Thursday, February 10, 2022

God, the devil, and evolution in the 1975 Jaws trailer

Here’s the opening voice-over on the trailer:

There is a creature alive today, who has survived millions of years of evolution, without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill, a mindless eating machine, it will attack, and devour, anything. It is as if God created the devil, and gave him, JAWS.

Think about that, millions of years of evolution, God, and the devil. 

Think about that in the context of Quint’s monologue about the U. S. S. Indianapolis: for five days the ocean writhed with men, wounded and dying, and sharks, attacking and feeding. Out of that Quint was picked by a seaplane. He lived, but did he ever leave?

Think about it: What would Jaws be without that monologue? Quint would be diminished and so would the film, for he is at the center. That monologue does for Jaws what the Marlow’s opening excursion to ancient Rome, the China Seas, and world maps does for Heart of Darkness.

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There’s more in my recent post: Crisis in Shark City: A Girardian reading of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.

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