In Defense of Rose from Titanic

Let us first consider the wood. By considering the wood, of course,
we must also consider its buoyancy. Buoyancy, that is, being relative
due to the displacement of water by the object. The greater the density
of an object relative to the water it displaces, the less buoyant the object
will become. Say, a shard of a heavy door – most likely oak. Oak is a heavier wood.
Say, a jagged triangle of oak - spacious, yes, but heavy – with a clinging body.
Then two bodies. Let us consider the bodies, their weight immutable even in the face
of their love. Whatever clever arrangement of limbs, the buoyancy is affected
by the weight. Yes, affected to the point of sinking into the water. Consider the water.
History tells us that on the night of the sinking it was 28 degrees Fahrenheit.
The expected time of survival in water 32.5 degrees and lower, naturally, being
under 15 minutes minimum and 45 minutes maximum. Let us consider that rescue
came in 63 minutes, as agreed upon by experts on both history and the film.
And let us again consider the bodies, the dense, beloved bodies, sinking to a dual death.

Some scientists, with more than the Internet at their disposal, have conducted
experiments to either prove or disprove the cry rallying from every screen:
there’s more room on the door!! Concluded conditionally – yes, survival
was possible had Jack and Rose strapped their life vests to the raft’s underbelly
– to which the response must be, again, let us consider the bodies. Not our lovers’.
The dead: frozen and drowned, splintered and shot, sad buoys littering the lethal sea.
Let us consider shock, how it numbs the skin, the brain, its capacity for breath
and reason; its colloquial cousin panic, the ship is sinking everyone is dead I’m so cold
we’ll die too, how these conditions are, perhaps, not most compatible with scientific
decisions for buoyancy enhancement, such decisions requiring, at maximum, knowledge
of the aforementioned properties of buoyancy, at minimum, an environment
absent of dead people, some of them loved ones, in which to make those decisions.

Now some may argue this is an excessive amount of effort and attention paid
to a fictional scene in an “epic-romance-disaster film” made over a decade ago
(source: Wikipedia). A sound argument, except: let us consider that in any story
where a man loves a woman and one dies, it’s supposed to be the woman (assuming
neither man nor woman are queer or trans, as this dramatically alters the probabilities
surrounding onscreen death.) The woman’s death is ornamental, a vehicle, its value
only relative, only in its propulsion of the man on an arc towards revenge, or redemption,
any thematic journey most accessible to those who look and live like, say,
a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Let us consider the film Titanic, for all its flaws,
as an interruption in a pattern. Let us also consider: when I was fifteen,
I half-lived an online forum because it is a truth universally acknowledged that memes
are better than homework. Or, I should say, most memes. The dwellers of this forum
had fixated on one Rose Calvert, formerly Rose Dawson, and that fateful makeshift raft.
Each post variations on a theme: there’s more room on the door, and furthermore
that Rose, her undeath, promising to not let go and promptly letting go (let us not
consider a metaphor), was proof, immutably, that women only love to serve themselves;
anything feminine is parasitic: will seduce you, drain you, then discard and move on.
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I’ve returned, almost a decade later, rebuttal in tow. Marshaled the facts and counter-
arguments laid out above. I’ve done my research, used big words, but calmly,
so as to not offend the men into, say, losing their temper, calling me “a crazy bitch”
and then, when I react, “emotional”. Have I convinced them? Polemicked my humanity
well enough to sate the hunger for my blood, the blood of my sisters?
Have you ever screamed for help across leagues of frozen waves, certain
distance will swallow your words, screamed anyway, until your voice gave out?
I’m trying to say I know what futility is. So let me be honest now:
I, too, want to outlive so many men that other men are mad about it.
I want my survival to be controversial – not because it depends on others’ deaths,
but because it bucks tradition. I want my very existence to refuse folding
into a more conventional narrative. Listen. I will drag myself from the water
just to spite you. Catch me portside, feet against the railing, each hurt
that I’ve withstood, each memory clutched, glittering, in my wrinkled fist.