I’ve been thinking about how to revise my original post about Jaws. I think the content will be much the same, but I’m considering one major restructuring. In the original article the penultimate section was entitled, “Speculative interlude – Questions.” I’m considering moving that to the top, right after the introduction and before I introduce Girard. Why? Primarily to motivate the introduction of Girard, but I also like the idea of giving a quick quasi-analytic synopsis of the film up-front.
Here goes.
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When you’re watching Jaws, it moves along seamlessly. But when you’ve watched it through and through and are thinking about it, you realize that it falls into two very different parts. The first part is in the thick of society: the town of Amity, its harbor, and its beach. It has many scenes with small, medium, and large groups of people. The second part takes place at sea and has only three people (Quint, Brody, and Hooper) and the shark. The first is jammed with people bustling all over the place. The second moves rapidly in a line, though not necessarily straight, and is set apart from society.
What connects the two? The obvious connection is through the shark, which killed four people in the first and is being hunted in the second. But there is a second connection. It’s not really hidden, but its nature is not obvious.
In the first part the shark kills a teenaged young woman, a young boy, and two adult men. Those four exist in the film only as victims. The shark kills one person in the second part of the film, Quint, the shark hunter. Though Quint only appeared briefly in the first part, when he set his price for killing the shark ($10,000), he is an almost continuous presence in the second part. By the time the shark kills him, we have come to know him.
There are several moments in the first part of the film where the mayor refuses to close the beaches because doing so would hurt tourism. He argues that we don’t actually know that there is a shark in the ocean and so it would be imprudent to close the beaches. Each time he did that I found myself getting angry at him. I doubt that my reaction is unique. I watched half a dozen “reaction” videos about Jaws on YouTube. In each case the reactor expressed anger at the mayor [1].
What does the film do with that accumulating anger? How does it resolve it? The film seems to drop it in the second part. The mayor and Amity don’t play any explicit role in that part of the film; they are not onscreen.
Is there anything in the second part that is somehow parallel to our anger with the mayor in the first part? What balances that out? I’m thinking of balance as a matter of aesthetics. Without it the film wouldn’t feel right, would be somehow diminished.
I am thinking that Quint’s obsession with the shark provides that balance. It is scary and off-putting and, when he destroys the radio and hence the possibility of calling for help, we realize that his obsession threatens the lives of all three hunters, Hooper, Brody, and Quint himself. I suggest that Quint’s self-destructive obsession gives his death an ‘aura’ of sacrifice.
Let’s think about that death for a moment, not in terms of real-world cause and effect, but in terms of myth-logic, in aesthetic terms. Why do we have anyone at all die in the course of the hunt? That’s not a causally necessary feature of shark hunts. But it enhances the thrill we the audience get from the chase. Why have one of the hunters be an Ahab-like obsessive? Yes, the hunters need to be skilled and determined, but that kind of obsession is not a causal requirement. It’s an aesthetic requirement. It’s necessity is that of myth-logic.
That’s why we need some help from René Girard, to explain the logic of sacrifice.
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[1] Here’s a reaction video entitled “Mr. Mayor, You Can Choke! JAWS Movie Reaction, First Time Watching.” Listen to the commentary starting at about 16:15.
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More posts about Jaws.
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