I have a confession to make. There are a couple of pretty big movies that I’ve never seen (at least not in their entirety in one sitting): The Wizard of Oz (the monkeys and the witch terrified me as a kid), The Sound of Music (I could sing all the songs, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat through the film end to end), and, weirdly, Back to the Future (not sure how I managed to miss that one, child of the ’80s as I am).
Until last week, there was another heftily titanic film on that list too: Titanic. When it came out in 1997, I intentionally stayed away for two reasons. One, everyone was seeing it and gushing about it … and it just turned me off. In a fit of oppositional defiance, I decided to personally boycott it. After all, I knew how the story was going to end, right?
But there was another reason. Much had been made of Kate Winslet’s nude scene in the film and, frankly, I decided I didn’t need to see that.
Fast-forward 15 years, and James Cameron has reissued Titanic in 3-D. Plugged In reviewer Bob Hoose wrote an updated review of Cameron’s box office smash, and I was assigned to see the 3-D version in the theater to make some notes about how adding another dimension impacted and influenced the Titanic experience. My editor also felt it was important for me to see the film, given its cultural impact.
I have to admit, Titanic is a moving story on multiple levels, and I could see how it garnered so much praise from fans and critics alike. As for the content, however, I thought that the combination of some visceral violence, profanity and, of course, Winslet’s nude scene arguably could have merited an R rating—a rating that likely would have kept many teens from seeing the film when it came out 15 years ago … and today, for that matter.
Speaking of that last scene, I also couldn’t help but wonder how it might unintentionally reinforce a social trend today that didn’t exist in 1997: sexting.
Sexting is the practice of sending sexually explicit text messages and/or photos of yourself to someone else. Depending on what research you draw from, sexting rates among adolescents may be as low as 2.5% and as high as 30%. Regardless of the actual percentage, however, experts in youth culture and law enforcement agree that it’s a growing problem—a problem aided and abetted by technology and teens’ lack of understanding about how such images could hurt them.
So what does this have to do with Titanic? In the film, Winslet’s character, Rose, volunteers to be sketched nude. She’s motivated in part by her growing attraction to Jack (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and by her rebellion against the strict upper-class mores and expectations she’s been subject to her entire life.
Here’s my question: When Rose poses without clothes for someone she’s attracted to—someone she’s known for little more than a day—what message does that send to the teen boys and girls who may just be seeing this film for the first time? I don’t think it’s a good one.
I worry that this scene may reinforce the unhealthy, dangerous idea that shedding your clothes for someone you’ve just met and are interested in is normal behavior. And for young men, I wonder if it solidifies the idea that asking a young woman do what Rose did is a perfectly acceptable request.
After all, it seemed so romantic in the movie, right?
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