JAWS (1975) - Film Commentary

HOPE F MCGEE

I was sitting in my car, driving from Kansas City to Houston, somewhere north of Dallas. When I heard it on the radio “sharks in the streets of Nantucket”. Shit. I flash back to the Shark jokes and Nantucket jokes I had been making all summer. It followed me here.

According to NBC Boston a great white shark has been spotted on the shore of Great Point Beach in Nantucket. The local radio station rang out that the sharks had been brought to shore due to a storm.

Swell.

So the next day, laying in my motel room, I ordered food to get delivered and I put on Jaws (1975). Jaws, to this day, is the reason my uncle won’t go swimming. Personally I always preferred the Sharknado (2016) concept when talking about why a shark would attack people. I have always been very pro-shark and the idea of an anti-shark film did not appeal to me.

Until now. Now the jokes are clicking. Why would a shark bite people? Well usually the theory is they become adapted to eating corpses. Or that surfers look like sea turtles from below. Or maybe the blood theory. That they smell your blood and attack. Or that the erratic swimming of a person drowning reminds them of prey. We could theorize that Larry Vaughn had been breeding great whites in secret. Feeding them carrion. Drawing the sharks closer to the shore. Sure. Could potentially be trying to bring real estate prices down; create an artificial buyers market. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Even in the film the sharks are described as unfeeling; all instinct no brains. Even Captain Quint admitted he didn’t know the difference. But the shark ate Quint. And I’m the Captain of this here vessel, and I’m about to say something crazy. What if the shark was dragging them somewhere? What if the shark was like “hey that’s a fucked up harness, but shit lets go”?. What if the shark was trying to lead them to Atlantis? What if the shark was trying to lead them to something bigger to save it? We will never know. A tragedy. To never know where the shark was leading them. On the other hand that could just be a story that never made it back to the shore. If you catch my drift. Off into the great beyond.