True! Funny to contemplate however, the world that the idiotic Rose was stepping into. She was stepping from a class in which women HAD opportunity (witness the educational and career achievements of many of the Titanic's first and second class women) into the one strata of 1912 society that almost guaranteed a life of drudgery. One of the things that bugs me about the film is that with four or five additional lines, Rose COULD have become a sympathetic character~ instead of the moronic plot device of having Classics of Impressionism posters dropped down in her suite to indicate "she's an intellectual!" could not she have been portrayed as a passionate would-be artist? It would have given her and Jack (after she stopped laughing at the quality of his artwork as shown onscreen, of course) something in common, other than horniness, on which to base a relationship. Likewise, had Rose been allowed to be a suffragette, at least her mouthy annoying traits could have been channeled towards some larger goal that "I am Rose and I am discontent!" Continuing with the thought~ Rose the thwarted intellect could have worked too: denied college in favor of an arranged marriage to Cal, she meets Jack and decides to risk it all....etc....etc....etc..... ANY of these things could have been achieved with fewer than five lines incorporated into scenes actually shot for the film (the whole denied college theme would have worked well in the stupid "Let's show her being strapped into a corset to indicate to the chimps in our audience that...SHE'S CORSETED BY HER LIFE! Brilliant! Let's run with it!" segment) and....to sum it all up....the reason why I came to hate the character and found myself rooting for Cal, is that Rose as written seems to have no actual interest other than "Rose," making her conflict (and I use the term loosely) seem more like the tantrum of an obnoxious brat, and therefore quite irritating rather than sympathetic.
BTW- Did you notice the situational irony of the part where she makes eye contact with the doomed blond woman at the end? We commented, aloud, amid the sobs of our fellow audience members "Hey! I got out of TWO lifeboats that you were denied the opportunity to get in!" Yup. The stupid brat who earlier commented to Andrews (how clever!) that there was not enough lifeboat space, got out of two of them WITHOUT giving up her space to someone. Making her character, as written, seem incredibly soulless. How hard would it have been to give Rose one extra line ("Here!") as she propelled some other passenger towards the seat she was giving up? Instead, one cannot escape the fact that Rose cared enough to comment on the lack of lifeboat space but did not care enough about her fellow human beings to make sure that one occupied the space that SHE did not want.
>And when you invest $200,000,000 in a project, you need a gimmick to ensure sufficient returns.
Unfortunately, Hollywood's brains seemed to have softened post 1980. The 1970s were strewn with films that somehow managed to be commercial and have audience appeal beyond that aimed at the lowest common denominator. What I loathed and resented about Titanic is that the elements of a really first class movie were all there and were overlooked in favor of the obvious and stupid.
>People eat up the stereotype of the first-class as soulless Stepford wives
This is the only point I disagree with you on, Peter! I work for a designer in the quaint town in which Ira Levin once lived, and on which he based Stepford....and as a denizen of Stepford I can tell you that both the book and original film are eerily on target! Don't know if you are familar with the film, but I had a disconcerting experience a few years back with a customer who seemed to be malfunctioning in much the same way that Mrs. "I'll Just DIE If I Don't Get This Recipe" did in the film, and it got me thinking if maybe, just possibly, it was all truer tahn we knew. And Stepford is NOT a stereotype.
(Begins mumbling "I'll just DIE if I dont get this recipe....")
