Jaws And Its Effects On Sharks And The Media

Sharks and the Media
A shark fin cuts through the water as it approaches a lone boat out in the middle of the ocean, music ominously grows in intensity as it draws nearer. Suddenly there are flashes of teeth, high pitched screams, and the water around what’s left of the boat is cherry red with blood. This is a horror scenario, a spine chilling moment in film that most people hope to never see in real life. Luckily for them they never will encounter such a thing, because the images that are shown in films portraying shark attacks are not even close to accurate. These horrifying images of blood and destruction are an effect of the carefully cultivated image of sharks that media outlets and Hollywood have spent years crafting. This misrepresentation

of sharks in movies, and news stories, has led to fear and misunderstanding that allows people to incorrectly view sharks as monsters instead of the complex apex predators they are. This fear has allowed overfishing and finning to deplete the shark population without the general public knowing, or caring, enough to stop it, or understanding how shark extinction would alter the ocean ecosystem and change the oceans as we know and love them.
People didn’t always think of sharks as monsters. In fact, prior to 1916 little was known about these ocean predators and most people had little to no opinion on them. However, in July of 1916 five people were attacked by sharks off the coat of New Jersey within a twelve day period, and all but one of them died. (Fernicola xvii) This was just the beginning of the media’s campaign against sharks and the start of their negative perception among civilians. For the first time in history newspapers began to use sharks in political cartoons to represent “everything that was ugly or corrupt about society” (Fernicola 139), ichthyologists, or fish biologists, began heading to the ocean to study sharks more closely, and people began to look at sharks as a huge threat. (Fernicola) This incident was completely unique and hasn’t been repeated since and today many researchers still argue about what type of shark(s) were responsible, but without accurate data or photographs it is difficult to tell. Nonetheless in 1916 the people of New Jersey all believed it to be a great white. When reading about the New Jersey attacks one might get a sense of Déjà vu, people being attacked by a merciless great white shark of the coast of New Jersey is so familiar. In fact “in 1974, Peter Benchley invoked the 1916 shark as the role model for his fictional white shark” (Capuzzo 297). Benchley’s fictional book on this shark eventually became a Steven Spielberg movie in 1975, a movie that changed everything.
Jaws completely changed the way everyday people looked and felt about sharks.

The image of sharks as predators has been around for years, but the image of them as relentless killers began after the release of Jaws in 1975. This movie was so successful that it is considered the first summer blockbuster. Unlike horror movies with a human antagonist, Jaws presented a new type of villain. Sharks have no humanity so there is nothing redeeming about them. Their presentation in the movie was created thorough viewers past knowledge of sharks and remarks made in the movie. One of these remarks comes from Matt Hooper, who plays an oceanographer in the film, “what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat” (Spielberg). Although this remark is technically true its presentation and context in the movie leaves viewers to suspect that that all sharks do is eat, and that their preferred prey is

humans.
This sort of dialogue in Jaws did a great amount of damage in defacing the image of sharks, but Jaws would have had a negative image even if it had been a silent film.

The main issue of Jaws was the completely erroneous rogue shark theory that the movie was based on. This theory according to the police chief in the film is that “"[the shark] keeps swimmin' around in a place where the feeding is good until the food supply is gone, right?" (Spielberg) This was the concept that terrified viewers; that a shark that attacked one human would go looking for more. This theory had stemmed from the 1916 New Jersey attacks, but the haunting visual, that Jaws so graciously provided, of a shark going after men, women, and children was horrifying. This image was forever branded into viewers minds and became the first thing that many people think of when they picture sharks. Media outlets soon discovered how lucrative this visual was and increased their coverage on sharks. According to Beryl Francis in her Journal Before and After Jaws: Changing Representations of Shark Attacks, “Reference to [ Jaws] and use of highly descriptive language, such as ‘man-eater’, ‘monster of the deep’, ‘predator’, … has continued to describe shark incidents regardless of the severity of the encounter”(Francis 56). Since the release of Jaws newspapers in particular have used this type of ‘Jaws’ labeling and language to provide a visual to their readers and attract attention. This has become a

huge trend in media reporting with the custom that “If it bleeds it leads”.
This exploitation of violence in media stories has been a constant trend ever since the media has been around. Attacks, murders, and violent crimes are reported because they are the stories that people want to hear. Consumers like to be afraid, to have something to gossip about in hushed tones, something that makes their everyday life risky, and shark attacks are perfect story for this craving. So, in turn, newspapers and broadcasts cater to this growing need for gore, to hear the details of the ‘brutal’ attack and how the victim nearly lost their life. However, a huge difference between a murder report and a shark attack is the veracity of the information being presented. Media sources like to characterize sharks involved in attacks as brutal, merciless predators that set out to kill. While some murderers or attackers have backstories, mental conditions, or other problems that partially explain their crime, sharks have no way to defend themselves against the media’s reaction and analysis of their actions. Media sources have no regulations that force them to give sharks the benefit of the doubt. They are not required to inform the public that the attack occurred because a diver aggravated the shark, or that they shark was on its own territory. Those details are obscured because “Following an attack…[a] shark is immediately labeled as ‘a man eater’, ‘a killer’, or ‘a killer-shark’ ” (Peace 12), and once sharks have these titles they are unable to shake them.