As far as historical events go, the sinking of the Titanic seems to be 'household' knowledge among people today. Everyone (even kids) has some awareness of what it means for something to be a 'titanic' failure. But has this always been the case? As a younger (or probably close to median age) Reddit user, I am very curious as to the effect the 1997 film had on our culture's general awareness of the 1912 tragedy. Grateful for any insight you guys can offer!!
The story of the Titanic has long held the popular imagination.
There has been a cinematic interest in the Titanic from the time of its sinking, with the first dramatic film based on the event being released a mere 29 days after the sinking. Even a Nazi propaganda film based on the Titanic's sinking was shot in 1943.
In 1953, the film Titanic was released, which took liberties with historic accuracy and focused on a fictionalized drama of an estranged couple on the ship. It was directed by Jean Negulesco, starred Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck, and won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Soon after this film, Walter Lord's A Night to Remember was released, which recounted the sinking from a variety of narrative viewpoints. Lord had studied the sinking for years as a personal hobby, and claimed that when he wrote the book there was no popular interest in the event. The book was a critical and commercial success, and has remained in print since that time - it was followed up by a 1958 British film based on the book, which while using fictionalized characters was praised for its overall historic accuracy (interestingly it apparently used clips from the 1943 German film). Lord would later advise James Cameron, and passed away in 2002.
After this spurt in the 1950s, Titanic popularity seems to have waned. Clive Clussler published a thriller, Raise the Titanic, in 1976 - this was turned into a feature-length film in 1980 that was a box office bomb.
However, not long after this, interest in the Titanic itself as an historic artifact and site began, especially with the discovery of the Titanic wreck site in 1985. This became widely known through National Geographic articles and documentaries, and Ballard's 1987 book Discovery of the Titanic (the role of the US navy in the search as a cover for Ballard to find US nuclear submarine wrecks was of course less well known at the time). Ballard's discovery cleared up aspects of the historic sinking that had remained unclear, most notably that the ship broke in two during the sinking, and that the water had entered the ship through fractures caused by collision with the ice berg (most previous film and book depictions had a Titanic sinking whole with a hole in the bow). Once the wreck site had been discovered, it soon became a place that various diving outfits visited and retrieved artifacts from, one notable visitor being James Cameron.
But none of this should really take away from the cultural impact of the 1997 film. Previous to this, the event was maybe akin to something like the Hindenberg fire: the public vaguely knew about the tragedy, and historians (professional and amateur) knew a fair deal about it, but it was something of a niche topic (ETA - actually maybe this isn't a great comparison: we don't have Academy award winning films about the Hindenberg!). The 1997 film was a worldwide cultural phenomenon, combining enough fiction, history, drama and special effects to make it the highest grossing film (not adjusted for inflation, mind you) until Cameron's Avatar knocked it to second place.