‘Jaws’: In Defense of the Shark

“Get out of the water!” These five words from Jaws inspire fear and dread, but it’s not the water the film smears. It’s sharks.

Ever since Jaws came out in 1975, sharks have been vilified as monsters. Director Steven Spielberg goes out of his way to position the Great White Shark as an almost supernatural menace, when in reality, sharks are complex creatures who don’t usually attack unless provoked. Jaws sins against sharks. It’s responsible for a general antipathy towards sharks, a misapprehension of their threat, and slander of an innocent sea creature. I’m going to say it: when you watch Jaws you should be rooting for the shark.

First we need to talk about how Jaws maligned sharks, the noble lords of the sea. These beautiful seadogs have never had much of a bone to pick with humans, preferring on feast on their fishy brethren. Out of nearly 500 types of sharks, only three seem to even pose a threat to us, and most of those attacks are unprovoked, or in Australia, where surfers are just asking for it. In fact, cows are more deadly to humans than sharks are, but children aren’t afraid of farms the way they are of swimming in the open water.

In addition to ruining sharks for generations of children, Jaws also makes the wild assumption that the Great White Shark is a mindless murder machine. Though we see its prey from its perspective, we never get to understand the Great White’s point-of-view. How do we know he’s a villain? What is his backstory? Oh, because he killed a few people roaming into his personal space and then did everything in his power to defend himself from his killers, we’re supposed to think he’s evil incarnate? Maybe the shark in Jaws is merely misunderstood.

Finally, Jaws reframes the infamous USS Indianapolis disaster as proof positive that sharks are violent beasts. Towards the end of the film, Quint (Robert Shaw), the wily old veteran who eagerly wants to hunt down the shark afflicting Amity Island, tells the story of the Indianapolis to Brody (Roy Scheider) and Hopper (Richard Dreyfuss). Quint’s memory is focused on the attacks of tiger sharks, which were indeed vicious and horrifying, but the whole incident is the fault of the Japanese navy.

Quint makes it sound like sharks killed the majority of the men on board, and that’s not the full story. More than 300 died in the initial attack, and the rest of the survivors had to contend with dehydration, exposure, and injuries sustained in the attack. It’s even debated how many men were killed by sharks versus how many attacks were on already dead bodies. Plus, the tiger sharks were just being tiger sharks, and they couldn’t help but to be attracted to the blood already in the water. Quint clearly is traumatized by the shark part of the incident, but the whole thing was a nightmare (and I recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History Addendum podcast episode on the topic).

Jaws is a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s also a well-crafted hit piece. It does its best to twist sharks into something sinister for the sake of a good thriller, but in doing so, it’s also ruined sharks for millions of people. The sharks deserve better than Jaws. 

Where to stream Jaws