Okay, but… why “Purple Titanic”?

Many people believe that the Titanic was the first ship ever to send an SOS call. And many believe it stands for “Save Our Ship,” “Save Our Souls,” or the like. Both these claims are myths. In fact, SOS was first used three years before the Titanic sank, in the summer of 1909, by the RMS Slavonia upon running aground in the Azores. And SOS was developed in Germany in 1905, then adopted at an international convention the year after, for a simple reason: thanks to the sounds that represent S-O-S in Morse Code—three short “dits,” three long “dahs,” and three short “dits” again—it would be easily remembered, easily recognized as a distress call, and easy enough to tap out that even an amateur could send it in a pinch.

Whenever someone asks, “Why ‘Purple Titanic’?,” my first instinct has been to respond, “Why do you think it’s called Purple Titanic?”

One friend guessed that I meant it as a blend of red and blue, reflecting hopes for a less-polarized political future. Another thought it was an allusion to “Purple Rain” and its metaphor of heaviness and doom. At least one other offered what is perhaps the most obvious explanation: that I mean to say that we’re all on the Titanic, and we’re all going down.

That last is a particularly tempting interpretation, I’ll admit. Because a whole lot of us—across the political spectrum—feel the U.S. isn’t exactly doing great. We see and feel and experience how our economic and political structures, institutions, and political leaders are failing people (or a different F-word). For my fellow lefties, right now in particular it feels like we are plunging, and that anything we do is the proverbial rearranging of deck chairs. And as I wrote about last time, many of us are sending out an SOS in search of a Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic survivors, to come steaming over the horizon.

But I don’t, in fact, mean the phrase to be a metaphor for our country or our planet. I have not consigned either to the bottom of the ocean yet, and I don’t intend to. In fact, I recoil from these types of defeatist metaphors. My firm belief is that we are still in the struggle, and the future is not yet written. Why on earth would I prematurely write our demise into being?

Here are some things, on the other hand, that a “purple Titanic” could symbolize:

• The Trump-Musk administration, which, like those who built and ran the Titanic, seems to have a hubristic and irrational belief in its own unsinkability that may well ultimately contribute to its undoing.
• An economic model that’s struggling to stay afloat—because it’s predicated on a combination of burning fossil fuels (like the Titanic) + keeping workers’ wages low, for the sake of the bank accounts of a few wealthy people, who in turn try to gaslight those workers into blaming someone else.
• The preposterousness of the situation we find ourselves in, given that a Titanic that is purple is, well, kind of preposterous.
• Even—this may be a stretch, but this has been on my mind—purple is kind of a gay color, right?—and I'm troubled by the belief I see among some of my fellow gay men that society has progressed juuuuust enough that we are unsinkable, even as our trans siblings, and other people pushed to the margins, are attacked.

To note: The loss of life on the Titanic was a great tragedy, and I don’t mean any disrespect to those who perished in the sinking or to their family members who loved them. But if any of these metaphors seems overblown, consider the people whose lives are and will be torn asunder by the Trump administration’s actions—many of them, even, immigrants to the U.S., just like many of the people who died on the Titanic.

But here’s my confession: I chose Purple Titanic because, when I was a kid, “Ari loves purple,” and “Ari is obsessed with the Titanic” were two fundamental facts that people knew about me. My initial idea for this newsletter was “The View From Hier” (“hier” being German for “here,” pronounced similarly). But a friend suggested I think of something that better reflected my personality and unique point of view, something that’d be more memorable to others. And “Purple Titanic” was the first thing I thought of.

Which is to say, while I find every one of the explanations above appealing… they’re all more or less my own equivalent of developing SOS because the letters are memorable, and then telling everyone it means “Save Our Ship.”

On the flip side… if SOS can, nowadays, mean “Save Our Ship” to many people, why can’t Purple Titanic mean all of the above, too?

Just for fun, I’d love to know: Why did you think I called this Purple Titanic? 

More soon.

Love,

Ari

P.S. ICYMI: Shout out to my mom, who drew the Titanic image for a different writing project of mine (because she is the best), and allowed me to repurpose it for the PT logo.