Director James Cameron at the launch of the 3D version of Titanic. EPA/Franck Robichon

“Trending on Twitter this week has been Gen Y shock and awe that Titanic isn’t just the name of a film. Apparently someone has accidentally stumbled onto the fact that the Titanic story was a tad more than just a bad Celine Dion song and some King of the World-ing on the prow of a ship. OMG why didn’t someone tell me this sooner?

“There’s an easy story here about dumb kids. A tale of stupidity, naiveté and the downside of education gleaned largely from the screen. A more interesting story however, is the question of why Titanic should be considered more important than any other historic event.

“Like many disasters – think the Hindenberg crash or the Challenger explosion – for reasons of sympathy and curiosity and quite possibly even a little schadenfreude – we remain fascinated decades and decades post-fact. Bad news sells and the worse the news, the higher the death toll and the more preoccupied we are.

“Only the explanation for why Titanic has been prioritised as a historic event has much less to do with the high death toll and far more to do with James Cameron Inc’s interest in keeping us fascinated.

“The RMS Titanic hit the iceberg in 1912. 1500 people were killed, Leonardo DiCaprio was not one of them, nor even was his character Jack Dawson who – like much of the film – was thorough fabrication. A whopping loss of life, to be sure, but lots of equally horrible stuff has happened since, thousands and thousands of other people have died tragically, and rarely have any of them been treated to the loquacious prominence as the Titanic story.

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