Thanks for this long and beautiful article. It was really exciting as usual to learn new things ranging from what a melismatic singing technique is to fun facts about the Titanic. I was never totally sold on Rose and Jack's love story not because I don't like popular movies, heartthrobs or whatever but because every time I watch them together in this movie, I always have the impression that Di Caprio is Winslet's little brother. He seems so much younger than her. On another note, I also took some time to appreciate a Ryan but not Ryan Gosling. For me, it was Ryan Reynolds. He grew on me in some later movies, but I was not his biggest fan at the beginning. As for Ryan Gosling, I don't find him particularly cute but he has charisma etc. I don't know where I will find the time to rewatch the Titanic movie. But I sure want to. after this analysis. The message it conveys is beautiful.
Wow. What I missed. I saw Titanic a long time ago so I guess I have to rewatch it now. Coming-of-age? Mr Cameron, how sneaky of you, to give the spotlight to a girl, and right under our noses. So thank you TVM for your sharp eye and sharper wits. Even the tiny queer reference...
We have made recommendations to you over time but a new series, Adolescence, is astounding. The teenager playing the lead role has never acted before and he's incredible. It's a tough watch but revealing the toxic sludge teenagers live with now. Four episodes, all shot in one take !!! They reference A Wanted Man, a series from the 80's which I haven't yet watched but will.
Maybe tonight I will tuck into some popcorn and watch 3+ hours of Titanic. Thanks to you.
I saw Adolescence last week. It was terrifying and I even cried at the end (and a little bit in between) and my dog came to comfort me 🥺
It was an interesting choice to film it as if it was taken with one shot, and I understand that it was probably to make the atmosphere as raw as possible and the audience more anxious, but the actors sometimes looked deformed with big torsos and short legs. I don’t know if this was intentional as well, but it disturbed me.
Nevertheless, the topic/problem teenegers face today, shown in this mini TV show, is really important to be addressed and discussed by professionals, the sooner the better.
If you want, we can look at this movie some more in the future. We've only really touched upon the metaphorical subtext in the post above. We haven't really gone into the character functions yet.
You analysing films here is like someone picking moments from my life to explain all the magic, the possible meaning, the connections in them. The depth. I am forever changed by your writing.
This was such a surprise! I think I was the one who’d mentioned Titanic in the comments, because indeed, I‘ve never watched it till the end. I have to admit that in part, my lack of curiosity was due to the images and Celine Dion’s song which, when it came out when I was around 18, were all absolutely off-putting to me (shouting “I am the king of the world!” was not my idea of romantic or cool or whatever). But especially because I’m afraid of both narrow spaces and the deep sea, and watching a whole film where a giant ship is sinking is just horrifying for me. Which is why I’m super grateful to have learned all these fascinating things about this famous film without having to put myself through the agony of having all of my panic buttons pushed😄. It was a riveting read, thank you!
I'm actually in the unique position of being able to give some advice here because, as it happens, I too suffer from both claustrophobia (pretty bad) and thalassophobia (much, much worse).
Just to give you an idea: I constantly drive people nuts because I will insist on walking up several flights of stairs instead of taking the lift (elevator). My colleagues keep groaning about it, "Really? You'd rather walk up seven flights of stairs instead of taking the lift?" To which I say, "Seven is nothing. Nine is nothing. I think I would even walk up twelve or so..." There's obviously a cut-off point at some point after that where I do compromise and take the lift (gritting my teeth throughout the ride and exhaling deeply once I can leave that small deathtrap again). But yeah, seven flights of stairs is nothing. I'll never take the lift for THAT! And with four-five flights of stairs, I'll usually even be quicker than the person taking the lift. (They have to wait. I don't! And I'm fast. Really fast.) In short: Avoiding lifts is a bit of thing for me. Positive side effect: It keeps you slim and fit, too. So, yay for claustrophobia!:D
My thalassophobia is worse. As in, I really break out in a sweat just watching submarine footage on TV and my heart rate goes up in ways that are frankly alarming.
Here's the good news: I don't experience this on a beach or on a pier. Even boats and ships are totally fine (well, not totally; I tend to get badly seasick, but vomiting is not the same thing as being phobic, right?).
I think the reason why I'm okay with beaches, piers and boats is that my brain somehow re-conceptualizes the ocean as this flat surface and then it's fine. It's specifically (and only) the underwater stuff that produces this feeling of horror and dread in me, and as long as I stay on the surface of the water, I'm fine.
So, with this as context...How about I tell you about the movie 'Titanic'?
I was really, really apprehensive when I first went to see it at the cinema back in the 90s, thinking I would go into full sweaty-forehead-shaky-hands-feeling-like-having-a-heart-attack mode, but I was actually surprised how okay I was, all things considered.
It's really just the first eight minutes or so that are bad. (That's the frame narrative where the treasure hunters literally dive down those almost 4 km in a submarine to examine the wreck.) I white-knuckled it through those first few minutes, and then I was okay.
In addition to that, it actually helped me to know that not all of what we are seeing in those underwater scenes was literally filmed on site, 4 km down, next to the actual wreck.
Only a very small number of shots are actually real. (I did not know that the first time I watched this movie, but I know this now and it helped me enormously when I re-watched it recently). Large parts of those scenes are actually fake! Everything you see when the little robot explores the former suite of Rose and Cal inside the wreck, the living room, etc....all of that is a film set! This wasn't filmed down there in the real Titanic wreck.
All of these shots (the shot of the grand piano underwater and all of those scenes with the mantelpiece, the safe, the bed frame, all that furniture covered in mud, etc. that entire suite)...all of that was recreated by set designers and then put in a pool and filmed there. None of that is real. None of it was filmed at the bottom of the Atlantic. (Only very, very few shots were actually filmed down there, the iconic bow of the ship, for example. Most of the inside-the-wreck shots are fake.)
Some of the shots don't even contain real water (!) Read that again: Some of the shots don't contain any water AT ALL. They used an old film trick for those: It's an optical illusion where you simply fill a room with smoke, then light it in a very specific way and eventually run a filter over the images. Et voilà...it looks like you're filming underwater even though there's no water at all, just smoke.
So, knowing all of that really helped me watch it the second time around, and I felt much more relaxed.
After those initial 'submarine scenes' at the very beginning (just a few minutes, really), I was largely fine.
The moment I got to the actual ship scenes in 1912, I was okay because that whole thing just looks like a giant hotel anyway, with opulent dining halls and grand staircases and splendid lobbies and such. My brain simply refused to go into Oh-my-God-deep-water mode. It just looks too much like a hotel. (Well, and the CGI back in the 1990s wasn't that good yet anyway. It's not like you look at that ocean and think it looks very realistic. Although admittedly, the fact that I'm not scared of the surface of the water might have something to do with that, too.)
All of that accounts for the first half of the movie.
Once the ship starts to sink in the second half, I would have expected a strong reaction, but strangely enough that never materialized because my brain just kept lamenting, "Oh, no. Now they'll get that beautiful hotel all wet." XD
Maybe I had just got used to the idea that this was a hotel and my brain couldn't switch that off anymore. So, even when the water was flooding the corridors and collapsing entire walls, I kept going, "Oh, noooo! The hotel is filling up. That'll destroy the carpets.":D
I felt a bit queasy when the whole thing went tits up at the very end because I thought that I would get extended underwater scenes of Rose and Jack being sucked down with the ship, but that obviously never happened, and they were both back on the surface of the water within a few seconds, so that was a relief. (Also, it should be said that there are no tracking shots of the wreck sinking all the way down to the bottom of the sea. It just sinks and is gone, basically.)
Well, and then Rose and Jack were both trying not to freeze to death in the water, so my brain just went, "Ah, yes, that's merely a surface now again. Wonder where the ship has gone. It just poof and disappeared because there's obviously, absolutely, totally no depth underneath that surface. La-la-la!" and I was completely calm again within minutes.
So, that's my account. Don't know if you're wired like I am and if you're phobias are similar to mine. But I found the whole experience surprisingly okay. (Like...I don't think I could bear to watch an entire film about a submarine, for example. But this...was actually mostly fine.)
Oh, and by the way, I'm firmly in the 'it's-genetic' camp when it comes to phobias. I don't believe in the 'traumatic-experience-in-the-past' explanation at all, as there are none in my past. I think it's genetic. (Also, I think from an evolutionary point of view, these fears are totally justified and reasonable. Being scared of narrow spaces and deep water is healthy and normal.XD Anyone who isn't scared of that is just a weird freak.:P) And no, I've never been scared of heights, which is much more debilitating in everyday life, anyway.
P.S. If you wanna check out if you could theoretically bear the whole experience, you could try taking a virtual tour of the ship first as a way of prep:
The 'Honor and Glory' guys have uploaded an amazingly detailed virtual tour of the whole ship to youtube.
There's no sinking, no drama. Just lovely, relaxing music (absolutely do switch the sound on!) and a ton of brilliant details. And you get to see the whole Titanic, every last smoking room, grand staircase and stained glass window.
So, pour yourself a glass of wine, put on your finest suit or ritziest evening gown and pearls, sit back and enjoy the view:
Now that I’ll be in Italy for a week, I’ll have the perfect opportunity to watch this! I’ll have to show this to my husband, too, who happens to have a life-long Titanic fascination going on, haha! Thank you so much! As for the movie itself, there is also the question of how I can backpaddle from my firm stance of “Nah, this movie is dumb, so cheesy, the first 15 minutes were enough!”😅. I guess I’ll have to watch it in secret (not that I don’t do that with half of my movies and shows anyway), IF this video turns out to be watchable and I get over my fear of the sinking ship. And yes, gosh, submarines are the WORST! I get palpitations just watching short snippets of movies set in submarines. Which is a shame, because “Das Boot” is supposed to be so good. But I just. can’t.
It was probably me who wrote “it’s not my cup of tea”, but other commenters also expressed similar experiences. For me it’s not because I don’t like big blockbusters. Going with your food analogy, I'm that vegetarian who doesn't like romantic movies in general. And the reason for that is that more often than not the women in those movies are portrayed as ‘waiting for the prince on the white horse who will save them and they can finally live a happy life as a wife and mother’. This absolutely doesn't resonate with me. Especially society's expectation of having children.
For full disclosure. I was around 13 when the movie came out and in my small city we had no functioning movie theatre at that time (it was closed for more than a decade before we could enjoy it again) and going to another city just to see one movie was not something you would casually spend your little spare money on. So we had to be creative if we wanted to see a new movie the time it went out. Thus, I borrowed a VHS cassette from a classmate which was a copy of a copy made from a copy of a copy of a footage taken in the theatre 😂 Can you imagine how bad it was? At some parts I could barely see or hear anything 😂 These were those beautiful times youngsters today will never understand 😅
Anyway, reading this post was a really, really big surprise for me. And I have to admit I really loved the subtext of the Titanic movie. All the mirroring (Cora had a cute red hat and Rose a wide belt in similar colour in that scene where Jack drew them on the deck to reinforce the mirroring as well I think), child - dad symbolism, foreshadowing Cal’s death, ship metaphor or the heart shaped diamond, … Now I understand why you love this movie 😊 I think you successfully passed the challenge.
I should probably watch it again but now a proper version 😂
Just a little trivia correction, for anyone who’s interested. The Slovak dad is actually played by a Czech actor/stuntman who speaks Czech in the movie as well, although the character he is playing in the movie is supposed to be Slovak. He speaks so quickly that I can’t understand most of what he’s saying but that swear word I can hear is in the vocative case (nom. idiot - voc. idiote), which in Slovak we don’t use anymore and it dates back in time, when Staroslovienčina, an old form of Slovak language, still used other things like dual on top of singular and plural asd well (some vocative case debris only remained for some words and in some dialects; like when calling out God: nom. Pán Boh - voc. Pane Bože - God Lord). For example my name ‘Alexandra’ is familiarly changed to ‘Sandra’ and the vocative form would be ‘Sandro’ and a Czech person would call me like that naturally when calling for me: “Sandro pojď sem, prosím.” (in Slovak: Sandra poď sem, prosím.”) - ”Sandra come here, please.” But, to make it a little bit complicated, we tend to use a form with ‘i’ (Sandri) which can be used similarly to a vocative form, but it’s more common to use it as a softer/cuter form of the name. This ‘i’ is thus sometimes used for names (where it sounds good only) and family terms only (Pavol - Pali - Paul; mama - mami - mother). “Mamííí…” is something that no mother what to hear because or something happened or, even worse, they want something 😂
So this is why hearing only one swear word is enough for me to know that it’s not Slovak. Cool right?
Wow, this is fascinating and so cool! I didn’t know some languages had the vocative still, I only know it from Latin. I wasn‘t even aware the popular name Sandra is a short form of Alexandra, because in my language, all Alexandras are nicknamed Alex, and Sandra is its own name (like mine - derived from Katharina, but not a nickname). And I always wondered how big the differences between Czech and Slovak are. But we certainly have the form with “i” at the end, too, and use it the same way you explained😉. Your description of the copied video tapes made me chuckle - I didn’t have copies of copies of copies, but did have some copies of self-recorded films, and even there, the quality could be pretty bad😅.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I've always loved Titanic but this opened my eyes to how multi-layered it too is. I can't believe I've never clearly understood that the major reason I love it is because it is essentially about a woman's independence. I've understood that it's all about Rose, a woman, but never really thought deeper into it.
This post also made me think about her name, and why it might've been picked. First I thought of a more straightforward reason, that it's because she's beautiful like a rose but has thorns. But then while reading this I was also thinking that she is like a flower blooming into her own self, from someone's daughter into a woman in charge of her own life.
Thanks for this long and beautiful article. It was really exciting as usual to learn new things ranging from what a melismatic singing technique is to fun facts about the Titanic. I was never totally sold on Rose and Jack's love story not because I don't like popular movies, heartthrobs or whatever but because every time I watch them together in this movie, I always have the impression that Di Caprio is Winslet's little brother. He seems so much younger than her. On another note, I also took some time to appreciate a Ryan but not Ryan Gosling. For me, it was Ryan Reynolds. He grew on me in some later movies, but I was not his biggest fan at the beginning. As for Ryan Gosling, I don't find him particularly cute but he has charisma etc. I don't know where I will find the time to rewatch the Titanic movie. But I sure want to. after this analysis. The message it conveys is beautiful.
Wow. What I missed. I saw Titanic a long time ago so I guess I have to rewatch it now. Coming-of-age? Mr Cameron, how sneaky of you, to give the spotlight to a girl, and right under our noses. So thank you TVM for your sharp eye and sharper wits. Even the tiny queer reference...
We have made recommendations to you over time but a new series, Adolescence, is astounding. The teenager playing the lead role has never acted before and he's incredible. It's a tough watch but revealing the toxic sludge teenagers live with now. Four episodes, all shot in one take !!! They reference A Wanted Man, a series from the 80's which I haven't yet watched but will.
Maybe tonight I will tuck into some popcorn and watch 3+ hours of Titanic. Thanks to you.
-a fan
I saw Adolescence last week. It was terrifying and I even cried at the end (and a little bit in between) and my dog came to comfort me 🥺
It was an interesting choice to film it as if it was taken with one shot, and I understand that it was probably to make the atmosphere as raw as possible and the audience more anxious, but the actors sometimes looked deformed with big torsos and short legs. I don’t know if this was intentional as well, but it disturbed me.
Nevertheless, the topic/problem teenegers face today, shown in this mini TV show, is really important to be addressed and discussed by professionals, the sooner the better.
I loved this post so much. Thank you thank you thank you.
You're very much welcome!
If you want, we can look at this movie some more in the future. We've only really touched upon the metaphorical subtext in the post above. We haven't really gone into the character functions yet.
You analysing films here is like someone picking moments from my life to explain all the magic, the possible meaning, the connections in them. The depth. I am forever changed by your writing.
This was such a surprise! I think I was the one who’d mentioned Titanic in the comments, because indeed, I‘ve never watched it till the end. I have to admit that in part, my lack of curiosity was due to the images and Celine Dion’s song which, when it came out when I was around 18, were all absolutely off-putting to me (shouting “I am the king of the world!” was not my idea of romantic or cool or whatever). But especially because I’m afraid of both narrow spaces and the deep sea, and watching a whole film where a giant ship is sinking is just horrifying for me. Which is why I’m super grateful to have learned all these fascinating things about this famous film without having to put myself through the agony of having all of my panic buttons pushed😄. It was a riveting read, thank you!
Ha! Well, what are the odds!
I'm actually in the unique position of being able to give some advice here because, as it happens, I too suffer from both claustrophobia (pretty bad) and thalassophobia (much, much worse).
Just to give you an idea: I constantly drive people nuts because I will insist on walking up several flights of stairs instead of taking the lift (elevator). My colleagues keep groaning about it, "Really? You'd rather walk up seven flights of stairs instead of taking the lift?" To which I say, "Seven is nothing. Nine is nothing. I think I would even walk up twelve or so..." There's obviously a cut-off point at some point after that where I do compromise and take the lift (gritting my teeth throughout the ride and exhaling deeply once I can leave that small deathtrap again). But yeah, seven flights of stairs is nothing. I'll never take the lift for THAT! And with four-five flights of stairs, I'll usually even be quicker than the person taking the lift. (They have to wait. I don't! And I'm fast. Really fast.) In short: Avoiding lifts is a bit of thing for me. Positive side effect: It keeps you slim and fit, too. So, yay for claustrophobia!:D
My thalassophobia is worse. As in, I really break out in a sweat just watching submarine footage on TV and my heart rate goes up in ways that are frankly alarming.
Here's the good news: I don't experience this on a beach or on a pier. Even boats and ships are totally fine (well, not totally; I tend to get badly seasick, but vomiting is not the same thing as being phobic, right?).
I think the reason why I'm okay with beaches, piers and boats is that my brain somehow re-conceptualizes the ocean as this flat surface and then it's fine. It's specifically (and only) the underwater stuff that produces this feeling of horror and dread in me, and as long as I stay on the surface of the water, I'm fine.
So, with this as context...How about I tell you about the movie 'Titanic'?
I was really, really apprehensive when I first went to see it at the cinema back in the 90s, thinking I would go into full sweaty-forehead-shaky-hands-feeling-like-having-a-heart-attack mode, but I was actually surprised how okay I was, all things considered.
It's really just the first eight minutes or so that are bad. (That's the frame narrative where the treasure hunters literally dive down those almost 4 km in a submarine to examine the wreck.) I white-knuckled it through those first few minutes, and then I was okay.
In addition to that, it actually helped me to know that not all of what we are seeing in those underwater scenes was literally filmed on site, 4 km down, next to the actual wreck.
Only a very small number of shots are actually real. (I did not know that the first time I watched this movie, but I know this now and it helped me enormously when I re-watched it recently). Large parts of those scenes are actually fake! Everything you see when the little robot explores the former suite of Rose and Cal inside the wreck, the living room, etc....all of that is a film set! This wasn't filmed down there in the real Titanic wreck.
All of these shots (the shot of the grand piano underwater and all of those scenes with the mantelpiece, the safe, the bed frame, all that furniture covered in mud, etc. that entire suite)...all of that was recreated by set designers and then put in a pool and filmed there. None of that is real. None of it was filmed at the bottom of the Atlantic. (Only very, very few shots were actually filmed down there, the iconic bow of the ship, for example. Most of the inside-the-wreck shots are fake.)
Some of the shots don't even contain real water (!) Read that again: Some of the shots don't contain any water AT ALL. They used an old film trick for those: It's an optical illusion where you simply fill a room with smoke, then light it in a very specific way and eventually run a filter over the images. Et voilà...it looks like you're filming underwater even though there's no water at all, just smoke.
So, knowing all of that really helped me watch it the second time around, and I felt much more relaxed.
After those initial 'submarine scenes' at the very beginning (just a few minutes, really), I was largely fine.
The moment I got to the actual ship scenes in 1912, I was okay because that whole thing just looks like a giant hotel anyway, with opulent dining halls and grand staircases and splendid lobbies and such. My brain simply refused to go into Oh-my-God-deep-water mode. It just looks too much like a hotel. (Well, and the CGI back in the 1990s wasn't that good yet anyway. It's not like you look at that ocean and think it looks very realistic. Although admittedly, the fact that I'm not scared of the surface of the water might have something to do with that, too.)
All of that accounts for the first half of the movie.
Once the ship starts to sink in the second half, I would have expected a strong reaction, but strangely enough that never materialized because my brain just kept lamenting, "Oh, no. Now they'll get that beautiful hotel all wet." XD
Maybe I had just got used to the idea that this was a hotel and my brain couldn't switch that off anymore. So, even when the water was flooding the corridors and collapsing entire walls, I kept going, "Oh, noooo! The hotel is filling up. That'll destroy the carpets.":D
I felt a bit queasy when the whole thing went tits up at the very end because I thought that I would get extended underwater scenes of Rose and Jack being sucked down with the ship, but that obviously never happened, and they were both back on the surface of the water within a few seconds, so that was a relief. (Also, it should be said that there are no tracking shots of the wreck sinking all the way down to the bottom of the sea. It just sinks and is gone, basically.)
Well, and then Rose and Jack were both trying not to freeze to death in the water, so my brain just went, "Ah, yes, that's merely a surface now again. Wonder where the ship has gone. It just poof and disappeared because there's obviously, absolutely, totally no depth underneath that surface. La-la-la!" and I was completely calm again within minutes.
So, that's my account. Don't know if you're wired like I am and if you're phobias are similar to mine. But I found the whole experience surprisingly okay. (Like...I don't think I could bear to watch an entire film about a submarine, for example. But this...was actually mostly fine.)
Oh, and by the way, I'm firmly in the 'it's-genetic' camp when it comes to phobias. I don't believe in the 'traumatic-experience-in-the-past' explanation at all, as there are none in my past. I think it's genetic. (Also, I think from an evolutionary point of view, these fears are totally justified and reasonable. Being scared of narrow spaces and deep water is healthy and normal.XD Anyone who isn't scared of that is just a weird freak.:P) And no, I've never been scared of heights, which is much more debilitating in everyday life, anyway.
P.S. If you wanna check out if you could theoretically bear the whole experience, you could try taking a virtual tour of the ship first as a way of prep:
The 'Honor and Glory' guys have uploaded an amazingly detailed virtual tour of the whole ship to youtube.
There's no sinking, no drama. Just lovely, relaxing music (absolutely do switch the sound on!) and a ton of brilliant details. And you get to see the whole Titanic, every last smoking room, grand staircase and stained glass window.
So, pour yourself a glass of wine, put on your finest suit or ritziest evening gown and pearls, sit back and enjoy the view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAd9RmiK4ZU&t
Now that I’ll be in Italy for a week, I’ll have the perfect opportunity to watch this! I’ll have to show this to my husband, too, who happens to have a life-long Titanic fascination going on, haha! Thank you so much! As for the movie itself, there is also the question of how I can backpaddle from my firm stance of “Nah, this movie is dumb, so cheesy, the first 15 minutes were enough!”😅. I guess I’ll have to watch it in secret (not that I don’t do that with half of my movies and shows anyway), IF this video turns out to be watchable and I get over my fear of the sinking ship. And yes, gosh, submarines are the WORST! I get palpitations just watching short snippets of movies set in submarines. Which is a shame, because “Das Boot” is supposed to be so good. But I just. can’t.
It was probably me who wrote “it’s not my cup of tea”, but other commenters also expressed similar experiences. For me it’s not because I don’t like big blockbusters. Going with your food analogy, I'm that vegetarian who doesn't like romantic movies in general. And the reason for that is that more often than not the women in those movies are portrayed as ‘waiting for the prince on the white horse who will save them and they can finally live a happy life as a wife and mother’. This absolutely doesn't resonate with me. Especially society's expectation of having children.
For full disclosure. I was around 13 when the movie came out and in my small city we had no functioning movie theatre at that time (it was closed for more than a decade before we could enjoy it again) and going to another city just to see one movie was not something you would casually spend your little spare money on. So we had to be creative if we wanted to see a new movie the time it went out. Thus, I borrowed a VHS cassette from a classmate which was a copy of a copy made from a copy of a copy of a footage taken in the theatre 😂 Can you imagine how bad it was? At some parts I could barely see or hear anything 😂 These were those beautiful times youngsters today will never understand 😅
Anyway, reading this post was a really, really big surprise for me. And I have to admit I really loved the subtext of the Titanic movie. All the mirroring (Cora had a cute red hat and Rose a wide belt in similar colour in that scene where Jack drew them on the deck to reinforce the mirroring as well I think), child - dad symbolism, foreshadowing Cal’s death, ship metaphor or the heart shaped diamond, … Now I understand why you love this movie 😊 I think you successfully passed the challenge.
I should probably watch it again but now a proper version 😂
Just a little trivia correction, for anyone who’s interested. The Slovak dad is actually played by a Czech actor/stuntman who speaks Czech in the movie as well, although the character he is playing in the movie is supposed to be Slovak. He speaks so quickly that I can’t understand most of what he’s saying but that swear word I can hear is in the vocative case (nom. idiot - voc. idiote), which in Slovak we don’t use anymore and it dates back in time, when Staroslovienčina, an old form of Slovak language, still used other things like dual on top of singular and plural asd well (some vocative case debris only remained for some words and in some dialects; like when calling out God: nom. Pán Boh - voc. Pane Bože - God Lord). For example my name ‘Alexandra’ is familiarly changed to ‘Sandra’ and the vocative form would be ‘Sandro’ and a Czech person would call me like that naturally when calling for me: “Sandro pojď sem, prosím.” (in Slovak: Sandra poď sem, prosím.”) - ”Sandra come here, please.” But, to make it a little bit complicated, we tend to use a form with ‘i’ (Sandri) which can be used similarly to a vocative form, but it’s more common to use it as a softer/cuter form of the name. This ‘i’ is thus sometimes used for names (where it sounds good only) and family terms only (Pavol - Pali - Paul; mama - mami - mother). “Mamííí…” is something that no mother what to hear because or something happened or, even worse, they want something 😂
So this is why hearing only one swear word is enough for me to know that it’s not Slovak. Cool right?
Wow, this is fascinating and so cool! I didn’t know some languages had the vocative still, I only know it from Latin. I wasn‘t even aware the popular name Sandra is a short form of Alexandra, because in my language, all Alexandras are nicknamed Alex, and Sandra is its own name (like mine - derived from Katharina, but not a nickname). And I always wondered how big the differences between Czech and Slovak are. But we certainly have the form with “i” at the end, too, and use it the same way you explained😉. Your description of the copied video tapes made me chuckle - I didn’t have copies of copies of copies, but did have some copies of self-recorded films, and even there, the quality could be pretty bad😅.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I've always loved Titanic but this opened my eyes to how multi-layered it too is. I can't believe I've never clearly understood that the major reason I love it is because it is essentially about a woman's independence. I've understood that it's all about Rose, a woman, but never really thought deeper into it.
This post also made me think about her name, and why it might've been picked. First I thought of a more straightforward reason, that it's because she's beautiful like a rose but has thorns. But then while reading this I was also thinking that she is like a flower blooming into her own self, from someone's daughter into a woman in charge of her own life.
Yes. Absolutely. Spot on. I think you're absolutely right about her name!