Part II_The Hyperreality of Titanic (cont'd)

The film is not fixated to this version of realism, though. It “marks and perverts a basic reality” by introducing fictional characters, who are on the same ship together with those “really” there. The fictional is connected to the “real” in a naturalized way i.e. to let them have a bit of conversation or brief encounter, even exchanging a glance or use the “real” as a background, something to refer to at times by the fictional. The two reinforce the presence of each other by virtue of their being apart in diachronic historical time on the one hand but together in synchronic cinematic space. This reality is no longer a “faithful” reflection of the real but a fictional creation which undermines the realism expressed by the set, costume and all the historical research which is claimed to have been undertaken by the filmmakers for years.

Perhaps there has never been a basic reality of the real Titanic at all. After all, all that is left is numerous testimony, contradicting tales and stories from various sources, images, artifacts, myths, ruins, bits and pieces which could never come together as a concrete whole to present an organic reality. But then who would know that there is an absence of reality? Maybe only Baudrillard who is quick and smart enough to point out that it is exactly the third phrase of the image which “marks the absence of a basic reality”. The whole set of the film has achieved a level of reality so real and immediate of its own that somehow it has become an enclosed world. The film has its own reality, as historian Ken Marschall remarks, “It’s like watching a picture from the Illustrated London News come to life”[1], referring to his experience of watching the shooting on set. To live and act in that reality becomes the ultimate concern. To get things right to the slightest possible detail means that it has to take on a reality of its own in order to let it out. This process comes to be separated with the initial phrase of the image, which still prioritize the real/referent/reality as its defining other. However, in the third phrase, as Baudrillard suggests, reality drifts away beneath its own image imperceptibly and it is in the fourth phrase that the image sweeps away any traces of the reality principle.

[1] Ibid. pp. 88.