<nettime> re: Titanic

[ratkins@IDT.NET (Robert Atkins)]

Titanic is a lousy movie pricipallly because its characters are wafer thin
in conception, cliched and undeveloped in an impressive number of ways. But
to fault this film, as James Flint does, for not challenging the American
imperium is like criticizing Rupert Murdoch's London tabloids for not being
the Manchester Guardian or Le Monde. Put another way, critical intelligence
in a fin-de-millenium, Hollywood epoch/disaster film is oxymoronic.

Perhaps the one genuinely interesting factoid about the making of Titanic,
is that the film's 87 year-old heroine is based on the 104-year-old
ceramicist Beatrice Wood. (She will turn 105 at her home in Ojai, Calif, on
March 3rd.) The  well-born Beatrice was an intimate of Duchamp, Henri
Pierre Roche and the New York Dadaists. Unlike the Kate Winslett character
who anachronistically bought Monet canvases that would already have been
worth tens of thousands of dollars at the time the Titanic sailed,
Beatrice, at the age of 24, was an avant-garde exemplar, publishing The
Blindman (1917), by Duchamp et al. I look forward to finding out what
Beatrice thinks of her life, as transformed by James Cameron for the
screen.

Robert Atkins

Voice:  212-662-2961
Fax:    212-222-4524
Emails: ra@kazz.com, RAtkins@idt.net


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