In 1997, James Cameron unleashed a cinematic behemoth that set a new standard in epic storytelling, Oscar accolades, and gluttonous Hollywood spending budgets. Viewers showed up in droves to theaters upon its release to make it the highest grossing film of the time. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing the faces of Leo and Kate plastered around. People were misty-eyed about “My Heart Will Go On,” which cemented its place as a cheesy ‘90s ballad. And for me, Titanic developed a lifelong phobia of large boats.
Due to its 195 minute run time, the tragic romantic drama was released on a pair of VHS tapes. My parents were not immune to the cultural phenomenon of the film, and purchased this set. Even at the age of six, I was hellbent on watching what so much of the country had fawned over. My mother let me watch some of the beginning of the first tape along with the entire second one, shielding me from the pre-marital sex exploits mid-film. That left me with consuming a little exposition, “I’m king of the world,” and a whole lot of death.
I remember watching that second tape numerous times and being unphased. I’d pretend that I too was sliding down the capsizing stern of the ship, holding onto furniture in my living room while imagining the horizontal floor was at more of a treacherous slant. It was merely a movie, and even if it was based on true events, my little brain couldn’t comprehend the severity of the death toll or how morbid it was that I was reenacting horrific death scenes as if it were nothing. Over a thousand people met their demise on the real life event, portrayed on film as screaming and desperate. I watched a fictionalized account of people taking their last breaths before losing their lives by no fault of their own. Yet life went on as normal for a decade or so before this had any sort of noticeable impact on my life.
Midway through high school, I developed a quirky little fear of ships. I first noticed it while cringing at those spammy webpage banners about winning a cruise, and the thought of boarding a cruise ship made my stomach drop. Growing up in a mid-sized city with a port, I encountered barges that made my heart race. Then there was the level on Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland that took place on an oil rig (I didn’t have an Xbox so I was not privy to this level on Pro Skater 3). While not a boat, this rig embodied everything I hated about nautical transport: no solid ground in site and the potential to fall very far down to my death. All of these things could be avoided and ignored with a page refresh, keeping my eyes on the road, or passing the controller to my sister and sitting in the kitchen for a few minutes. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I confirmed that this was more than an idiosyncratic tick.
I was enrolled in a psychology class, which naturally had a lesson on the sympathetic nervous system and human responses to fear. My teacher started off the class by asking if anyone had a fear they would like to share with the class. Comfortable in my skin (and honestly looking for some sort of explanation), I offered up my fear of boats. This was understandably met with some chuckles, and a classmate joked, “Did you watch Titanic a lot when you were growing up?”
What this person didn’t realize was that they had hit the nail right on the head. Writing it here, it seems so obvious but this flipped a switch in my teenage brain. I had never connected the two. There was a ten year gap between me voraciously consuming the reenacted perilous deaths and edging closer to panic attacks when faced with an image of a large boat. Images flooded back of people letting go as gravity fought their grasp, their limp bodies bouncing off railings and smoke stacks before being buried in the ocean’s midnight abyss. The panned out shot of the boat snapping in two, “too big to fail,” and then failing before my eyes shook my understanding of reality. And my goofy fear wasn’t so goofy anymore.
Today, my physical and emotional reaction to large ships fluctuates in severity. At 18, I took a ferry across Lake Michigan (though I wouldn’t look at the boat from land). I frequently drive over a large bridge that towers over a much busier port than my hometown, and sometimes I catch an unwilling glimpse at our marine visitors; typical anxiety reducing techniques of deep breathing and thinking of other things get me through. But there was also the Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, that flipped over; I unexpectedly saw an aerial photo of it laying on its side in 2012 which sent me into an hour long panic attack. In reading the Wikipedia page on Titanic preparing to write this, I accidentally enlarged a thumbnail (which was terrifying enough) of the ship splitting and had to close out of the whole browser. While I have a sense of humor about the ordeal, it has a negative impact on me.
So on this Frightday week of celebrating sea horror, I will decline to review a film and I hope you now understand why. And let’s be real: the true horror is potentially being forced to marry Billy Zane’s stuffy ass when you could have young, artistic Leo.