Titanic anniversary: which tacky souvenir will you go for? | Hadley Freeman

Companies have come up with some pretty tasteless ways to cash in on the 100th anniversary of the catastrophe. Can't they see the irony?In regards to the MS Balmoral, the cruise ship scheduled to lumber across the Atlantic enabling passengers to mark this weekend's centenary of the sinking of the Titanic by re-enacting the world's most famous maritime disaster without ? hopefully ? the disaster part, some people have expressed, well, let's call them "qualms". Questions involving words such as "poor taste" and "seriously, do you have nothing better to do with your time and money?" have been posed by those who query the morality of treading in the footsteps of tragedy. These people clearly did not celebrate their 13th birthday by dragging six poor friends on a Jack the Ripper tour. ("And here is the alleyway where Jack the Ripper slaughtered another of his victims," breathed our tour guide as we walked along Brick Lane, admiring the sites where prostitutes were murdered. Man, I throw the best birthday parties.)Along with conspiracy theories, self-sabotaging politicians and re-runs of Friends, prurience is one of the few things that we will never run out of in this world. Fascination in the Titanic has simmered away ever since it sank on 15 April 1912 and it is understandable: the pathos, the horror, the microcosm of the class system in the 20th century. Yet distance does not always breed wisdom, and the expressions of fascination seem to get dumber as time goes on, as a comparison between the wonderful 1958 film A Night to Remember and Julian Fellowes' silly and heavy-handed mini-series proves. But the imminent centenary has produced other tasteless homages that even we aficionados Victorian murder tours find striking.Much is being made of the fact that descendents of Titanic victims are aboard the MS Balmoral, as though that makes the whole venture (cost: up to �8,000 a ticket) any less tacky. Which I guess it does, if the image of 9/11-themed flights for grandchildren of the victims of that tragedy in genuine 21st-century clothing doesn't strike you as deeply, deeply weird. This cruise is one of the rare instances in which "paying homage to the past" and "pretending to be Kate Winslet" seem to blur a little.Anyway, the MS Balmoral, despite some initial and rather ominous troubles, has already set sail, so you missed that boat. But if you still want to mark the tragic event this Sunday, here are some suggestions:1. Have a Titanic hen night Hen nights make most people want to throw themselves overboard anyway, so why not remove the effort by having it on the Titanic? (Note to anyone whose hen night I have attended: obviously yours did not make me want to self-slaughter. In fact, I still have the temporary tattoo from the night on my wrist! Good times!) As the Lagan Boat Company's website (tagline: "She was alright when she left here") promises, this will be a "hen night with a real difference". This difference doesn't extend to two-thirds of your friends perishing in the icy ocean, but rather you will be on a boat and provided with "an ice bucket" and ? ooh! ? "a CD player". So not that different, then.2. Go on a cruise. One doesn't need to be on the verge of marriage to enjoy a Titanic-themed boat trip. Saga is offering what it describes as a "Titanic remembered" cruise, which promises to be "unbeatable value for money" even if, at �1,554 for 10 nights, it seems to be almost twice as much as other similar cruises that don't have the word Titanic in the name. Still, that kind of branding is priceless.3. Get drunk. Cruises aren't your thing? Especially cruises with the word "Titanic" in the name? Don't worry! Perhaps you are of the same mindset as David Foster Wallace who once wrote that cruises imbue him with "a yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness". For a mere �99.99, you can gorge on a Titanic hamper, which includes plenty of Titanic-branded booze and a Titanic tea towel. Extra absorbent, no doubt.Rather like the people who profess shock that the sinking of the Titanic was a real event and not just a film by James Cameron, so this paraphernalia revels in the luxury of the Titanic without appearing aware of the reality. Part of the enduring pull of the Titanic story is that it, yes, illustrates man's hubris to the point that the ship itself has become a cliched metaphor. But it also demonstrates the folly of the common belief that luxury equals security. The sheer glamour of the Titanic was what made it, pre-voyage, so famous, and its end even more shocking. For overpriced wares to be hawked in its name ? a name, apparently, divested of tragedy ? is even more clunkingly ironic than any of the heavy-handed lines from various Titanic movies ("We are the luckiest sons of bitches in the world!" cries Leonardo DiCaprio, embarking the ship.) My pubescent Jack the Ripper birthday suddenly seems downright classy.The TitanicCruisesHadley Freemanguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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