Adele is 30 years old. It’s a milestone – even Beyoncé acknowledged it on her website and she celebrated on Saturday at a Titanic-themed party, where she dressed up as Kate Winslet’s Rose from the movie and posed on a staircase very similar to the one in the film which was recreated to look exactly like the one on the real-life boat. People were dancing around in life jackets. And Mark Ronson even had ice in his hair.
Fun? Or offside? That’s the discussion we’re having today on The Social because there has been some criticism of Adele – that partying like this is tasteless, considering that it was an actual tragedy.
As she says in her Instagram post, Adele is a “superfan” of Titanic, the movie:
Can you be a fan of a movie and theme your party after the movie without disrespecting the victims of the historical event?
F-ck. My head hurts on this one because I don’t know what side to fall on. I’m trying to imagine, if I was a descendant of one of the people who died on the Titanic, would I find this insulting? Or was it so long ago that there is enough distance between the immediate pain and its legacy?
I get why it’s rather… morbid…to be dancing around and getting sh-tfaced in a fake Titanic setting. The question I can’t answer is whether or not we should be outraged about it. And, going forward, if the outrage is indeed warranted, how does it apply to other tragedies or tragic figures in history? Like… can I ever dress up as Anne Boleyn? And how does this extend to the artistic glorification of tragedy? How many times has Hollywood made movies about legendary mobsters? Al Capone alone probably has dozens of movies dedicated to him. Al Pacino. Scarface. That’s a Halloween costume every year. The Titanic sank because of human error. But it wasn’t deliberate. It wasn’t like whoever was at fault decided to sink the ship on purpose to kill all the people. Al Capone, on the other hand, was a murderer.
And then there’s the issue of capitalising on tragedy. Titanic made a LOT of money. Do we need to be pissed about that? If it’s gross to theme your party after the Titanic, is it just as gross to profit from it?
TELL ME THE ANSWER TO THESE QUESTIONS.
