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Now Showing: Jaws (1975)
While it’s a great white shark that terrorizes the small coastal town of Amity in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws, it’s the commercial and political leadership of the town, particularly the slick mayor cum real estate broker, who transform a tragedy into a catastrophe. The film opens with a cringe inducing sequence as two drunk teens run down the water at dusk. The girl strips down and dives into the water. The boy falls asleep on shore. Then we see her swimming, from below, and the shark strikes. She gasps and disappears beneath the waves.
The story spools out from there, and we meet the local police chief, Brody (Roy Scheider), a grizzled deep sea fisherman and shark hunter, Quint (Robert Shaw) and eventually a trust fund baby with a PhD in sharks, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), who team up despite phobias, crankiness and brattiness to take down the beast from the deeps. Most of the drama during the first half of the film happens on shore, though, as Brody fights to close the beaches to swimmers. He is opposed in his pursuit of public health by the mayor and local business luminaries who are afraid of the economic impact of beach closures and headlines about shark attacks during the peak of the tourism season.
Spielberg, in a stroke of brilliance, hardly shows the shark to the audience or the characters during the first half of the film, causing the creature to become an ominous, and deadly, yet unseen, threat. Even though Brody quickly identifies the first death as a shark attack, the mayor leans on the coroner and has it declared a boating accident. When Hooper uncovers the lie using marine science, the town officials still try to look the other way. Meanwhile, Quint, a talented killer of fish, has been offering a simple yet expensive solution that no one wants to consider. It’s not until multiple deaths have occurred in clear view of all the townspeople — and the mayor’s own children have been endangered — that Brody, Hooper and Quint are finally empowered to take on the shark. From this point forward, the story goes out to see and the audience sees the shark more and more often, in all its toothy glory.
It’s easy almost 50 years later to dismiss Jaws as a cultural phenomenon from another era, but the movie possesses surprising currency and the ability to deliver chills to even the most jaded viewers. The performances are riveting, and the John Williams score, with its pulsating strings, remains anxiety inducing. On a technical level it is a masterclass in filmmaking (indeed, Jaws is still taught in film schools as a nearly perfect example of the craft). Most importantly, it goes beyond being a story about man versus beast and instead becomes a parable about human ignorance, perseverance, right and wrong in the face of a cold and uncaring world.
Jaws is available to stream on Hulu.
A note from the shore:
I’ve spent the past week, as I have every summer for the past eight years, at the Jersey Shore on Long Beach Island, albeit this time with a mask and without a night out at the Hudson House. The weather was mostly perfect, the water chilly, the sun hot, the surfing great, and the cocktails from the Spray Beach Inn’s walk-up bar were chilly and citrus infused. In the past few years, this bliss has been interrupted somewhat by a preponderance of Trump flags flying from the upper decks of many beach houses. This year, there were still Trump flags, so no surprise there. Yet they were far fewer in number.
Some houses were flying equally big Biden flags. Others had opted instead for the generic Stars and Strips. And a few that had conspicuously flown the Trump flag just one year ago no longer lofted those colors. One house, in particular, struck me. Last year, they strung up both a Trump flag and a Blue Lives Matter flag in support of the police. This year, while the Blue Lives Matter flag still snapped in the wind, the Trump flag was nowhere to be seen. It seems his colors have gone somewhat out of fashion.
A quick stop into Silver Sun, a local t-shirt shop that in years past has done a booming business selling Trump swag, revealed a similar trend. While most of the LBI, Stay Salty, Jaws and Jersey t-shirts and sweaters were sold out of everything but Extra Small and XXL sizes, there was a massive stack of unsold Trump 2020 inventory. The Pork Roll shirts are still all the rage, but the President’s likeness just is not in demand. Of course, one can’t extrapolate from fashion and home decor to national politics…but it sure is tempting to look to it as a leading indicator for this year’s elections.
Care for a drink?
My go-to this week has been the mojito. It’s the perfect tropical cocktail for a hot day by the salty waves.
Muddle 3–4 lime wedges (half a lime) and 8–10 leaves of fresh mint in a cocktail glass.
Add 2 tablespoons sugar and muddle again.
Fill the glass with ice.
Add 1.5 oz. of white rum.
Fill to the top with club soda.
Enjoy!
Beach Reads:
Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski is the second book in The Witcher series and contains a handful of engaging fantasy novellas and (long) short stories. It’s pure fun — shows more mastery of the genre than the first installment in the series — and is the perfect escape by the water. It’s available at Barnes & Noble.
The Lion’s Den by Katherine St. John is unabashedly a beach read, a thriller about a young woman on a super-yacht with her friends, a creepy billionaire and drugged cocktails. The New York Times picked it for their beach reads 2020, and I have it on good authority that they were right. Also available from Barnes & Noble.