What is it about the activity of play that might be dangerous? How do we accommodate our impulses, relationships, and communal strivings, without being consumed by them? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Stephen Spielberg’s 1975 classic “Jaws.”
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Transcript
0:19 Erin: [email protected] subtextpodcast.
0:32 Wes: Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of of Jaws. Erin had just got done talking about this really interesting parallel between the bombing of the shark and the bombing of Japan. I think we are going to ready to buy now. It doesn't undersells it the way I just put it. I've reached part two and so my energy level has started to fault. Sorry for underselling that.
0:58 Erin: No, no, no. That's what it is, unfortunately.
1:01 Wes: But now we are going to talk about Hooper and this might re energize us. Or at least me.
1:07 Erin: Because you're a big Hooper fan.
1:09 Wes: Yeah. What were you gonna say about the class element? Well, he's a little breath of fresh air. He's a little. Don't you think so? Richard Dreyfuss is just. Oh yeah, he's energetic in the way that Brody isn't. And funny. The novelist, the guy who wrote the novel. Benchley. Peter Benchley. Right. By the way. And I looked at the novel. It's not a great novel, put it that way. It's not a literary masterpiece or something. And then he wrote three screenplays and naturally it's a very different craft. And then Spielberg brought in someone else to rewrite it and in the end had a friend, I forget the name, someone with more comic chops. He said to this guy, eviscerate it completely. Redo it, and then put some humor into this. This is the kind of thing that happened to the Die Hard script as well, by the way. And it's one of the things that makes the movie really work. And I think it's probably a good. Really, it helps any movie, almost any genre, doing this sort of thing. But.
2:11 Erin: And the improv too, we should say, right, that they also improvised and wrote. Wrote it down and incorporated it the next day. So that was pretty systematic too. Yeah.
2:21 Wes: But, yeah, Hooper is a big source of comic relief, I think. Right. He has some pretty funny lines.
2:30 Wes: I know that's not the thing that you are ready to talk about, but.
2:34 Erin: No, no, I'm not really ready to talk about anything with him because I'm not sure what the class thing is really about there. I mean, we have, you know, one of the other things that Jameson article talked about. It was also kind of about the Godfather, so I only read part of it. But the three main characters also kind of represent like the three ages of man, you know, youth, maturity and old age. And they also seem to represent three different classes, though maybe Quint and Brody are more. You know, they come from such different worlds. But maybe that maps out to be sort of roughly the same class or Brody maybe a little bit. A little bit higher up than Quint. But what's the significance of. For instance, Hooper, you know, the moment that's really sticks out to me is him bringing two bottles of wine to Brody's house. Like, why is that? That's such a curious thing to do. He brings both red and white. What's that about? You know, he seems. He seems unspoiled and eager to please for being upper class. So thinking through this, maybe Hooper and Quint are both aligned in their sense of guilt. If we're. If we're agreeing that Quint has some guilt going on, Hooper maybe is guilty over his wealth. And maybe that's a motivating factor for him to go out and study these Sharks and just sort of confront, front, like create the conditions under which he would be wrestling with real danger, real stakes in a way that his wealth perhaps has insulated him from otherwise. And maybe the bringing over of the two bottles of wine is indicative of his, of that guilt and of his desire to please and to be generous.
4:10 Wes: You know, he doesn't bring over a box of wine and he doesn't bring over some fancy, schmancy, expensive bottle of wine, but he doesn't know which wine they're going to prefer, so he hedges his bets by getting one of each. Or maybe he doesn't know which wine is going to go with dinner or something like that, right? So he's sophisticated enough to know that a white will go with some dishes and a red will go with others, but he hasn't asked them in advance. And so it's at the same time, you can see it as something, the kind of thing a wealthy person would do in the sense that it's, right, he's spending more money than he might have, but it's also a bit. There's a down to earth element of it, right. It wouldn't be the, you know, if you showed up to another snobby wealthy person's party with two bottles and said, I didn't know which one to get, you know, that would probably would be seen as maybe a bit of an unsophisticated thing to do. But in this context, right, he knows that it's not. He does, I think he comes across as. He's right, he's a trust fund kid, right, and he doesn't have to work and this is his hobby. And he does come across, I think, as a bit spoiled, you know, and he's got all that fancy equipment that Quint makes fun of him for and he's a bit green in various ways and he doesn't want to take orders and things like that. I mean, I think also, you know, overall he's very charismatic, likable, likable character. But you do get the sense he's a rich kid. It's not done to the point of caricature. So he's a complex character and he's not turned into a villain because of that. But it's quite a contrast to Quint. And the other contrast there is, he is, right, he is representative of the scientific impulse or of curiosity, which is the thing that you ultimately, therapeutically, you want to replace fear with curiosity. The curiosity towards sharks, right? That's the better comportment towards them than fear. So you have these three different.
6:11 Erin: Hold on, I'm writing this down. Okay, okay, I'm joking.
6:15 Wes: Oh, sorry. Like, wow, this is really that good?
6:20 Erin: No, I mean more like teach me not to be afraid of things. Okay, thank you.
6:26 Wes: Easier said than done. But, you know, although I have had these moments, right, in therapy where you take the edge off suffering by moving into the position of curiosity. But, yeah, not easy to do. But you might see that as the journey for Brody. And he's very excited. It's one of the few times you see him excited in the movies. Excited when he blows up the shark. He's excited when Hooper shows up. You could see this as maybe this is the kind of thing that I could have done, but I didn't do something like that. But in any case, I was going to say three impulses represented in Quint, vengeance, perhaps in Hooper, scientific curiosity. In Brody, fear, resignation, depressiveness. Something like that. And in the end, so he's reluctantly invited by Quint to do the thing that he doesn't want to do, which is to destroy the shark. He's not really that into the idea of hunting down and destroying sharks, but he's forced in that position in the end. And he obviously gets a big thrill out. I guess not getting eaten is pretty thrilling. I don't know which is more thrilling, getting eaten or not getting eaten.
7:40 Erin: Yeah, well, they seem to have forgotten that Quint was just eaten because there's, you know, it's so, like a straightforward win at the end.
7:50 Wes: They don't shed a lot of tears.
7:54 Wes: Before they start paddling home.
7:56 Erin: Exactly. Just high five each other. And Brody is like. Brody is also spitting out the bloody water. He has a taste of shark blood there. It's like the sharks get. Get gotten the taste of human blood. That just grossed me out watching that. That he's, you know, you could see the blood in the water and he's like. Has his mouth open in it and spitting it out. Oh, yeah. That has nothing to do with anything. Sorry, but I'm always just like. Much of that is Quint's blood. I wonder. Anyway, Kid. Flying through the air anyway.
8:31 Wes: Yeah. I mean, the shark has a lot of people in his stomach, right?
8:37 Wes: Blowing out all those people, but not whole people.
8:40 Erin: That's. That's the other sick thing about the shark that I meant to say. He doesn't eat the whole person. Like, he just takes bites here and there and he leaves.
8:49 Wes: He only likes certain cuts. Yeah. I'll have the filet mignon, please. Yeah. So curiosity. Weird. And scientific impulse. That's the thing that I was associating with Hooper. And so script might have made more out of this. Right. Because you got these three characters on the boat. You might have had Hooper pulling him in one direction and saying, no, we should tag it and study it. And he does tag the shark at a certain point. Right. He sneaks the tag onto the. The barrel or something. I don't know. Or onto the. That's what I thought Hooper was doing at some point. He's trying to do something scientific at the same time because I think maybe he thinks that they're not going to actually be able to kill it or something. But. So you could have made more out of this conflict and you could have had Brody pulled in these two different directions. I don't think it would have worked, of course, but that would have thematically done more and might have even added more tension in some ways. And Brody's arc, I don't think, is to go either the Hooper direction or the Quint direction, really. Although he does seem to get. Have overcome his fear of water in the end. But getting back to Hooper, because I think that's. Yeah, I don't think you had your full say on that, but.
10:04 Erin: Yeah, no, no, he just, you know, he's also done away with during that. During the final confrontation. So it really is just man versus Beast.
10:15 Erin: Not men versus beast at the end. The fact that he has that whole missed opportunity with the harpoon and the hypodermic needle or whatever it is, you know, and ends up being off screen for the final moments or the climactic moment.
10:32 Wes: He's always dropping critical things. You know, he drops the tooth.
10:36 Erin: That's right.
10:37 Wes: He drops the hypodermic.
10:40 Erin: Yeah. I don't know. There's some crucial way in which that that's not going to be the thing. It's going to be the gun. The gun and the. And the air tank, which got some heavy criticism in this house for its. Sure, shark wouldn't blow up that way.
10:55 Wes: Well, apparently he can't really blow up a tank with a gun like that. And also, why is he just holding it in his mouth? So I'm just gonna hold the thing in his mouth for that long.
11:08 Wes: I understand why they like that idea and wanted to make that work. But it's fun. It's fun to see the shark blow up in the end.
11:18 Wes: What else are you gonna do? I mean, it's. Is it. Is it just gonna die slowly of its injuries and sink to the bottom of the ocean.
11:25 Erin: Is that how it was initially killed? How it was, or rather how it was killed in the book?
11:30 Wes: I actually don't remember. I don't know how it's killed in the book. It's probably just shot. But yeah, I don't. I mean, the scuba thing is. I think that was Spielberg's idea. Yeah.
11:39 Erin: Tiring it out is how you do, how you deal with the sperm whale. That's the Nantucket sleigh ride.
11:45 Wes: The shark took a lot of bullets and a lot of harpoons, I think. I don't know that it would have really survived it.
11:52 Erin: Well, in the end, it's a group effort. I mean, I guess, you know, they get there by virtue of quintessential Quint's boat, though. He makes it so that they, you know, they can't contact any help. And then it's the tank, which is a. Which is a Hooper contribution, and he has the equipment that he puts on the boat and then the. Then the gun. So there's something of another elemental clash in the. I was sort of imagining in part one that the beach is about like the being on the borderline between elements, I suppose. You know, the fact that the shark is blown up with air, like air defeats water. The visible somehow, like defeating the. The obscured or the hidden and then, I guess, you know, science defeating nature or something. You know, all of these things, I think, are inherent in that tank idea. But it's funny that it needs the detonation of the. Of a gun. It's like hillbilly fishing or something. Like, just like shooting a shooting fish in the water. Anyway.
12:50 Wes: Well, he seemed to have the idea in the beginning that he was going to use his pole, which was pretty funny.
12:55 Erin: Right? Right.
12:56 Wes: I think they already knew how big the shark was at that point. Right. 25ft.
13:00 Wes: Actually, once caught a shark, deep sea fishing.
13:04 Wes: Small shark, little baby shark. Like maybe four feet or something. But yeah, I'd gone out on this boat and I was very seasick and everyone around me was catching all these, like, red fish, I forget what they're called. And just having a great time, and I was catching nothing. I'm like, what's wrong with me? Why am I failing at this? Like, we're fishing in the same ocean. I'm not catching any fish. And then finally I got something on the reel and then I started. I'm like, this is pretty heavy. Start reeling it up. And then you see the shark coming out of the water and your first impulse is to. To like, okay, well, let Me go backwards on the real. I'm not reeling. And then. And then. But another part of you is like, this is the only thing I've caught all day, and it's probably the only thing I'm gonna catch. So he's coming up, bringing the shark up no matter what.
13:56 Wes: And then, you know, got to take the picture with it and then threw it back.
14:02 Wes: But it's a weird experience. Yeah. You have a feeling of being connected. I haven't done a lot of fishing, but. But in that moment, you know, you feel connected to something very primordial. It's almost a hypnotic quality. But. Yeah, I don't think you're gonna pull out a 25 foot. Sure, get the guns.
14:22 Erin: Yeah, it's gonna pull you out.
14:26 Erin: Right off the dock.
14:27 Wes: It's gonna pull you in.
14:29 Erin: Pull you in. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. To go back to the air tank for a second, I was also thinking about the floaties on the. On the beach. The raft, you know, the inflatable raft. And that great image of the raft being caught in the surf and, like, tumbling because the. The bite was taken out of it. Oh, my gosh. The dog. Okay, I did not know that a dog was killed in this film. That really upset me. That was. Oh, you could do anything you want, but don't kill dogs. Yeah, the dog is.
14:56 Wes: The dog was actually killed.
14:58 Wes: Oh, fictionally.
15:00 Erin: Oh, yeah, Obviously. Yeah.
15:02 Wes: Wait, I didn't think the dog. That. The dog was eaten. Yeah. They're calling because he can't find the dog.
15:06 Erin: Calling for the dog. Yeah. So sad.
15:08 Wes: You think the shark got the dog and the boy? And one.
15:11 Erin: Oh, yeah, Just two. Two different appetizers in one. One bite. Double fisting it.
15:21 Wes: Well, the dog is the appetizer. The boy is the main course.
15:25 Erin: Light. Light main course. He's small. Anyway, back to the beach. I'm just thinking about. I'm just thinking about the mayor. I love that actor, Mr. Robinson. Great character actor. Murray Hamilton, you know, so we. We have this whole enemy of the people. This is a preview, I guess, for our next episode. But we have this whole enemy of the people element in the first part of the film. And then it's as though the pollution becomes a charismatic megafauna that then, like, everybody is obsessed with that. That. That steals focus and becomes the main character, the pollution itself, you know, but we have this whole. This whole idea of the greed of this guy who doesn't want the resort town to become. You know, I'm pretty sympathetic to this, you know, you don't want your entire. Like, his motivations are he shouldn't be killing people. People should be getting out of the water. But his. His motivations are justified, which is that this entire town exists off of the proceeds that they get in the summer. Right. The revenue that comes in in the summer from tourism. This could potentially just bankrupt the entire town. I don't know. What could we say about him? The scene where he's encouraging people to go in the water. And that older couple that he talks to that I mentioned in part one. The guy's a really good actor. So terrifying when they all. Encourages them all to go. And of course, he's. He's in his sport jacket and doesn't go in himself. Yeah. We have this funny instance of Hooper dropping the tooth and then therefore, of the mayor sort of not having the smoking gun.
17:00 Erin: And then the. The sick vandalism is such a funny. Such a funny thing to say about the fact that they drew the shark fin on the billboard. It's the sick vandalism, like. And she just, you know, you expect it to be like, you know, like a phallus that somebody's drawn on this billboard. And instead it's the fin on the woman's face. It's like her eyes, I think, are bugging out and it says, help in a little.
17:27 Wes: Yeah, that's great. And we've seen that sign before, earlier in the movie. So we see it in its pristine state, and then we see it vandalized.
17:34 Erin: Right. And she's on a rat. She's on an inflatable raft. Right? In that image?
17:40 Wes: But it's. Yeah. Sick vandalism. That is a deliberate mutilation of a public service message. Now I want those little pain happy bastards caught and hung up by their buster Browns.
17:51 Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:52 Wes: So this is a convergence of the theme of vandalism and Brody's function in the town to keep vandals at bay. Right. So to keep up appearances, in other words. And here's something real happening, and Brody's trying to deal with it, but he's being redirected to the appearances, which is very interesting. So we were talking a little bit before about helplessness, and Brody nominally is an authority figure as the chief of police, but he's lacking in all. He really doesn't have any authority because the mayor and the town council control everything. I think he's right. When he's confronted about closing down the beaches, Vaughn, the mayor says, martin, you gonna shut down the beaches on your own Authority. And he says, well, what other authority do I need? Well, technically, you need a civil ordinance or resolution by a board of selectives. That's just going by the book. And then it's your first summer, you know. So the idea that they're not native islanders converges with the idea that he actually doesn't have much authority except to deal with nuisances and vandals, such that they can keep up the appearances and keep up the community life that they have. Which I'd be pretty depressed in that situation as well. If he's coming from whatever he was doing as a New York City cop on one beat or another, if he thought this were a promotion, if he thought this were a kind of step up, he must have had a rude awakening at some point to find out that not only is he dealing with these petty concerns, but he also doesn't have that much authority. And I think that is connected ultimately to this theme of helplessness. The helplessness of sometimes in the face of our own impulses, the helplessness of being in the water with something unseen that can grab us and eat us. Even dismemberment, right, is a very good visual representation of helplessness because our limbs are what allows us to move and to do things. So to be unlimbed. It's part of the terror of getting killed by a shark as dismemberment. We see the leg fall to the bottom of the ocean at one point. And I think part of that is about being deprived of power, or it's about being helpless. It's about being humiliated, even in some ways. It's about. So even if you live through a shark attack, right, you might not have legs, or you might be missing one leg or an arm. Your ability to take care of yourself, your ability to move, your ability to physically function in the world is going to be compromised. So in a way, he's already at the point where we begin the movie. Brody has already been not dismembered, but not neutered, which is the next thing I wanted to say. But his authority has been softened. His efficacy in the world is not as high as it maybe he thought it would be, or maybe as it was in certain ways in New York. New York is dangerous. New York is unsafe, he says. In this town, it's completely safe. He's nothing to worry about. Your wife saying be careful to you is just a joke. But it also means there's less to do. It's less meaningful, it's less interesting, it's safe, but it's not exciting. So that's why I wanted to get. Yeah. Get to this idea of loss of efficacy and the way the sharks. The danger of the shark as representing that loss of efficacy.
21:27 Erin: Or I agree with you. But to push back against this, because can't we also read him as the reverse of that, as the shot in the army that this town needs? Because without him, they would all be, you know, the town itself, as helpless as he is. The town itself is also, it seems to me, suffering under maybe something like a problem of decadence or of unreality. Like there are indications that we get that this town is a bit insulated.
21:57 Erin: It's insulated. It's insular, but it's also a bit. Maybe it's a bit dilapidated or it's not dilapidated. That's too strong a word. Its defenses are down, and that's part of the problem. So Brody comes in, his defenses are up, and that's what makes him the right person for this job. I mean, visually. So we have, like, the fencing is a pervasive, like, visual theme in the film. So we have Brody's own white picket fence. Looks a little bit dilapidated. We have the fence that. What's her name? Is it Chrissy? Can't remember Chrissy, the woman from the beginning of the film that she and the guy run along. That's sort of jagged, which is indicative of a seaside town. Like things. Things actually break down, wear down faster, right. Of course, because of the sea air, the salt in the air. So things decay or degrade faster there.
22:46 Wes: Everything's weathered.
22:47 Erin: Everything's weathered, right? And you have the kids. You have the kids karate chopping the picket fences, which, when you think about it, that's. This is a stretch. Now I'm. Now I'm really going out on a limb here. Pardon the pun, but, you know, you put your hand out straight, your palm out straight, right? And karate chop. And that's kind of a, you know, you put it on top of your head, it's like a fin, right? So there's something about the forces of decay that are within the town. The decadence of the town as represented by this mayor who's kind of like a smarmy and not the right person to lead the town. So, like, how did he get elected? You know, that leads. That both leaves the town vulnerable to the shark. But also, it seems like, you know, with the little boys karate chopping their own fences, they're leaving themselves vulnerable and open in certain crucial ways that seem to invite something like this to happen. Much as you're postulating that the shark is almost an extension of Brody's imagination, which I think is really compelling, it's almost also a kind of an invitation on the part of the town because their defenses are down. They're too much in the holiday mindset and not enough in the New York cop mindset. They're asking for trouble by existing in that kind of holiday space where nothing bad can really happen. So you're gonna go in the water anyway, even if there's a killer shark on the loose. Something. Something along those lines.
24:18 Wes: Yeah. I mean, he finds some efficacy as the film goes on, but at the point in the beginning where he's just. Right. Dealing with people's complaints and telling his. I guess it's his secretary, something about paperwork. You know, she's got to keep certain things off his desk if the new filing system is to work or something like that, and where you get complaints. And this is one of the charms of the movie. In the beginning, as he's going around town, he's having various people complain to him about one petty thing or another. So at that point, that seems to me would be a depressing contrast to a higher stakes job. The stakes are lower. It's safer. Seemed to be. It turns out it's not. And so one's efficacy is lower in that sense. One is not as powerful. Not just in the sense that the town is run by the mayor at this point. His authority may increase with time, of course. Right. The longer he's there, even if he never becomes an islander, you could expect that his authority would increase. But it's not just in that sense. It's just in the sense that he has less to do. So he's less powerful because less is at stake.
25:19 Wes: And then more becomes at stake. And so his power is gradually returned. Although, again, I think he remains quite passive until the very end of the film. He's being ordered around by Quint, essentially, for most of the second half of the film. Right.
25:33 Erin: And he has to take the fall for, you know, when. When the Kitcher kid's mother confronts him. I think it's Kintner, Kitner, some K name that Alex is the kid's name. Right. When Alex's mother confronts Brody and he. You know, there's just this, like, really painful moment where he just has to. Or he just kind of accepts her criticism. I mean, there's. There's nothing you can do, really, to fight back in that scenario. And she just has to. She's a grieving mother.
26:02 Wes: Well, the Mayor says she's full of it. And then Brody says, no, she's right, Right, right, right.
26:08 Erin: But he doesn't say to her, I mean, it would be absurd to do so, but he, he doesn't say, listen, I tried, you know, whatever, whatever he, he might have said in his own defense, partially because one, one can't say anything and because she needs to just express her grief, but partially because it seems like this ineffectuality that's sort of the peak of it, the peak of his helplessness in the face of even of criticism for interventions that he was actually trying to make and couldn't.
26:36 Wes: Yeah, he could have blamed it on the mayor at that point.
26:39 Wes: He says nothing. The mayor says, I'm sorry, Martin, she's wrong. Martin says, no, she's not right. And then the mayor gives the order to cut the shark down without looking at the contents of its belly, which is crazy. Yeah. They catch a shark at this point near the midpoint of the movie, and of course it's the wrong shark.
26:58 Erin: But yeah, I feel sorry for that shark, actually. I do. It's a little hapless and a little.
27:05 Wes: Poor tiger shark's always getting blamed.
27:09 Erin: Well, you know, it's a victim too of this. The real, the quote unquote, real shark. It's more like an animal than the headliner shark is the Louisiana license plate in its stomach. It's like it sort of got lost or something. You know, what's it doing up here? It's a little hapless.
27:28 Wes: Well, this is one of the spectacles of the film is right after the news of the shark goes out. Mrs. Kintner has offered a reward. After people find that out, they come from all over to go out in fishing boats. Well, I wouldn't call them fishing boats. They go out on these tiny boats like, are you insane? Right? Going out in like rowboat sized boats to try to. And even Hooper makes fun of them. At some point. Yeah, they're all going to get killed. So they go out shark hunting and you get the sense that, yeah, this is the kind of response in a way that's unhelpful. And it's the kind of thing the film really. So I think we both looked at this documentary, Jaws at 50. Yeah. And one of the unfortunate. You know, Spielberg worked with shark conservationists when he made this movie and even got footage from them. There's not a lot of footage of real sharks the movie, but there is when, you know, the scene in the cage, for instance, that's real great white Shark footage.
28:29 Erin: That's a great advertisement for cage diving.
28:31 Wes: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so one of the unfortunate outcomes of this movie was to make people more scared of sharks and to increase the popularity of shark fishing. I think ultimately it was a boon because it. It also led to an interest in sharks. Right. So you have the Quint side and then you. The Hooper side.
28:51 Wes: Aroused the Quint in people and it also aroused the Hooper. Ultimately, I think the Hooper went out more and the. Like, the major threat to sharks is from thinning. Right. Thin soup.
29:05 Erin: It's disgusting.
29:06 Wes: Yeah, yeah. But you can see some of that kind of. Yeah. That knee jerk type of reaction when they go out just to catch a random shark and then say, oh yeah, this must be the shark.
29:18 Wes: It's a lynching.
29:19 Erin: Right. Yeah. And its peculiarity to be found in those waters and its size make it something they can pin things on. Yeah. But in addition to the tiger shark, you know, there's the dog. You mentioned in part one that it does seem like a typical horror film at the beginning because Chrissy is getting. Is getting eaten because of her sexuality or something. The rest of the victims. That doesn't seem to be the case. And Quint. Quint's getting eaten because that was his destiny, to get eaten. We might have expected Hooper to get eaten too, but Quint for sure.
29:53 Wes: Yeah, he is actually. I think him living is a last minute change to the script.
29:58 Wes: And they changed it because the footage of real great whites they were able to get was with an empty cage and they wanted to use that. So they actually rewrote the script to have Hooper live to escape the cage first. But I think it's better. Yeah. So you might expect him to be killed. He's killed in the novel. He's killed even in a late iteration of the script. But then I think it's better if he survives him.
30:22 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, then you get an interesting outcome there, symbolically with law and order and tech defeating the shark.
30:33 Wes: You get two people paddling home in the end as opposed to one.
30:36 Erin: And that's always nicer.
30:39 Erin: It's nice to have company on your comment return.
30:42 Wes: I used to be afraid of the water.
30:44 Wes: I don't know why.
30:45 Erin: It is better. It is better.
30:47 Wes: It's like they're. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship moment.
30:51 Erin: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
30:53 Wes: It's a great little. Great little ending, but. Yeah, but go ahead.
30:56 Erin: They walk off into the sunset and then Brody has a friend on the island. So he's, he's not alone anymore.
31:02 Wes: Hooper will stay, stick around and.
31:03 Erin: Yeah, he probably will. He doesn't have to go to Australia to see the great white there. There's one right there. Hopefully they'll get more sharks for him to. Then, then Hooper is trying to lure the sharks into. To Amity.
31:17 Wes: He's rich. He can have them, you know, air dropped.
31:20 Erin: There you go.
31:21 Wes: Have them transplanted. Another great white, I mean, obviously we don't need up here in Boston. You know, we don't like. Great whites are naturally here right off of Cape Cod and off of. Yeah. So they don't need to be imported, but. Yeah, go ahead, say something about victims.
31:41 Erin: The little boy seems like the, the most high profile of all the victims. And that seems to be because of the fact that Brody has two boys. I don't know what, what else we could say about that, you know, because the other, the other murders are kind of. Murders. Yeah. You know what I mean? They're kind of, they're, they're kind of, they feel like murders. They're. They're kind of glossed over, you know, like we never see Chrissy's family. We never see, you know, we don't see her, her mother throwing up, looking at her body in a little box. I mean, nobody would show.
32:13 Wes: I think this is one of the mother.
32:15 Erin: Those types of remains.
32:16 Wes: But yeah, was subjected to the. There's not, there's not any time spent trying to build up sympathy for the victims. I think even for the Kintner boy.
32:26 Wes: Maybe if you're cuter. Just kidding.
32:31 Erin: Well, and partially that seems like the function of the shark, like that's the randomness that it could be anybody. And so therefore it's kind of. We can't expect who it's going to be. It seems like that's about what the shark is about. It's also about the film building suspense. We don't know, you know, we haven't like built a relationship with this little boy and then he gets killed. And so we can kind of see it coming, you know, like, it seems part of the strategy of the way that the narrative is working and the horror is popping up randomly.
33:03 Wes: Yeah. I think in a horror movie, it's not about sympathizing with the victims. The violence is not moralized. So if it's in a good guy, bad guy film, it's important, Right, that we sympathize with the victims and that we hate the villains, the bad guys for doing what they're doing. It's important because when the bad guys get killed, we have to be able to enjoy that. The violence has to be moralized in that sense. There's no moralization here, because you can't do it with a shark as much as you might want to try. And it's not going to be thrilling seeing Jaws get it in the end as it is seeing what's his face fall off the building at the end of Die Hard. Hans Gruber. All right. Yeah. So it's not gonna. It's not gonna be. Although. What was. What was the shark's name? The model shark's name? It was Bruce. Bruce. Okay, so close. It's not gonna be as thrilling seeing Bruce get it as it is seeing Hans get it, because the shark is not really an agent. So there is no murder in this movie. I hate to tell you, Erin. There's no murderer, and there's no murderer. And we can't enjoy seeing the shark get it at the end that much. Except for the spectacle of the explosion and the fact that Brody is gonna not get eaten, I don't think it matters.
34:24 Erin: No verdure, no murder, no
34:27 Wes: perfect crime about the victims. What they're doing in the film is to represent our own vulnerability to this type of thing. I think play is always still very important. The play is going skinny dipping and then sexual play, and then the play of children. Because play implicates the release of these impulses. Right. It implicates loosening up. And then the danger is that the impulses will be too much. Or the danger is that in being less defended, we open ourselves up to outside predation and these ecstatic moments where we're not on guard. So it happens, obviously. So I think it's important that we go. I think it's great that the movie starts with, like, this typical horror trope of teenagers, but then we move on to children. The theme, you know, we're set up with Charlie getting his hand cut with the theme of child safety. And then the child gets killed. And then it's the scout master. He gets killed trying to save the kids and Michael.
35:23 Erin: Oh, right, right.
35:24 Wes: Yeah. And then who's next? Well, Gardner gets killed off screen. Right. And that was actually a second thought that. That. Yeah. That made me jump.
35:35 Erin: Yeah. That is.
35:36 Wes: That's the only point in the movie where I jumped. And Spielberg shot that scene with his own money after the fact in a pool.
35:44 Erin: That was in the tank. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:47 Wes: I think that shot. Was that in the tank or was it actually. So was it in a studio tank or. It might have been in someone's pool.
35:54 Erin: Yeah, yeah, someone's pool.
35:56 Wes: The. Just the part where the head is coming out.
35:59 Wes: Might have been redone in a. In someone's private pool. But anyway, that, to me, was the scariest part of the film. Gardner, by the way, is the one that they based Quint.
36:08 Erin: Quint off of.
36:09 Wes: Off of. Yeah. Yeah. So. But. Yeah, so I think the victims. I guess the victims do get progressively less innocent after the child. But did you feel a pang at all when Quint got it in the end and.
36:22 Erin: Oh, sure, yeah. There isn't even any. As much time as we've spent with him and hearing his story. There's also the. When he destroys the radio, you know, and he. I mean, we're introduced to him with nails on a chalkboard. I mean, we're not designed to even. To really love him.
36:43 Wes: As a characteristic moment of the film.
36:45 Erin: Yeah. Tell me about it. You know, it makes me. You know, he's much like the shark he's heard first on the soundtrack before. He's seen.
36:54 Wes: All right, we haven't. Yeah. That's another thing we have to talk about is the music. But.
36:57 Erin: Yeah. Yeah, parts of the music were funny to me. You know, they're so like the adventure music at the end.
37:04 Wes: Yeah, it's a very. Music. While they're chasing the shark. It's like.
37:11 Wes: You know, it's John Williams off to.
37:17 Wes: look, we're having fun chasing the shark. Yeah, exactly.
37:20 Erin: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There's so much E.T. in there.
37:25 Wes: Right. I think it's almost all in the same mode. Is it the Lydian or something? All these movies are on the. What is the Lydian mode on? Is that the seventh?
37:38 Erin: Back to theory.
37:40 Wes: I don't know if that's right, if it's Lydian or another mode. But it gives it a very. This airy feel. It's very common in film music, but it just gives it. You know, it's there in Star wars, so this airy, kind of light but adventure y feeling. Yeah. And it seems a little. Seems a little out of place. I had the same. Exact same reaction, but. But the. The main theme music is just. Who knew? It's like a Spinal Tap moment. Just two notes right next to each other on the keyboard. Two notes.
38:16 Erin: It's as simple as that. Yeah.
38:19 Wes: What do you call this music? Jaws.
38:27 Erin: Oh, my gosh. It's like a heartbeat, too. So you have that.
38:31 Wes: So you get a chromatic ascent when
38:34 Erin: the shark goes away. That's when it Goes da da da da da. No,
38:42 Erin: The Doppler shark.
38:46 Wes: So the chromatic element gives it that sinister quality. Sounds like a heartbeat. It sounds like, I don't know, it's very. It goes well with something that's hidden and unseen somehow. The drive element of that, just the two note. It's like an engine with two, two strokes or something.
39:03 Erin: And then that explosion. Yeah. And the. Very much he must have been influenced by the rite of spring.
39:11 Wes: Yeah. And then the crescendo and you know, the quickening and the crescendo as it, as the shark attacks. And then it sounds a little psycho like her, doesn't it? It's like donut, donut. I don't know how it crescendos, but. I'm sure listeners will appreciate this attempt to reproduce.
39:35 Erin: Yeah, psycho sort of same concept but on the opposite end of the scale. But yeah. And it's sort of like singular. Very few notes. Well, you know, another big victim of this film, I'm sorry to say is the film industry itself. I was thinking about how much, how much this film has to answer for and how much, how much maybe the, the death of Quint and the triumph of Brody and Hooper is like, you know, the death of. The death of the small budget, you know, the, the, the little tiny film business and the birth of the film industrial complex. I mean, you know, of course there was the studio system and that's, that's the film industrial complex. But yeah, the birth of the, the summer blockbuster and the. I think like Star wars gets a lot of credit blame for that. But of course this predates that by two years and, and there was so much marketing and tie ins and maybe not little action figures, you know, so associated with Star wars, but lunch boxes, T shirts. That was one of the things that really stood out to me from the. The Jaws at 50 documentary was just like how much merchandise you could buy in 1975 for the fab is surprised. You know, it's something I associate with coming like in the 80s post Star wars merchandise. It's a great film and I think Spielberg is, you know, maybe there's an argument that he's the greatest American director. And so it's kind of a curious thing that the result of this early film of his is that small budget or films that are more say on the artistic end of the scale are less likely to be made. And we have like, you know, Marvel movies are downstream effect of Jaws. There's a direct line there.
41:25 Wes: Well, apparently they, you know, the movies didn't get wide releases initially and they got a narrow, narrower release and fewer theaters. And then there was some give a chance to build word of mouth and you could do higher quality, less blockbuster y pictures. With Jaws, the marketing plan was to do a wide release after like a national coordinated media campaign. And it worked. Worked very well. So it became a highest grossing movie in history up to that point. And unfortunately, yeah, it's a model that is now chased.
42:00 Erin: Yeah. And the previous model, you know, I think was designed to give a good movie a chance to build, you know. Yeah. So would help under the radar films that didn't have these big marketing budgets find an audience. Whereas now it seems very much about this. It's. It's just become more and more a business and less and less. You know, this has always been the problem with movies as an art form, but I think it became more about business and more about trying to predict beforehand what would sell and then cramming that down people's throats and not. And not funding the little movies at all. You know, Know, until we have like now this, just a 24, I guess, and that's. And then everything. All the big budget stuff. Yeah. So I don't know, as someone who's. Who's more, more, more jaded about films than I've ever been, who, you know, I kind of. I think film is over.
42:58 Wes: Well, I don't think you've seen the new, the new Superman then.
43:01 Erin: Right, Right. Yeah, yeah. I think it's. I think it's basically over. And I think a lot of people will have in the past few months have tried to argue with me and give like individual case studies and I think all of these things are death row, you know, death row films. It's over. What can we trace it back to? A lot of things we could trace it back to, you know, the death of the studio contract with the Olivia de Havilland lawsuit in 1947. You get. You know, I've found a lot of origin points in the past, but one of them is Jaws. One of them could. But, you know, that's a, that's a case that could be made. Not to end on a totally pessimistic note, but that's.
43:38 Wes: Yeah, no, I get it.
43:39 Erin: It's one of the things that makes me ambivalent about the film despite its real craft and what, what's so great about it.
43:48 Wes: Yeah, okay. I'm going to just end with one little correction on the music. It's free anal anal. Yeah. It's not, it's not. Lydia And Lydian is on the 4th, not the 7th. So like C majors. F. Lydian, C, D, E, F. Right. So the same scale, just different stopping point. But the Jaws is in B minor. The two notes are E and F, so it looks like 4 or 5. But anyway, thank you. This was fun.
44:18 Erin: Yeah, thank you.
44:19 Wes: You did enjoy it. You did enjoy the movie. Sounds like.
44:21 Erin: Oh, I did. Had a great time. Yeah, it was okay. And I successfully took a shower after without calling for help. Don't laugh at me.
44:33 Wes: I don't think he can come out of the spigots.
44:36 Erin: Comes through the wall in my imagination. Okay. And it's when my eyes are closed because I'm rinsing the shampoo out of my hair.
44:43 Erin: And anything can happen when you. Exactly, exactly. SNL taught us an important lesson. The threat is all around us. Of course you know the name. The name of the boat is my actual greatest fear. Which I will not say.
45:02 Wes: More afraid of.
45:03 Erin: Now that I'm scared of. Yeah, that's like really? I don't even want to.
45:06 Wes: They don't care about you. They just want a good seal.
45:08 Erin: Are you kidding me? They. So they. That's the scariest. That's the scariest animal ever. I. I just think.
45:19 Wes: Don't work. Don't work.
45:21 Erin: Scarier than a shark. A shark in a frickin mask. Okay. That's what's scary.
45:26 Wes: Pretending to be a mammal.
45:28 Erin: Yeah. And whose eyes on the mask aren't even its real eyes.
45:32 Wes: All right, let's. That's true. That's a really good point, actually. That is scary. What's the theme music for norca?
45:39 Erin: Oh, please. No. They are shooting up my spine. Goosebumps.
45:46 Erin: I'm such a wimp. Wes. You don't even know. I have. Okay, so it's. So it's that those things. And yes, like kind of sharks. But mostly because. Okay. And sharks are scary because of the jaws and because they're really ugly and really prehistoric and all that. But I have this phobia that I didn't know was a phobia because I'm also afraid of like, you're gonna. This is so embarrassing. I'm also afraid of like the movie Titanic because. Because it turns out. Okay. Because it turns out that I'm afraid of.
46:20 Erin: Yes. That. Doors. Floating doors. No, I'm afraid of big things. Like I have. What is it called? Megalo. Megalomania. No, you know, Megalophobia. Yeah, something like that.
46:35 Wes: Is that a thing?
46:37 Wes: And you're Afraid of the sublime. Well, the sublime is meant to be scary, but not scary at the same time. The not. You're missing the not scary part of the sublime.
46:47 Erin: Well, like big vistas, that's different, but like a bit like a huge thing that dwarfs you physically, you know? So that is like. I went swimming with. Did I ever tell you this? I went swimming with beluga whales and.
46:59 Wes: Oh, wow, that's.
47:00 Erin: I love beluga whales. And I think they look so sweet and great. You know, they're adorable, and they're just wonderful creatures. And the. But I started freaking out, even though I wasn't. And I was like, why am I freaking out? And anyway, I finally got the. It's just. They're huge. When you're near them, they're really, really big. And eventually I calmed down. But, yeah, it's the. It's the size thing. Feeling dwarfed by something and that even with an inanimate object. And also, like, being in the water, too, is like, you know, like big things in the water, so they're sort of like. The size is kind of obscured or even like, maybe doubled, depending on the reflection. But anyway. This is pathetic. We should. I might want to cut this out. I really shouldn't be admitting this stuff publicly, but, you know, you probably will
47:52 Wes: cut it out, even though I don't think you should.
47:56 Wes: All right, so what's the theme song for Orcas? It's not. It's. Is that it? Did you just do it?
48:09 Erin: No, thank you. That's.
48:13 Wes: It's just silence.
48:14 Erin: So. The scariest music of all.
48:19 Wes: Right. Any last words?
48:20 Erin: No. Next time, we'll do the prequel to Jaws, an Enemy of the People. That's what happened to the last mayor, right?
48:31 Wes: All right, thank you.
48:32 Erin: Thank you, and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast Please send your questions, feedback, and episode requests to lettersoubtextpodcast.com if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook at Subtext Podcast and on Twitter at Enjoy Subtext.
