The infamous and unavoidable Titanic emotionally traumatized me as a child. I'm hardly kidding. I believe I was around the tender age of 7 when I first saw this movie. You see, I have an older sister who at that time was in that stage of obsessing over every ridiculously over the top romance she could get her hands on. She was part of that pre-teen girl demographic that good ol' Leonardo DiCaprio baited in so well. She was absolutely enamored with that movie for a quite a long time. So I, being the annoying younger sister that tried way too hard to impress the elder, watched it with her. I don't remember my first time seeing Titanic. I don't even remember last time I saw it (quite some time ago, I know that much). However, what I do remember is the impact it left on me.
As a young girl I was far from girly in just about every aspect of my personality. But as a naive child (and still having a pair of X chromosomes) I had a fairly good amount of romantic optimism swelling inside me. Blame Disney princesses. Anyways, Titanic. As I stated before, I don't remember the first time I saw this movie, but I DO remember abjectly refusing to watch this movie when my sister asked me to because I didn't want my heart to be ripped out and drowned again. The whole "tragic love story" concept had completely crushed all my romantic optimism (amongst other things, but I won't get into those for now). Don't get me wrong, the 1,500 people out in the middle of the ocean traumatized me in another way completely, but that's not what I'm focusing on today. Seeing how in love poor Rose and Jack were, only to later watch him freeze to death and have to cope with the fact that they be separated at death before ever even taking that vow, just killed me. I started to realize around that time that love doesn't always end so happily as many other stories would have you believe. It was a pretty harsh realization that I still haven't managed to shake; especially considering there is so much more evidence to support this in real life. "Careful! Don't fall in love because they're just going to die anyways! DON'T DO IT!". Thus began my complete paranoia of romantic love.
Now, you might be thinking "what does this have to do with Romeo and Juliet?". Well, that should be obvious. Tragic love story! Star crossed lovers! They're perfect for each other but the world just will not let them be together! etc. This is what I and many others consider the "Romeo and Juliet concept". A.K.A. romantic tragedy. The Romeo and Juliet concept is usually very similar to most romance stories, in the sense that they both involve couples pitted against trials and tribulations that they must overcome if they want to be with each other. The main difference being that in the Romeo and Juliet concept, they don't succeed. And the ending is what sticks with you more than anything else.
By no means was Romeo and Juliet the first story with the star crossed lovers thing going on, (see Homer's The Iliad for a much earlier example) but it's one of the most famous and, dare I say it, over the top examples. From the very beginning it's pretty ridiculous. Poor Romeo is depressed because he thinks he's in love with someone he's never spoken to and he bitches about it for a good long scene. Then IMMEDIATELY upon seeing another hot chick (who, by the way, is at the oh so ripe age of 13) completely forgets about this girl who supposedly broke his heart. It's never stated how old Romeo is in the script, but it really wouldn't surprise me if he was 13 as well because that sure sounds like some middle school crap to me.
This is what bugs me most about Romeo and Juliet in particular. I don't know what kind of "love" can be achieved by simply knowing what a person looks like and exchanging minimal words on a balcony during some silly party, but it's sure nothing I've ever experienced. But hey, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Romeo and Juliet are hardly even characters. Romeo's one characteristic is that he's a whiny bitch with bi-polar disorder. Juliet, I can hardly even say she has a single characteristic. She gets depressed but seems a lot less whiny about it. Instead she kills herself. Wooyay.
I have both love and hate for this story in particular. I just expressed all the things that piss me off most about it, so what do I like about it? Well, I adored most of the iconic scenes. Such as the balcony scene and the last scene where they show their commitment towards each other by committing suicide. Mercutio dying also tugged my heart strings pretty effectively (until Romeo started his usual whining, that is). I just think it would have been so much better if Romeo and Juliet had been actual characters for us to sympathize with, and had actually gotten to know each other. It would have made the already effective ending even better. Not to mention it would have made the first scenes a whole lot less insufferable.
The concept of the tragic love has grown and evolved a lot since Romeo and Juliet. Titanic is quite similar in a lot of ways, so I wonder why it's not considered a re-telling of that story? I think it's superior to Westside Story in that way, and Westside Story much more closely follows the formula that was laid out. Essentially what Titanic did was fix Romeo and Juliet's biggest flaws. People felt invested in Jack and Rose, because they felt like they knew them. Romeo and Juliet were more of just people to fit the story, instead of people going through this experience.
So, to conclude: "love is totally great and awesome, but it doesn't matter because death will just tear you apart anyways! And if death doesn't something else surely will. Sooner or later." This is essentially the message I get out of the Romeo and Juliet concept. Some might say that's a very pessimistic thing to take out of such beautiful yet tragic love stories, but I would argue that that is the point of them. To show us that with love often comes with pain. They're business partners. That analogy of "a rose is beautiful but careful not to let the thorns prick you" comes to mind, despite how overdone and cliche it is. So, what's the optimistic thing you can take out of these stories? I suppose one could take from them the idea that if you love as deeply and are as determined as those people are, you'll probably have much better luck in succeeding than them. Or you could just think "gee, I sure am glad I don't have to watch my boyfriend freeze to death while I chill on a floating door". And if you're one of those people that hasn't been that desperately head over heels for someone (not to mention dependent), then you can be glad at the thought that you don't have to deal with the crap that they do.
