. Despite that you see things like tacky Titanic shaped ice cube molds. Or Titanic slides that kids slide down not understanding its implication. Then there are t-shirts out there that say “Titanic Swim Team.” And finally what drew the ire of many was Red Bull’s advert that made light of the tragedy. Red Bull says it was just in fun and certainly that was their intent. They got away with it because the uproar was light. They got what they wanted, publicity for an energy drink but it comes at price. The price being it turns off a lot of people who may never buy Red Bull again. It is one thing to do a show like MASH and poke fun at war but show its serious side but another to mock. Hogan’s Heroes was a show meant to get laughs out of showing the prisoners running a major underground operation right under the watchful eyes of Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz. Most people do not realize that it was purposeful to depict the Germans as idiots. And Werner Klemperer, whose father was forced to leave Germany when Hitler came to power, demanded that of the producers.

Some argue that over time we can be desensitized to past events we have no connection to.There is a point to this and sometimes it is ignorance or lack of empathy. When either occurs, it becomes all too easy to simply look at past tragedies and not care much. And that makes it possible for people to make light of tragedies and come up with dumb products or t-shirts. It means that those who do care have to work harder to remind people not to forget the human cost of the events they trivialize.


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Titanic Musings

With the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking over, things have quieted down. News wires were jammed with Titanic themed stories, sometimes just repeating what others wrote. There were remembrances galore, Titanic dinners, heartfelt commemorations. And then inevitably come the commentators all trying to write that piece that sums up Titanic. I lit a candle and watched the movie  A Night To Remember based on Walter Lord’s book of the same name. Though we have modern treatments like Cameron’s and a recent BBC miniseries, this movie still resonates.

I recommend the Criterion collection version which has commentary by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall. They provide lots of interesting details, historical and otherwise, to the movie. The movie does a good job of visualizing Lord’s book but does shift around some things and not always historically accurate (like the opening scene which depicts a ceremony christening Titanic which never happened). Captain Smith comes across as more decisive in the movie but in actuality less so. The movie tends to show the crew working better than in reality in lowering lifeboats. On Titanic most of the crew and officers were unfamiliar with the ship and there were no drills. We see also how frightening it was to step into those boats seeing how far down they had to be lowered. We also see two very different reactions to Titanic’s sinking on California and Carpathia.

The depiction of Lord in that movie caused the real Captain Lord to seek a new investigation believing he had been unfairly maligned. Lord came under severe criticism in 1912 for failing to act. Conflicting testimony and Lord’s own statement the ship seemed to steam away gave rise to theories of a third ship, but that has never been proven. What is damning is that neither the officers or him were that interested in that ship to wake-up the wireless operator. Had they done so the SOS would have been heard. Rostron on Carpathia sprung into immediate action once he got the information and immediately set off. It is that standard that Lord, fair or not, is held to. Now had Lord had learned the same information at the same time as Carpathia, the outcome would have been the same. Both would have arrived long after the sinking and most passengers had died. So to blame Lord for Titanic deaths is a stretch and both of those captains heeded the ice warnings and stopped for the night while Captain Smith sped on.

There are many stories associated with Titanic and one notable is about Isidor and Ida Straus. When Isidor declined a seat on a lifeboat insisting that women and younger men be saved before him, Ida declined a seat saying “I will not be separated from my husband.”  As we have lived so will we die together.” It is one of those stories, told by witnesses afterwords, that had a lingering impact on people who learned of it. Such a remarkable show of love and devotion tends to do that. While most people learn that Isidor Strauss owned Macy’s not much else is reported about his life. Wikipedia has a biographical sketch but does not give you a feel for who he really was.

Thankfully an article in Jewish Ideas Daily does. Born in 1845 in Otterberg, Germany, his family immigrated to America in 1854 and settled in Talbotton, Georgia. While his family was Jewish, the family no longer was observant and ate bacon from their own smokehouse. He tried enlisting in the Confederate Army but was too young (16) and spent the war working as a store clerk. After the war the family moved to New York where he and his brother Nathan ran a shop selling family glassware and crockery at Macy’s Department Store. By 1896 both Isidor and Nathan took over ownership after the Macy family decided to sell making Isidor a very wealthy man.

Despite having no Jewish education and a secularist, he supported many Jewish institutions and causes even many he did not agree with. He was ardently anti-Zionist and wrote scathingly of its cause. His brother Nathan though was a supporter after a trip to the Holy Land. Ida was more appreciative of Jewish traditions reminding her grown children to remember Pasach and to eat Matzos. Like many he believed himself no longer Jewish but assimilated. Isidor and Ida’s deaths was mourned. Many Jews had died on Titanic but their story was the most well known. Memorial services were held in many places, a park in their name opened three years later (Straus Park). There is a memorial plaque on the first floor of Macy’s in New York, a public school named after them, and Straus Hall at Harvard (a gift from his three sons).

Walter Lord Still Lives On

Walter Lord’s A Night To Remember  first published in 1955 is enjoying record sales, print and e-versions. According to an AP report, 30,000 downloads of the e-edition were recorded by Open Road Integrated Media–the digital publisher. This is an excellent book. Check your local library to see if they have the old or newer editions of the book. It is worth reading and Lord’s excellent writing style does not disappoint. His book about Dunkirk is also highly praised. Worth a read if you come across it.

The Dark Side of Titanic

Gerry Adams penned an op-ed piece in the Irish Echo about Titanic. Adams, of course, was one of those agitating against the British in Northern Ireland for many years. So it comes as no surprise, despite the peace accords, that he would take a whack at British dominated Ireland in 1912. Harland & Wolff did not hire many Catholics, some were expelled, beaten or even killed. He writes further of the bad conditions Catholics endured and the divisions festered by government and business owners. It is interesting that while Adams praises the promising jobs created by Titanic themed building in Belfast, he wants no one to forget the society that built it. He praises Titanic but rues the society that built it.

Here We Go Again….Titanic II

Right after James Cameron’s movie came out there were people saying they wanted to build Titanic II. Nothing came of them, except lots of chatter on the Internet. Fast forward to 2012 and guess what? Some very rich guy who lives down under wants to build Titanic II. Oh and with Chinese help! It is his money, of course, so he is free to spend it as he wishes. However one wonders if it all just publicity stunt for something else. Whatever. Not holding my breath for tickets available for Titanic II in the near future.

Tacky Titanic:Titanic icecube

 

Need I say more?


Tacky Titanic: Titanic Inflatable Slide Appears in Switzerland

]Many readers know about the Titanic slide (see my post Titanic Adventure Slide). Designed to look like Titanic sinking with its fantail in the air, kids slide down not knowing the tragedy the slide is based on. Kids find the slide fun while many adults, who know the Titanic story, are sometimes appalled. Such is the case right now in Ibach, Switzerland.

According to the Independent, the bouncy castle fair organizers are defending the use of the Titanic slide. The newspaper reports that critics call it insensitive and a “bouncy graveyard.” Switzerland’s Titanic Club has also weighed in on the matter:

But Gunter Babler, spokesman for Switzerland’s Titanic Club, asked: “Is it ethical to let kids slide down the decks of a blow up Titanic? Hundreds of people died sliding down those decks.”

Responding to the criticism, one of the organizers said Titanic sank long ago and those emotions have long been dealt with. Both sides have a point here about remembering Titanic. Creating a slide for children to slide down upon makes light of the tragedy that night. Unethical? Not really. Tacky and thoughtless most certainly. Parents are the ones who ought to exercise judgment here if they do not want their kids on the slide.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, Titanic Bouncy Castle With Inflatable Icebergs Is A ‘Bouncy Graveyard,’30 June 2010