How much did Cameron research the 3rd class passengers?

[Leila Salloum Elias]

Just to clarify the early 20th century. Both Christians and Muslims who hailed from Greater Syria were of the same culture and traditions. In Damascus, for example, my mother's family who is of the Arab Orthodox Christian faith, covered their heads and wore a veil as did all Syrian women who went out in public. Culture and tradition are not reserved for one religion. All one people despite various faiths. The woman portrayed in the movie represents a Syrian female passenger. It does not matter from which faith.

 

[Sarah S]

Just to clarify the early 20th century. Both Christians and Muslims who hailed from Greater Syria were of the same culture and traditions. In Damascus, for example, my mother's family who is of the Arab Orthodox Christian faith, covered their heads and wore a veil as did all Syrian women who went out in public. Culture and tradition are not reserved for one religion. All one people despite various faiths. The woman portrayed in the movie represents a Syrian female passenger. It does not matter from which faith.

Interesting, I wasn’t aware that all Arab women from Greater Syria wore the veil. The woman in the movie looked very specifically muslim, meanwhile other faiths wouldn’t be as strict about covering every part of their hair but instead wore it rather loosely.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I have seen images of Levantine Christian women wearing loose headscarves but did not know that some wore veils too. Perhaps they were very orthodox or it was the expected norm for women of certain mixed communities. As you say, interesting.

 

[Question_asker]

I think Cameron did a lot of technical research. I'm not so sure about the human part of the story.

Agreed. He pats himself on the back for getting things like the grand staircase clock accurate, props and fixtures. He's not so bothered about the human aspect. William Murdoch being the worst (and most atrocious) example. I always find it ironic that the end of the movie has Brock Lovett say "All these years thinking about Titanic, but I never got it. I never let it in." And yet I feel like shaking James Cameron and saying THAT'S YOU DUDE.

 

[Yuriko Cheng]

Of the very small handful of third-class passengers who survived, only a few were ever asked to talk about the sinking at length. So there would be little contemporary material for one to conduct research off. Plus, James Cameron is human, and if he did deliberately misrepresent or omit the narratives of certain groups of people out of maliciousness, then he deserves to be condemned; but I think it is more likely he simply overlooked certain details or took creative license. After all, the movie's end goal was to entertain.

I personally think that much like the WSL's and the public's general opinion of steerage at the time, any omission by James Cameron vis-à-vis the third-class passengers was not because the steerage passengers mattered less, only that they were simply overlooked. Furthermore, Europe and North America were still very much white-people-centric societies at the time, and I doubt few people would have bothered to record the experiences of non-whites at the time. Add that to the already lacking material on third-class, and you have virtually no information on 'coloured' steerage passengers on which to base research.

 

[Natasha_Smith]

Of the very small handful of third-class passengers who survived, only a few were ever asked to talk about the sinking at length. So there would be little contemporary material for one to conduct research off. Plus, James Cameron is human, and if he did deliberately misrepresent or omit the narratives of certain groups of people out of maliciousness, then he deserves to be condemned; but I think it is more likely he simply overlooked certain details or took creative license. After all, the movie's end goal was to entertain.

I personally think that much like the WSL's and the public's general opinion of steerage at the time, any omission by James Cameron vis-à-vis the third-class passengers was not because the steerage passengers mattered less, only that they were simply overlooked. Furthermore, Europe and North America were still very much white-people-centric societies at the time, and I doubt few people would have bothered to record the experiences of non-whites at the time. Add that to the already lacking material on third-class, and you have virtually no information on 'coloured' steerage passengers on which to base research. You are being redirected...

Thank you for sharing!

 

[schara01]

I personally think that much like the WSL's and the public's general opinion of steerage at the time, any omission by James Cameron vis-à-vis the third-class passengers was not because the steerage passengers mattered less, only that they were simply overlooked. Furthermore, Europe and North America were still very much white-people-centric societies at the time, and I doubt few people would have bothered to record the experiences of non-whites at the time. Add that to the already lacking material on third-class, and you have virtually no information on 'coloured' steerage passengers on which to base research.

Thank you, Yuriko, I agree. Many of the surviving 3rd class passengers also did not speak English because so many of them were immigrants, so the WSL and newspapers would've had a hard time getting their stories in an accurate way. I imagine that once the survivors arrived in NYC, it was mostly just complete chaos at the docks. I have scoured many of the 3rd class passenger stories and I, as a modern boring American woman, find their stories absolutely fascinating. At the time, though, they definitely were not seen as "important" as the surviving first class passengers who were the wealthy elite. This is to say, every story of every passenger and crew member of the Titanic was important. Times were just very different then and it's hard to look at it from our modern perspectives. Nowadays we very much want to make sure that every story is heard, but at the time that wasn't something that was even considered.