> I also really like the scene in Titanic where the rich guy tries to buy his way into a lifeboat and gets told his money won't be worth anything at the bottom of the ocean.
In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.
In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.
I'm reasonably sure that's because the gates to third class were locked to keep them off the decks and not because first class passengers were successfully bribing staff to let them onto the life boats. So, for me, it doesn't diminish the power of the scene.
The original piece that this was based upon was written at a time when my bank account was locked up for a month by creditors. I was homeless in downtown San Diego, surrounded by modern wealth, and the only cash I had access to was change found on the street and sidewalk as I walked around during the day.
A similar vignette would be a story I remember reading about a plane crash where they ended up burning large quantities of cash to try to avoid freezing to death in the snow-covered mountains.
I was enduring something extreme. It was a tremendous head fuck and I was doing my best to wrap my mind around it. It wasn't easy to come up with similar examples from literature to which other people might relate at all and people tend to think I'm exaggerating when I talk about the facts of my life. They think I'm being a drama queen to state things that happen to be true for me and try to convey what it's like to experience it.
I remember being in a women's day shelter and someone else who was homeless was waving about a five dollar bill and I had no money and no means to get any money and I don't know how to describe how bizarre that was that even other homeless people were so much more comfortably well off than I was that they didn't feel some need to hide that five dollar bill and protect it from the other poor people around them.
And it's like "Just how can anyone in the US be so extremely cut off from money like that in the midst of so much wealth?" But there I was.
And I'm not the only person who is invisibly cut out. Plenty of people can walk past the table where America lays a feast for some, but not others, and they aren't invited to partake and if they touch it they will go to jail for theft. A lot of those other people are People of Color and they serve the feast, but aren't allowed to eat any of it.
The barriers that keep people out are weird and "magical" in that they are invisible and intangible in certain important ways and they run deep. And all these years later, I still don't know how to speak of it effectively as is clearly demonstrated by the numerous scoffing comments in this very discussion.
No, that's a complete myth, probably propagated by the Titanic movie. Third-class women (& children of course) were MORE likely to survive than a male in First-class.
First-class men were about twice as likely to survive as third-class men, and first-class women were about twice as likely to survive as third-class women.
For those that are interested, here are the survival rates, broken down by men/women/children in first/second/third-class/crew: https://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm
"'On 14 April 1912, Benjamin Guggenheim, Solomon’s younger brother, found himself on board the Titanic, and, as the ship started sinking, he was one of those who helped women and children onto the lifeboats, withstanding the frenzy, and at times the brutality, of other male passengers. Then, when his steward was ordered to man one of the boats, Guggenheim took his leave, and asked him to tell his wife that ‘no woman was left on board because Ben Guggenheim was a coward’. And that was it. His words may have been a little less resonant, but it really doesn’t matter; he did the right, very difficult thing to do. And so, when a researcher for Cameron’s 1997 _Titanic_ unearthed the anecdote, he immediately brought it to the scriptwriters’ attention: what a scene. But he was flatly turned down: too unrealistic. The rich don’t die for abstract principles like cowardice and the like. And indeed, the film’s vaguely Guggenheim-like figure tries to force his way onto a lifeboat with a gun.'
Now, here come the interesting questions. When the scriptwriters did rule out the inclusion of this scene, did they do so because they thought the audience would consider it implausible? Because they themselves despised the rich so much that they did not want to concede even one of them the moral high ground? Because they feared their movie would be considered capitalist propaganda, if they included Ben Guggenheim as a hero?"
In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.