Foul stench of sewage on UK beaches draws Jaws comparisons

Boris Johnson's tenure as UK Prime Minister may almost be over, but he's one last Mayor from Jaws comparison up his anchor jacket sleeve.

And that's in the brown floaty cloud of raw sewage being pumped into the waters around the UK by water companies.

Steven Spielberg may have referred to Bruce the mechanical great white shark as the great white turd, on account of him not working properly. On that basis then in the UK there are several large useless floaters in Westminster.

And those proportions are correct in this cartoon by Stephen Lillie in The Guardian, with the Prime Minister claiming that the beaches are safe, surrounded by Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, one of the people who will take over the role in September.

They are stood in front of what looks like the graffitied Amity Island Welcomes You billboard, but instead of a woman on a lilo looking panicked at a shark's dorsal fin, she is distraught at seeing a large triangular faeces.

There are those who say that Jaws shouldn't be made political, but they miss the point, Jaws always was political and about politics. It was one of the story threads, period.

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 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, and never more so than presently relating it to pumping raw sewage into the sea.

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.

Angry about the raw sewage? You bet. Having just come back off holiday, my kid was on one of those beaches and swimming in the sea - for hours. Enough is enough, from our health point of view and for the impact raw sewage has on our already delicate eco-system.

Jaws may have been released in the 1970s, but that doesn't mean we want to be in a world like the 1970s!

With raw sewage being pumped into our rivers and seas we are already dipping our toe back in that decade, and if talk of potential planned power cuts is to be believed, then we may be submerged further. To paraphrase Chief Brody, I don't want to have to go through that hell again.

Boris Johnson Reveals Jaws Character As Political Inspiration

Words by Dean Newman

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