Titanic disaster slides to the level of an amusement ride
"The past is never dead. It's not even past," one of William Faulkner's characters said.
But that doesn't mean you can't play on it.
In January, I was at a children's fair sponsored by radio station WSNE at the Rhode Island Convention Center. The attractions included a number of those giant vinyl inflatables on which kids can bounce, climb and slide. There was a pirate ship, an obstacle course, a castle.
By far the most popular was a huge ocean liner, its stern sticking high in the air, ready to slip beneath the waves. It was the Titanic -- technically, the Titanic Adventure Slide, manufactured by Cutting Edge Creations in Burnsville, Minn.
The slide is a 33-foot high replica of the doomed ship, which sank in the North Atlantic on the cold clear night of April 15, 1912, with the loss of 1,503 lives. It was the great tragedy of its time -- at least until World War I gave the world a grotesque new standard for body counts.
Immediately after the Titanic sank, men and women alike wept at the accounts of gallant gentlemen giving up their seats in the lifeboats to women and children. At the wives who refused to be separated from their husbands. At the hundreds of frozen corpses floating in the water. Hymns were composed; memorial poems were written.
Now it's just a big toy.
At the Convention Center, kids waited in line to enter the inflatable ship, clambered up the interior stairs, then slid happily down the sloping decks.
It gave me an odd, slightly shivery feeling, as though someone was tempting fate.
Bob Field, vice president of Cutting Edge Creations, said his company has sold 475 Titanic Adventure Slides in the past three years. During the 2000-2001 season, it was one of the top five grossing amusement rides in the country.
The ride did so well that Cutting Edge offered a new inflatable to go along with the Titanic -- The Iceberg Challenge. You climb up one side of an inflatable "iceberg," slide down the other, and crawl through a pair of "broken smokestacks" before making it to the Titanic itself.
The Titanic sells for $15,000; the Iceberg Challenge runs another $10,000. Field said buyers can make that back in no time.
Field said he has no qualms about the Titanic Adventure Slide, or the Iceberg Challenge.
"There's nobody left living who was on the Titanic. At any event, there might be one or two people who don't like the idea, but there are several thousand people who wait in line and just see it as a very entertaining ride . . . You're never going to make everyone happy with what you're doing."
Field pointed out that every year, thousands of Americans dress up in Civil War uniforms and re-enact the bloodiest battles ever fought on U.S. soil. For fun.
(By the way, Field was wrong about Titanic survivors; according to the Titanic Historical Society, based in Springfield, Mass., there are four left, all women.)
Most popular inflatable
The Titanic Adventure Slide at the convention center belonged to Magic World Amusements out of Worcester. Magic World president Walter Derosier said the company bought it about three years ago.
"It's the most popular inflatable in the business," he said. "You just can't help it, you have to go on it. People look at it and say, 'Wow.' "
Derosier said only one parent -- he can't recall where -- has raised any objection to the Titanic slide. Meanwhile, throngs of people have happily climbed up, and slid down.
He added that Magic World has even set up the slide at schools, where teachers would talk about the ship and its fate.
It was probably the phenomenally successful movie -- Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Celine Dion warbling
My Heart Will Go On
-- that turned the doomed Titanic into such an easily recognized pop icon. (Apparently it's a short hop from the big screen to the Kids Fair.)
Maybe the Titanic is an isolated case. Or maybe the passage of time naturally smooths the edges off any tragedy.
Which might not be such a terrible thing. When memories are too sharp, you have Northern Ireland, where the Battle of the Boyne (1690) is still treated as a fresh wound.
Or the Balkans, where no one can seem to forget anything.
Even so, 90 years seems a short time to go from mass grave to plaything.
The Trade Center next?
To compare the Titanic with the terror attacks on the World Trade Center is unfair. One was a dreadful accident; the other was a deliberate act of mass destruction.
But watching all the laughing kids slide down the Titanic at the Convention Center, I couldn't help wondering if, a century or so from now, children will get their thrills jumping from a replica of a flaming World Trade Center.
I hope not.
Television writer Andy Smith and other Journal
arts writers share the At Large column.
Reach him by e-mail at asmith@projo.com.
Printer-Friendly Version
