It's a part of cinema history.
Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws is commonly sited as a turning point in American movie-going: after the thriller was released to (then) historical markets, the idea of the summer blockbuster was born and films exhibited in American theaters grew in proportion to the importance of fine art in the French Louvre. And this is how we commonly look at Jaws, in terms of how much it grossed, but this post will examine why it grossed as much as it did, why it was so popular with viewers, why they were compelled to go and see this film. The long build-up I have been making in critiquing the sci-fi films of the 1950s finds its climax in Jaws: whereas films in the 1950s dealt with radiation as a sign of guilt for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, Jaws justifies and validates why the atomic bomb was dropped, in terms Americans could understand, and absolved Americans of any lingering "radiational guilt" over the issues.
That's a pretty big claim on my part, because most people wouldn't even consider Jaws to be a sci-fi film, a thriller perhaps, maybe even a drama, but not science fiction, and certainly not in the vein of those cheesy films from the '50s. But we have to remember two things: first of all, even though Jaws is 15 years after the end of the 1950s, Spielberg grew up with those films and they are still an influence on him today.
atomic bomb. In previous posts (listed at the end of this posting) I have carefully built up an argument that, while critics and viewers think the 1950s sci-fi genre was about Communism, it was really about us, and what happened to us has a result of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the key scene to understanding this is one of the greatest in film history, the monologue of Quint (Robert Shaw) talking about his time on the doomed USS Indianapolis which delivered critical parts of the atomic bomb so it could be used to end World War II with the Japanese and this monologue and what it tells us is the heart of the story.
But it's always best to start at the beginning.
When the film first opens, we cruise through the water as if we are with the shark that we know is the star of the show, and this idea of us being one with the shark means, psychologically, that we are one with the shark, the shark is something with us and Spielberg is going to separate it from us and kill it so we can be rid of it. The power of the film is that Spielberg waits to really define what, or who, Jaws symbolizes.
But then we jump to a beach shot of a casual party and Chrissy invites a young man, extremely drunk, to go swimming with her. He's so drunk he can't make it, but he's able to report to Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) the next day that she's missing.
Who is the girl?
Pearl Harbor.
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was. This is Spielberg's first argument in his analysis of why dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified: we were minding our own businessunarmed and not ready for attack.
What about the guy trying to follow her?
He says absently, "I can swim, I just can't walk or undress myself," referring to the might of the US Navy and why Japan wanted to attack it: it could swim the distance to Japan with the aircraft carriers in the fleet, but the United States couldn't walk (the Army who generally walks to battle) because we weren't prepared for war at all (most of the men had no training), so the Japanese attacked what we did have: the Navy. (Not being able to walk might also refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt who, stricken with polio, was unable to walk without braces and help). If this all seems like a stretch, don't worry, it all falls into place, just keep reading.
(Skipping a bit) there are two important aspects about Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) being on the ferry when the "city council" (i.e., the mayor) comes to sway him from disrupting the 4th of July celebrations by closing the beach. First, the mayor wears a sports jacket with anchors on it, the symbol of the United States navy (the unofficial symbol). Yet the mayor also presents the audience with the inherent conflict of the film: the very identity of the United States.
The mayor argues that making money is more important than the safety of the people you hope to make money from, but on the larger scale, the contradiction in the mayor's argument is that capitalism is more important than the safety of the country, and, of course, we the viewers can see how erroneous his position is, which in the larger scheme of the film goes something like, "We can't go to war because it will be bad for business," and that's a familiar argument; watching the film, we know that if we can't provide for our safety (in this case, from shark attacks) then what does money matter and Brody makes this exact argument. In terms of the war, we can't go to war because it will interrupt commerce, but what will happen to commerce if we are conquered by a foreign power?
Even though Brody knows the mayor is wrong, the mayor wins this round of arguments, and this discussion on the ferry going out to the boy scouts could be compared to US soldiers abandoned in the Philippine Islands when General MacArthur abandoned them, and the United States decided to pursue the European theater of war first, and concentrate on the War in the Pacific at a later day.
As we see visitors relaxing on the beach and swimming in the water, Spielberg basically parades for us a plethora of possibilities as to why the Japanese attacked: there is a very large woman getting into the water and her size could easily be symbolic of American wealth; even though we were barely (if at all) coming out of the Great Depression at the time, America's immense natural wealth in terms of resources and people meant that, if we did get into the war, we would be a force to reckon with. But this woman isn't attacked, she isn't a victim.
There is a couple named the Tafts talking on the beach, and this is important because United States President William Howard Taft served in the Philippines before becoming president, and the Philippine battles during World War II were some of the most traumatic of the entire ordeal. But the Tafts aren't attacked, they aren't victims. So our role in handling the Philippines isn't to blame or American Imperialism.
There is an old man who is swimming, and he isn't attacked, so something from the past (his advanced age) isn't the problem, that's not why we were attacked. The young couple frolicking in the water, symbolizing sexual behavior or loose morals (just in a very general sense) aren't attacked. Then the dog goes missing and the little Kintner boy is eaten off his yellow raft. Alex Kintner, as children usually do, symbolizes the future: the Japanese wanted to dominate and destroy the future of this country for future generations of Americans and put them under Japanese Imperialism. (The name "Alex Kintner"" sounds like "Al is kin" when pronounced and would make sense that it is not just one little boy lost, but the country lost one of its own, one of our own).
Alex is floating upon a yellow raft, and yellow--because of the resemblance it bears to gold, the most precious of all metals--symbolizes dignity. The dignity of the children growing up during the war, and the fear of being oppressed is the second argument Spielberg sites for the attack on the Japanese. I would not have come up with this, but in the Watch the Skies! (available for viewing here) documentary about the 1950s science fiction films, Spielberg puts particular emphasis on how children were always at the center of the story in those films and the ones trying to save humanity and the future (and how he identified with them). But the little boy on the raft is also Spielberg himself, and the suffering he endured watching the psychological trauma of films throughout the 1950s. (Again, the entire Watch the Skies! documentary is here on Youtube).
Now the beaches have closed, and Mrs. Kintner offers a $3,000 bounty for anyone to catch the shark that ate her little boy. The bounty turns into a contest, and a regrettable one, because that reflects the attitude of "Remember Pearl Harbor" (that Spielberg takes up at the end) that the dropping of the atomic bomb wasn't a game, it wasn't a contest of dominance, but it had to be done. Until servicemen got a taste of the staunch foe the Japanese Imperialist army would prove to be, it was like a contest, a game, to individually repay them for the losses and trauma of Pearl Harbor, but that kind of an attitude Spielberg isn't galvanizing.
When Brody is at dinner that night, and his son imitates him, it's not just Spielberg providing us with some variance in the pacing, or releasing some of the tension from the film: just as little Michael imitates his father's gestures, so a grown-up Michael will one day look to the precedence that his father's actions set for him (and all America) and imitate that course of action. The writing of history is at stake, Spielberg is saying, and what we do now will be remembered and determine for the future generations what is expected of their actions when faced with similar conflicts and decisions.
Looking around at Ben Gardner's boat, Matt finds his corpse, and Spielberg is saying, the dropping of the atomic bomb was justified because of all the people who lost their lives and would not have, if Japan had not attacked the United States. Ben was known as an excellent fisherman, and the shark obviously attacked his boat (like the torpedoes Quint will talk about later), but Ben would have been home, safe and sound with his family, if he did not have to go out and fight against he shark.
In the next scene, Spielberg wants to do a summary, so will I.
When the mayor tells people that "Amity" means "friendship," Spielberg reminds the audience how we were at peace with the Japanese; the girl on the sign (pictured below) recalls Chrissie dying and the yellow raft she is on recalls little Alex dying. The red banner at the bottom emphasizes the founding of the country--the 4th of July celebration--while the girl yelling, "Help! Shark!" re-introduces the issue of capitalism and how this struggle in the film is being used for us to better understand our identity as a country and how forces work to undermine it.
After they believe the shark has been caught, and they re-open the beaches, Jaws of course comes back, and what does he do? Spielberg uses Jaws coming into the pond, where his son is, to make his next argument in reminding Americans how close the United States was to the Japanese attacking the West coast, which Spielberg again took up in his film 1941.(Even in 2008 with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spielberg was still thinking about atomic bombs and radiation because what happens to Indie after he escapes the Communists? He goes into a test town for atomic radiation and lives through the blast in a fridge,... "food" for thought).
Orcinus orca, a killer whale. Since Jaws is a Great White, we have a killer whale going to kill a killer shark. This is the reason why the Orca will sink: as many great films have pointed out, you have to be better than your enemy to overcome your enemy; you can't be worse than your enemy if you want to overcome them, because you will be overcome yourself, and that is what happens to the Orca, as it is captained by Quint, it's not good enough to defeat the shark, the same way that America wasn't going to be good enough to defeat Japan, if it didn't change its strategy (and "good enough" here refers to the moral standing of America: we couldn't "play dirty" and hope to win, we had to do everything on the highest possible moral ground to win).
And now we get to the most important part of the film, Quint's monologue. They have been in the famous scene of comparing their wounds and Matt asks Quint about the one on his arm, and Quint replies it was a removed tattoo. Matt says, "Let me guess, 'Mother,'" and he laughs. The reference here to "mother" means what experience "gave birth" to Quint, what experience made Quint the man he is, the man "with blood on his hands?" Quint replies that it was the USS Indianapolis, and Matt knows instantly what that means, but Brody doesn't, so Quint tells him:
This monologue is what the entire film is about: "We delivered the bomb." All the great (and the not-so-great) science fiction films of the 1950s were inspired the releasing of radiation into the world and that's why those films were made as they were, they were trying to deal with the guilt of what we had done and the unforeseen consequences of the people it turned us into and the possibilities of actual chaos from radiation. Spielberg, on the other hand, was inspired by the events themselves which prompted us to drop the bomb and, since stories repeat themselves, this is exactly what happens in Jaws. After Quint has finished his monologue, the shark starts pounding on the side of the boat, just like the Japanese torpedoes that sank the USS Indianapolis.
Now is a great time to talk about each of the main, three characters and what they represent. Now that we have heard Quint's monologue, we know what he is in Spielberg's scheme and why Quint cannot be the one to kill the shark, to overcome the enemy: revenge. Quint is the ultimate symbol of revenge in the film, and we can know that because of the way that he himself dies.
He doesn't die, but he does get "removed to the sidelines," which is frequent of the 1950s science fiction films. As a scientist, Matt belongs (artistically speaking) with all scientists, the ones who developed the bomb that could be dropped on Hiroshima. Is he a bad guy? No, but there is also another problem with him: he's independently wealthy. We don't find out exactly how much he's worth, but he's obviously "from money," and this important conflict with Quint over working class and his hands "being soft," compared to Quint's hands that have blood on them, invokes the money argument about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, that they rich didn't want to go and die in the war the way the poor/working class was. Matt works hard on the boat and does everything he can to aid in victory, and since he lives, Spielberg doesn't condemn the upper-classes for not doing enough or only protecting themselves and financial investments the war might have put at risk.
Matt's willingness to enter the cage and go down is highly commendable, but fruitless. It's odd, isn't it, that Matt escapes the cage and being eaten, but goes "off screen" for the rest of the film? That's because this is art and things like that can happen in art. The cage that's destroyed is the barrier of his wealth as a member of the upper-class (the war and rations didn't effect them as much as the lower classes), and the insulation of being a scientist and the public's perception of scientists since they developed the bomb and "won the war." Because scientists, as a class in American society, could be good (the lives saved by dropping the bomb) or bad (they developed the bomb and now radiation is going to kill us all) Matt doesn't have to die, but he also doesn't get to contribute in the shark's demise.
Throughout the film, he has been torn in two, just like Quint and Matt, between the mayor and Brody's official role as sheriff for the town and as a father and citizen like the victims. The question is, why is it Brody who kills the shark, who "defeats the Japanese?" Because Brody is not out for revenge, he's not out to advance science, or make money, or make a name for himself; Brody is the one capable of killing the shark because Brody is the hand of justice. In terms of the film, when Brody puts the tank of air into the shark's mouth, "Brody delivers the bomb," just as the Enola Gay did.
In Spielberg's terms, it was right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because we didn't start the war, the future generations of America had been put at risk because of the war, men and women died who would not have died otherwise, people were not born who should have been born because their parents died pre-maturely, and because the only reason why the Japanese attacked us was the appetite for power and control (we had done nothing to provoke it or deserving of justice ourselves).
Debates over whether it was correct to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki still wage (you can read issues on both sides over dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki here). But there is another side to this story: the Japanese. What did they think of the dropping of the bombs?
As I have said before, films are social documents that archive and document thoughts and psychology which might not make it into the historical record otherwise. Just as Americans used the monster Jaws to articulate our fears over the Japanese, the Japanese used Godzilla to articulate their nightmares over what the United States' dropping the atomic bomb did to them. What is so interesting about Godzilla, however, is the evolution from dastardly beast that must die (the United States is evil), to being a beast that would actually protect Japan from Mothra and Rodan (the United States as beneficiary), other giant monsters wanting to destroy the country. This evolution may be a result of the Japanese witnessing China, North Vietnam, North Korea and Russia all falling to Communism and the United States keeping Japan a capitalist country.
The Second Original Sin: Art In the Atomic Age, The Decade Of Turmoil Film In the 1950s, Love In the Sonic Age: Attack Of the 50-Foot Woman, One Of Us Has To Die: The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Salt Of the Earth: The Monolith Monsters, And the Beasts Shall Reign Over the Earth: Them!, Promiscuity & Gender In the 1950s: The Thing From Another World and Mirroir-Noir: Invasion Of the Body Snatchers
Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws is commonly sited as a turning point in American movie-going: after the thriller was released to (then) historical markets, the idea of the summer blockbuster was born and films exhibited in American theaters grew in proportion to the importance of fine art in the French Louvre. And this is how we commonly look at Jaws, in terms of how much it grossed, but this post will examine why it grossed as much as it did, why it was so popular with viewers, why they were compelled to go and see this film. The long build-up I have been making in critiquing the sci-fi films of the 1950s finds its climax in Jaws: whereas films in the 1950s dealt with radiation as a sign of guilt for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, Jaws justifies and validates why the atomic bomb was dropped, in terms Americans could understand, and absolved Americans of any lingering "radiational guilt" over the issues.
That's a pretty big claim on my part, because most people wouldn't even consider Jaws to be a sci-fi film, a thriller perhaps, maybe even a drama, but not science fiction, and certainly not in the vein of those cheesy films from the '50s. But we have to remember two things: first of all, even though Jaws is 15 years after the end of the 1950s, Spielberg grew up with those films and they are still an influence on him today.
atomic bomb. In previous posts (listed at the end of this posting) I have carefully built up an argument that, while critics and viewers think the 1950s sci-fi genre was about Communism, it was really about us, and what happened to us has a result of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the key scene to understanding this is one of the greatest in film history, the monologue of Quint (Robert Shaw) talking about his time on the doomed USS Indianapolis which delivered critical parts of the atomic bomb so it could be used to end World War II with the Japanese and this monologue and what it tells us is the heart of the story.
But it's always best to start at the beginning.
Happily swimming and enjoying life,... until... |
No other shot of the "first victim" better exemplifies how "unarmed" and unprepared for danger she is, and how helpless she is to face it and protect herself. |
Who is the girl?
Pearl Harbor.
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was. This is Spielberg's first argument in his analysis of why dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified: we were minding our own businessunarmed and not ready for attack.
USS Nevada trying to escape Pearl Harbor like Chrissy trying to escape Jaws. |
He says absently, "I can swim, I just can't walk or undress myself," referring to the might of the US Navy and why Japan wanted to attack it: it could swim the distance to Japan with the aircraft carriers in the fleet, but the United States couldn't walk (the Army who generally walks to battle) because we weren't prepared for war at all (most of the men had no training), so the Japanese attacked what we did have: the Navy. (Not being able to walk might also refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt who, stricken with polio, was unable to walk without braces and help). If this all seems like a stretch, don't worry, it all falls into place, just keep reading.
When we first meet Chief Brody, he is sitting on the edge of his bed, having just woken up, his wife waking up still under the covers, and he complains, "The sun never came in here before," referring to the glaring light that has woken up him, and she replies, "We bought the house in the fall." What is this exchange? The sun being referred to is the sun on the Imperial Japanese flag, that even though it's always been there, it isn't until now that the meaning of the flag has forced him to "wake up" to what is going on. |
Chief Brody types up the official police report verifying that it was a shark attack which was the cause of death, not a motor boat accident, as the mayor suggests. |
Chief Brody on the left, the mayor in the middle, quite literally, and a councilman on the right. The mayor wears a light blue jacket embroidered with anchors, symbolic of the US Navy. |
This man is an unsung hero of the film: without his verbosity and monotone delivery working against the anticipation of what is to happen, this sequence in the film would lose the bite it retains today, but it also re-illustrates how the needs of the individual (in this case, keeping his property in order) is overshadowing the larger concern of the safety of the entire community. Just as this man is complaining about kids "karate chopping" his fence, karate--a Japanese method of fighting--illustrates in another way what happened: the Japanese (symbolized by karate) were tearing down the gates (defenses) of the United States. |
Alex Kintner being eaten by the shark from his yellow raft. |
There is an old man who is swimming, and he isn't attacked, so something from the past (his advanced age) isn't the problem, that's not why we were attacked. The young couple frolicking in the water, symbolizing sexual behavior or loose morals (just in a very general sense) aren't attacked. Then the dog goes missing and the little Kintner boy is eaten off his yellow raft. Alex Kintner, as children usually do, symbolizes the future: the Japanese wanted to dominate and destroy the future of this country for future generations of Americans and put them under Japanese Imperialism. (The name "Alex Kintner"" sounds like "Al is kin" when pronounced and would make sense that it is not just one little boy lost, but the country lost one of its own, one of our own).
Alex is floating upon a yellow raft, and yellow--because of the resemblance it bears to gold, the most precious of all metals--symbolizes dignity. The dignity of the children growing up during the war, and the fear of being oppressed is the second argument Spielberg sites for the attack on the Japanese. I would not have come up with this, but in the Watch the Skies! (available for viewing here) documentary about the 1950s science fiction films, Spielberg puts particular emphasis on how children were always at the center of the story in those films and the ones trying to save humanity and the future (and how he identified with them). But the little boy on the raft is also Spielberg himself, and the suffering he endured watching the psychological trauma of films throughout the 1950s. (Again, the entire Watch the Skies! documentary is here on Youtube).
Now the beaches have closed, and Mrs. Kintner offers a $3,000 bounty for anyone to catch the shark that ate her little boy. The bounty turns into a contest, and a regrettable one, because that reflects the attitude of "Remember Pearl Harbor" (that Spielberg takes up at the end) that the dropping of the atomic bomb wasn't a game, it wasn't a contest of dominance, but it had to be done. Until servicemen got a taste of the staunch foe the Japanese Imperialist army would prove to be, it was like a contest, a game, to individually repay them for the losses and trauma of Pearl Harbor, but that kind of an attitude Spielberg isn't galvanizing.
When Brody is at dinner that night, and his son imitates him, it's not just Spielberg providing us with some variance in the pacing, or releasing some of the tension from the film: just as little Michael imitates his father's gestures, so a grown-up Michael will one day look to the precedence that his father's actions set for him (and all America) and imitate that course of action. The writing of history is at stake, Spielberg is saying, and what we do now will be remembered and determine for the future generations what is expected of their actions when faced with similar conflicts and decisions.
Looking around at Ben Gardner's boat, Matt finds his corpse, and Spielberg is saying, the dropping of the atomic bomb was justified because of all the people who lost their lives and would not have, if Japan had not attacked the United States. Ben was known as an excellent fisherman, and the shark obviously attacked his boat (like the torpedoes Quint will talk about later), but Ben would have been home, safe and sound with his family, if he did not have to go out and fight against he shark.
It's not just death that men had to get used to in World War II, but terrifying and disturbing death, they kind that would haunt them all the days of their lives, if they lived through the war. |
When the mayor tells people that "Amity" means "friendship," Spielberg reminds the audience how we were at peace with the Japanese; the girl on the sign (pictured below) recalls Chrissie dying and the yellow raft she is on recalls little Alex dying. The red banner at the bottom emphasizes the founding of the country--the 4th of July celebration--while the girl yelling, "Help! Shark!" re-introduces the issue of capitalism and how this struggle in the film is being used for us to better understand our identity as a country and how forces work to undermine it.
After they believe the shark has been caught, and they re-open the beaches, Jaws of course comes back, and what does he do? Spielberg uses Jaws coming into the pond, where his son is, to make his next argument in reminding Americans how close the United States was to the Japanese attacking the West coast, which Spielberg again took up in his film 1941.(Even in 2008 with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spielberg was still thinking about atomic bombs and radiation because what happens to Indie after he escapes the Communists? He goes into a test town for atomic radiation and lives through the blast in a fridge,... "food" for thought).
Orcinus orca, a killer whale. Since Jaws is a Great White, we have a killer whale going to kill a killer shark. This is the reason why the Orca will sink: as many great films have pointed out, you have to be better than your enemy to overcome your enemy; you can't be worse than your enemy if you want to overcome them, because you will be overcome yourself, and that is what happens to the Orca, as it is captained by Quint, it's not good enough to defeat the shark, the same way that America wasn't going to be good enough to defeat Japan, if it didn't change its strategy (and "good enough" here refers to the moral standing of America: we couldn't "play dirty" and hope to win, we had to do everything on the highest possible moral ground to win).
And now we get to the most important part of the film, Quint's monologue. They have been in the famous scene of comparing their wounds and Matt asks Quint about the one on his arm, and Quint replies it was a removed tattoo. Matt says, "Let me guess, 'Mother,'" and he laughs. The reference here to "mother" means what experience "gave birth" to Quint, what experience made Quint the man he is, the man "with blood on his hands?" Quint replies that it was the USS Indianapolis, and Matt knows instantly what that means, but Brody doesn't, so Quint tells him:
This monologue is what the entire film is about: "We delivered the bomb." All the great (and the not-so-great) science fiction films of the 1950s were inspired the releasing of radiation into the world and that's why those films were made as they were, they were trying to deal with the guilt of what we had done and the unforeseen consequences of the people it turned us into and the possibilities of actual chaos from radiation. Spielberg, on the other hand, was inspired by the events themselves which prompted us to drop the bomb and, since stories repeat themselves, this is exactly what happens in Jaws. After Quint has finished his monologue, the shark starts pounding on the side of the boat, just like the Japanese torpedoes that sank the USS Indianapolis.
The USS Indianapolis, 1937, Pearl Harbor. |
He doesn't die, but he does get "removed to the sidelines," which is frequent of the 1950s science fiction films. As a scientist, Matt belongs (artistically speaking) with all scientists, the ones who developed the bomb that could be dropped on Hiroshima. Is he a bad guy? No, but there is also another problem with him: he's independently wealthy. We don't find out exactly how much he's worth, but he's obviously "from money," and this important conflict with Quint over working class and his hands "being soft," compared to Quint's hands that have blood on them, invokes the money argument about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, that they rich didn't want to go and die in the war the way the poor/working class was. Matt works hard on the boat and does everything he can to aid in victory, and since he lives, Spielberg doesn't condemn the upper-classes for not doing enough or only protecting themselves and financial investments the war might have put at risk.
Matt's willingness to enter the cage and go down is highly commendable, but fruitless. It's odd, isn't it, that Matt escapes the cage and being eaten, but goes "off screen" for the rest of the film? That's because this is art and things like that can happen in art. The cage that's destroyed is the barrier of his wealth as a member of the upper-class (the war and rations didn't effect them as much as the lower classes), and the insulation of being a scientist and the public's perception of scientists since they developed the bomb and "won the war." Because scientists, as a class in American society, could be good (the lives saved by dropping the bomb) or bad (they developed the bomb and now radiation is going to kill us all) Matt doesn't have to die, but he also doesn't get to contribute in the shark's demise.
Throughout the film, he has been torn in two, just like Quint and Matt, between the mayor and Brody's official role as sheriff for the town and as a father and citizen like the victims. The question is, why is it Brody who kills the shark, who "defeats the Japanese?" Because Brody is not out for revenge, he's not out to advance science, or make money, or make a name for himself; Brody is the one capable of killing the shark because Brody is the hand of justice. In terms of the film, when Brody puts the tank of air into the shark's mouth, "Brody delivers the bomb," just as the Enola Gay did.
In Spielberg's terms, it was right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because we didn't start the war, the future generations of America had been put at risk because of the war, men and women died who would not have died otherwise, people were not born who should have been born because their parents died pre-maturely, and because the only reason why the Japanese attacked us was the appetite for power and control (we had done nothing to provoke it or deserving of justice ourselves).
Not exactly a mushroom cloud, but pretty impressive. |
Who else was "an enraged monster that wipes out an entire city!"? The United States, wiping out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
The Second Original Sin: Art In the Atomic Age, The Decade Of Turmoil Film In the 1950s, Love In the Sonic Age: Attack Of the 50-Foot Woman, One Of Us Has To Die: The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Salt Of the Earth: The Monolith Monsters, And the Beasts Shall Reign Over the Earth: Them!, Promiscuity & Gender In the 1950s: The Thing From Another World and Mirroir-Noir: Invasion Of the Body Snatchers
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