Titanic appeals to everyone in a certain age group. This is known as a tent pole film.
A tent pole film is a four quadrant movie that attracts all four of the general quadrants of the movie going audience. According to an article on film website Indiewire, the four quadrants of the audience all have very specific needs concerning the content of a film. [1] Typical females under 25 like films where a girl falls in love, with decent romance scenes. Females over 25 prefer doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. On the other hand, males under 25 like explosions, blood, poop jokes and sex, but not in a romantic way. Males over 25 like darker films, classic genres such as westerns and war movies.
Throughout the film, the theme of love is presented, which capture females under 25’s attention, between Jack and Rose. The director focused on a fictional love story which draws a huge audience to watch this film instead of a boring historical movie that is just based on the history of Titanic. The scene of which Jack dies ends up being one of the most emotionally powerful scene which shatters young females emotion, giving them the feeling that Jack sacrifices himself to save his love of his life, Rose. This particular scene is one of the most touching, it has the ability to melt a million girl’s hearts over Jack’s death. Also having an insanely handsome actor such as Leonardo Dicaprio, appear in the film helps grab young female audiences to watch the film by obsessing over a celebrity crush. Study shows that females over 25 hates seeing child in danger, therefore Titanic has created a safe environment where they put a lot of effort towards keeping child being safe.
For example, when the ship’s beginning to stinks, A crew worker asked Captain Smith who should be allow to evacuate on the dinghies, the captain explicitly issued an order for women and children to be saved first, which enforce protection regarding to children’s safety. Another example was when Cal saw a little girl crying behind the barriers all on her own, he ignore her at first, but as the movie continues Cal showed humility and went back to save the little girls life, in addition of his own skin. Nevertheless, it does illustrate children being saved. On the other hand, Males under 25 pay much more attention towards action with the realistic contents. The director did this by adding intense action scene as soon as the ship hits the iceberg, the amount of speed, death and harm was caused during the scene when the ship was about to fully over stink.
Cameron created a blurred line between reality and illusion where he did an excellent job distinguishing different types of deaths, such as painless death, where people stay in their own cabin drifting off to sleep, horror death, where some people got shot by the crew workers, long angle shot leading death, where it show bodies dropping from a high angle into the water and electric death where crew workers get shock from the electric by trying to shut the ship down. This creates action within the film where it quickly exhaust young male audience base because they tend to ignore the fact that it’s a real event which is supposed to be historical . Young males also admire watching sexual contents, therefore the director forced on a elegant nude scene where audiences can see Rose modelling, naked half naked lying down on a couch wearing a necklace as Jack draws the portrait. Older men aged over 25 are more interested in historical contents. They rather learn about the captain to find out about why he was going too fast, hearing about the engineering and wanting historical truth.
The director provides an overview of the period time from the late 20th century through the film, he used many historical perspectives on what actually happened during the whole event for instance Captain Smith and the story of the band who continued playing as the ship sank, all of whom lost their lives. Titanic was an effective tent pole film. Titanic represents perfect property due to budget growth from commercial soundtrack “My heart will go on by Celine Dion”, publicity, and promotion with entertainment industry news, and box office. [2] For example Pearl Harbour is known as an epic historical American war film however according to reviewers, Pearl Harbour has no sense of history, strategy or context. [3] Pearl Harbour tried to do exactly the same thing as Titanic such as big budget, historical tragedies, good looking actors, love and action but at the end, it was pretty widely condemned by critics and audiences.
In the film Titanic, the director has shown a huge contrasting divide between rich and poor passengers. He related this portrayal primarily among the two main characters, Rose and Jack. Throughout most of the film, James Cameron represents the rich as oppressive, rude and arrogant while the poor are seen as joyful, brave and wise. Around the beginning of the film, poor people have to go through a health inspection before they are allowed in the ship, whereas the rich just go straight on board from their fancy gold car, because they were wealthy they would not have any health condition.
Also during the beginning, rich people are able to walk comfortably on board with their pets and get friendly greetings from the crew workers in a personal white ram that has a label saying “For passenger traffic only. ” This means that the ram is only for royal passengers. However the poor people are stuffed together, trying to get in with their belongings before the ship leaves. This shows the difference between the historical accuracy towards rich and poor people that were treated during 1912.
In the middle of the film, Rose finally understands that poor people were ten times happier than the rich people. Cameron displays this by contrasting the differences between rich and poor during each party that Rose and Jack attend. Rich people are portrayed as boring and ignorant, they spend their time greeting others and talking about business and politics while smoking and drinking alcohol. For example, when Jack was invited to the Rose expensive dinner, He learnt to greet others politely but soon as Cal and Rose’s mother came down from the stairs, Cal was being a total jerk by ignoring Jack which symbolizes that all the rich people on the ship. He is the upper classes.
On the other hand, poor people were entertaining, vivacious and caring, instead of doing nothing all day like the rich people, poor people were more alive where they’re surrounded in warm lighting dancing to Irish genre instrumental together with full of enjoyment and laughter. Cameron has created this division intentionally for the audience because it makes the story appeal more real estate where he made poor look good and rich look like terrible, to portray artificial divide between good and evil/rich. Audiences tend to not focus about who’s good or bad. They don’t like complexity or moral grey areas, they prefer how it feel to get swept away. On the occasion, Titanic exhibit that rich people has greater benefit than the poor people. In particular when Titanic hit the iceberg, the poor people in the lower class were the first one to be affected due to the wet ground because their accommodation were near the bottom of the ship.
Also, when the lower class people tried to escape there were many rats running, this means that the lower class passengers live in a bad condition environment. The huge disadvantage towards the lower classes was the amount of support they had, since it was hard for them to find their way to the top. Cameron added scenes where they were locked in their own deck when the ship begins to stink while the first class passengers were able to escape first. First class passengers were physically closer up the top therefore it was easier to get to the lifeboats than the lower classes, giving them quicker way access. In addition, when the ship started to stink, Cameron no longer presents equality among the rich and poor classes together.
For instance when Cal shoved money into Captain Murdoch coal to get him safe on the lifeboat, Murdoch quickly and without thinking rejects his offer and walked off. Later on when Cal demanded the captain his deal, the captain grabbed the money from his pocket and threw it on Cal face and said “Your money can’t save you anymore that can save me. ” This shows that being able to live is much more important that money, since money cannot buy you everything and there’s time where money is meaningless and not powerful. Comparison between rich and poor was shown through how poor people are more considerate of others since they know how tough life can get while rich people believe that money can get them anywhere.
Bibliography:
[1] http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/inside-a-hollywood-studio-movie-marketers-playbook[2] http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=q1Q8PlAnosQC;pg=PA41;lpg=PA41;dq=Titanic+tent+pole;source=bl;ots=Yqvgxt2Htd;sig=vFsXMuXSM_Uagd7RscyGtLBPHHg;hl=en;sa=X;ei=UhYgU5WeFsvbkAXosYAw;ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage;q=Titanic tent pole;f=false[3]http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pearl-harbor-2001
