Our Enduring Fascination

Ryden | Our Enduring Fascination Kent Ryden University of Southern Maine Our Enduring Fascination Paul Heyer. Titanic Legacy: Disasteras Media Eventand Myth. Praeger, 1995. (175 pages) y now, the sinking of the Titanic has become firmly established among most Americans' mental furniture, part of obvious and unquestioned references which sprinkle and structure their conversations. "X was a disaster of Titanic proportions," "Doing Y is as useful as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic"unremarkable phrases like these demonstrate the extent to which the big liner's fate is, and is assumed to be, common knowledge. In Titanic Legacy: Disaster as Media Event and Myth, Paul Heyer, a professor of communication at Simon Fraser University, accounts for the Titanic's continued looming presence in Americans' minds through examining the close interrelationship between the events and circumstances of the ship's sinking and the development of mass communication , particularly Marconi's wireless telegraph, the popular press, and film, and television. In Heyer's analysis, the relationship between the Titanic and the mediums has been a symbiotic one: not only have the media been responsible from the outset for disseminating information and interpretations about the sinking, thereby embedding the ship firmly in American popular culture , but their very involvement in the event and its aftermath —"our century's first collective nightmare and one of the biggest single-event news stories of this century," in Heyer's words—have often influenced the development of the media themselves. At the time of the sinking in April 1912, the two media most directly involved were wireless and mass-circulation newspapers—wireless because of its role, for better or worse, in communicating both navigational information to the Titanic and information about the disaster and rescue efforts to other ships and to stations on shore, and the popular press because ofits vital function in gathering and providing news about the sinking and the subsequent senate investigation , and in shaping public opinion. From the time that Guglielmo Marconi patented his device in 1896—and largely because of Marconi's own promotional efforts—wireless had been an important medium ofmaritime communication, enabling the exchange of ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore information over great distances and playing an important part in the rescue of crews from other foundering ships before the Titanic. Wireless performed up to all previous expectations in making known the Titanic's plight and bringing other ships to its aid; however, the feeling that even better communication would have resulted in a larger and faster response and the loss of fewer lives led to the first governmental regulation ofthe medium, including requirements that ships have at least two operators on board so they could send and receive around the clock; the licensing of all operators; and specific wavelengths and transmitter capacities for all stations . Wireless was also central in getting word about the Titanic into the press: once the New York newspapers began receiving messages that the big liner was in trouble, they all scrambled not only to provide as complete coverage as possible but to outdo each other in the process. There were over a dozen daily newspapers in New York in 1912, and Heyer provides detailed summaries of the Titanic coverage of the top six papers—the Times, the Herald, the Tribune, the 5un, Joseph Pulitzer's World and William Randolph Hearst's Journal—from April 15, when the first wireless messages began coming in, until April 18, the day the rescued survivors arrived in New York on the Carpatnia. As Heyer 98 I Film & History Regular Feature | Book Reviews demonstrates, the Times consistently offered a comprehensive , and accurate reportage over these four days, increasing its readership in die process; its edition ofApril 19, centering on exclusive (if sneakily obtained) interviews with the Titanic's and Carpathia's wireless operators, did much to establish the national and international reputation not only of the Times but ofNew York journalism in general. In the last third of the book, Heyer turns from Titanic as news to Titanic as metaphor, from media which provided information about the disaster to media that has attempted to plumb the meaning of the event. He provides a comprehensive summary of significant...