Applause for jaws, despite the defects
Fifty years ago, the film Jaws frightened beach lovers and demonized sharks. Now, however, the sharks, the public and our beaches all evolve towards a better understanding
Universal Pictures / Graciety of Getty Images
The film Jaws deserves another series of applause on its 50th Birthday, despite its faults. Released on June 20, 1975, this classic invented the successful summer genre, made sharks a familiar enemy (if it is dismantled) and gave a visceral image to the words “shark attack”.
But today, humanity has grown up to have a better appreciation for all sharks, even those who swim near the beach. We owe a part of the public feeling that it is “sure to return to the water” to Jaws.
Initially, the biggest impact of the film was to portray shark bites as intentional “attacks” against swimmers. The fictitious history of the human-shark relationship (and the human-oceanic relationship) that humans are on the menu-was one of the most successful Hollywood stories in the history of cinema. More films, suites and spin-offs have created a lasting story and an industry of “thugs” sharks, rabid dogs, territorial bears, hungry crocodiles and other animals that intentionally and sometimes hysterically attack innocent in the classic “Sharknado” style.
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The public believed that this story of intentionality so completely that each shark bite was essentially a murder, and each shark a potential murderer, and the beach was the scene of a crime by a monster deviating against innocent gum. Above all, the rogue narrative of sharks gaining a taste for human flesh before Jawsand was largely invented by an Australian surgeon, Sir Victor Coppleson, in the 1950s. The novel by Peter Benchley in 1974, JawsAnd the film’s blockbuster provided the justification and weakens the repulsive against, all the anti-chariting public policies that followed, including the shark hunts, the shark derbies, the changes in the fishing laws that have classified sharks as fish waste, delays in the conservation of sharks and the placement of netal sharks on certain international beaches.
Another piece of Jaws History was its representation of an innocent coastal community which was prey. Here, beach enthusiasts were not large terrestrial animals entering the foreign field of a dynamic marine ecosystem, but they were presented as landowners and users of recreational water who had the right to expect that nature behaves domesticated. This erroneous perception that the beach is safe was introduced as a big false idea and lie to the public, as the idea that sharks are all dangerous. The ocean is constantly in flow, and the direct opposite of “shark bites is intentional attacks” is a story much less worthy of the Oscars on the beach as wild, dynamic and active oceanic.
In 2014, I proposed “the effect of jaws” in the Australian Journal of Political ScienceIn which I argue that politicians use familiar films and films as a basis for explaining real events. The effect of the jaws can be considered as a political instrument that uses films to strengthen three themes: “that sharks intentionally hunt people, that shark bites are fatal events and that killing individual sharks will solve the problem.”
After a terrible deadly shark stitching in Australia-Western in 2000 and the following bites and shark meetings, the Prime Minister of Western Australia Colin Barnett used the term “rogue sharks” who, according to him, returned to the beach to attack swimmers, it was therefore necessary to help the government to kill the specific target sharks that were intentional to haunt the community local beaches.
During this period, Benchley wrote an open letter to Australia-Western on the case and the political directive to track down the responsible shark. He wrote: “It was not a rogue shark, thirties by the taste of human flesh and now wanted to kill and kill again. Such creatures do not exist, despite what you could have derived from the jaws. ”
The effect of jaws continues in Australia, however, today. In 2024, the Elliston District Council adopted a motion to allow agents of the southern Australian peaches to kill large white sharks after shark bites in this area, which said: “Sharks are capable of learned behavior. The purpose of putting an end to the shark responsible for an attack is to prevent this shark from using this behavior to harm another person. ”
However, at 50, Jaws is also a celebration of sharks, creating a fascination that has helped lead to more than two generations new shark researchers. Indeed, some of the people who have done the most for the conservation of sharks worked on Jaws. Valerie Taylor helps collect images of sharks that have been used in Jaws And was one of the leaders of Southern South Wales on conservation laws to protect the gray nursing shark, which in 1984 became the first species protected of shark. In addition, Leonard Compagno, who was scientific and consultant JawsAlso directed the effort to protect white sharks in South Africa. The idea that Jaws Led to bad public relations is too simple a story. Our reading of the film, real sharks, the public and our beaches all evolve. Jaws is better at 50, sharks are seen more positively in 2025, and the public is more involved in the conservation of sharks and the safety of the beaches. There is even a “jawsie” prize in Australia, awarded each year to the strangest reports of shark attacks and intended to stimulate awareness of the safety of the beach.
I would be neglected if I did not note the link between JawsThe false theory of rogue sharks, and the current debate on the orcas entering the yachts off the Strait of Gibraltar. Both National Geographic and the BbcFor example, made the headlines on such “thugs” orcas. In the mixture of stories to explain this behavior, which affirmed that it was a situation of the “Orca” type where a female orca had been traumatized by a boat before and now trained to its young people to attack boats in revenge. Very JawsOr maybe Jaws 3But there will be no reward for this fish story.
This is an article of opinion and analysis, and the points of view expressed by the author or the authors are not necessarily those of American scientist.
