I just got home from work and it's Easter which means I have to catch up on chocolate. This also means I'll be hyper by the time I go to bed tonight but a man's got to do what a man's got to do and all that delicious goodness isn't going to eat itself. We didn't get many customers today - just a few people who don't celebrate Easter and the odd divorcee dad too lazy to make a proper Sunday lunch for his kids. I work in a Mexican fast food joint which, based on my H2B in Culture, Media and Everyday Life last year is an example of Glocalisation. You take something foreign and make it local. No one at my work knows anything substantial about Mexico. I found myself wondering what Mexicans do on Easter and was hit with a vision of people dancing around in Sombreros, running from bulls, pitting chickens against each other and throwing their ponchos over barbed wire in an attempt to cross the border into the United States of America. In other words, my understanding of this no doubt sophisticated and multi-layered nation is limited to a series of stereotypes. I just don't know any better. It's subconscious and it's caused by movies and TV. Producers think no one's going to know our story is set in Italy unless the Colosseum is in the background, or that no one's going to know the main character is Mexican unless he has a moustache and a pet chihuahua.
So anywayz...I feel this strange urge to watch Titanic again, but not in 3D because I don't see the point unless there's a whole new subplot hidden in that extra dimension. The first time I ever saw it was when I was five years old. It was on VHS and I think the mother of the kids I saw it with must have cut out the scene where Leo paints Kate Winslet naked because I don't remember that bit at all. Also I'm glad she did that because every time they play it on TV and that scene comes on I have to fight back a Niagara Falls-worth of projectile vomit. Kate Winslet is repulsive and if I were Jack I would have pulled her off that floating piece of debris. "I'm not dying for you, bitch," I'd say, imagining all the brawds I'd be able to pull back on the mainland with my boyish good looks and courageous story.
"I was on the Titanic when it sank," I'd boast, two women hanging off me with parasols and ringlets (unless I've got the time period wrong in which case they'd have the right to vote and ringlets or just ringlets.) "I tried to save as many people as I could but there weren't enough lifeboats. Just ask Billy Zane."
It's true. To this day I don't understand how Jack, who with his charming, nineties haircut and prettyboyness could have banged anyone on that ship, ended up with a horsey British redhead who looks ten years older than him.
Just sayin'.
But not only does this woman manage to get a man who's way out of her league (I think) to sacrifice himself for her, she also forgets all about her family after the Titanic. Let's adopt one possible explanation for the ending and assume that (spoiler alert) she dies in her sleep and reunites with Jack, along with the rest of the people who died on the voyage. So then what about her husband? Where's he? Waiting in some other part of Heaven with their deceased friends and relatives, looking at his watch and wondering where the fuck she's gotten to when she's probably doing it with Jack in that steamy car again. Gross.
Even if she's dreaming it's still clear she never quite got over this man she knew for at most a week. If I were her I'd have asked Bill Paxton to search the ocean floor for his corpse. One look at his disgusting skeleton ought to put her off.
But putting all that aside, if you went and saw it again in 3D and came out of the cinema with dry eyes, then I commend you for your emotional detachment and ability to listen to Celine Dion fucking wailing without feeling like someone is soldering your ears. It's definitely one of the saddest and most touching movies I have ever seen. It's also funny in ways both intentional and unintentional and it's no mystery why people consider it to be a classic. It deserves eternal recognition, unlike ava-blue-alien-pocahontas-dances-with-wolves-star-wars-the-matrix-atar.
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