Titanic Legacy: Disaster as Media Event and Myth by Paul Heyer (review)

Book Reviews 129 Book Reviews Paul Heyer. Titanic Legacy: Disaster as Media Eue11taud Myth. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. Pp. xi + 175. Paul Heyer, a professor in the School of Communiccltion at Simon Fraser University, has done extraordinary excavation work, both in digging through the "archival archeology" (7) that surrounds the sinking of the Titimic, and in piecing together the many fragments, the many strands, of the Titanic legacy. Heyer's main argument is that the Titanic disaster signalled a new era in global communications, and that this transformation took place on a number of levels. News of the tragedy spread with a rapidity that was previously unknown; the wireless reporting-through its marriage with newspaper -provided an instant and constant flow of communication that was to change the nature of news reporting, and people across the world were transfixed by the same news story literally for weeks. According to Heyer, the sinking of the Titanic was perhaps the first truly global event, the beginning of McLuhan's "Global Village" (64). The book is organized so that the tragedy is viewed from a number of vantage points, all of which centre on some aspect of communication. Chapters deal with how the sinking and the legend were treated in different communication mediums; wireless, newspapers, literature, film, and even on large Imax screens. Heyer's thesis is that the reporting of the ship's sinking was integral to the development of new mediums of communication-it was the Titanic disaster that made Marconi a household name and brought about new rules for maritime communication. But he also makes the case that it was the reporting of the Titanic tragedy that lifted the Neto York Times into a distinguished place in American and international journalism. Under the leadership of managing editor Carr Van Anda, the newspaper provided saturation coverage and gripping eyewitness accounts, including Harold Bride's famous description of the ship's band playing while passengers desperately fought to get into lifeboats or stay alive in freezing waters. lJO Cdnad1an Review of Amencdn Studies Revue ca11ad1enne deludes ame, 1cames While Heyer covers the controversies that swirled, and the politics and manoeuvring that took place in the wake of the tragedy, he also attempts the much more difficult task of describing why the Titanic gained such a vaunted place as myth and metaphor. The fate of the Titanic continues to haunt the imagination. Heyer suggests that on one level the Titanic became a symbol of dass conflict. The ship was partly a "grand hotel" (158) whose guest list included a large slice of the rich and famous of the day, and whose opulent accommodations included every imaginable luxury-glittering staircases, expensive carpeting, large pools, and magnificent dining rooms. Stories about Isidor Strains, the owner of Macy's, and his wife Ida going down hand in hand, c1nd of John Jacob Astor bringing his nineteen-year-old bride to a lifeboat aroused purient interest. Although Heyer points out that during the crisis the wealthy were given preferential treatment, the tragedy also proved that wealth could not protect people from misfortune. In "Titanic Toast," a Black Amen can oral poem, the hero is a Black man named "Shine" who saves himself during the sinking, turning his back from the follies and sexual temptations ot the white world. Thomas Hardy's poem, "The Convergence of the Twain," has a mocking tone: Jewels in Joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. (161-62) The Titanic disaster also became a symbol of the limits of human progress, of the capacity of human beings to control the natural environment, to tamper with the forces of nature. As Heyer has written: Like the Nautilus and, from more recent genres of fiction, Star Trek's Enterprise, the Titanic has an aura of science fiction about her. She took part of the bounty of Earth on a voyage that often seemed more imaginary than real. The trip dramatized how limits of human achievement could be overridden by arrogance and vulnerability. (159) The author also compares the Titanic to the Challenger disaster of 1986, in which the space shuttle exploded in the atmosphere killing...