Shark attack! 'Jaws' celebrates 50th anniversary
A detail from the 1975 “Jaws” movie poster. Image courtesy of Universal Pictures
DUUUN-DUN ... DUUUN-DUN ... DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN.
If you’re of a certain age, those two notes are forever embedded in your memory.
The tension that immediately permeates.
The anxiousness, knowing what is coming.
And then, those teeth. Those white, sharp, terrifying teeth.
All the while, John Williams’ score from the 1975 movie “Jaws” is ratcheting up the suspense.
This June marks the 50th anniversary of “Jaws,” the Steven Spielberg blockbuster that grossed more than $470 million worldwide and so scared its audiences that people swore they’d never step foot in the ocean.
Fifty years later, “Jaws” remains one of the most iconic monster movies of all time. To understand why — and to appreciate Spielberg’s masterpiece — ASU News talked with Humanities Dean Jeffrey Cohen, who wrote the book “Monster Theory” in 1996; English instructor Emily Zarka, who writes and hosts a show called “Monstrum” for PBS Digital Studios; and Kevin Sandler, an associate professor of film and media studies in the Department of English.
“Jaws” was the first summer blockbuster movie and, according to Sandler, the perfect diversion at the perfect time after the unrest of the 1960s.
“People were kind of tired of the 1960s, and a malaise had set in by the early 1970s,” Sandler said. “The kind of social-consciousness movies Hollywood tried to make — people were no longer buying. They wanted to buy hope and freedom and a fun time. 'Jaws' delivered that.”
Sandler said “Jaws” appealed to audiences because it was a bit of everything: a disaster film, a horror film, a crime film and a film about corruption.
And, of course, a gigantic shark that was eating people. In that sense, Sandler said, it felt more real than the monster movies that preceded it.
“The monsters of the old days — they’re not really real,” he said. “The only other film that’s an equivalent is 'King Kong,' but nobody is seeing gorillas around. But sharks attack in shallow water. They’re very scary and very real.”
"Jaws" might have been another forgettable summer movie if it wasn’t for the Spielberg touch, Sandler said. As he would later prove in movies like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” Spielberg knew how to take audiences on a joyride.
Even one as scary as “Jaws.”
“He really knows how to make a movie,” Sandler said. “In 'Jaws,' the movie is so well cut. The images are so well framed. He knew what he was doing in a way that other directors perhaps did not. He knew how to do family adventure big-budget spectacles.
“That innate ability is really impressive. Here’s a movie from a young kid (Spielberg was 28 when 'Jaws' was released) with a variety of tones that shouldn’t have come together. But it does.”
Zarka and Cohen said “Jaws” worked as well as it did because the shark — which was called “Bruce” by crew members — doesn’t appear until 81 minutes into the movie.
“That does come from this larger tradition of the slasher movie, which was emerging during the same time,” Zarka said. “You don’t necessarily see the masked killer up front. We see glimpses of it, very much like we see in 'Jaws,' where we see pieces of the shark, but not the whole shark. And then you see the reaction of fear on other people’s faces.”
“The minute you hear that John Williams score," Cohen said, "you’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ Through the absence of the shark, you really invest. There’s all this uncertainty going on. You’re on high alert, and it makes a much more effective movie that way. I don’t think the movie works as well if you see the shark immediately.”
Zarka believes one of the reasons “Jaws” became such a phenomenon is that, in an oversized fictional way, it mirrored real life. Shark attacks, which are responsible for five to six deaths annually, had been written about for decades. People saw the ocean as a dark and foreboding place.
Now here came a great white shark eating people swimming in shallow water, just a few feet from safety.
Williams’ score just upped the fear factor.
“We’ve been using that kind of operatic theme since the 17th and 18th centuries,” Zarka said. “I bring that up because I think it’s so important to recognize that these major pop culture moments, even something like 'Jaws,' don’t just come out of nowhere.
“They come out of a longer history of horror and real fears that humans have.”
That fear of monsters is one of the themes of Cohen’s book.
“People like to say (monster movies) embody everything we fear,” he said. “I don’t think that’s true. They actually embody a lot that we desire, too. They’re the thing that helps us understand what it is to be human, and they kind of lure us out of our own safety. They’re the forbidden, but the forbidden is always attractive.”
It’s also fun to be scared by a huge shark.
“That, too,” Cohen said. “I think that’s why it’s often the case that people go on dates to scary movies rather than romantic movies. A scary movie will stay with you a lot more than a romantic movie will.”
Zarka has no doubt that if “Jaws” were re-released today, people would flock to the theater to see it.
“I think it would definitely bring in an audience,” she said. “It’s an iconic film in a lot of ways.”
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