I.
INTRODUCTION
Released to theaters in the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg’s
film Jaws was nothing less than a
cultural event, the first movie to “…break the $100 million mark in box office
takings…” (Buckland 86) as well as being the film that set a new standard for
Hollywood formulaics. With Jaws Spielberg “…ushered in the age of
the contemporary summer blockbuster” (Buckland 86) and “…revolutionized
industry practice…” (Morris 43). Jaws opened on 494 screens
simultaneously and “…eventually grossed around $500 million worldwide…” (Morris
44), reaching millions of people and allowing its director to tap into a mass
cultural consciousness. While Jaws is primarily thought of as a
thriller par excellence, it is actually an intellectually complex and
disturbing film, most notably in its open embrace of misogyny and depiction of
male impotence. By romanticizing male
power dynamics and interrelationships, Jaws
posits a highly misogynistic worldview that effectively endorses a deep hatred
of the female.
Jaws is based on Peter
Benchley’s novel of the same name, itself a bestseller. In her book-length study of the film, Antonia
Quirke maintains the novel “…was of no particular merit, even as a time passing
page turner…” (Quirke 6), but Spielberg hired Benchley to draft the film’s
screenplay, which eventually went through three major revisions before arriving
at its heavily truncated final form.
Spielberg excised much of Benchley’s plot in favor of an intense
emphasis on the shark and its reign of terror over Amity island; Benchley’s
novel is more concerned with the personal and psychological effects the shark’s
presence has on the principal characters.
Where film and novel converge, though, is in their explorations of
masculinity and their demonizations of the female. Benchley’s prose is wrought with misogyny,
reveling in rape fantasies and implied sexual punishments. Spielberg, while more subtle, allows the same
attitudes of dominance to infect his film.
Jaws becomes less a “Moby
Dick” evocation of obsession, the classic “man vs. nature vs. himself” motif,
than a glorification of male virulence and ascendancy, a “will to power” by way
of a natural threat to society; in their heavily academic essay, Thomas Frentz
and Janice Rushing posit that the film effectively “…reaffirms patriarchy
through the slaying of the feminine…” (Silet 37).
II. VIOLENCE
AGAINST THE FEMALE
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| Chrissie Watkins, punished for her sexuality. |
The film’s opening scene establishes Spielberg’s misogynistic
tendency. After flirting with a drunken
islander, pretty, young Chrissie Watkins goes for a late night swim and is
attacked and killed by the shark. The
attack itself is horrifically violent, Chrissie’s death being
“…unconventionally protracted, longer than your average screen murder…something
as long as a screen rape” (Quirke 12). Spielberg shoots the scene in a way that
heightens its sexualized content: the camera beneath Chrissie, with the shark
gazing voyeuristically up at her through the murky blue of the water and the
heavenly, ethereal moonlight from above.
John Williams’ score is fittingly surreal, as though hypnotized by
Chrissie’s blatant femininity. If, as
David Gilmore states in his full-length study of misogyny that “…the greatest
obsession in history is that of a man with a woman’s body” (Gilmore 17), then
this opening scene is nothing less than a coveting, with the female (Chrissie)
an object of hungry, violent lust. The
shark here illustrates the subtext.
Chrissie’s immolation is “…the perfect metaphor for casual sex…” (Quirke
13); her death is punishment for her wanton sexuality.
Benchley’s novel is even more explicit in this association. Prior to the attack, Chrissie and the drunken
man have sex on the beach, a mess of “…twined limbs around limbs…”, an act of
copulation performed “…with urgent ardor on the cold sand” (Benchley 10). Afterwards Chrissie bounds into the water,
bearing the stench of her sex. Benchley
makes mention of the shark smelling Chrissie; given that sharks are tuned to
the scent of blood, Benchley is here suggesting the bizarre quality of
menstrual blood as “…the world’s most deadly substance and a magical scourge”
(Gilmore 25). That the shark then destroys
Chrissie completely references primitive beliefs of women as sexual witches,
reinforcing “…misogynist pollution fears…” with the blood in the water as a
contaminant (Gilmore 32) and a deep-rooted, perhaps culturally ingrained, fear
of the female. Spielberg shoots
Benchley’s vision of the Watkins attack almost exactly as it occurs “…even to
the subjective mood” (Bowles 209), highlighting the author and director’s
shared sexual conservatism.
III.
EMASCULATION, IMPOTENCY, AND OBJECTIFICATION
 |
| Martin Brody, unsure of himself as always. |
After the attack on Chrissie, Spielberg introduces us to Martin
Brody and the film’s other major thematic concern: male impotency. Brody enters Jaws waking, tired and groggy.
The world continually forgets him; he is small, simple, unmemorable. Brody is Amity’s Chief of Police, removed
from New York, where he was even more invisible. Brody relishes Amity because in Amity, small
and isolated Amity, “…one man can make a difference” (Quirke 41). Spielberg here gives the impression Brody has
never made any difference, in either the lives of the anonymous citizens he’s
sworn to protect or the lives of his own wife and children. As seen by critic Nigel Morris, Brody is
shown to be “…morally spineless in his conformity…” (Morris 53), unable to
stand up to the various authority figures bearing down on him in the wake of
the shark’s voracious attacks. Spielberg
continually shows Brody in the far left or right of the frame, pushed against a
figurative wall, pinned down and squirming under the thumbs of Amity’s economic
guardians (the shark is pure poison to a community that survives on its summer
tourist influx.)
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| The terror, revealed? |
Spielberg revels in Brody’s ineffectualness and pitiful
self-awareness. The most demonstrative
instance of this is the pierside confrontation between Brody and Mrs. Kintner
regarding the death of her boy, Alex, taken by the shark in a brutal attack
several days prior. Wearing a beaming,
near ecstatic smile awash with naivety, Brody hams it up for the newspaper
photographers, posing with a group of local fisherman who have just hauled in a
tiger shark, which everyone (except for Matt Hooper, the young marine biologist
requested by Brody to help deal with the shark) assumes to be responsible for
the recent attacks. Mrs. Kintner
approaches Brody clad in a black dress and mourning veil and the entire pier
goes silent-her entrance is almost ghostly, perhaps a harbinger of violence to
come. Standing before Brody, Mrs.
Kintner slaps him full force and admonishes him publicly for not closing the
beaches when he knew there was a shark in the water. The slap has an incredible significance in
establishing Spielberg’s themes. First
and foremost, Mrs. Kintner is calling Brody out on his impotency. He could
have prevented the attack by closing the beaches, if only he could have stood up to Amity’s economic
guardianship. “You knew,” Mrs. Kintner
laments. “My boy is dead,” she goes on,
“and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
 |
| Brody, humiliated in front of the entire community. |
This is Brody defined: complete inefficacy. Brody could not gather the courage to stand
for what he knew to be right; in sexual terms, this is equitable to failure in
maintaining an erection. Here the slap’s
secondary implication becomes clearer.
Mrs. Kintner’s accusation is a public emasculation. “A slap in cinema is sexual…” (Quirke 36),
carrying a severe intimacy. Mrs.
Kintner’s slap “…is like being kissed by a skeleton…” (Quirke 36), both
enervating and painful. Brody is made to
cower before a woman, unable to offer up any sort of defense. He is a failure as an authority figure and
also as a man, and the entire gathered community is allowed to bear witness to
it. It’s a humiliating scene that
Spielberg plays up for thematic effect; in Benchley’s novel the encounter is
private, in Brody’s office, without the physical confrontation. Spielberg wants to create a sense of rage
towards the female in Brody-the embarrassment he suffers as a result of this
encounter with Mrs. Kintner will later manifest itself as rage towards and fear
of the shark, itself cast as an embodiment of the female.
 |
| It's all happening right before his eyes. |
Brody’s emasculation continues in one of the most loaded,
subtextual scenes in the film, the dinner scene between Brody, Hooper, and
Brody’s wife Ellen. Over a copious
amount of wine, Hooper and Ellen exchange glances and smiles while an oblivious
Brody descends into drunkenness (watch how he pours himself an entire glass of
wine, more than anyone else at the table).
Ellen is clearly infatuated with Hooper, a young, virile, intelligent
man with an aristocratic upbringing, the very opposite of her husband. Brody is old, tired, and common, retreating
from the difficulties of life in New York and finding himself unable to face
the challenges wrought by the shark terrorizing Amity island. The contrast between Brody and Hooper here is
extreme; Spielberg uses Ellen’s attraction to Hooper to illustrate Brody’s
feelings of insecurity and suggests that they may not be entirely
unfounded. Brody recedes into the
background of his own home, made invisible by his wife’s dismissal. At one point, Ellen’s hand comes to rest on
Hooper’s as she gazes at him, seemingly dazzled; in response “Hooper flirts
with Ellen, who flirts back, so subtly, almost unaware she’s doing so” (Quirke
39). Ellen’s eyes glint in the low light
of the dining room, a little girl lost in the glow of a crush. Brody then rouses himself and reiterates
Hooper’s earlier suggestion that they go into town and cut open the tiger shark
caught earlier, to see if the Kintner boy’s remains are inside. Ellen reacts immediately, asking “Martin, can
you do that?” It seems a minor, almost
throwaway remark, but in light of the tableside scene that just took place, it
becomes bitter mockery, a woman questioning a man’s desire and authority.
 |
| Together but apart. The rift that will never be traversed. |
The scene has no parallel in Benchley’s novel. It was an invention by Spielberg, but it
subtly reinforces one of the novel’s strangest and most disturbing (as well as
its most misogynistic) episodes, the sexual affair between Hooper and
Ellen. Benchley saw his novel as a
comment on class relations, a discourse “…about class consciousness centered
around the Sheriff Brody-Ellen Brody-Matt Hooper triangle” (Bowles 211). Benchley’s Hooper is an arrogant, Ivy League
islander, the younger brother of one of Ellen Brody’s old boyfriends. Spielberg dismisses much of this backstory but
does acknowledge Hooper’s wealthy background (at one point in the film, Hooper
confesses to Brody that he purchased his research boat with money given to him
by his wealthy parents.) The Ellen Brody
of the novel is wracked with longing for the life she could have had had she
not married Brody, and she uses Hooper to achieve some semblance of the life
she so desperately regrets leaving behind.
Ellen sets out to seduce Hooper; meeting him at an out of the way restaurant,
the two get drunk together and discuss sexual matters:
“(Hooper) poured Ellen a glass of
wine, then filled his own and raised
it for a toast. “To fantasies,” he
said. “Tell me about yours.” His eyes were
a bright, liquid blue, and his lips were
parted in a half smile.
Ellen laughed. “Oh, mine aren’t very interesting. I imagine
they’re just your old run-of-the-mill fantasies.”
“There’s no such thing,” said
Hooper. “Tell me.” He was asking, not demanding, but Ellen felt that
the game she had started demanded that she answer.
“Oh, you know,” she said. Her stomach felt warm, and the back of her neck was hot. “Just the standard things. Rape, I guess, is one.” (Benchley 147).
This is a very interesting exchange, and is evident of
Benchley’s blatant misogyny. The first
fantasy Ellen blurts out is rape, which she considers to be one of “the
standard things” a woman fantasizes about.
Benchley also implies that the idea of talking about rape is arousing to
Ellen, endorsing a primitive idea of subservience to male sexual
authority. In the novel, Ellen goes on
to detail exactly how she would want a man to rape her; Hooper asks if the man
raping Ellen has a large penis. The
conversation is so titillating for both parties, they find themselves in a
hotel room having sex, and Ellen finds herself reduced to an object:
Even
after his obvious, violent climax, Hooper’s countenance
had not changed. His teeth were still
clenched, his eyes still fixed on the wall, and he
continued to pump madly.
He was oblivious of the being beneath him, and when, perhaps a full minute after his climax,
Hooper still did not relax, Ellen had become afraid-of what,
she wasn’t sure, but the ferocity and intensity of his assault
seemed to her a pursuit in which she was only a vehicle. (Benchley 153).
Again Benchley’s misogyny is on full display here. The female is only an object to be used for
the sole purpose of male satisfaction; the entire conversation that preceded
Ellen and Hooper’s coupling was not an instance of two people getting to know
one another but a prolonged arousal ritual for the male party’s sole
benefit. Brody eventually begins to
suspect the affair, and tensions between the two men in the novel’s final third
set aboard the Orca reach a boiling
point. The dinner scene in Spielberg’s
film is a heavily truncated version of the events in the novel; we never see
Hooper and Ellen have an affair, but the suggestion is made implicit by the
flirtations between the two. Spielberg
uses it as a device to further explore Brody’s male insecurities, which
manifest themselves aboard the Orca
via extended contact with Hooper and Quint, the latter being the garrulous,
rogue islander Brody hires to hunt and kill the shark.
IV. MALE
POWER DYNAMICS AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FEMALE
 |
| Quint brings a lifetime of hatred to his craft. |
The second half of the film and the final third of the novel are
congruent, with both detailing the hunt for the shark in the open seas. Benchley furthers his class consciousness
theme with the introduction of Quint, a salt –of-the-earth fisherman who
represents, even more strongly than Brody, the “…crusty know-how of small,
local businesspeople in America” (Silet 28).
Quint is possessed of a lifetime of wisdom and experience; he is at once
arrogant in his confidence and suspicious of what he doesn’t understand or
trust (made manifest in his derision towards Hooper’s “anti-shark cage” and
chemical means of killing the shark.)
Spielberg brings this into the film almost exactly while adding more
misogynistic traits. Quint is ribald and
obvious, given to reciting a number of sexist song lyrics like “Here’s to
swimmin’ with bow-legged women” and “Here lies the body of Mary Lee/died at the
age of one hundred and three/for fifteen years she kept her virginity/not a bad
record for this vicinity.” Quint also takes
an immediate dislike to Hooper.
In one
of the more “rapid fire” sequences in Spielberg’s film, Quint and Hooper engage
in a back and forth over what it takes to be a fisherman; Quint demands Hooper
tie a basic knot and accuses Hooper of having “city hands”: “You’ve been
counting money all your life.” Hooper
replies venomously, “I don’t need this working class hero crap!” Spielberg establishes an early antagonism
that clearly makes Brody uncomfortable.
Thrust between two extreme personalities whose knowledge on the matter
at hand (sharks and, to a certain degree, masculinity) far exceeds his own,
Brody is forced into a diminished role again wherein his authority amounts to
nothing other than a title.
 |
| Class warfare on the high seas. |
Once aboard Quint’s boat the Orca,
Hooper and Quint engage in a number of games of one-upmanship: Quint downs a
can of beer in one gulp and crushes the can while glaring at Hooper; Hooper
drains a small Styrofoam cup of coffee and crushes the cup in his hand in
sarcastic response. They argue
constantly over the most effective methods of fishing for the shark. As the hunt progresses, the two men fall into
something like a rapport based on a latent homoerotic attraction: Hooper sees
in Quint the sort of man he wishes he could be, the rogue individual making his
own way in the world oblivious to social concerns and obligations. Quint sees in Hooper what he could have been
had his ambition been stronger, had he been less docile and more willing to
take part in society. This dual
magnetism becomes a uniting aspect for the two men and allows them to establish
a bond based on mutual admiration and attraction. Though “Quint and Hooper represent polar
opposites in almost every imaginable realm…” (Friedman 166), they “…ultimately
learn to understand and respect each other, to work together to defeat a common
enemy” (Friedman 165). The bond, which
excludes Brody, reaches its culmination in the “scar comparison” scene in the
film.
 |
| Scars of the flesh, scars of the heart. |
The interactions aboard the Orca
almost all revolve around the absence of any female presence, and the “scar
comparison” scene is no exception. Few
sequences in the film so aptly demonstrate Spielberg’s latent misogyny. Over a number of drinks, Quint and Hooper
trade barbs, eventually settling in to a swap of war stories and battle wounds:
being cut by a thresher shark’s tale (Quint), being bitten by a moray eel
(Hooper), etc. This interaction isolates
Brody, standing away from the table where Hooper and Quint sit together; Brody
“…has never looked so lonely” (Quirke 70).
Clouded with doubts as to his own masculinity, Brody can only recede
into the background yet again as he glances at his tiny appendix scar, ignored
by the alpha males. Quint’s memories in
particular speak to a hatred of the female (his reference to an arm-wrestling
contest/night out in which he was “…celebrating my third wife’s demise…”) with
squealing delight, as well as a glorification of the masculine (again, arm
wrestling). Not to be outdone, reveling
in the contest and a need to top Quint, Hooper reveals the ultimate scar. Baring his chest, he cackles “Mary Ellen
Moffit, she broke my heart.” All three
men laugh at this, suggesting a shared understanding that to be spurned by a
woman is the greatest pain of all.
Spielberg implies that a woman’s motives are ultimately unknowable (why
did Mary Ellen Moffit break Hooper’s heart?) and therefore utterly alien, a
true manifestation of the psychoanalytical Other in society.
 |
| The sharks acts according to stranger motivations. |
This brings us to the question of the shark and what it
ultimately represents. In the film,
Hooper refers to the shark as “a miracle of evolution,” unchanged in its design
since prehistoric times. The shark is
ancient, unknowable, and mysterious. It
is a simple element of nature, supposedly beyond any sort of intelligent
motivation; the shark is animal instinct in its purest form. This shark, though, is different. Both Quint and Hooper acknowledge it in the
film, remarking that neither, between their shared lifetimes of experience,
have ever seen a shark behave the way this one does. Spielberg allows a supernatural element to
attach itself to the shark; it seems to strike with intelligence and
malice. It is very much a force beyond
instinct. It makes conscious decisions
and behaves in an almost human way.
 |
| Hooper, Brody, and Quint, in awe of the shark. |
It becomes apparent that the shark is emblematic of the female
in society, the ultimate Other. Quint
and Hooper both react to the shark as one would an attractive woman: they watch
it glide along the boat and are mesmerized by its size and grace. Hooper proclaims the shark “beautiful.” As it becomes obvious that neither man can
possess the shark, though, the attraction becomes anger and disgust, and the
urge to destroy it becomes overwhelming for both men. Brody, true to his established character, is
afraid of the shark and fears being devoured, of completely disappearing inside
it. Brody feels eclipsed by the idea of
femininity; Hooper and Quint merely hate it.
“The ability of feminine sexuality to disrupt the male..system..is
displaced onto the shark…” (Silet 25) and it becomes the men’s collective
mission to silence that sexuality through immolation.
 |
| Brody confronts the vagina dentata. |
At this point the shark attains a mythic symbolism. Jane Caputi, professor of women’s studies at
Florida Atlantic University, sees the shark as representing “…the primordial
female and her most dreaded aspects…the Terrible Mother of death and hell…”
(Caputi 307-08), an engine of fear rooted in primitive beliefs revolving around
“…a frightening and terrible mother goddess locked in love/war with a young
male protagonist who ultimately kills and dismembers her, thereby creating the
new patriarchal order” (Silet 25). The
shark here ceases to be a mere animal and instead assumes the role of a female
threat, one that must be slain in order for society to function. The shark, in the film and the novel, becomes
an evocation of one of the most ancient misogynistic beliefs, that of the vagina dentate, the toothed vagina. In the film especially, there is an intense
focus on the shark’s mouth, ringed with bloody, gnashing teeth, eager to
consume anything in its path. In the
film’s epic conclusion, we watch as Brody shoves a cylinder of compressed air
into the shark’s yawning mouth, effectively smashing the vaginal teeth “…so as
to ‘prepare’ the female orifice for male entry” (Silet 26). This entry comes in the form of a bullet to
the tank that explodes and destroys the shark completely. The male penetration
and climax (Brody firing the bullet and the subsequent explosion) is so
powerful, it renders the female form non-existent, virtually reducing it to a
receptacle for male desire and dominance.
The patriarchy is restored through the absolute eradication of the
female.
 |
| The female, eradicated. |
Both Spielberg and Benchley suggest that the female is
inherently evil; by making the shark something beyond an ordinary animal, they
imbue it with a motivation towards ruining men in particular. One could cite the opening attack on Chrissie
Watkins or the constant reference in book and film to the shark as “he” as
negation of claims of misogyny, but “…gender disguise…is a common practice
among patriarchal myths…” (Silet 25) that connects to Spielberg and Benchley’s
ultimate distrust and fear of the female.
The shark functions most vividly as threat that is distinctly feminine. That the threat is contained in such a violent,
literally explosive manner is indicative of the subconscious hatred both author
and director hold towards the female person.
V.
CONCLUSION
In her 2010 book The Male
Brain, Louann Brizendine makes the claim that a man’s brain is more
interested in objects than emotions.
Perhaps this idea helps to explain why Steven Spielberg and Peter
Benchley so willingly reduce female characters and female personifications (the
shark) into mere totems. Objects and
symbols are far easier to deal with than complex, thinking persons; in a
constructed world wherein one object represents another, meanings can be
interpreted in any number of ways. Jaws, as a film and as a novel, offers a
fear of an unbridled female sexuality.
Spielberg and Benchley both seem terrified by the possibility of a woman
as a sexual or intellectual equal, and in their creative works both men go to
lengths to establish scenarios in which the female is reduced or removed.
 |
| Steven Spielberg confronts his greatest fear. |
While not inherently frightening, especially in light of more
modern approaches to gender differences in society, the works of Benchley and
Spielberg should be approached carefully, with a cognizance of the somewhat
archaic notions of femininity both contain.
The works of Spielberg especially bear reflection, as he has maintained
a significantly higher and more influential cultural relevance than
Benchley. Ideas have a way of taking on
power when they’re communicated and received en masse, and Spielberg certainly has the reach. Recent films, like Schindler’s List and Munich,
have both shown a remarkable leap in maturity, but the critical complaints
against him, of being “…incapable of creating complex female figures” (Friedman
8), are as true today as they were when Jaws
was released over forty years ago.
The fear of the female is still very present in modern culture, and
while our society has made advances in correcting gender inequality, the
specter of hatred still looms in the shadows.
Or beneath the waves.
WORKS CITED
Benchley, Peter. Jaws. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Print.
Bowles, Stephen E. “The
Exorcist and Jaws.” Literature Film Quarterly 4.3 (1976): 196-214. Print.
Brizendine, Louann. The
Male Brain. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. Print.
Buckland, Warren. Directed
by Steven Spielberg: Poetics Of
the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster. New York: Continuum, 2006.
Print.
Caputi, Jane E. “Jaws as
Patriarchal Myth.” Journal of Popular Film 6 (1978): 305-26. Print.
Gilmore, David D. Misogyny:
The Male Malady. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Print.
Jaws. Dir.
Steven Spielberg. 1975. Universal Studios, 2000. DVD.
Morris, Nigel, ed. The
Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire
of Light. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. Print.
Quirke, Antonia. Jaws. London: British Film Institute, 2002. Print.
Silet,
Charles L. P. The Films of Steven Spielberg: Critical
Essays. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2002. Print.
