Titanic: Critic Contradictions Of Rick Altman

A melodramatic film is one that is portrayed as a “sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to all emotions” (Merriam-Webster). The Titanic directed by James Cameron in 1997 staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, is certainly a film of melodrama that conveys many codes and ideas about genre analysis.

Rick Altman, a cinema and comparative literature professor at the University of Iowa, explains that there are two ways to approach a film and describe how film genre works in his article, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” The first way one can approach a film, in Altman’s opinion, is semantically. This means to address the way that the media is presented. This involves the way characters are presented (i.e. what clothes they are wearing, the makeup, attitude, dialogue, angles, body language, music, setting), in which adds to the storyline. Along with semantics comes syntax. The syntactic approach to is understanding how to describe the relationship between character and setting; as well as understanding the structure of narrative in genres. In 1999, Altman added another component to his approach to film and film genre; pragmatics. Pragmatics refers to “the branch of linguistics, dealing with language in use and the contexts in which it is used, including such matters as diexis, the taking of turns in conversation, text organization, presupposition, and implicature.” (Merriam-Webster). Because of these approaches led by Altman, as a society we are able to understand the language of different films and film genres, and identify the underlying codes of characters, plots, settings etc. in a certain setting.

In the film, Titanic, we are able to use Rick Altman’s approaches to decode the underlying messages and the genre. Typically, The Titanic is viewed as a romance film or a drama, however, the film can be interpreted well as a melodramatic film. The film accentuates characters to bring the plot to life, and evoke many emotions out of the audience. In most of the love scenes in the movie, this melodrama is played out. While this aspect may be hard to represent on a 2D photo, music plays a great deal into the melodrama of the film. Music is what Altman would describe as the semantic aspect to the film. It is clear to the audience what mood is being set, and evokes a certain emotion out of the viewer. The clothing of Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Rose, played by Kate Winslet, gives the audience the atmosphere that the of the movie takes place in the early 1900s and tells us how the plot will follow from that time period. However, semantics isn’t the only thing that defines the film. In fact, Altman argues that the films in which are the most coherent and understandable are those that have a logical syntax.

Rick Altman has three contradictions that happen when critics start to analyze a film. The three contradictions are one: genre analysis is both inclusive and exclusive; in one way they are easy to construct because we have a preconceived list of specific genres in our minds, but there are also exclusive ones, meaning that they they are outside of the typical “box”. The second contradiction is that genre theory is too preoccupied. Those who study genre theory are too preoccupied with semiotics, rather than the historical message behind genre movies. The audience needs to be remembered when accounting for how genre is developed. The third contradiction is to understand genre as a truth; the audience is manipulated by generic conventions; it feeds on desire for entertainment and ritual, however, also transmits messages of ideologies.

Through my image captures of the Titanic, I found ways to solve these contradictions in the genre analysis that Altman describes. First, it is important to identify the syntax, because while semantics are important, the syntax is what makes it capable for this film to be included as a melodramatic one. To portray this, I decided to insert the lyrics of “My Heart Will Go on” by Celine Dion (the song played in the film) because although we can not hear them out loud, we can interpret them, and remember what they sounded like in the film. It may seem that the lyrics may be interpreted more as a semantic approach, however, because of the time the music is in the film, it shows the patterns of a melodrama – the audience is moved by the way the band may be playing this calming music in times of stress and desperation. It was also important for me to iterate how even though some themes of the film may be politically incorrect, or not in line with social norms now, they show the theory and history of how film genre changes over time, and the correlation between semantics and syntactic approaches does as well. I showed this by really defining how the film is pushing for heteronormativity and the classic American hero of the boy that chases the girl and vice versa. For this, I outlined the male and female in and chose to make Jack (Leonardo, DiCaprio) seem more like the main focus of the piece, whereas rose is faded. Also, I wanted to make it clear to the viewer what the audience is seeing and how this may shift over time depending on what the climate of Hollywood may be in the moment. For this, I chose to include the older version of Kate Winslet’s character, conveying how typically in old romantic and melodramatic Hollywood films, the woman seemed like she always needed to be saved by the heroic man. She feels as though he added something to what she already may have been before; essentially gave her more life. Whereas now, it is strongly urged for women to be independent and proud of their character no matter who comes into their life. Through these changes, and understandings of genre, I anticipate that as time goes on, audience members will be able to decode these underlying messages as well.