This is why I am so opposed to James Cameron. […] It’s almost embarrassing to see Avatar or Titanic, you know, all the rich are bad, sympathy with the lower class, the natives on the planet and so on, no? But at an implicit level, you get a very reactionary need sustaining this. In both movies that need is best articulated by the ultimate imperialist writer, Rudyard Kipling. Avatar is The Man Who Would Be King – the miserable crippled guy who is nonetheless good enough to save the natives and marry their princess and so on. This is the ultimate White Man’s dream. And Titanic is Captains Courageous. It’s really the story of a spoiled upper-class girl who has a moment of crisis and then uses Leonardo DiCaprio to restore her ego. Literally, he paints her portrait, then he can fuck off – he can leave. When Leonardo DiCaprio is freezing in water, she notices that he’s dead, and starts to shout, ‘I will never let you go,’ but while she is shouting this, she is pushing him away. It’s not even a love story. Again, Captains Courageous: upper classes lose their life, passion, vitality and act like a vampire to suck vitality from a lower-class guy. Once they replenish their energy, he can fuck off.
So Titanic is a vampire film?!
Yeah! Absolutely! Cameron appears to be progressive, but the mythical coordinates of his universe are reactionary.
— Slavoj Zizek, The End Times (Interview in Huck Magazine)
