Classicism Movie Analysis - Titanic

Running head: Classicism Movie Analysis

Classicism Movie Analysis

Juanoga Kendrick

Grand Canyon University

UNV 200 (March 2009)

March 15, 2009

Introduction

The movie Titanic, directed by James Cameron, was a fictional story based on the true ship, Titanic. Cameron's movie was based on a love story. This paper will reflect an analysis of the three concepts of Classicism: Realism, Humanism, Idealism and Aristotle's theory; focusing on some of the differences between the two classes aboard the Titanic. This movie clearly portrayed how differently the first and second-class people were treated during this time period. Titanic is an American film that portrayed a love between people from two extreme social classes on board the ship en route its doomed journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Titanic is a great example for Aristotle's theory. All seven rules are clearly in the movie and we see necessity, probability and inevitability arise within the film. Aristotle claimed that all human beings seek happiness, in everything they do. Human life is essentially teleological. We necessarily aim at targets in our day-to-day lives, trying to make things happen. And it's Aristotle's insight that underneath all that we do, happiness is our universal quarry. A real understanding of this claim will help us to appreciate the role of ethics in life (Morris, Tom, Ph. D. 1999). The movie uses past time continuity and the story is presented in its entirety as something the viewer knows has happened and that the end will be a tragedy, though beautiful in the memory. Aristotle wrote that, "tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of action and life" (Matthews, Platt, 2008, p. 95).

It's no secret that Cameron intended the Titanic to be a big philosophical movie - in the film, the Titanic is America, a luxury liner filled with idle rich partying it up on their journey across the ocean while the underclass and immigrants are crammed into steerage. Some people have perverted the story of the Titanic so as to make the crew and the male passengers appear cowardly and selfish. Historians like to tell people what happened from the facts that are given to them, and eye witness accounts of what had happened on the ship the night it plunged to its deep dark grave. Everyone knows that the ship sank and that it is gone, but what they don't know is what had happened while people were being loaded into the lifeboats and what was occurring after the ship went down. Men played a big role in all of this; some were looked upon as cowards and others as heroes.

There are different view points of what the roles of men were. Not only during