Introduction
Movies not only provide entertainment but also often depict situations that show various aspects of the human life. Different social problems, for instance, are vividly present in many films. In this paper, we will scrutinize the movie Titanic, in which the problem of social inequality is rather bright. After that, we will analyze social inequality from two different sociological points of view, namely, the conflict and the interactionist perspectives.
Short Synopsis of the Movie
Titanic is an American 1997 movie that tells a fictional story of a young woman and a young man who met on RMS “Titanic,” a historic British ship that sank in the North Atlantic in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg (Cameron & Landau, 1997). The story is told by Rose, an old woman who survived the catastrophe. When she was 17-year-old, Rose DeWitt Bukater boarded “Titanic”; she came from a formerly rich family that was experiencing financial problems.
She was to marry a Cal Hockley, a rich man, to resolve these problems. She did not love Cal, neither did she want to lead a life of a wife of a rich businessman. The old Rose says, “I saw my whole life as if I have already lived it, an endless parade of parties and cotillions… Always the same… people, the same mindless chatter. I felt like I was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared or even noticed” (Cameron & Landau, 1997, 0:34:45-0:35:15).
Rose was going to commit suicide and jump down from the stern, but she was stopped by Jack Dawson, a poor young painter. After communicating with him for a while, Rose fell in love with Jack. She decided to part with Cal and run away from her family together with Jack; she left a mocking note to Cal. When Cal discovered it, he decided to frame Jack for stealing a precious diamond necklace, the Heart of the Ocean. Somewhere at this point, the ship collided with the iceberg, while Jack ended up chained to a pipe on the lower deck.
Instead of using a lifeboat, Rose went down to the lower decks to save Jack. Having fetched him, she went up to the upper deck and boarded the lifeboat. When she was looking at Jack, she understood that there was no lifeboat for him as he previously had claimed (there were too few lifeboats on the ship), and jumped back to the ship. Eventually, they waited together until the ship sank. Later, Rose was picked up by a lifeboat, but Jack died of hypothermia in the ocean. Rose lied about her name and introduced herself as Rose Dawson later on a ship that came to save them, to avoid Cal, as well as her family.
The Social Problems Shown in the Movie
One of the major social problems that are shown in the movie is social inequality. It is vividly depicted in the film. The main characters, Rose and Jack, come from different social groups, and the position and obligations of Rose do not allow her to be with Jack. Even when she rejects the privileges (which she perceives as a burden) that her class offers in order to be with the one she loves, she is eventually separated from him because of the consequences of social inequality.
The fallout of social inequality is also brightly depicted in the movie. The number of lifeboats that are available on the liner is too small; there are only enough to save approximately half of the people on the ship. When Rose says, “Half the people on the ship are going to die,” Cal answers her: “Not the better half” (Cameron & Landau, 1997, 1:51:45-1:52:00), for the boats, are reserved for those who use the first class, the rich and the noble. While they are boarding the lifeboats, the passengers of the economy class are forced to wait on the lower decks, locked so that the rich could board the boats without interruptions (Cameron & Landau, 1997, 1:49:30).
Therefore, the people who could only afford the economy class tickets were forced to stay on the ship and die. This is why Rose jumped back to “Titanic” when she was already in a lifeboat; she understood that Jack, being a poor person who was traveling by the economy class, would not get a place on a boat and that he would most likely die together with the other lower-class passengers. She decided not to abandon him. And still, she lost him when he froze to death while they were waiting for a ship to come and save them.
Social Inequality According to Sociological Perspectives
Social inequality is a situation when resources are distributed unevenly in the society, according to people’s social status. The types of inequality include racial, ethnic, gender, age inequality, etc. One of the most obvious types of social inequality is economic inequality, an uneven distribution of wealth among people, or the representatives of different social groups. Social inequality can be analyzed through the prism of different theories; we will look at it using the conflict and interactionist perspectives.
According to conflict theories, which are most often associated with Karl Marx and Marxian economics, economic inequality is the result of the economic system of the society (Bartos & Wehr, 2002). Today, this economic system is capitalism, which is based on the free-market economy. In such a system, the members of the wealthy class use the members of the working class in order to produce wealth. According to Marx (2004), they hire them as employees but achieve income by accumulating the surplus value (i.e. the value created by workers that is more than what the capitalists pay the workers for their labor) and turning it into capital, which is then used to obtain even more income.
Capitalists possess capital that they can use to produce more wealth by using workers, whereas the workers can only sell their labor to capitalists, and are forced to do so in order to make their living. But, however hard a laborer works, they will not be able to get an equal share of income. It also means that e.g. a worker’s children are extremely unlikely to become rich, for they do not have starting capital, as well as other resources needed to enter the higher class. Also, even if one manages to become a member of the higher classes, the vast majority of people are still forced to sell their labor to the few who possess capital. This means a conflict over valuable resources between the rich and the working classes continuously exists (Marx, 2004).
It should be stressed that possessing great amounts of wealth, large capitalists have enough resources to obtain a share of political power as well. They often use governments to maintain their position, to create subsidies, tax breaks, and other means to help their business. Therefore, the rich not only receive an unevenly large share of money but also have much more power than the others. In addition, it means that they can control or affect the media, the education system, etc.; they use it to spread an ideology which is beneficial to them. For instance, according to such an ideology, the wealth of the rich is a result of their own hard work rather than the structure of the society and their starting position, whereas the poor are poor because they are not hard-working enough, and so on. The wealthy create the image of “self-made men” in order to maintain their position via cultural influence.
On the other hand, according to the interactionist perspective, the position that one has in a society is maintained via the micro-interactions between them and the other members of the society, on a day-to-day level (Ferrante, 2008). This leads to people keeping their social roles prescribed by society (Turner, 2006, p. 217). For instance, when an employee interacts with their employer, the worker will often behave cautiously and very politely; they will attempt not to get on their bad side so as not to get possible penalties this might involve. This maintains the subordinate position of the worker and the superior position of the employer.
Therefore, the social inequality is also maintained via such interactions. The people will usually attempt to act according to their social roles, in order not to lose these roles. These ways of interactions preserve the relations of power that exist between individuals on the micro-level, which eventually leads to sustaining the power structures on the macro-level (Dennis & Martin, 2005, p. 207). In fact, it works in different contexts: members of different social groups interact according to their roles (as was shown in the example with a worker and an employer), members of groups with different political power also interact accordingly (one is likely to behave courteously with the president of their country, whereas if virtually everyone stopped considering them a president and behaving accordingly, the president would stop being one), etc. Therefore, according to the interactionist perspective, the interactions between people on a micro-level should be considered one of the factors that preserve the social inequality.
Social Inequality in Titanic According to Sociological Perspectives
It is now possible to apply the described sociological perspectives to Titanic. If we use the conflict perspective to analyze the movie, it is easy to see that Rose and Jack come from different classes, which prevents them from being together; even even though they wish to leave their social difference behind, the low status of Jack prevents him from escaping, and he, along with many other lower-class passengers, dies in cold waters of the ocean. On the other hand, according to the interactionist perspective, both main characters do not keep to their social roles; however, they are still interacted with by the others as the carriers of those roles, and this fact eventually seals their fate.
Conclusion
As it was possible to see, the problem of social inequality is presented rather vividly in Titanic. In fact, social inequality is one of the main reasons why the protagonists could not be together. There are some sociological perspectives that can be used to analyze social inequality. According to the conflict perspective, which is closely associated with Marx, social inequality comes from the economic system of society. On the other hand, according to interactionists, it results from daily interactions between people. Both perspectives can be used in order to understand these social phenomena.
References
Bartos, O. J., & Wehr, P. (2002). Using conflict theory. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Cameron, J. (Producer & Director), & Landau, J. (Producer). (1997). Titanic [Motion picture]. United States: 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, & Lightstorm Entertainment.
Dennis, A., & Martin, P. J. (2005). Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power. British Journal of Sociology, 56(2), 191-213. Web.
Ferrante, J. (2008). Sociology: A global perspective (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Marx, K. (2004). Capital: A critique of political economy, volume 1. (B. Fowkes, Trans.). London, UK: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1867)
Turner, J. H. (Ed.). (2006). Handbook of sociological theory. New York, NY: Springer.