You’re gonna need a bigger screen: Catch Jaws at the Panida Theater

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Some movies only get better with age. Fewer still become even more allegorical. Jaws, the iconic 1975 thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, is one such film.

Adapted from the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws is on its surface a movie about an enormous, ravenous Great White shark that terrorizes a New England beach community until it is hunted and killed by a motley trio consisting of a crusty old seadog, a snarky oceanographer and an every-man cop who is, ironically, afraid of the water.

As with its aquatic antagonist, there is of course much, much more going on beneath the waves. Rafts of critical essays, reviews and film school theses have been written about the deeper meaning(s) lurking within the plot of Jaws — the most obvious interpretations keying into its similarities with Moby Dick.

However, many other cinephiles have suggested that Jaws is a cautionary tale about humans’ propensity to invade environments in which they don’t belong; that it’s a metaphor for the trauma and catharsis of the Watergate scandal; that it’s a story about nature pushing back against the world-ending threat of nuclear war; that it’s a class drama, exploring how members of the lower- (Quint), middle- (Brody) and upper-economic strata (Hooper) grapple with the enormous socio-political and natural structures in which they’re enmeshed.

(For an excellent summary and explanation of those themes and more, read the 2020 essay by Olivia Rutigliano titled, “On the Endless Symbolism of Jaws, Which Owes its Dark Soul to Moby Dick,” at crimereads.com.)

One interpretation that I particularly like — and one that Spielberg himself identified as a critical piece of the story — is that Jaws is an indictment of capitalism’s favoring of short-term profit and convenience over human lives. 

That point should be clear enough to anyone who’s ever seen the film: the sleazy mayor knows there’s a killer shark stalking the shoreline of his resort community, but refuses to listen to the dire warnings of his own police chief to close the beach — especially heading into the Fourth of July weekend, when the tiny community of Amity Island will see its biggest influx of tourists.

What’s more, the mayor and his fellow town leaders actively downplay the threat by willfully misrepresenting or ignoring the evidence, dismissing legitimate concerns as hysteria and outright lying to the public by insisting that everything’s fine — even as people are devoured in spumes of blood and seawater.

In 1975 that probably played as a direct jab. Viewed 47 years later, amid the COVID era and the long tail of the truth-averse Trump presidency, Jaws feels even more pointed toward what Rutigliano described in her essay as satirizing or condemning “the potential inconvenience of facts.”

In our time, to that could be added climate change, unchecked wealth and property accumulation, and even the Supreme Court. Or maybe it’s just a horror movie about a gigantic, overly intelligent and vicious fish. But I don’t think so. Otherwise it wouldn’t be considered among the most essential popular films ever made — to many students of cinema, even regarded as “a perfect film.”

Ultimately, it may be that Jaws is so resonant because the shark represents anything the viewer wants it to be, whether that’s the pitilessness of nature, Richard Nixon or a 20th-century Moby Dick.

Whatever you want the shark to be, there is no denying that Jaws is one of the most entertaining spectacles ever put on film — even better to see it in all its gory glory on the big screen July 13 as part of the Panida Theater’s Second Wednesday Summer Film Series. Sponsored by Bleeding Hearts Tattoo Emporium, doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show is at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 general admission and free for Panida members (find out how to become a member at panida.org). Bonus: Wear your “best Hawaiian shirt, outrageous personal floaty or best Quint impression” and prizes will be awarded to the first-place winner in each category.

Jaws (R) • Wednesday, July 13; doors at 6:30 p.m., screening at 7 p.m.; $5 general admission, FREE for Panida members. Panida Theater, 300 N. First Ave., 208-263-9191, get tickets or become a member of the theater at panida.org.