When RMS Titanic sank on the night between April 14 and 15, 1912, the modern world’s greatest metaphor of disaster was born. During the hundred years that have passed, we have returned ― again and again ― to this epic story of catastrophe; countless of tragic situations of downfall and breakdown have been compared to the Titanic ― from the collapse of buildings, visions, economies, to the most recent maritime accident, the Italian cruise ship Costa
Concordia in January 2012. The Titanic myth is today one of the most over-exposed historical events of the 20th century, partly because it contains a treasure store of drama; the apparently “unsinkable” ship embodied the technological hubris of a world believing that it had finally triumphed over nature for good. It was rigidly divided into three classes ― with the rich people above, the poor below, and the middle class in-between. Out of 2,224 passengers, approximately 1,500 people died. The lucky few witnessed from lifeboats the horrible sight of a giant ship helplessly being swallowed up by the sea, inch by inch. Their testimonies contain stories of human magnanimity, folly, and cowardice. The spectacle lasted over two hours, enough for a literary play, as some have pointed out; ample time to grasp the situation’s epic gravity. All these details ― and many more ― add to the event’s irresistible lure.
The sinking of the Titanic became such a traumatic incident of the modern world above all because it represented the most consummate realization of a narrative fantasy that had been underway for some time ― namely the collapse of the belief in the enlightenment idea, the rational progress of history, and mankind’s emancipation from ignorance and irrationalism. Nietzsche and others had begun seriously questioning the enlightenment project in the latter half of the 19th century. And Joseph Conrad discovered the obscenity at the center of the Eurocentric enlightenment project in the novel “Heart of Darkness” (published in 1899) ― the barbarism accompanying Europe’s colonial mission to enlighten the “dark corners of the earth.” But perhaps most uncannily, Morgan Robertson published a short novel called “Futility” ― in which a giant British liner named Titan sinks after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic ― in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic left Southampton, England. In short, the tragedy of Titanic came to represent the fulfilment of these intellectual and aesthetic prophecies by unfolding a fully-fledged drama that seemed to confirm our worst nightmares.
If the sinking of the Titanic materialized nightmares that were legion around 1912, it has since become an obsessive fiction in its own right ― in innumerable plays, novels, films, documentaries, books, museums and so forth. James Cameron’s 1997-version of the Titanic drama in many ways represents the culmination of the ship’s dramatic afterlife. Albeit many critical things may be said about Cameron’s movie ― which can now be seen in 3D ― it does capture and magnify the un-reality of the disastrous event. The movie captures, in other words, the mythologization of the catastrophe. What this process of mythologization means, however, is something much more radical than the mere fictionalization of what actually took place on that ominous April night 100 years ago. The event of the Titanic articulated the catastrophic ― what is meant by “catastrophic.” Never before or since has the world ever experienced or understood the catastrophic in quite the same way. If the Titanic myth has since become the event to which all anthropogenic or man-made collapses must refer, it is because it has come to embody the prototype through which we view disasters. It provides us with the preeminent narrative model to make sense of experiences of the catastrophic ― that is, as a spectacle, a play, and, notably, with a meaning.
From the moment the Titanic sank and right up to our days, we have witnessed one titanic catastrophe after another; but ignored, overlooked or forgotten many more. We seem to measure and weigh disasters according to what one may call the “disaster template,” namely the Titanic myth. Those not fitting this template disappear ― as though they never existed. As the Titanic myth took form, a powerful, collective mnemonic phenomenon emerged; one that made it increasingly difficult to register ― or properly understand and distinguish ― experiences of the catastrophic that deviated from the prototype of the Titanic. For example, few people remember the torpedoing of the German ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, during which 9,400 people perished. That this event has failed to engrave itself onto the collective memory ― despite being the largest loss of human lives in recorded maritime history ― is perhaps due to the fact that the passengers were largely German refugees, Nazi soldiers, and military personnel. They suffered a terrible death at a time when there was little or no sympathy for the German people. We remember the recent maritime accident that unfolded on the night of Jan. 13 this year ― the Costa Concordia, a luxurious liner carrying a large crowd of affluent guests on holiday excursion. The story instantly flooded news media around the world. Although “only” 30 people died, they died because of human incompetence and folly. It inevitably provoked comparisons to the Titanic incident ― including all the mythical resonances. A few weeks later, an infinitely less grandiose boat carrying 55 Somali refugees capsized on their way to Europe; 15 died and 40 people went missing. The story barely made the newspapers, and no more than that. Like the Germans onboard the ill-fated MV Wilhelm Gustloff, the misfortune of the Somali refugees was evidently deemed less relevant, less communicable, by the world community. What their story lacked, one may hyperbolically conjecture, was a resemblance to the Titanic myth. MV Gustloff and the unnamed Somali boat, along with many others, are the forgotten shipwrecks buried anonymously on the bottom of an indifferent ocean, as the Titanic myth merrily sails on. As we commemorate the centenary of the Titanic these days, it may be apt to recall Walter Benjamin’s words that “there is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” That might in turn remind us that it is time to forget the myth of the Titanic, to let it rest in peace on the bottom of the North Atlantic Sea. And perhaps, once the Titanic Orchestra’s last song has finally faded from our ears, we may yet again be able to recognize all the disastrous events that failed to find their myth.
By Eli Park Sorensen
Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.