A Myth About A Shark

There’s a myth about a shark in the movie Jaws; how the constant breakdowns of the mechanical shark forced Spielberg to get creative. But the movie isn’t really about the shark. The shark is a force of nature. And Spielberg knew exactly how to frame the shark as the catalyst, not the subject of the story.

So what exactly is Jaws about? The original Peter Benchley novel and the Spielberg movie present as man-versus-nature stories. It’s a staple of adventure stories going way back beyond Moby Dick, Beowulf and Grendel, past Hercules and the lion, Theseus and the Minotaur, Perseus and the Kraken, past Gilgamesh and assorted beasts. The killer fish is just another incarnation of the Watcher in the Dark, a malign presence, a predator with a taste for blood.

The Creature-feature

Spielberg sold Jaws to the studio as a ‘creature-feature,’ a staple of cinema with its roots in Nosferatu, Dracula, and Frankenstein’s monster. Like Godzilla and his kaiju betheren, the giant ants in Them, the Blob, or the Martians in The War of the Worlds, the predator in the creature feature doesn’t respond to reasoned arguments, bargains or compromise. There’s a basic, primeval conflict between man’s ingenuity and an unstoppable force for destruction.

The idea of a giant man-eating shark fits neatly into the creature-feature. As the first of a generation of Summer Blockbuster movies, it revived the genre. Ridley Scott released the first Alien; James Cameron the original Terminator, John McTiernan the first Predator. Stephen King wrote Cujo. We got pirhanas, anacondas, killer bees, killer rats, even killer sheep. But that’s not what Jaws is about.

A Trojan Shark

Peter Benchley’s novel remains grounded in the petty, shabby and disappointed lives of his characters, clinging to a broken American dream, set in a corrupt coastal town in decline. The shark threatens to destroy the remnants of the tourist trade keeping the town afloat. His protagonists, Brody, Hooper and Quint present a repellent trio of jaded, bitter and emasculated male egos. The shark is merely a catalyst that forces them to face unpleasant truths about their lives and careers.

Spielberg’s film adaptation isn’t about the shark either; it’s about friendship. It focuses on loyalty, bravery, camaraderie; family forged in adversity, as Spielberg’s Band of Brothers does twenty years later. Spielberg makes us care. Novel-Brody is a jerk, Movie-Brody a hard-working every-man and caring father thanks to Roy Scheider’s charisma. Novel-Hooper is an arrogant brat, Movie-Hooper a brilliant underdog in the hands of dynamo Richard Dreyfuss. Quint moves from maniac to missionary as we understand his PTSD; through Robert Shaw, he remains a force of nature to match the shark.

The Myth, the Shark, the Legend

Jaws is two movies back-to-back. Part one is the setup, the Watcher in the Dark, the predator preying on the town. Part Two is three mis-matched men in a boat, three fishes out of water, finding common ground. Spielberg’s movie version becomes more of a grand adventure. It makes heroes of his three protagonists, as they set off to slay the dragon. There’s none of what we now call the toxic masculine energy of Benchley’s characters. These men are likeable, proactive, competent.

Then what of Bruce, their mechanical co-star, and a myth about a shark? Some critics claim the many technical breakdowns of the animatronic fish forced Spielberg to extraordinary creativity. Not so. The monster under the bed retains its power because it is unseen. This is the secret of the suspense genre; the audience anticipates the monster. It is more powerful in our imaginations than any image on the page or screen. Hidden beneath the water, it strikes terror into our very hearts without the need to reveal itself. Spielberg learned from the masters of suspense and displayed his mastery on every movie from Duel to Bridge of Spies. We never fully see the aliens in Close Encounters (the late, extended, director’s cut notwithstanding).

For three quarters of the movie, we barely see the shark. John Williams’ sinister musical score stands in for the shark while the camera adopts the shark’s predatory point of view. At other times, it is the reaction of the other characters that invokes our terror. Everyone has seen the extraordinary parallax shot of Roy Scheider on the beach as the camera pulls focus on his horrified expression. His son freezes in fear as the shark passes by in the lagoon. There’s a jump-scare as the shark briefly emerges and Brody jumps back to murmour “we’re going to need a bigger boat.”

You’re going to need a bigger theme…

The shark isn’t the subject. Spielberg shows us as much of the shark as he needs to tell the story. It’s a creature-feature for marketing purposes only. Is Jaws 3-D any better for more shark? Or the lazily formulaic, Then-There-Were-None nonsense of Deep Blue Sea?

The emotional core of Spielberg’s adaptation is the night before the climax where the three men bond over a beer and Quint recounts the horrific sinking of the USS Indianapolis. After that, the movie slips into action-adventure, the pace cranked up to eleven. We’re too caught up in the story to dwell on the rubbery disappointment of Bruce on-screen. Brody and Hooper return home as transformed men, as friends and conquering heroes. In Benchley’s novel, there is no heroic arc. They return home to the status quo. In fact, Brody is in a worse place, as he acknowledges his wife’s affair with the young, dymnamic Hooper. Much as Benchley writes nature red in tooth and fin, the shark is a brief distraction; at the end all their problems remain.

The conflict in both versions is man-against-society; man-against nature is merely a sideshow. Our disappointment with Bruce the shark is quickly forgotten, passing into myth.