Steven Spielberg’s Jaws: A Working Paper

New working paper. Title above, links, abstract, table of contents, and introduction below.

Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/106614251/Steven_Spielbergs_Jaws_A_Working_Paper
SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4572033
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373921548_Steven_Spielberg's_Jaws_A_Working_Paper

Abstract: Jaws takes place in two parts. The first part is set in the resort town of Amity. The townspeople must deal with the fact that a shark is killing people along the beach. The second part takes place at sea where three men set out to kill the shark. In the first part we see townspeople and outsiders fall over one another in mimetic confusion (to invoke the thought of Rene Girard) as they compete with one another to slay the shark. In the second part the town sheriff, an oceanographer brought in to investigate, and a professional shark hunter, Quint, pursue the shark. The shark kills Quint, but the sheriff finally success in killing the shark (the oceanographer is sidelined). By following the mythic-symbolic linkage between the shark and Amity (dubbed “Shark City” in a remark by the sheriff), and the relationship between the town and Quint, we can see that it is Quint who is the sacrificial victim (in Girardian theory) whose death allows order to be restored. Also, I include commentary on three other interpretations and a note about the trailer.

CONTENTS

Introduction: My late encounter with Jaws 1
Shark City Sacrifice: A Girardian reading of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws 2

The problematic of Jaws 2
Imitation, sacrifice, and René Girard 3
The mayor of Shark City 4
Tie me a sheepshank 5
You’re gonna’ need a bigger boat 6
Just deliverin’ the bomb 7
Transmutation though the end 8

Jaws: Misogyny and violence 10
Jameson offers a Marxist reading of Jaws 13
Quint and Ahab, Jaws and Moby Dick – getting ‘religious’ 17
God, the devil, and evolution in the 1975 Jaws trailer 19

Introduction: My late encounter with Jaws

I forget just how I came to watch Steven Spielberg’s Jaws several years ago. Most likely I saw it on my Netflix homepage and, noting that I’d not seen it when it came out in 1975, I said to myself, “Why not?” I knew it had made Spielberg’s career and was generally regarded as the first summer blockbuster. And John Williams’ two-note theme was by now as recognizable as the opening four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

I watched it, was shocked at the appropriate times – for example, when the shark first comes up behind the Orca, prompting Sheriff Brody to utter the best-known line in the movie, “You’re gonna’ need a bigger boat.”

And that was that.

Until a year ago.

I decided to revisit Jaws. I watched the film several times, making notes. I watched Jaws 2 as well. It isn’t as good as the original.

“Why,” I asked myself, “is the original so much better than the sequels?” Two things struck me rather quickly: first, Jaws 2 was more diffuse than Jaws, and second, there’s no character in the Jaws 2 comparable to Quint, the Ahab-like shark hunter. On the first, consider the way the last two fifths of Jaws is devoted to the hunt while Jaws 2 wanders from plot strand to plot strand the entire film. As for Quint, I asked myself: “Why did he have to die?” Sure, he’s arrogant and abrasive, but that doesn’t warrant death. Something more is required.

That’s when the light went on: sacrifice. Quint, not the shark, but Quint, is being sacrificed for the good of the community. That in turn suggested the ideas of René Girard, the literary and cultural theorist who has come to see the myth-logic (my term) of sacrifice as being central to human community. I now had a way of thinking about Quint’s death.

Now that I had begun thinking about the film, thinking inevitably led to writing. The bulk of this working paper, “Shark City Sacrifice: A Girardian reading of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws,” is a full-dress interpretation of the film based on Girard’s idea of memetic desire and the social utility of sacrifice. That is followed by three short pieces in which I engage with other critics. I conclude with a short note about the trailer.