Blockbuster film Titanic has maintained its number one position in the American market since its opening in mid-January. One reason for its success has been its overall message that love ultimately triumphs over money, a belief American society generally likes to think itself as intrinsically driven by. The delineation of class by deck in the movie establishes a clear division of power by which the Edwardian upper class comes to represent the forces of production attempting to maintain the existing superstructure by containing any subversive attempts of resistance made by the lower classes. The daughter of a "society empress" from a prominent Philadelphia family, seventeen year old Rose DeWitt Bukater, originally emerges as a symbol of the aristocratic Bourgeoisie governing the ship (16). Conversely, twenty year old Jack Dawson, "lanky [American] drifter" (19), symbolizes the proletariat lower class struggling to resist injustices imposed upon them by the forces of production. The love that evolves between Jack and Rose in their five days on the Titanic, then, symbolizes a union between the forces and relations of production and, thus, a subversive resistance to the superstructure's demand for class division. Attempts made by Rose's fiancée, Cal Hockley and her mother, Ruth, to separate her from Jack reflect a desperate attempt by the superstructure to contain this resistance and maintain itself as the dominant force of production. Rose's ultimate estrangement from her aristocratic role, however, reflects that her resistance has been successful and reveals her intrinsic desire to subvert the dominant power structure and thereby unite classes.
Establishing the central conflict as the struggle between love and money, the film opens with a flock of modern day scientists searching the ruins of Titanic at the bottom of the ocean in an attempt to locate a famed 56 carat diamond that apparently went down with the ship in 1912. "Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond," Brock Lovett, head scientist, reports (11). Meeting with Lovett to discuss events that occurred eighty-six years earlier, a ninety-nine year old Rose describes the diamond as merely a "dreadful, heavy thing" (11). Unimpressed with the diamond's monetary value, an older Rose represents Marx's ideal individual, motivated by intrinsic desires rather than capitalistic drives for financial superiority. Lovett, conversely, resembles the capitalist Bourgeoisie, valuing objects and people according to how they can advance his own net worth. Just as he values the diamond over individuals in his life (he divorced his wife in order to give full attention to this mission of recovering "Le Coeur de la Mer"--The Heart of the Ocean), so too he values this older Rose merely for the knowledge she possesses about the diamond's whereabouts. Like the upper class depicted on Titanic, Lovett's drive for fame and wealth determines his appraisal of his environment. Eager to obtain Rose's story he quickly tells her, "I will happily compensate you for anything you can tell us that will lead to [the diamond's] discovery." A shrewd Rose, fed up with Lovett's preoccupation with money, replies, "I don't want your money, Mr. Lovett. I know how hard it is for people who care greatly for money to give some away" (12). Aware of the damage money did to her as a youth, having been forced into an engagement with a man she did not love to secure her class and inheritance, Rose acknowledges Lovett's dangerous fascination with the worth of the Diamond and adherence to capitalist ideals.
As the elderly Rose begins her story, the picture of the Edwardian aristocracy of which she was a part and which controlled the other classes on the ship comes into focus. Cal immediately emerges as a central spokesman for the Aristocracy, as he pays off a porter to bypass the baggage check and calls the lower class passengers he sees "steerage swine" (18). "Cal never tires of the effect of money on the unwashed masses," reads the script's notes (17). Defining himself according to his superior class position, Cal upholds that distinction by reminding the lower class of its financial inferiority.
Conversely, Jack represents the lower class proletariat, living according to his own motivations and unconcerned with monetary distinction. While he values his own innate drives to create (he is an artist) over external insistence on financial competition, however, Jack is aware of the existing hierarchy and of his place at the bottom of it. Once on board, for example, Jack remarks to friend Tommy that the first class dogs come down to their deck "to take a shit...so we know where we rank in the scheme of things;" to which Tommy replies, "Like we could forget" (29). Aware of the dominant power structures that govern the ship and require a separation between upper class and lower class, Jack and Tommy resist such superstructure, however, only through the passive means of sarcasm. Not until Jack sees Rose from a distance and later saves her life by pulling her back from the edge during an attempted suicide does Jack make active efforts to resist the established power structure that disadvantages him.
Rose, however, becomes resistant--at least emotionally--to the capitalist superstructure from her first introduction as we hear her thoughts explain, "Outwardly I was everything a well brought up girl should be. Inside, I was screaming" (19). Already dissatisfied with her role in the upper class, Rose is prepared to make the transition from passive to active resistance once Jack's love gives her the impetus. The moment before she runs to the edge of the ship to attempt her own suicide, she expresses her resistance to her established role by "ripping off her pearl necklace" (30). As money is the reason she must marry Cal, her destruction of this symbol of her worth reflects a first attempt to resist the superstructure. When Jack retrieves her from the edge and their love begins, her resistance evolves from anger at her aristocratic role to an intrinsic desire to connect with a member of another class. This reciprocal desire is symbolized in Jack's comment that he will not leave her because, as he says, "I'm involved now" (32). Despite criticism from friends, Jack allows his love to overpower his knowledge that he shall not associate with members of the first class.
Cal's appraisal of Jack to Rose as "a steerage ruffian, unwashed and ill-mannered" (36) reflects the first of his attempts to contain what he begins to understand as Rose's resistance to the superstructure. Ruth, too, Rose's mother, blames Jack for her daughter's growing resistance and attempts to subvert this resistance by exhibiting disapproval of this third-class "steerage." "My mother looked at him like an insect," remarks an elderly Rose, describing her mother's expression when she first sees the two of them together; "A dangerous insect," she continues, "which must be squashed quickly." Sensing the implicit danger in their affection for each other, Ruth understands the necessity of containing this potential resistance as soon as possible.
When Rose finally denounces Cal and, thus, her family inheritance, and chooses Jack, she denies her capitalistic role at the top of the hierarchy and emotionally connects with another human being for the first time in her life. Although Jack admits to Rose, "I know I have nothing to offer you" (66), she abides by her deeper feelings for him and chooses love over money, explaining, "When this ship docks, I'm getting off with you" (2b). When, in one last attempt to contain her subversion, Cal accuses her of being Jack's "whore," Rose confidently replies, "I'd rather be his whore than your wife" (22b). Her separation from the aristocracy is nearly complete and nothing Cal or Ruth can say is able to prevent this separation.
When, lowered in the life-boats without Jack, Rose leaps back into the sinking Titanic to spend her last moments with him, it becomes clear that, as the script explains, "She is willing to die for this man" (41b). Even after Jack eventually dies in the freezing waters and Rose is rescued by a life boat, she denies her last chance to reunite with Cal, who has also survived, by letting him and her family believe that she went down with the Titanic. To seal her bond with her deceased love, she changes her name from Rose DeWitt Bukater to Rose Dawson, taking Jack's last name, and thus, his lower class heritage. An older Rose acknowledges her success in resisting the dominant power structure by admitting to Lovett, who has attentively heard her moving account, "he saved me, in every way a person can be saved" (66b). Although Jack died with the Titanic, his ability to encourage Rose's release from her capitalistic enslavement "saved" her from the bonds of the aristocratic forces of production. Despite continual pressure from the dominant class to prevent her resistance, Rose's escape from this world affirms the ultimate success of her subversion of the hierarchy.
Not only has she been freed of capitalistic insistence on economic and class delineation, but Lovett, in listening to her tale of love, has come to understand his own folly in placing his drive for money over his need to connect with other people. "With her story," reads the script, "Rose has put them on the Titanic in its final hours and for the first time, they do feel like graverobbers" (63b). Their years of dissecting the sunken Titanic in search of the lost diamond becomes nearly criminal set against this tale of human love and massive death. "Lovett," the script explains, "for the first time, has even forgotten to ask about the diamond" (63b). Rose's experience, as well as the telling of it, has had the ability to subvert an entire power system, calling into question the ultimate value of class and monetary superiority.
Knowing only that she was dissatisfied with her current position in the superstructure of Edwardian upper class, Rose DeWitt Bukater boards the Titanic with little knowledge that she possessed the power to undermine such superstructure. Possessed by an inherent drive to emotionally connect with Jack, Rose quickly understands her need to resist her external class expectations and follow her instincts. Despite consistent attempts from representatives of that class system to contain Rose's growing acts of resistance, the strength of love ultimately wins out in this film. An optimisitic depiction of the human need for love to triumph over superficial capitalistic expectations, Titanic reflects a hope that the relations of production have the ability to overpower dominant forces of production.
Cameron, James. "Titanic Script 1/2." SoHo.
Cameron, James. "Titanic Script 2/2." SoHo.
©CopyrightSusan M. Weaver