ORIGINAL: fcooke
MM - I will take issue with your Shakespeare position. As someone who has read most of his work in the name of 'higher education', he has gotten a huge pass for whatever reason. But comparing Comedies/Tragedies to Titanic is likely unfair. Cameron threw the BS romance in there, and every time I hear a Celine Dion song I cringe.
And I haven't researched....but I am guessing many of the officers were armed. If he wanted to make a statement he could have created a fictional character. 99% of the audience would likely not have been any the wiser and his message would still be delivered. Without offending family and folks who are in the grognard / cranky old men category.
I think a better story would be more focus on management's decision to not fit out enough lifeboats, commercial arrogance, and they could keep a love story (but please not Celine). And ownership didn't learn, Titanic's near sister went down in WW1 (Brittanic) due a single mine impact, but thankfully loss of life was much, much, less. But she still sank in less than an hour.
A few thoughts:
- I disagree about the fictional character. Murdoch's character arc in the film combined with his historic role did an excellent job of emphasising the massive emotional trauma that he must have experienced that night.
- The lifeboat issue is with modern day hindsight. Any contemporary rescues of sinking passenger ships had occurred when another ship was on hand to assist. In those cases, the lifeboats merely ferried passengers from one ship to another. That mindset was reflected in the legal obligations of ships at that time.
- If you go down the road of being critical of management and leadership, then you run in to the same problem you have with Murdoch with Capt Smith. Ultimate responsibility for the ships actions lay with him, and the general response of Smith (who had a fairly uneventful career) contrasts sharply with that of Lightoller (who IIRC had been shipwrecked twice).
I don't think he's ever actually issued an apology - although iirc he's suggested that using a real life character was sub optimal - or something mealy like that.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/556995 ... -director/
Took me literally two second to google that.
The human cost can be shown in so many ways. A 'limey bastard' shooting an unarmed Irish steerage class passenger was not necessary - but simply panders to a certain audience. If this is about human cost - and not childish point scoring - why would Cameron have an Irishman call Murdoch a limey????
I disagree. It was excellent mechanism to make stark the underlying conflicts across both national and class boundaries of the time. It's not by chance that the vast majority of Titanic survivors were of a specific national and social class.
As for the specific decision to use "limey" for a Scottish character, I think it's acceptable to use in a ship that was overwhelmingly crewed from Southampton. Even more so when there's water at your ankles.
Except of course its the bribery twist that matters so much. Yes Murdoch was likely armed, yes there were reports of shooting - and as you say it is not confirmed that shooting was at anyone as opposed to warning shots as people began to lose control, and an officer (of which one possibility was Murdoch) did choose to shoot himself at the end.
Given the above, if Cameron wanted to show what might have happened - simply use a clearly unidentifiable and made up character.
Well, here's some more thoughts:
- It's reasonably likely that there was at least one attempt to "influence" an officer by first class passengers.
- There is a power imbalance between first class passengers and ships officers. Despite the officers authority, actions/allegations by a first class passenger could easily scupper a career. Smith himself gained a positive reputation for his handling of high-profile first class passengers.
As I've said above, a unknown character adds little. With Murdoch, we get a very bitter resolution to a tragic character.
- show the gates were open - they were not kept locked to keep steerage class passengers down (I believe Goebbels showed something similar in a film about the Titanic before the war. Although of course the steerage class passengers being victimised were German).
Survivor testimony suggests that at least
some gates were locked. That specific gate mentioned was near the boat deck of the ship.
As for the situation below decks, it was likely absolute chaos:
- Third class had few stewards compared to second and third class.
- Confusion reigned as orders did not get passed down from above (no PA system!)
- Most of third class had boarded three days previously, so were unable to find their way around in a ship that took two weeks to become comfortable moving around in.
One of the main factors contributing to the high mortality for third class was that they would have needed stewards or crew familiar with the ship to guide them to the boats. For a number of reasons, that didn't happen.
- chose to ignore the role of the SS Californian - a rather big omission for one so desperate to get the location of every star right.
Actually, they didn't. It just didn't make the cut 
The Californian's lights were actually included by the special effects team in a number of scenes.
Unsurprisingly, they get drowned out so as to be effectively invisible
; Julia Child
