Feminist Criticism In The Titanic

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The Titanic is known as one of the most remarkable films of the 20th century and won Best Picture of the Year in 1998. This film was based on a real event that made headlines all across the world including in the New York Times. This tragedy was not supposed to have happened. The ship was built to be indestructible. So the event was certainly unexpected and tragic. The New York Times ran a headline stating The phrase “TITANIC SINKS” was part of the headline for the Boston Daily Globe, the London Herald, the Baltimore American, the Globe (of Toronto), and, of course, The New York Times after the historic wreck of 1912 [Here’s what the article (sans headline) looked like in The New York Times, courtesy of the Times Machine. –D.A.]” (Amlen, p.1). …show more content…

Feminist Criticism is suppressed in literature and film. In this case, one can use Feminist Criticism on the film The Titanic. Rose can be viewed as feminist. She is not a traditional woman of that time as she doesn’t care about what is appropriate behavior for men and what is appropriate behavior for women. Throughout the film, Rose shows how she doesn’t care about femininity and what the standard for women was back in 1912. Rose disregards what is for men and what is for women. There are a couple of examples within the film scenes that show how feminist criticism would say is not normal for women. The first example is the scene where Rose goes with Jack to see how he lives his life with the lower class population. He takes her to a party attended by the third class passengers. Rose grabs a beer and Jack looks at her oddly as this is not viewed as proper etiquette for a woman of Rose’s class. Rose’s response was: “What a first class girl can’t drink beer” (Titanic). This quote shows how the view on a first class lady is that they should be more classy and that beer is more appropriate for men that are lower class. Another example, is when Rose tells Jack, “to teach her to ride like a man, chew like a man, and spit like a man” (Titanic). Rose uses the phrase “like a man” showing that she is interested in doing things that are only viewed as male characteristics or

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