Does Anybody Really Care About The Titanic? Really Like? Really?

[Minder]

The aren't finished with it yet, the MLAs in Stormont are having a 2 hr debate about it this morning. I can just imagine them sitting with a Titanic colouring in book.

A 2hr debate about what exactly?

Dunno, some journalist had it on Twitter earlier. They have been off for two weeks and their first bit of business was a chat about the Titanic.

Not any auld chat! Some DUP fella wants a Titanic memorial at Stormont because there just hasnt been enough public money spent on it. Some other Alliance chap wanted to red up Andrew Marr. Some outfit.

I read that about the proposal for a memorial in Stormont - ridiculous - they've just unveiled a memorial outside the city hall. Enough is enough.

Would be another photo opportunity though.

[sheamy]

Clowns at stormont. SF mayor of Belfast no better. Whole thing is a feckin disaster.

[Minder]

The Times - Kevin Maher

Now that "Titanic Day" has finally passed, and that we've all duly bowed our heads in remembrance of the 1,500 souls who perished so tragically in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, can we all get together as a global community, join hands and solemnly say the words "Never again"?

Never again will we allow ourselves to indulge in a month-long spectacle of such abject breast-beating idiocy as to be almost incomprehensible. The TV shows, the documentaries, the newspaper features and the movie re-release.
Between you and me, I simply don't get it. Ship sinks a hundred years ago. Lots of people drown. And?

Why, for instance, don't we get equally wobbly-lipped when we remember the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 (death toll: 1,198)? Or the Tenerife airport disaster of 1977, when two fully loaded jumbo jets crashed into each other on the runway of Los Rodeos Airport, killing 583 passengers?

Or the Piper Alpha disaster? Or the Hindenburg? Or the freak lightning strike that hit a munitions dump in the Palace of the Grand Masters in Rhodes in 1856, killing the 4,000 people who were gathered in the adjacent church?
But no, say Titanic enthusiasts, Titanic is different because it's about man's hubris and his Promethean belief in technology over the power of Nature, and it's got real human drama, and the quintessential "what would I do?" lifeboat dilemma too. Which is all utter nonsense.
The narrative of the Lusitania disaster contains all the above, but with a bonus dollop of political intrigue and pivotal questions about how many of the passengers knew that their ship's hold was full of US munitions bound for the war effort, thus making her a juicy target for the U-boats that eventually torpedoed her off the southern coast of Ireland.

Equally, the Tenerife crash even has its own iceberg, in the form of a thick and inexplicable fog that suddenly blanketed the runways — you can picture the movie now, can't you? The pilots saying, "I've never seen anything like it!" The control tower bamboozled. And then suddenly, the worst.
Ultimately, I blame the movies. Or, at least, I blame James Cameron's insufferably saccharine Winslet and DiCaprio love-in, Titanic. Until the arrival of that film in 1997 it seemed that the preservation of Titanic lore had been confined to a few bearded nerds with crazy stares and questionable social skills, much like Cameron himself.

But then (and this is what actually happened) at the exact same cultural moment, computer-generated movie effects peaked, thus allowing Cameron to deliver previously unimagined disaster spectacle, plus Hollywood studio marketing departments began to actively target the profitable yet neglected teenage-girl demographic (hence the ramping up of the film's love story), plus the pre-release publicity around Titanic, which concentrated on the fact that it had become the most expensive movie ever filmed, created a wildly contagious curiosity buzz that ensured a mammoth opening weekend, if nothing else.
In the end, of course, the entire planet went to see Titanic, and often two, or three, or ten times (it made $1.8 billion on its initial release). Inevitably, the real-life tragedy, in the hearts and minds of millions of people, was magically transformed into a thing of numinous mystery, defined only by the weeping face of Kate Winslet and the preternatural warbling of Celine Dion.
Even those who decry the movie today cannot deny that it is has essentially become a monumental PR campaign for Titanic-ites everywhere.

Yet surely it's better to remember that it's also a lie? That Titanic is just a ship that sank. And that the Lusitania centenary is only three years away. And counting!

[armaghniac]

The real story on RTÉ now. In case you don't know the story.

[Orangemac]

The aren't finished with it yet, the MLAs in Stormont are having a 2 hr debate about it this morning. I can just imagine them sitting with a Titanic colouring in book.

A 2hr debate about what exactly?

Dunno, some journalist had it on Twitter earlier. They have been off for two weeks and their first bit of business was a chat about the Titanic.

Wouldn't want them overdoing it on their 1st day back!

[Tony Baloney]

The real story on RTÉ now. In case you don't know the story.

Fire up a *spoiler alert* in case you mention the ending 

[armaghniac]

Fire up a *spoiler alert* in case you mention the ending

Hard to know at this stage, a lot of pumping going on.

[ziggysego]

Fire up a *spoiler alert* in case you mention the ending

Hard to know at this stage, a lot of pumping going on.

Are you sure you're not watching James Cameron's Titanic?

[armaghniac]

Are you sure you're not watching James Cameron's Titanic?

No. 


Although that film has its knockers, it wasn't the worst.

I won't reveal the ending of the one I was watching.

[ziggysego]

It was on Channel 5 yesterday.

[ziggysego]

Things get heated between Colin and Philip on the Titanic coverage debate.

Stephen Nolan - BBC Radio Ulster

[Eamonnca1]

I hear even Celine Dion's sick listening to her own song. Says they play it in every restaurant she shows up in as if they're paying "tribute" to her, little do they know she can't abide the bloody thing and even hates having to sing it now. And who can blame her? True story.

[stephenite]

I hear even Celine Dion's sick listening to her own song. Says they play it in every restaurant she shows up in as if they're paying "tribute" to her, little do they know she can't abide the bloody thing and even hates having to sing it now. And who can blame her? True story.

She told you herself?

[armaghniac]

Says they play it in every restaurant she shows up in as if they're paying "tribute" to her, little do they know she can't abide the bloody thing and even hates having to sing it now.

I'd say she gets a sinking feeling when it starts up in a restaurant.

[sheamy]

Although that film has its knockers, it wasn't the worst.

I bet they're not as good as Kate's. Quite frankly I blame those two things for the whole sorry waste of money that is the Titanic guff that's all over Belfast.