In the summer of 1974 a then 26 year old Steven Spielberg is going about his business of making sure that his movie about a shark that had overshot the expected $3.5 million budget does not sink his career in Hollywood. Everything that could go wrong had already gone wrong and it was hard to see the light at the end of this very dark tunnel. The movie he was making was Jaws, a movie that is today classed as a master piece in many circles and topping many greatest films lists while being one of the most commercially successful films in movie history. Jaws changed the way movie makers and movie goers thought about film. This was a movie that went against the norm and was released at a time weaker movies were usually released. It changed people’s perception of the open waters as a great distrust grew as people began to stare at the waters with distrust. Before all these though Steven had to find a way to ensure that this goose of a movie be released. What then did he do right?
It must be noted that the production of the Jaws movie began without a finished screenplay. According to Richard Dreyfuss the film began without not only a completed script but no shark or cast either. It is a known fact that the movie Jaws came off the novel of the same title by Peter Benchley. What many don’t know however is that Richard D Zanuck and David Brown had decided that the novel could make a saleable movie before the book hit the shelf which was when they read the book? This thought was intensified by Universal when the book became a best seller in 1973. Steven Spielberg was chosen eventually to make the film and for a while the parties involved in making a movie out of the book felt that everything was going to run smoothly – this was May 1974.
Spielberg had ideas to make the movie a little different from the novel as he was more interested in focussing on the man versus shark plot and not the other many subplots. Along with these changes Steven also wanted to add a better element of humanity to the main characters as he felt the book made them unsympathetic. Once again they went through a series of screen writers after Benchley himself bowed out and eventually they settled for TV comedic writer Carl Gottlieb to work with other writers in creating the screenplay. Yet it was not finished by the time shooting began and even the actors began to improvise lines. This improvisation gave rise to one of the most popular quotes of the film – “we’re going to need a bigger boat.” This mismatch of writers and contributors gave rise to a supremely well written film.
Unfortunately it seemed like the problems would never end for the movie and the shark was malfunctioning with the most common being it sinking. The problems the shark provided made Spielberg look to other methods to use in announcing the presence of the fish and he resorted to music, cinematography and acting to heighten the fear that the presence of the shark was meant to bring. With the production running over the schedule and the film exceeding the budget Spielberg was forced to say he saw himself moving out of his depth. Eventually the movie was completed and Spielberg still couldn’t tell if this was the movie that was going to sink his career. Fortunately he was wrong – he was very wrong.
The Ideology of Jaws
When Jaws was released it blew everybody’s expectations when it broke the box-office set by Godfather 1 in ten days by taking in $21,000,000. All of a sudden it had become the movie of the summer and the first real summer blockbuster. This movie seemed to have it all – good acting, a great script and an amazing directing by the wunderkind that was Steven Spielberg who was 27 at the time. While this war was not the war set in the Cold War, it would have been more straightforward to explain the ideology of this film if it was set in that era as we could have called the shark a symbol for International Communism. Jaws did not just make money as a movie but towels and shirts and posters and any other item that could have the image of Jaws pasted on it saw a growth in business. The movie Jaws can be likened to Moby Dick albeit a less pessimistic allegory as Jaws is seen as some form of liberalism at sea. And unlike Moby where the whale survives, in Jaws the shark is blown to bits.
The thematic design comes to play from the onset of the movie and it ends up governing the whole movie. The movie begins in fun with college kids having a good time at the beach. The film uses warm colours like red and yellow to show that at that moment they are secure and well and healthy. Everything seems to be normal until a woman at sea is devoured by the unseen shark. The camera work in this scene adds to the intrigue as it is fastened on her face as it is shot up close. This early scenes have led to many discussions as to the gender of the shark with the consensus being that it has to be a male specie that fulfils its sexual passion through its preys. While the people killed by the shark were both male and female, the shark is made to symbolise a young man without his inhibitions and moral scruples or even rational faculties – one who is now depending on his libido for direction. The young woman it seems was being punished for her forwardness and sexual freedom.
While not always the case most of these attacks happened at night where there was not as much light as during the day. This absence of light could be a symbolism for the actions of the victims that were not in and of themselves right. The film seemed to be telling us that we rest our vigilant outlook and are lost when our security is at its most fragile. Although it was not stated in black and white, this movie is steeped in ideology as we see scapegoating populism come to play as there subtle references to the Watergate connection. While we see meetings held with the business people of the town in a bid to sort out the shark problem but these business men and women decide to carry on as usual. This is a similar correlation with the Nixon administration when the administration decided to carry on with business as usual. It almost seemed like the movie was asking the question – who are the real sharks?
In the water Jaws becomes a male adventure story as we have to deal with themes like initiation and heroism. Brody, Hooper and Quint present us with different versions of manhood and leave it to the shark to adapt the one that was most appropriate for the mid-seventies. Because Jaws is not a right-wing populist fantasy it is easy to see why Quint dies. He is prone to excess and independent of traditional ties, extorting money from the council and scandalized Ellen Brody. In a sense he is almost as dangerous to Amity as the shark. Brody on the other hand with all his shortcomings is the man for the people. Unfortunately he can’t stand alone against the crowd and he caves in and leaves the beach open and in so doing becomes responsible for the death of Alex Kintner. His encounter with the boy’s mother is shown to the audience from Brody’s point of view.
Spielberg made Brody so relatable that he is immediately seen to be like one of us with all his vulnerabilities and his fears. He does not partake in the gamesmanship of macho men that is played out by Quint and Hooper. Brody wins out in the end more due to what he isn’t than what he is – he is not as privileged as Hooper or as experienced as Quint - and that is why he won out in the end. He was ordinary and unexceptional and was hanging by a thread and a prayer and that was just adequate enough to see him through.
We can truly say that very few movies have gone on to change the world and these movies are few and far between and Jaws is one of them. Jaws changed movies forever and this is not just talking about summer blockbusters, but in the changing of careers and fortunes and the way movies were directed and special effects shot. Outside the movie arena Jaws also changed the way we viewed the ocean and our hatred and fascination for great whites as people wanted to understand what made them tick. The shark revolution was finally upon us.
Many ideologists have looked at the death of Chrissie and claim it to be symbolic with rape and most probably date rape. We can look at the way she took off her clothes to the look given to her by the predatory Tom or even how Brody collected her clothes the next day can all be reinterpreted to touch on the male – female dynamic of life and sex. Tom who is staring at her is too drunk to join her and she revels in her ability to swim alone. Through all this her death then begins to look like some punishment meted on her for enjoying her own eroticism.
In Jaws we see Spielberg’s love of escapism come to play as he ensured the audience never for a second left this fictitious world he has created. Spielberg himself has stated that of the many reasons for his choice of the use Martha’s Vineyard, one of them was the fact that he could in this location obscure terra firma in a way to make it look like his characters were stranded at sea.
The Review
There are many things that can be said about Jaws and Steven Spielberg and how he made a masterpiece out of disaster and most of the praise that may be heaped on the movie as a result will be well deserved. That is just because Jaws is just that good. As most scary thriller goes it is meant to incite in people fear which it does in piles but this is some sort of nicer fear and not the type of fear an audience would experience from watching The Exorcist. Spielberg also made his characters relatable to the point that we are bound to see ourselves or people we know in these characters and that relatability was one of the draws of the movie.
On the surface this story is about a shark and how its attacks affect the way of life of the people of Amity, the movie has many undelaying ideologies and symbolisms. While Jaws is not a real shark some of the footage we see though is of a real shark. When we do get to see the image of jaws and look into its relentless eyes our fear is complete for in our mind’s eye we have seen a shark.
And while this shark was hidden from the audience because of its imperfections, suspense was built in the audience as a result. His handicap led him to adopt the slogan less is more and just like with most things it also rang true. It is known that this movie was taken from the book of the same title, what Spielberg did was downplay and completely take off some parts that he felt did not align with the type of movie he wanted to make. Because the star of the movie was a shark Spielberg was not pressed into finding big name stars to helm the movie and was rather able to go with lesser known stars that completely embodied the characters they played.
John Williams who made the score for Jaws has made more rousing and even better scores but the theme he used for the shark has become one of the most recognisable today and has been reused in numerous other capacities. Williams score helps the audience anticipate the shark even when they don’t see it on the screen.
Conclusion
There are many things that can be attributed to the movie Jaws but two of the most important was how it changed the face of summer blockbusters forever and how it took a little known director and made him an A-lister. While it would be much easier today with all the gadgets at our disposal to make a film about a shark it must be noted that Jaws was filmed in 1974 and at that time it was a massive task to create a believable 26 foot shark. As have been shown above the making of this film came with its own share of troubles. This beast which happened to be one of the major characters of the film did not appear till way into the movie. Spielberg instead uses the score and lights and shadows to announce the presence or in most cases the absence of the shark.
Never before then has there been a movie that made people afraid to go to the water like Jaws accomplished. Jaws opened on the 20th of June in 1975 and was distributed by Universal studios. They hoped that having a big TV campaign as well as releasing the movie to theatres around the country might make the movie big – they were wrong as the movie turned out to be huge. For two years this movie was such a commercial success to remain the biggest movie of all time till George Lucas released another summer smash in Star Wars.
The movie Jaws went on to be the highest grossing film of its time and the first summer blockbuster. This movie left audiences terrified and ecstatic at the same time. Decades later and this film still have the power to hold up to the more recent and bigger movies that have been made.
The success of Jaws opened the eyes of studio executives to the lucrative business that was summer blockbusters as summer had previously been seen as the months for dead movies. Today the biggest movies aim to come out in the summer months and that is all thanks to the success of Jaws.
Even though the story of Jaws is not real, it was indeed inspired by a shark attack. A couple of well documented shark attacks took place on the Jersey Shore in 1916. The rallying cry of that era was for the people to go kill some sharks as they saw the confrontation as kill or be killed.
In conclusion I will say that this was the movie that set Steven Spielberg apart as a great film producer. Many years later and this movie can still be enjoyed by audiences born into a different era and that is what makes Jaws a classic.
Works Cited
Jaws. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.
Universal Pictures, 1975. Film.
Biskind, Peter. “Jaws between the Teeth: A Review of Contemporary Media” 1975. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC09folder/Jaws.html
Ebert, Roger. “Jaws Reviewed.” 1 Jan 1975. Web. 11 Oct. 2013. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jaws-1975
