James Cameron's ‘Titanic' is hated mostly in reaction to its highest grossing film status

Thanks for accepting. I will respond to your points before adding additional thoughts. - I know you to be wrong because I remember why I disliked it so much. It was a fad. It was like the Macarena. You couldn't get away from it if you wanted to. It was everywhere. - Dictionary.com defines a ‘fad' as a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc. followed enthusiastically by a group. I would argue that the film's status as a ‘fad' is linked so strongly to its status as ‘biggest box office success ever' to the degree of it being, in terms of a motive for hatred, identical. The biggest film of all time would *have* to be a fad, being (a) a temporary fashion, and (b) followed enthusiastically by a group. Harry Potter could similarly be described as a ‘fad' at the time of release, as could any of the top five highest grossing films worldwide. If you will concede that calling Titanic a ‘fad' is not in fact distinguishable to the content of the original proposition, then the ‘fad' argument is void. I will concede that my original debate topic awkwardly implied a number of variations on a theme; I would reject alternative reasons for the film's mass loathing such as "its extreme popularity", "that lots of people saw it", on the same grounds that I reject "it was a fad". - stupid little girls were swooning over it […] it falls into the category of NSYNC or Backstreet Boys. […] The movie tapped into the same hatred most of us had for the boy bands. - This however, is different, and a possible alternative: the lowest common-denominator girl appeal. I think the only way for me to disprove this hypothesis is to identify non-hated films that also have widespread ‘girly girl appeal' in the same vein. I think it could be stated that girls have ‘swooned', in the past, over Patrick Swayze in ‘Dirty Dancing', John Travolta in ‘Grease', or any number of other films with hunky leads. Pre-teen girls went to many repeat viewings of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' to gawp at Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. These films do not inspire the same disdain as ‘Titanic'. For this reason, I don't consider the ‘teeny bopper following' argument valid either. - Not to mention, most guys also have a natural aversion to such sappy, cavity-inducing love stories that go overboard (pun intended) like it did in Titanic. - I don't agree that people hate Titanic due to the sappy love story, although they may use it as a common excuse. Films containing soppy sentimentality are intensely popular, even with male audiences, such as ‘Casablanca' and ‘Wuthering Heights'. Even films where the romantic element is particularly weak or even nauseating (‘Four Weddings and a Funeral' with the horrific "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed!" line) are not hated in the same way ‘Titanic' is. And if ‘Titanic' is not hated for its love story, it must be for a different reason. I propose, in development of my response to your third point, that no single aspect of the film's actual content (such as, indeed, the overblown love story) could create such intense hatred for a film. That the film was so popular initially is strong evidence to suggest that the love story aspect of the film was convincing and that audience members, male and female, invested in that relationship and enjoyed it, regardless of whether or not they would have admitted so one year later. Indeed, if audience members had hated any significant aspect of the film itself, the positive word-of-mouth and repeat viewings would not have occurred. This brings me to conclude that intense dislike for the film must have happened later, long after the majority of people who had seen it had recommended it to others. This indicates something else must have been responsible for the backlash; as argued in my original post, it is very likely to have been its eventual status as ‘the biggest film of all time'.