A Fairy Tale called the Titanic
Modern mythology on the inner marriage
The first time I saw the movie Titanic, I was 13 y/o and in my second year of high school. Me and my friends thought it was girly and it was obvious not to like such a story being a young teenage boy. And also, why the fad?
I had conversation with somebody about the impact of Covid-19 on the economy and we talked in analogies of the Titanic. The economy as a sinking ship, where first the lower (poor) levels are flooded, and the rich people are preparing their lifeboats at the cost of everybody else. This conversation got me intrigued in watching the movie again 22 years later and I was astounded at how good it was. Moreover, I actually think it’s a strong mythological story, a modern day fairy tale about the inner marriage. In this analysis I will take a deep dive into the mythos of the Titanic.
The Height of Creation carries the Seed of Destruction
In real life, the name of the ship Titanic was derived from Greek Mythology as well. The Titans were a group of gods that preceded the Olympians whom we are most familiar with: Zeus, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Demeter and Hera. Note that also the Titanic wasn’t the only ship in the White Star fleet, the others of the same class were called, wait for it: … the Brittanic and the Olympic.
Among the Titanic gods we have for example: Prometheus, Chronos, Oceanus, Atlas, etc.. These gods were the children of Ouranos and Gaya or the Sky and the Earth. They therefore ruled the over the expansion and the boundaries of physical space-time. E.g. Chronos is the god of Time, Atlas carries the Globe, Helios the Sun god, Eos the Goddess of Dawn, etc.. So calling a ship after the Gods of space-time is perhaps not a bad one for a ship that cruises on the oceans between land, sea and heaven.
But the movie has a more obvious link to Greek mythology. The main story of the Titanic is that of Icarus, the flying boy that went too close to the sun. Against his father Daedules’ warnings he comes too close to the sun, his wings made of feathers and wax melted as he crashed down to the Earth. Note here that the sun is the highest God in Egyptian mythology. Tempting to be close to sun is to tempt godhood. One who stretches too far, is overconfident, ignores the laws of nature, will eventually fall back down to the Earth. Like a pendulum swinging back from one extreme to the other.
In the film we observe a ship more luxurious, stronger and bigger than was ever built before. But for the Architect of the ship (Bruce Ismay), that wasn’t enough. He needed new headlines for the Titanic in the newspapers, so it also had to be faster. This decision lead to sacrificing fame and personal gain over the well-being of others. More precisely, the security of ship. Note, in the design and building the ship, security was already compromised. For example by not carrying enough lifeboats or using inferior materials for the ship’s hull. But the overconfidence and allure of personal gains were too great. The limits of the ship were exceeded, it went too close the Sun and it crashed and sank.
In Eastern philosophy, there’s the Yin and Yang symbol. Basically, this image can be interpreted as the balance between order and chaos. But inspect this image deeply. At the darkest points polarity reverses. So deep black turns into white and clear white turns into black. So, order births chaos and vice versa. In the case of Titanic the quest for too much order turned into total chaos. Therefore it is said that the height of creation carries the seed of destruction.
The main story is set by the sacrifices/compromises by the creator and operator of the Titanic (read: Architect and Captain). A disaster waiting to unfold, the tempting of the Gods waiting to be punished.
Personal gain over altruism or one could say the confusion over rich and poor, fake and real, ego and other are the main polarities that dominate the ideas and tensions of the story and sub stories.
The same story line plays itself out in the meta story where the salvagers remain focussed on retrieving the “Heart of the Ocean” necklace, until they have finally ‘salvaged’ the real treasure which is the story of Jack & Rose.
Rich and Poor
The rich and poor theme is played out through the whole story, but take note, one can look at this physically and spiritually. Of even more importance, the main contrast between physically and spiritually rich is the core theme of the movie and they are portrayed as diametrical opposites. I.e. rich in physical space means poor in spiritual space and vice versa. I’m not saying that this is always true in real life, but it’s the idea that’s being played out in the Titanic.
The darker/evil characters believe that wealth is having material belongings (outer riches), whereas the lighter/hero characters believe that true wealth is spiritual belongings or inner riches. The hero characters will sacrifice money for love whereas the darker characters sacrifice love for money.
The most powerful difference is that love is eternal, but material wealth is not. I’ll talk more about this in the conclusion.
The divide between poor and rich is physically present on the ship. The upper decks are for the wealthy and the lower decks are for the plebs. Parts of the upper decks are restricted for the poor. In the latter parts of the movie, the poor levels feel the crisis first, but then are locked on the lower levels in order for the wealthy to have their seats on the life rafts first.
Mythological Analysis of the Plot
The story portrays a few common archetypes, like the masculin, the feminin, the hero, the king and their shadow counter parts. These archetypes are ingrained in the psychology of every human being on this planet. Therefore, it’s easy to relate to the myth of the Titanic. It’s a play of these archetypes between the forces of the shadow and the light. It’s a play in which we are also actors in our day to day lives.
The main take of the story is the struggle between inner and outer. It’s the duality between poor vs rich, real vs fake, love vs fear. Perhaps, the duality of rich against poor is most accurate for this story. The divide is clearly visible in the physical world where the poor and rich are divided on the ship between the upper and lower decks. But the dichotomy is also real looking at in it in spiritual sense, where Rose seeks a richer life in stead being rich in terms of money. She has to move away from her materialistic fiancé and move towards Jack who has no money but is rich within.
As also mentioned in my analysis on the Little Mermaid, the meta narrative is the salvaging of a treasure at the bottom of the ocean from a wreckage. This is all symbolic, where everything below the surface of the sea is the unconscious. And the salvaging operation was for material treasure, the piece of jewelry, but turns out to be the salvaging of a love story from depths of the soul.
Crisis
The sinking of the ship is a crisis situation which draws out the personas of people on board. They suddenly are pushed to the situation where they have to make difficult decisions. Will they act out of love, or out of self preservation?
Rose seeks a more meaningful life, rich of soul. She’s very unhappy with her life of material riches, but perhaps more important: a deprived spiritual life. She has an unloving, egoistic and jealous husband. Rose stays with him because of her mother who told her that that’s the only way to have security (to survive). Unwilling to dare and get out of the narrative with the mother, she has remained chained on a “slave ship” as she calls it narrating.
In life there are two types of situations: on stage and behind the curtains. Rose’s life is merely an on-stage event where she has to pretend she’s somebody. The scene at the back of the boat is the real her, behind the curtains, where nobody but Jack is around and she can be herself. Her desperate situation drove her to try to commit suicide that night. She forms like an anti-figurehead when she holds onto the railing at the aft of the Titanic, ready to jump. Perhaps ready to jump into her new life. The jumping theme comes back again later in the story: “You jump, I jump!”. A jump into the ocean of the unknown.
That same night she’s tempted by her fiancé in the mirror who offers Rose the “heart of the ocean”. But it’s a blue heart not a red one. It’s cold, materialistic and … a prison. The mirror is a symbol of reflection, key to this scene, as Rose hasn’t yet made her mind up about which way she’s gonna go. Is she gonna stay in her old life or is she gonna let that go, overcome her fear and move into a new, broader and more meaningful life.
Inverse Snow Whites
Common in modern fairy tales is that we’re seeing flipped archetypal themes of classic fairy tales. For example, in the classic fairy tales of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty it’s the heroic prince who kisses awake the princess from her curse. It perhaps stems from a time where the female was more repressed and needed to be unchained and uncaged.
These days perhaps it’s the lack of healthy male energy that the world is lacking. Therefore, modern fairy tales seem to have inversed the idea, where now it’s the princess that liberates the prince. Where in the beginning it is Jack who inspires Rose to break free, but in the latter part of the story she actually needs to unshackle “the prince” from the flooding of the lower decks where he’s been chained by the dark prince.
Similar themes play out through the 90s and onwards in other stories. In the Matrix it’s Trinity who kisses Neo back to life. In the Lion King it’s Nala who makes Simba come back from the jungle to return to pride rock. In the Lord of the Rings it’s Aeowyn who revives Aragorn with a kiss after he has fallen from a cliff. There are many more examples of the Inverse Snow White in modern day film, you can see them all the time.
The Inner Marriage
Many people would agree that the end of the Titanic is not a happy ending. I disagree. If you look at this film without any mythological context then yes, Jack dies, very sad day. However, this is a fairy tale, which is made obvious in the last scene, where we finally have the wedding between our prince and princess.
In this scene we zoom to the bottom of the ocean where lays the wreckage of the Titanic. But what happens there is the marriage between Jack and Rose, the male and the female. For Rose, the meeting with Jack was not just an outer thing. She found the man within. When letting Jack go when she was floating on the raft, she had already married him in spirit. He in fact never died. She met him inside and never let go of him spiritually. That’s the main point of the movie. What is happening in the physical world is just the on stage event. Jack died on stage, but he lived on in Rose her heart and always went with her from that point.
“They never found anything on Jack. There’s no record of him at all”
Confusing the audience. We could now pose that Rose her experience with Jack was just a figment of her imagination. He entered her life on the ship and went down with the ship, like a ghost. The author of the movie leaves the possibility of him not being “real” as there’s no evidence of him. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever Jack was, even if he was just imaginary, it saved her and she married the spirit of him. The same trick is done in Contact when Arroway (Jodie Foster) cannot prove her experience of meeting her dead father in outer space.
The lyrics at the end credits also reflect this idea, in the infamous song “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion:
Every night in my dreams I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you go on
Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you, go onNear, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more, you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and onLove can touch us one time and last for a lifetime
And never let go till we’re gone
Love was when I loved you, one true time I hold to
In my life we’ll always go onNear, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more, you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and onYou’re here, there’s nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on
We’ll stay forever this way
You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
So, Jack goes on inside of her. His spirit was incorporated into her. He only died physically, not spiritually. These lyrics are not just words, they are reflecting a deeper reality of who we really are. And also perhaps of what truly loving somebody really means, a marriage of spirit.