Last Saturday, the Icon of the Seas, the biggest cruise ship in the world, was christened by Lionel Messi before setting sail from Miami. The massive ship, reminiscent of a floating skyscraper, garnered criticism for its potential environmental impact—in many cases, taking a cruise can be worse than air travel, pollution-wise. The ship fought back against this reputation. It is the first of its kind to be powered by liquified natural gas, a fossil fuel that represents a “cleaner alternative” to more standard oil options. Unfortunately, many of these claims have been largely written off as greenwashing and, despite its imposing size, social media remained unimpressed, nicknaming the bloated ship “human lasagne.” 

Sustainable or not, any sort of cruise sounds like my personal nightmare, and when I talked to my friends, there seemed to be a consensus that cruises are unappealing. It’s not necessarily a hot take to be anti-cruise, so why is the multibillion-dollar cruise ship industry still growing? And why have cruise ships like the Icon of the Seas recently captured (and somewhat maintained) the world’s attention?

To address cruise ships’ recent growth in popularity, we must, as with many things, go back to the year 2020. The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the case of the Diamond Princess, which will forever be known as the first cruise ship to experience a major outbreak of the virus onboard, forcing the entire population onboard to quarantine at a time when little was known about the disease, how it spread, or the proper methods of protection. As a result, hundreds of people got sick and some even lost their lives in a scenario reminiscent of apocalyptic fiction. Events like these seem like they would deter people from choosing cruises as their vacation of choice. Yet, in the years since, the wider field of commercial travel has changed drastically across all sectors, somewhat offsetting this particular case study. 

For starters, flying has become un-fun. I don’t mean this flippantly. Over the past few years, the quality of customer service has gone down across the major airlines, hurting the overall experience. This is partly due to the fact that most airlines compete “on price rather than service,” and partly due to the fact that, at least when flying domestically, your airline options are limited. Flying on an airplane has gone from a cozy, exciting experience where you get a hot meal and a free movie on your personal TV to an every-man-for-himself horror story where delays, cancellations, and untrained or inept pilots have become way more normal than they should be. Even though air travel remains extremely safe, some recent incidents have raised questions about flight security. At the beginning of January of this year, the plug on one of the doors of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane detached from the plane right after takeoff, which scared many potential fliers away. On the driving front, while soaring gas prices have not completely dissuaded families and travelers from road-tripping, they have certainly made it more expensive.

Enter cruise ships. The pro-cruise-ship argument is pretty straightforward. They’re basically floating all-inclusive resorts, providing a cheaper alternative than traditional vacations—although their baseline cost does not include onboard surplus expenses like alcohol, gambling, shopping, and other add-ons. Some customers see them as less risky than airplane or car travel, and they don’t require any planning beyond the preliminary ticket you buy. Still, these on-paper benefits don’t feel like enough to explain why cruise ships seem to be having a moment right now, and not just for actual cruise-goers, but for people like me who do not have any interest in taking a cruise, but who find themselves interested enough to write an article about them.

Take the nine-month cruise, which is happening right now. If, like me, you ended up on the nine-month cruise side of TikTok, then you may be hooked on simply watching the spectacle of the thing unfolding before your very eyes. Think about it: a huge group of people with nothing in common spending the better part of the year together. There’s bound to be conflict! Some commenters on these nine-month cruise vlogs have lamented the phenomenon’s reality-TV-show potential. Creators vlogging aboard the cruise have reported swingers, strict rule enforcement, canceled excursions, and a plethora of other dramatic moments.

We are seduced by cruise ships in the same way we are seduced by reality TV or anything else gaudy, campy, tacky, outlandish, or just a little bit disgusting. It seems we are always on the prowl for a new form of entertainment. The lowest price for a stay aboard the nine-month cruise is “an interior stateroom that costs $59,999 per person,” and can run up to over $100,000. This makes the whole thing that much more enticing for the viewers at home. We love to scrutinize the rich and famous, and we especially love to do it when there’s some possible impending danger involved—in this case, the cruise going horribly wrong. This kind of buzz was evident around the Titan submersible and even in the Titanic more than a century before it.

But the bigger trend I want to point out is the recent popularization of class critique media, even if that critique isn’t necessarily very strong. The best illustration for our purpose, perhaps, is “Triangle of Sadness,” a film commentary on the ultrarich about a cruise ship extravaganza. Even though it’s arguably full of satire, most critics found the message lacking nuance or complexity, and I personally was not a fan. It is also reminiscent of the much-talked-about “Saltburn,” which also sometimes fell flat in terms of depth, but was truly an enamoring visual experience, even at its most bizarre. Both films lay their groundwork through pompous displays of wealth that subsequently get torn down and stomped all over. Each example of this genre of media offers some of this allure. In a world of overconsumption and a dire climate crisis, we disapprove of such vapid expenditures, and yet we can’t look away, especially as we watch character after character lose everything that has been built for them.

I see it more broadly as an attraction to abundance and excess—the idea of it, of course, is not necessarily the reality. It’s enjoyable to consume extravagant content from afar, but as we get closer, what we’re looking at becomes more disconcerting. There is also something that feels distinctly American about this kind of performance, as cruise ships seem to fit right in with our large portion sizes, amusement-park-slash-shopping-malls, and vast industrial wastelands of McDonald’s and Starbucks. Good ol’ fashioned American nostalgia is also trendy, seen in last summer’s explosion of hot dog connoisseurs and ballpark attendees.

So what does it mean exactly? That we are drawn to the cruise ship as an emblem of everything wrong with capitalist society? That we see it as some sort of microcosm for our own existence as humans gorging on an earth that eventually will not be able to sustain our appetite? Or maybe it’s not as deep as that. Maybe our obsession will fade, and the industry will continue to become stronger, until we all live on cruise ships, forgetting why we were even against them in the first place.

Emma Kendall can be reached at erkendall@wesleyan.edu.