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WSWS : Correspondence : Art & Culture

Titanic and cultural decline

Posted 28 May 1998

To David Walsh:

I only discovered your Web site yesterday morning, so my rehashing of the old "Titanic" dialogue of some months back is quite late. However, I too would like to commend you for putting such bold thoughts out there. I haven't seen the film, but I don't need to. I could tell by the way my students are responding to it that it isn't worth much. All of them could tell me they liked it, none of them could tell me why, beyond the defense of the film as a "love story." And whether any of the people who responded to your review think that's a problem or not, it is.

I teach high school in Central Harlem. I don't have to tell you anything about the cultural evisceration of the country in the last twenty years, but believe me when I tell you it has reached a depth in this neighborhood that is appalling. I came to New York to learn more about Afro-Cuban drumming, but here in this place that served as cradle to some of the most dynamic musical schools of the century, I am teaching the grandchildren of the pioneers. It shouldn't be like that. People who don't understand the ramifications of what I just told you are the audience that Titanic thrills so. And this is as true of my students as it is of a white teenager in the Midwest who enjoyed the film.

Anyway, I think that your review was right on the money. Nowhere is this clearer than in some of the savage responses it received. I think you explained yourself quire clearly. It was almost poignant to see how tenaciously people cling to spectacle in the absence of real depth and breadth. As you foresaw, most of the folks who spoke of the film's "greatness" were comparing it to Alien and The Abyss.

But, then, that's confirmation of something CLR James talked about in one of his essays, I can't recall which. James said something to the effect that the greater the disparity between everyday life and the promise of our so-called free environment, the greater the level of mediation offered to people by the powers that be and their creations. And I think Titanic and the hoopla around it are confirmation of that thought. Hell, Herbert Marcuse would have a field day with what passes for filmmaking in the US anymore, no?

Anyway, this has wound on longer than I originally planned, and I'm sure you know how to take care of yourself when the brickbats come, but it never hurts to get support from unknown quarters. As for the person who wrote and celebrated your coming obscurity a century from now, it would be amusing to see where their thought is five years from now when it is more readily apparent just what a flash-in-the-pan all this fuss about the "film of the century" really is.

Finally, I know I don't have to tell you to enjoy your obscurity, but I'll just remind you in case the charges of envy ever rattle your cage. As the Situationist Raoul Vaneigem once observed, celebrity doesn't have the relevance of a wet fart living under these bastards.

Yours in unity,

MHP
24 May 1998

P.S. You should check out some of the work of Afr-Am filmmaker Oscar Micheaux and contemporary director Julie Dash when you get a chance. There weren't enough black film makers on your list. I know it wasn't intended to be comprehensive but I thought I'd get my licks in, too.