Why Mayor Vaughn made all the right moves in Jaws

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, tons of people started comparing Amity Island Mayor Larry Vaughn to whichever politician they were upset with for not doing enough to stop the virus. But all too often these comparisons hinged on the idea that Larry Vaughn was a cartoonish villain willfully looking past piles of dead bodies to save a dollar. Since I consider Jaws to be one of the most well written movies of all time, this upset me greatly.

Jaws has no cartoonish villains, just people doing the best they can in an impossible situation. When you ignore the book and fan theories and focus exclusively on the movie you realize the truth: the man who does the best job while dealing with the worst situation is Mayor Larry Vaughn.

The only reason you feel so comfortable blaming Vaughn for not recognizing Chrissie’s death as a shark attack is because you watched the shark attack her. Otherwise, we have an arm on the beach that a New York cop and a coroner from an island that’s never had a shark problem take their best guess about. While everyone’s convinced Mayor Vaughn bullied the coroner into claiming she probably died via a boating accident, that idea is much more logical than a shark attack. After all, eating everything but an arm would be odd shark behavior and we know where Chrissy was swimming there were a ton of buoys. And lest we lay all our blame on Mayor Vaughn, remember that when pressed by Brody, the coroner makes it abundantly clear that when it comes to the boating accident theory, “I’ll stand by that.”

Once Alex Kintner is attacked and it becomes clear to everyone in town that there’s a shark problem, does it look like the townspeople of Amity want the beaches closed? Watching at the town meeting, the answer is clear: no, they want the beaches open. There is simply no other way for the town to financially survive. Why does Vaughn take so much flak for doing what the town obviously wants him to? Isn’t that what an elected official is supposed to do?

A huge thing people miss is that after Alex Kintner’s death, Mayor Vaughn does a masterful job taking advantage of a terrible situation. Sure, he could hire Quint to kill the shark, but why would he do that when there are already hundreds of fishermen trying to do the same thing thanks to Mrs. Kintner’s bounty? While many mayors would have shut that whole thing down by limiting dock space or using some other bureaucratic method, Mayor Vaughn lets them have a go and even uses his police force to help them launch their boats.

Aside from the fact that this venture is successful to some degree (who’s to say that license tag chomping tiger shark wouldn’t have bitten a swimmer?), assuming the shark hunters (who we know are from all over the country) bought some local goods, stayed at some local hotels and ate at some local restaurants, he gave his constituents a financial boost just ahead of a weekend they knew wasn’t going to be as big as in year’s past. That’s a pretty shrewd move from a much-maligned politician.

If many of the Covid parallels arose from not listening to scientists, it needs to be asked: does anyone think Hooper does a good job making his case to Mayor Vaughn? He never mentions how long the beaches need to be closed before the shark will move on, never offers any explanation of why an island that never had a shark problem before is suddenly dealing with a murderous maneater, and never talks about what the other beaches who regularly deal with shark attacks (as a shark expert, he must known plenty of people still swim in beaches that have dealt with fatal shark attacks) do to mitigate the problem. Instead of being more persuasive or trying to work with Vaughn on a compromise, Hooper (who it should be noted is not a small business owner desperately trying to survive, but a rich kid who inherited his money from his parents) stomps around like an angry child because Vaughn won’t do exactly what he wants.

And while the viewer knows Hooper is correct, looking at the whole situation from Vaughn’s perspective, is it illogical to not immediately believe a giant great white shark sunk a fishing boat and decapitated its captain? Is it odd to want some physical evidence to prove such a wild claim, especially after watching hundreds of boats nearly collide in your harbor, some of which were rather nonchalantly tossing explosives into the water? After witnessing that scene, is “the shark sunk the boat” really the most logical conclusion you’d come to about what happened to Ben Gardner?

But even if Larry Vaughn listened to Hooper and shut down the Amity beaches, it wouldn’t have done any good. Citing the “territoriality” theory, Hooper suggests they cut off the shark’s food supply by closing the beaches. That’s a great way to keep the people of Amity Island safe for a summer, but if we understand that the shark is probably not going to stop eating people now that it’s identified them as an easy food source, it’s not much of a solution. After all, what good is closing your beach and sending the shark to slaughter the children of Cape Cod, The Hamptons, or Long Island? Was the plan to somehow shut down every beach in the Northeast? That would never happen. So even if he’d listened to Hooper, would Larry Vaughn have been a good guy for NIMBYing fatal shark attacks to some other beach town?

But the big thing people seem to miss is how much Amity did to stop the shark. On the Fourth of July weekend, Mayor Vaughn has shark spotters and a literal row of armed boats protecting swimmers. Don’t forget, everyone on that beach knew there was a shark issue (there’s even a news reporter covering it at the time) so you can’t claim they were unaware why those boats were there. Vaughn spent all sorts of money trying to keep that beach safe, can we really fault him for not foreseeing that a 25-foot shark was going to swim into the pond? Hooper’s supposed to be the shark expert, where was his heads up to the Mayor on that one?

While there’s no doubt Mayor Vaughn’s choices were wrong, too many people seem not to understand that they were extremely logical and sensible. He was a man faced with a no-win situation who did the best he could to save his town from both financial ruin and a killer shark. Jaws is too well written for people to keep misunderstanding or intentionally misrepresenting it.

Words by James Kinneen

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