By Elliott Serrano
“Look, Chief, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil.
It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy.”
– Matt Hooper in Peter Benchley’s novel JAWS
In 1975, the movie JAWS was what everyone in my grammar school class would talk about. (That’s what we called elementary school in Chicago. Or did you call it “middle school”?) It was the blockbuster film of the year that several of my classmates had seen multiple times. The boys would go on and on about Chrissy’s nude swim at the beginning of the film, speaking in lascivious tones and insisting that they’d seen boobs. They’d talk about the “scary scenes” involving body parts and disembodied heads. Oh yeah, even before social media was invented, I was getting unwanted spoilers for movies. Being from a family of modest financial means (i.e. “poor”), it would be almost a year before I’d see JAWS, once it reached the affordably priced second-run theater, and I’d finally get to see what all the hubbub was about.
Expecting the opening credits to evoke horror-movie vibes, you can imagine my surprise when the film opened with a shot of the ocean floor, the ominous notes of John Williams’ JAWS theme playing over the serene imagery. Even then I understood that we were looking through the eyes of the shark, slowly gliding over undersea plants and coral, the music evoking a sense of what I could only describe as wonder. If I was supposed to be afraid from the get-go, I wasn’t. If anything, I was captivated.
Then came the scene when Chrissy meets her demise and I thought two things: 1) oh my god that was horrible I am never going into the ocean at night and 2) my friends are such liars, it was too dark to really see any boobs.
As the story progressed, I could tell that this wasn’t just a horror movie. The characters were too much fun for a typical slasher film. Chief Brody was a guy you could root for; world-weary and jaded, he reminded me of my dad. Hooper was the nerdy scientist who I seemed to find myself relating to the most (go figure).
And Quint. Well, Quint was the guy who filled me with a sense of dread…and sadness.
You see, Quint was the guy who HATED sharks. And after he tells his story about the USS Indianapolis, I could understand why. When you go through a traumatic experience like he did, you can’t help but empathize. Still, it made me sad because he saw sharks as monsters, as demons, as something to fear.
Meanwhile, Hooper had a healthy appreciation of sharks. He recognized them as forces of nature. You could hate a shark as much as you did a tornado. Sure, you could fear a tornado, but can you really hate it? When Hooper explains to Mayor Vaughn that “What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine. Uh, an eating machine. Now all this machine does is swim, and eat, and make little sharks, and that’s all,” you got the sense that he had a healthy respect for the animal, or as much as you could have for something that was going to try and eat you.
And then when Brody, Hooper, and Quint board the Orca and set off to catch the Great White, Spielberg’s stunning vistas of the ocean, along with Williams’ masterful score, just filled me with a sense of awe.
“I thought this was supposed to be a horror movie” was what I was thinking during the sequence when the trio were chasing the shark and shooting harpoons that would attach the yellow barrels to its hide. Quint standing on the end of the bow pulpit, while Hooper steers the Orca in pursuit, is made all the more memorable by the musical cue from the score called “One Barrel Chase.” This wasn’t a horror movie; it was an adventure! Man versus nature on the most timeless of battlegrounds. The sequence just thrilled me, and gone was any sense of dread I may have been feeling going into the screening.
(To this day, “One Barrel Chase” is still one of my favorite pieces of music by John Williams. And little did I know he would blow my mind again two years later with a little movie called Star Wars. God, I love his music so much.)
As all JAWS lovers know, what eventually follows is one of the most famous climaxes in movie history. Brody, Hooper, and Quint have their final confrontation with the Great White. Quint meets a horrific end that is all too fitting for his character, with Brody finally destroying the unrelenting ocean predator. And as the shark’s body sank into the watery depths, Williams gave it a musical eulogy that felt like a mercy to the misunderstood creature.
As I got older and learned more about sharks and the ocean, I grew to appreciate Spielberg’s take on the material. Subsequent viewings would have me recognizing the ignorance being shown by the adults in the film who could have/should have known better, from the Mayor to the throngs of sport fishermen who clogged the docks of Amity Island to find and kill the shark. And I still appreciate that the demise of Pipit the dog wasn’t shown on screen for shock value. (There are those that say she appears later in the film, on the dock as people run to the reservoir where the shark would terrorize young Michael Brody. I can accept that in my head canon.)
“With knowledge accumulated from dozens of expeditions and hundreds of dives
and countless encounters with sharks of many kinds came the realization that I
could never write Jaws today. I could never demonize an animal, especially not
an animal that is much older and much more successful in its habitat than man
is, has been, or ever will be, an animal that is vitally necessaryfor the balance of
nature in the sea, and an animal that we may—if we don’t change our destructive
behaviors —extinguish from the face of the earth.”
– Peter Benchley, JAWS
It saddens me to think how so many people let a movie like JAWS fill them with a hatred of sharks. And I do say hatred, because sharks have been so maligned and human cruelty has devastated many of the species. It’s disappointing that so many young folks went to see the movie and weren’t filled with the sense of wonder that I was. They weren’t so moved by the imagery, the performances, the musical score, to recognize the power of nature and the consequences that come when it’s not properly respected.
At the same time, I’m heartened by the number of marine biologists and conservationists who credit JAWS for inspiring them to learn more and work to save the sharks. I would have a similar experience shortly after when Luke Skywalker would get me to imagine myself as an astronaut. (Spoiler: it didn’t happen.)
Of course, you can say “it’s just a movie” and dismiss it as such. But we wouldn’t be celebrating the 50th anniversary of JAWS if it was “just a movie.” The film made a tremendous impact on the film industry, on pop culture, and on millions of young people who went to see a movie that they expected to warn them of the dangers of going into the water. I went in expecting that and left with a love of movies, music, and a healthy respect for the ocean.
Thank you Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw…
And John Williams.
This nerdy kid thanks you for opening me up to a greater, grander, more beautiful world.
ABOUT ELLIOTT SERRANO:
Elliott Serrano is a writer, columnist, radio and podcast host. He was dubbed “Chicago’s King of Geeks” by Laurence Holmes of WSCR 670 The Score; and called “Chicago’s Clark Kent” by Eisner Award-winning artist Gene Ha. He has written for the best-selling comic book series “Adventures of Grumpy Cat,” “Army of Darkness” and “Homies.” He has written features for the Chicago Tribune, Bleeding Cool News, Playboy.com and Monkeys Fighting Robots magazine. He is the co-host of the WRMN Morning Show in Elgin, IL. You can track him down online at About.me/ElliottSerrano
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