Jaws COVID-19
We always knew that Jaws would get lots of headlines this year, after all it's the 45th anniversary since its release on the big screen. It was a given, in the words of Mayor Larry Vaughn, we were going to have our best summer yet.
There was news of new Jaws figures by NECA, a Jaws exhibition in Martha's Vineyard and the West End debut of The Shark Is Broken, featuring Ian Shaw the son of Robert Shaw.
Nature Vs man was one of the themes of Jaws, and so it would be again with the Coranavirus outbreak. And with the outbreak came the news that both the exhibition and play would be pushed back, like everything else. That of course meant the closure of Universal Studios in Hollywood, Florida and Japan.
However, we could never imagine that Jaws would resurface in quite the way it did, getting so much name checking in reporting and commentary regarding the global COVID-19 pandemic. You'd have initially thought it might have been Contagion or Outbreak.
Jaws made the cover of The New York Times, was the subject of numerous political cartoons and memes, even ending up in a piece of art work by Jim Carey, making a comment about President Trump.
Supporter of Trump or British Prime Minister Boris Johnson - who often compared himself to the mayor from Jaws - or not, it was hard not to see the parralels between Mayor Vaughn leaving beaches open and claiming everything was fine and some of the (in)actions of those running the country.
The Daily Jaws follower Harrison Smith is a director and writer of horror films, so is more used to disturbing us with made up tales of terror. He sent us this compelling video showing the narrative links between Jaws and the handling of Covid-19. You may agree with all of it, some of it or indeed none of it. It certainly isn't seaweed.
For some, they have seen the world of science ignored, just like Matt Hooper was on Amity Island. Hooper compared the Amity attacks to those of New Jersey in 1916, this has been compared to the flu pandemic of 1918.
Chief Brody represents the key workers, out of his depth, and like has been suggested about those closest to the virus on the front line in hospitals, facing it with equipment not right for the job. But he still faces the unseen terror, regardless.
And then we have the shark itself, for the most part an unseen terror that can seemingly strike anyone, young or old, sound familiar? We've already seen covid-19 take the Alex Kintners and Ben Gardners of the this world, even those with expertise on the front line, like the Estuary Victim who was the swimming coach and even Quint.
Even Chrissie's demise could be read - in this covid-19 reading at least - as a death due to not social distancing. If she'd not been at that beach party then she might still be alive, it's hard not to see those scenes and not think of the ignorant spring breakers. To be fair to Chrissie, the shark wasn't known about until after her remains were discovered.
The true villain is perhaps that of Mayor Vaughn, ignoring the situation before it has become too late. We all know the line Vaughn spouts to Brody, “It’s all psychological. You yell ‘Barracuda,’ everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell ‘Shark,’ we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
Smash cut to Trump saying it was little worse than the flu.
Even the second part of Jaws is about isolation, three men in a boat at sea against the shark. They may not have to be two metres apart but the fractions and camaraderie aboard must seem all the more real for those all having to stay at home to stay safe.
The shark in Jaws appears for around four minutes in total, but its presence is felt throughout. The longevity of Jaws has been that Jaws is about people and politics, and that doesn't age. Jaws isn't about a shark, Jaws is people, just not in the Soylent Green way.
So what was once about post Watergate paranoia or Vietnam can be just as easily be attributed to the ignorance and spread of AIDS, the BSE crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic.
And because of that, "Are you going to close the beaches?" will always have a far greater meaning for the audience viewing it in the present. We are all residents of Martha's Vineyard, islanders or not. Jaws is timeless and shall always be about our time, and that is what will always make it relevant.
If Jaws is the perfect allegory for the Coranavirus outbreak, then the future of Jaws 2 makes it look bleak. An early, darker draft of the script for Jaws 2 gave us a boarded up Amity on its knees at the opening, a tourist ghost town.
In the filmed version Roy Scheider's Chief Brody warned us in that he wasn't prepared to go through that hell again. Politicians need to heed that warning and not not think of the summer dollars. It's not economy first and humans second.
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