Jaws

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy Zephim Beast start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Auga Alert, Alert, We're going on tour.

00:00:22
Speaker 3: We're going on tour, and I know what you're all thinking. What are you going to the same four cities again? Normally the answer be yes. This time no, we are for the first time touring in the Midwest. You heard, we responded nine years later, we are touring the Midwest. We are very, very excited, and so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so you can grab your tickets. It's our end of summer tour. Caitlin, where are we going?

00:00:53
Speaker 2: I will tell you. We're kicking off the tour in Indianapolis on August thirtieth. That is a Saturday matinee show with Let's Fest. So check out our show for sure, and check out other programming at the festival.

00:01:12
Speaker 3: I've got a solo show that night. You should come.

00:01:14
Speaker 2: You should definitely come to that to come to both of them. So, yeah, that's Indianapolis August thirtieth, then the following night, on August thirty first, we will be in Chicago, so come on out to that show.

00:01:30
Speaker 3: We'll be at the Den Theater that night. It's a beautiful, beautiful theater. We're very, very excited, and tickets particularly we'll be going quick there, so if you're in Chicago, get your tickets now.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: Indeed, a few days later we'll be over in Wisconsin. That's right, We're coming to Madison on September fourth. We will be at the Burr Oak and then finally we will be in Minneapolis on September seventh at Dudley Riggs Theater.

00:02:00
Speaker 3: It will be a thrilling week in the Midwest. We are very excited to come and see you. Come hang. As always, we do like audience involvement stuff. We do meet and greets after we sell exclusive merch it's a blast, so come be weird and parasocial with us. We will be announcing movie pics a little bit closer to the shows, but we can promise you're gonna have an amazing time. Bechdel Cash shows are rowdy and weird and a lot of people have met their significant others there, so are we promising love.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: Yes, significant others, friends or just fuck buddies. Yeah, just go in and find someone to fuck if you want.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: They're just if you're a horny, well no, actually, if you're a horney, figure it out. But you can come to the show. You're wal, you can see people welcome. Don't be weird about it. Just don't be weird about it, honor system.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: Yes indeed. Yeah, and the tickets for all of these shows can be found on our link tree link tree slash bechdel Ca, So grab them while you still can. We're expecting these shows to sell out, so don't wait. As as mister Andrews says to Rose at the after the Titanic has hit the iceberg, don't wait. Get your tickets now and we will see you there. Should I be invoking Titanic a national tragedy?

00:03:24
Speaker 3: I think that it's you.

00:03:25
Speaker 2: You crested thee hundred year roll. It's fine, thank you so much. In any case, grab your tickets. We're so excited to come see you.

00:03:33
Speaker 4: See you there and now done done Fuck America by byecast Jamie.

00:03:44
Speaker 2: We're gonna need a bigger pod podcast.

00:03:48
Speaker 3: I mean, look, we've been trying.

00:03:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell your friends not for lack of.

00:03:53
Speaker 3: Effort that we don't have a bigger podcast. Tell your friends, Tell your friends. We didn't pivot the video. I guess, hey, I mean, yeah, look, we're we've got we've got a we've got a quin style podcast. So true, chugging along, full of trauma, old fashioned, no video doomed. Who could say, let's hope not, Let's hope not.

00:04:17
Speaker 2: What if at the end of this episode we get die?

00:04:20
Speaker 3: Honestly, it would be a blessing. It would be a blassing bringing on. Hi everyone, Welcome to the Jaws episode of the Vachdel Cast. My name's Jamie Loftus.

00:04:31
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Droonte. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test. Simply as a jumping off point.

00:04:42
Speaker 3: Is Jaws of what pronounces Jaws use?

00:04:45
Speaker 2: Well, the characters refer to Jaws as he him.

00:04:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like, I mean, I guess that they are shark experts, so I'm assuming they know that, But it just feels like it's a given, like.

00:04:56
Speaker 2: They don't question it at all, Like before they.

00:04:58
Speaker 3: Could possibly know they you're using him. I just needed, like definitely not to be like obsessed with the like gender of the shark. It just felt like the he him was a was a foregone conclusion, versus.

00:05:10
Speaker 2: Like, I mean this is true. I think they just see a forebiding aggressive thing and they're like, well, that must be a male shark. I mean, animals don't have gender. Gender is a very human construct, so right, but it very well could have been a female shark.

00:05:27
Speaker 3: Well, because Spielberg later on, I mean famously the dinosaurs in Jurassic.

00:05:33
Speaker 2: Parks, so you know, all female growth growth exactly over time anyway, So yes, we use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. That, of course, is a media metric created by our very best friend in the whole wide world, Alison Bechdel, first appearing in her comic Dikes to Watch Out For in nineteen eighty five. Often called the Bechdel Wallace Test, there are many versions of it. The one that we use requires this, do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? And do they speak to each other about something other than a man? And also, we like it when it's narratively impactful dialogue and not just throw away nonsense.

00:06:19
Speaker 3: We like it. We love it. Yes, and today we are taking that interactional feminist frame and applying it to one Jaws nineteen seventy five, directed by Steven Spielberg, which feels especially worthy of mention this year because it's celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Yeah. I was really hoping to watch the new documentary about Jaws, but it unfortunately does not come out until after this episode airs tragically rude. But there is plenty, plenty, plenty to be said about the movie Jaws. There's been a lot of inks billed, and here is a little bit more MP three about it.

00:07:02
Speaker 2: Indeed, here's our contribution to that. Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie Jaws?

00:07:08
Speaker 3: I was a late bloomer to Jaws. I didn't grow up with Jaws, even though I grew up, like you know, I grew up in Massachusetts, where Jaws famously takes place. Yea, my mom not when I was growing up, but my mom when I was in high school and my parents got the Vorst. She moved to a community not unlike the community in Jaws. A community. She lives in Marshville, Massachusetts, which is a community that has a wide class gap. There's the rich folks in the hills and kind of the more working class, middle class folks in the city below. It is a town that very much relies on and has a very complicated relationship with the tourist economy. And so while there's a lot of cartoonish elements of Jaws, I actually did feel somewhat at home when I finally saw it. I didn't see it until a couple of years ago. It was re released in Imax, I want to say, three years ago, and that was my first time seeing it, and I have watched it every summer since. So I think this was my fourth viewing of Jaws. And I mean, it's a classic for a reason. Baby. Is it copaganda? Yes, but but it's is it a movie ever? Like kind of it is? It's like it is. It's really nice seeing like a movie that, like I wasn't avoiding it, I just like never saw it, and then when you finally see it, you're like, oh, it's it's as good as everybody says. It's an incredible movie.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: It's so good.

00:08:44
Speaker 3: It's so good, and much of the lore behind it is really fascinating because it's got that like this movie shouldn't have worked and then it did, which is always a fun thing, and it's yeah, Spielberg's like first theatrical release because he made that TV movie that was unlike Jaws if Jaws was a truck. Yeah, so that was this little warm up. He's like, okay, Jo, well what if Jaws was a fish and what if the truck was a shark? Yeah, but if the truck was a shark? And he slaid that and he was like twenty eight, which is upsetting but also incredible, and I, yeah, this movie. Look, could we make a better movie than this?

00:09:21
Speaker 2: Me? No?

00:09:22
Speaker 3: I like, no, we couldn't. And there's many movies we've covered in the show that we could make up definitely, but this is this is one of the greatest movies probably ever, one of like what a what like invented the blockbuster essentially. I didn't even ever think hard about the term blockbuster, but then you're like, you think about it. People lined up around.

00:09:43
Speaker 2: The block, Oh and they and they busted.

00:09:47
Speaker 3: They busted while they were waiting. And if the movie is so good, everyone busted and it came. That's why you wait around the block and then you bust when you get in.

00:09:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like edge you're waiting you're waiting, you're waiting.

00:10:01
Speaker 3: And you get so scared you come and yeah, this would be rocks. It fucking rocks, Roles and rules. It still feels very timely no matter when you see it. I love this movie. I particularly love the Robert Show performance. I think it's my favorite.

00:10:24
Speaker 2: Had no idea who was British.

00:10:26
Speaker 3: Oh oh by. And also I didn't know that he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist author like he was. Oh yeah. He was also a very successful writer, and I think was you know, many such cases. He was always a bit pissed that he was more famous as an actor than as a writer, but he was a very I wouldn't say he was an underrated writer. He was rated. He almost won a Pulitzer.

00:10:51
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:10:52
Speaker 3: Anyways, I think that his performance as quint is like one of my favorite performances ev which is the coldest take humanly possible. And I don't like Richard Drivis famously. I think he's annoying, and it's really it's horrible when someone's a horrible person, but it's interesting when someone's a horrible person, and it just validates the fact that you never enjoyed watching them perform and That's how I feel about Richard Drives. He sucks and I don't like watching him. And it used to just be like, am I being a bitch, And then I found out he was a horrible person. So now I'm like, well, I can freely air I don't like Richard Drivis. I think he's obnoxious.

00:11:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't know until you sent me that link. But he's a piece of shit.

00:11:38
Speaker 3: It's Jaws related too. The reason that like, I mean, he's he's been. He's been a piece of shit quietly for years. But his most recent outing of being a piece of shit was he had like an outburst against essentially any diversity or DEI in film at a Jaws screening in Massachusetts several years ago. Go and because Massachusetts is the greatest, he was booed in the theater and it made the news rounds. But I mean, it's, you know, an old white man, old white manning But it just was like, I would not recommend watching the clip. It's rather disgusting. And he's possibly a Republican, we just don't know, but we know that he it's it's one of the more comprehensive, hateful speeches I've ever heard yeah.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: He was disparaging of women of the meet too, and.

00:12:37
Speaker 3: It was literally like, if you are not a cis white man, I don't respect you.

00:12:42
Speaker 2: Make him vomit as he says.

00:12:44
Speaker 3: Yes, he says yeah, so early in the show to get into that. But and I you know, not that I'm like, and I'm sure Robert Shaw was a woke king, like who fucking knows.

00:12:55
Speaker 2: He did identify as a socialist, so maybe he did more.

00:12:58
Speaker 3: So I mean, look, yeah, not necessary. I mean to hang out at a DSA meeting long enough. Anyways, this movie's amazing, Yes, and I really really like it. I think if I saw it when I was younger, it would be in like some of my all time movies. But I'm a pretty recent convert. What about yourself?

00:13:17
Speaker 2: Honestly kind of the same. There's an alternate timeline version of me, or like a multiverse Caitlyn out there somewhere in the world who has seen this movie a hundred times, who can quote it? Yeah, who started watching it when I was like eight years old. But that just isn't the version of me who's speaking right now. That's okay, thank you so much. I saw this only once in my like it was either when I was a teenager, like in high school, or it was during the kind of great Caitlyn movie binge of two thousand and five somewhere around then. But I watched it that one time, and I didn't see it again until last summer at a screening at the Vista in LA and I was like, holy shit, why was I sleeping on this movie this whole time? This is incredible? What am I doing? And now I'm gonna work it into my regular rotation because it is so good. It's such a great movie.

00:14:18
Speaker 3: It's a movie.

00:14:19
Speaker 2: It's a movie that feels like a movie. We come to this place for magic and for Jaws.

00:14:23
Speaker 3: Literally that I do feel this is so core, but like it's a movie that feels like a movie. When people are talking about movies, they're basically talking about Jaws pretty much. Yeah, it's got something for everyone.

00:14:35
Speaker 2: It really does.

00:14:36
Speaker 3: Whether you're a child or traumatized from what you did in World War two, this movie's got something for everybody.

00:14:43
Speaker 2: Indeed, let's take a quick break and we will come back to do the recap and we're back. Yeah, Okay, here's what happens in Jaws.

00:15:06
Speaker 3: We open on just saying exactly.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: We open on some young people having a campfire on the beach. A man and a woman run off to go skinny dipping. The man is too drunk and he kind of like passes out in the sand, but the woman, Chrissy, goes into the water, and we've.

00:15:28
Speaker 3: Got that creature from the Black Ligan shot throughout.

00:15:32
Speaker 2: In something that's underwater, grabs her and starts thrashing her around, and eventually she's pulled underwater, never to be seen alive again.

00:15:46
Speaker 3: The casting for this is so seventies sexism, but it's interesting this character is called Chrissy. Yes, So the casting call for this basically said, okay, are you hot, willing to get naked, and very physically strong so that we can yank you underwater. And the actor who played her was all of those things. She had done like some pinup modeling I think, and was a I believe, like a semi professional slimmer like she had.

00:16:17
Speaker 2: A lot of and a stunt performer, like a professional stunt worker.

00:16:21
Speaker 3: Some of our most underappreciated actors. But she in what I believe. I watched the Jaws documentary that was filmed for the fortieth anniversary, so about ten years old.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: Now I also watched that one.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's when I sent to you and her she was basically waterboarded yeah during the shot, but she was like, but we didn't call it that back then. You were like okay, but just like I don't know, very like casting eat, it'sunded, Like Steven Spielberg was the only person that was like, is she appropriate for the role, And all the other men in the room were like, humana huamanahamana. So you know that's and because it's like the seventies and everyone's our parents age or earlier, they're like ha ha ha, And it was so funny and we just have to be like, well, if you say so, I don't have to agree. It sounds like they've waterboarded you anyways. Yeah, rip Chrissy, m hmm.

00:17:20
Speaker 2: Then we cut to Martin Brody played by Roy Scheider, the chief of Police of Amity Island, very Martha's Vineyard vibes, and that is famously also where they shot the movie.

00:17:32
Speaker 3: A cab does include Brody, yes, but I do love him. He's hard. It's hard, he I mean, but that's why coppaganda exists, because guys like Brody don't actually exast I know anyways, do love him.

00:17:50
Speaker 2: So we meet Brody and his wife Ellen played by Lorraine Gary.

00:17:56
Speaker 3: Love her too. What a fun Steven Spielberg is so like early Spielberg. I feel like it is full of mom characters like this who just like I mean, it's not similar to the mom and et in that she is a much bigger character in that story. She's a single mother, but just that, like the women in his like seventies and eighties movies in like rather formulaic movies still like have a personality at very least, which so few characters in like genre movies do. It's very like I am your wife. Here is French fries I mad or like however, wives are nagging, right, But she is humorless. She's fun. She is like we live on the beach. She's like not a great parents.

00:18:45
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone in the seventies were, because the way that parents just let their kids run around loose all willy nilly.

00:18:53
Speaker 3: It definitely was like, yeah, parent of the time. But also it's just wild how well aware she has that there's a shark nearby and she's like, there are my kids. Oh, you don't like that? They're in the water, like, well, I'm gonna have a drink, and you're like, all right, let's go. I love her.

00:19:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's fun, and so she and Brody have two sons together and are recent transplants from New York City. Then Brody gets a call about a missing girl, the one from the night before, and he discovers her body on the beach, or what's left of her, because she's been badly mangled and it's presumed to be a shark attack. So he wants to close the beach until further notice. But Mayor Vaughn played by Murray Hamilton and his minions go to Brody and say, oh, you can't close the beach. This is a summer beach town and we need the money that tourism brings in. We don't have sharks. That woman died in a boding accident.

00:20:01
Speaker 3: Probably, I think there's I've read about. I didn't really know before prepping for this episode that Jaws was a book. I did not read it, but I did look up and like watch the video and read a few articles about what the changes that are made in the book. And one of the things that like, I'm not upset at the way Spielberg did it, but I would be curious, like what it would be like if I guess I guess the mayor is a piece of shit in both things, but like everyone seems more like a piece of shit and more complicated in the world of the book, like there aren't really the Spielbergie heroes that you get. But I guess that the book takes more care in a way that I was like, oh, because I like, I don't know, like recognize that dynamic from my mom's community, Like takes way more pains to describe the consequences and the dependency that the community has, and how severely many of the residence, like the full time residence of their community would suffer if the summer economy were to disappear. And so while it's still ultimately I think painted in the book as like the mayor is clearly making a decision against the wellness of his people, I feel like the Spielberg movie makes it as like he's more of like a mister Crabs, like he's like our money, money, money, I want money for myself and just me, Whereas I guess the mayor of the book is like, well, like yoh, there's a shark. Oh, it's killing everybody, but otherwise, like people won't be able to pay their rents. Like it's presented as a more complicated thing where I feel like in the like the people in Amity and This are more like they're very sheeple vibes versus like we're not I mean, And it's like the movie can only do so much. But I feel like the people who are like the working class normal people are made out to be like very not smart as opposed to like, this is a very complex issue, but also they're about to get eaten by a fucking shark. It's not like, you know, it's not like Brody's.

00:22:09
Speaker 2: Wrong, right, Yeah, the movie seems to kind of oversimplify it slash like lean into the villainization of the Mayor character, but.

00:22:18
Speaker 3: It's also I don't hate, but no, it works. It still works. I just I just thought I was like, Oh, I would be interested in like alternate universe version of the movie where you know, you had a character that's like but I am, like I run a small business or like a small restaurant, and if summer people weren't here, I wouldn't be able to YadA YadA, you.

00:22:41
Speaker 2: Know right what, Yeah, the movie definitely glasses over that. Yeah, but in any case, Mayor Vaughn is like, pitshposh, there's no shark. Then we cut to the beach. There's lots of people having a nice time. Brody is there keeping an eye on things because he's very anxious that everyone's going to be eaten by a shark. There's a kid there who is singing do you know the muffin Man? And we're like, okay, Shrek vibes.

00:23:11
Speaker 3: Uh huh huh.

00:23:12
Speaker 2: Just had to throw that out there. And then there's another little boy, Alex Kittner, who goes in the water and soon after a shark attacks and kills him. This prompts a frenzy in town. Missus Kittner, Alex's mother is offering a three thousand dollars reward to the person who kills the shark that killed her son. And this town hall meeting is called and Brody says that he's going to close down the beaches, which upsets, you know, quite a few of the townspeople because they have businesses that rely on tourism. So it isn't just the mayor like, there are townspeople who are like I need summer dollars to serve.

00:24:00
Speaker 3: It's just very yes, I just, I just I guess again, it's just like they're to me, are presented is very like you fucking fool, You're gonna die, which is true. But it's also like if we're thinking of Jaws being the if Jaws is capitalism, you know, et cetera.

00:24:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I controversially think that the sharks did nothing wrong and that the real villain of the movie is capitalism.

00:24:23
Speaker 3: Well, it's also like, you know, the shark. I guess that that's I don't know about sharks, but I learned about sharks for the purposes of today, and uh a shark probably wouldn't wouldn't have done any of that shit.

00:24:36
Speaker 2: True.

00:24:36
Speaker 3: And then there's like, I know, we'll talk about it, but like the author of Jaws went on to become a shark conservationist, Like.

00:24:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he felt guilty about the aftermath of Jaws.

00:24:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, oops, I was just kidding you guys. I didn't think anyone was gonna read all that kind of fun. Peter Benchley. Yeah, yeah, he's like oops, and then he spent and now he's like a legend in the shark community.

00:25:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a shark named after him. I found out.

00:25:07
Speaker 3: Yep.

00:25:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk more about that. But we're at this town meeting and then we hear fingernails on a chalkboard and they belong to Quint, the Robert Shaw character. He's an eccentric local fisherman who says that he'll catch and kill this shark, but it's not gonna be pretty. I he'll do it for no less than ten thousand dollars.

00:25:30
Speaker 3: Quint. All right, I'm gonna say this because I don't think I think since my mom stopped commuting, I don't think she listens to the show anymore. So if you've noticed a change in numbers by one, that's probably her, Which is why I feel comfortable saying Quint does not not remind me of some of my mom's ex boyfriends, whoa okay, just the guys that have spent a little bit too much time in the sun. Maybe. Yeah.

00:25:56
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he's kookie, and he's just been in the sun a lot. He's been in the sun, and he's been out on a boat all by himself.

00:26:04
Speaker 3: He's had too much. He's had a couple of natty daddies. Let's say that, what's that? It's a fisher Well, it's like a cheap beer, but it's like a cheap beer that's extra. It's like turbo beer. Whoa that? I don't know. My mom dated a couple lobster men in her time, and Natty Daddy was sort of the lobsterman drink of choice because it was beer, but it was stronger. Wow, natty daddies, I can't funk with It's it's they're pretty nasty, but they're strong. It's like a buzzball for beer drinkers.

00:26:36
Speaker 2: Oh okay, got it. We do see him drinking a narrogast on the boat later on, and I just matters. It really brought back. It brought me back to my days of living in Boston.

00:26:48
Speaker 3: Well, I love going home and having a little Ganst Shandy in the summer time.

00:26:53
Speaker 2: That's nice.

00:26:54
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's got he's cookie fishermen vibes.

00:26:58
Speaker 2: And everyone's like sure, yeah, we'll think about it. Because he like makes this proposition and no one takes him seriously.

00:27:06
Speaker 3: No one is asking the question I'm asking, which is what is this accent? Where? Like where are you from? What doesn't matter not important, it's perfect, it's great. Every choice being made is the right choice.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: Agree. So after this, Brody starts researching sharks. He's astonished at how little is known about them, which I think at the time was like, pretty true. There wasn't a lot of like scientific shark research.

00:27:35
Speaker 3: You could just say anything about sharks, which is how Yeah, and then Robert Benchley regretted it exactly.

00:27:43
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, a couple like local guys set up a shark trap hoping to get that reward money, and the shark takes the bait, but the guys don't end up catching it, and the one guy almost gets killed. So just another reminder at what they're up against. And then more people come into town hoping to catch this shark and get the reward money, but most of them don't know what they're doing. They're being reckless. It's chaotic. And then a guy named Hooper, this is the Richard Dreyfus character, arrives in town. He's a marine biologist from the Oceanographic Institute there to lend his expertise, which in this case means I agree, we have to kill this shark, not like let's do something else, Like I'm a scientist, and shouldn't I be doing like.

00:28:40
Speaker 3: Chris, maybe we should like catch this shark. Yeah, I think that's reasonable.

00:28:45
Speaker 2: But he's like, no, let's kill it.

00:28:46
Speaker 3: It's reasonable to catch the shark. Right.

00:28:49
Speaker 2: So Matt Hooper is there to say what he knows about sharks, and he examines the remains of the young woman, Chrissy, who was attacked in the first scene and concludes that it is definitely a shark attack. It was not a boating accident, and he's furious that the authorities in town have been extremely negligent about this. We then cut to a shark that has been captured and killed, and everyone is rejoicing because they assume that it's the shark that has been attacking people.

00:29:24
Speaker 3: That's so funny. It's like that illustrates exactly how much in this world people don't know about sharks because they're like, there's only one shark. Ever, we got it at ever, we killed a shark, right.

00:29:38
Speaker 2: But Hooper is like, well, this is a tiger shark and its bite radius doesn't really match up with the wounds on Chrissy. This shark seems too small. This shark is innocent. Yes, we killed an innocent shark. Oh sad, and he's like, the only way to be sure, though, is to cut the animal open and see what's in its digestive tract. The mayor is not fond of this idea, and then missus Kittner approaches Brody to slap him and be like, I just found out that you knew about a girl getting killed here last week, and you knew these waters were unsafe, and you let people go swimming anyway, and now my.

00:30:17
Speaker 3: Boy is dead, and great scene.

00:30:22
Speaker 2: And now Brody is feeling some feelings such as guilt, and he goes home and he's like drinking a pint of wine and Hooper shows up. Oh, I guess he starts drinking the pint of wine after Hooper shows up, because Hooper brings the bottle of wine. Anyway, Hooper shows up to be like, hey, again, I'm pretty sure that shark that got caught is not the shark. And so they go to the docks and they cut open this shark and confirm Hooper's suspicion that this was not the shark who killed the little boy, which means the killer shark is still on the loose. So then Hooper and Brody go out on a boat, which, by the way, Brody is very scared of the water, so this is difficult for him.

00:31:13
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think fear of the ocean is the world's most reasonable fear. I personally am afraid of the ocean. It is too big.

00:31:23
Speaker 2: It is really big, and there's so many scary things inside.

00:31:27
Speaker 3: I know that you're supposed to be full of with a sense of wonder, but that's just not my story.

00:31:34
Speaker 2: And that's okay. I am afraid of any water that I cannot see the bottom of. So even like a shallow pond, if it's murky and I don't know what's what the ground looks like, I'm scared.

00:31:46
Speaker 3: There's probably a murderer. Yeah, at the bottom there is. There's a famous movie about the ocean, and guess who wins the ocean. The movie's called Titanic. Yeah, the ocean always wins. Wow. Movie sets a false expectation of challenging the ocean.

00:32:03
Speaker 2: You're oh, you're so true. Yeah. Wow. Anyway, that's why I only go swimming in swimming pools, thank you very much.

00:32:11
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:32:12
Speaker 2: Okay. So then so they're out on this boat, Brody and Hooper, and they're looking for the big bad Boy Shark, using all of Hooper's fancy ocean sonar equipment that he bought himself because he comes from a wealthy family. And they come upon the half sunken boat of a local fisherman, and Hooper insists on putting on scuba gear and going to check it out, which to me seems like a very bad idea, what with the ravenous shark on the loose and all. Yeah, but he goes in the water and he finds a huge hole bitten out of the bottom of the boat. He finds a huge shark tooth.

00:32:55
Speaker 3: A very very funny dummy.

00:32:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:33:00
Speaker 3: I was like, it is actually having seen I've seen Jaws in theaters twice now, and it is unbelievably effective in a crowd. I was so scared the first time I saw it in theaters. And then when you see it and you can pause.

00:33:14
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, it's a little silly, but silly, it's a great jump scare.

00:33:18
Speaker 3: Everything is so and also like so much of the like, oh should I get in the water? Shit, It's just I do feel like this movie. He does a great job at having a like three way dick measuring contest between these men and they're all there are coming from such a different place, but all of them are like, oh you think that was hazardous to your safety, well check out. Like it's just so like masculine, and it also feels very aware of what it's doing, especially between Hooper and Quint.

00:33:49
Speaker 2: Definitely, it's just awesome. There's a great moment, speaking of the narrogainst there's that moment where Quint chugs his cann of beer and then crushes it with his hand, and then it cuts to Hooper who then takes the final swig of his coffee in a styropham cup and then crushes the cup.

00:34:11
Speaker 3: Which I guess is like somewhat improvised on the day, which is because of this whole like legendary feud between Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus, which we can talk about in a bit. It's not super relevant to like our discussion, but it is interesting.

00:34:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, they find this dead fisherman and the huge shark tooths and everything, and it's scary and they come back to shore and tell the mayor to close the beach because a great white shark is in their midst. That's what this like tooth confirms, but the mayor is like, it's the fourth of July weekend, I cannot and will not close the beach. Then tons of tourists arrive for the holiday weekend. People are on the beach and they're apprehensively going in the water. But then a shark fin is spotted and everyone panics and rushes out, and this like shark patrol are about to shoot what they think is a shark, but it turns out to be two boys playing a prank.

00:35:20
Speaker 3: Close call for them.

00:35:22
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, in shallower water, the real shark is spotted, and this is where Brody's son Michael is playing with his friends and the shark is coming for them. A nearby man is attacked and killed, though the kids are pulled to safety and Michael goes into shock and has to go to the hospital and stuff. And then Brody convinces the mayor to sign a voucher so that he can hire Quint to kill the shark once and for all. So Quin, Brody, and Hooper make preparations. Again Quin, who is this like grizzled working class fishermen, is like, who the fuck is this? Hooper guy with his soft hands and money in his pockets, so there's you know, animosity between them. They pack up various weapons, equipment, a shark cage, et cetera, and then Captain Quint says, take her to see mister Murdoch. Let's stretch her legs.

00:36:25
Speaker 3: Except this is not the largest ship to ever sail the Atlantic, not by a long shot.

00:36:32
Speaker 2: And in fact, maybe they need a bigger ship the boat.

00:36:36
Speaker 3: It's been said, it's been said.

00:36:39
Speaker 2: So they set off to the seas to try to find this great white shark. They're dropping bait, they're trying to lure it in with chum. There's this moment where Brody accidentally drops some tanks of compressed oxygen and Hooper is like careful, those can explode, and we're like, okay, Chekhov's air tanks. Then it seems like the shark has taken the bait and they're trying to reel it in on this like huge fish line. But they lose it after a while, until Brody gets a glimpse of it as he's throwing more chum in the water, that famous scene where he like his head pops up into frame.

00:37:22
Speaker 3: Oh it's great, so good.

00:37:24
Speaker 2: And then right after this is when we get the famous line of You're gonna need a bigger boat because this shark is huge. It's like twenty five feet long.

00:37:34
Speaker 3: It's almost like it's an animal. It's a malfunctioning animatronic almost, and who can say.

00:37:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. The shark is now circling the boat, so they fire harpoons at it that are attached to these floating barrels so they can easily track the shark and try to prevent it from going under. But this shark is so strong and big that it pulls the barrel under, so they lose it again in the hours where on nightfalls they start drinking and comparing injuries from the past and they're sharing stories, including one that provides backstory for Quint, which is that he was a soldier in World War Two on the real life naval ship called the USS Indianapolis, which sunk twelve hundred people went into the water, and the survivors floated there for days while sharks started circling them and picking men off one by one.

00:38:35
Speaker 3: So this is a very fabric We kind of circle back to this. This is so such an effective moment in the movie right where it's like taking this stock character and giving him like unbelievable depth to like the degree to which you're just like, oh my god. Yeah, I didn't realize. I didn't realize, you know. I mean, there's a lot to be said. I did a little bit of research into like this was added. This is not in the book. This is added for the movie they hired. There was like I forget there there was. This movie mainly was by Peter Benchley and one other writer who worked frequently with Steve Martin. He also wrote The Jerk question Mark.

00:39:15
Speaker 2: Oh, Carl Gottlieb.

00:39:17
Speaker 3: But this was a third writer, a secret third writer who had the idea for this monologue, wrote it out, gave it to Robert Shaw. Robert Shaw rewrote it for himself. He is also he's a writer, and I guess the speech was like seven pages long. But this is all like I thought it was it because it's such a specific detail that I thought was like, this has to be from the book, but it's not. And it's so effective, if overblown, and like what I didn't get from this because it's they're talking about like they were transporting parts of a bomb that would decimate areas of Japan, Right, Yeah, what I was looking up. I don't know if this is in the speech not to but like they didn't know they were doing They knew they were on a secret mission, they knew they were bringing parts of something, but they didn't even know what they were transporting, so they were they'd just done something absolutely horrible unbeknownst to them, which is just like very darkly fascinating to me. But at the point being, this is a true story, but like the shark involvement is way overblown. Most people died of hypothermia, there were sharks around. But when I was like reviewing this speech, I was like, he's implying that like six hundred people got eaten by sharks. Yeah, that was not the case. It worked. It's better if that happened for the movie. But I just was, really, this was not something that I I don't know. I mean, like I've seen the movie several times and I know that they cite something specific, but I just never learned anymore about it. And it is a very it is a very horrible story. I would uh, I would drink too truly.

00:40:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently there's a Nicholas Cage movie about the USS Indianapolis, Like about sure, there is story.

00:41:08
Speaker 3: I think I'll skip it, but that's yeah. In the documentary I watched, there was also people who were on the USS Indianapolis interviewed for the documentary.

00:41:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched the same interviews, and it seemed like there were mixed reactions to the Robert Shaw speech in the movie where they were like appreciative that this character brings this story to life because it was like this secret mission that was not disclosed to anyone for a long time afterward, and a lot of the survivors just like never either couldn't tell anyone or didn't tell anyone because you know, this was especially an era where men didn't address their feelings or their trauma and they just buried it and tried to move on with their lives. So they were like, this is the first time I ever saw my story told on screen, which.

00:42:05
Speaker 3: Is important, but it's I don't know, it's very tricky too, because it's like again it's like, I'm aware that the soldiers aboard the USS Indianapolis did not know that they.

00:42:16
Speaker 2: Were delivery doing a war crime.

00:42:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're war criming, which makes it more tragic to me. And it's I don't know, it's complicated. I think it's at the end of the day, I was like, that was a very interesting and surprising choice in the world of the.

00:42:35
Speaker 2: Movie, especially to refer to this real life event, because it could have easily just been like a made up mission, a made up ship, yeah, in World War Two.

00:42:46
Speaker 3: But it weirdly makes the movie feel more real. Yeah, in some ways where it's this I think, you know whatever. Part of the reason I think the movie holds up is to some extent it feels like it takes place out of time. There are some like dated aspects of it, but for the most part, like it's not like they're using you know, it's it's not like you're watching a movie that comes out in two thousand and two and someone takes out like an ancient cell phone and you're kind of taken out of it for a second. But yeah, just like having a real life like horrific story of veterans PTSD that there are people who like it, just I don't know it really it really brings stuff home and it makes the character so much more memorable for sure, and Robert Shaw slays it. Yeah, there's also like a while there's so much written about the production of this movie that he because he had like severe alcoholism. He struggled a lot with alcoholism, as did his father. But there's like two takes of this scene, and the first one Robert Shaw was like, I'm gonna have a few drinks before and then was like too drunk to complete the scene. And then I don't know, I just I feel he's it seems like he's really struggling. He called Spielberg and was like, did I embarrass you? I'm sorry, and Spielberg was like, it's all good, King, just just don't do that tomorrow. And then he didn't do that tomorrow. He shut up and gave the speech that we saw, and it's great.

00:44:11
Speaker 2: I think this is part of that documentary too, though, that he did two takes of it, one completely hammered and one completely sober. And then a lot of people were like, I couldn't tell the difference. He's just such a good actor that like he nailed at both times.

00:44:25
Speaker 3: I just really was so endeared to him. Yeah, I like him a lot.

00:44:31
Speaker 2: So anyway, we get this story from Quint that informs why he is like fascinated but also has a vendetta against sharks.

00:44:43
Speaker 3: Very captain ahab vibes right.

00:44:45
Speaker 2: Right, right right. Then there's a series of like the shark comes back, it rams their boat, It disappears again, then comes back again, and they shoot it with another like barrel harpoon, and tie the ropes attached to the barrel to the back of the boat the stern if you will, to try to pull the shark toward shallower waters to kill it there. But the shark is so strong that it's pulling the boat around and the boat starts taking on water, so they have to cut the shark loose. Now there are three barrels attached to it, which means theoretically the shark cannot go underwater. But this shark isn't like the other sharks, and it can do anything. And then the shark starts chasing their boat, so again they try to lead it toward shore. But quint is acting a little cuckoo bananas, and he's like pushing the engines too hard. He's like overheating them. They're like catching fire. The boat is lightly sinking. Also, he has smashed up the radio, so they can't call for help.

00:46:03
Speaker 3: He shouldn't he he should not have done that.

00:46:06
Speaker 2: He should not have done that.

00:46:08
Speaker 3: That was I wish I could tell him if I could reach into my TV, I'd be like, oh, don't, why'd you do that? Instead of going to therapy? What's that horrible god that like really tired meme where it's like men will smash the only radio communications on the Jaws, But instead of going to therapy. That's kind of his whole vibe.

00:46:29
Speaker 2: That is his whole vibe. So now they have to switch to Plan B, which is Hooper is going to go into the water inside the shark cage and lure the shark close enough so that he can like stab it in the eye or mouth and inject it with a lethal poison. But the cage seems very flimsy compared to this goliath of a shark, so it seems like a bad plan, but they don't really have any their options. So Hooper goes in the cage in the water, and of course, the shark immediately breaks the cage apart. Hooper drops his giant syringe of poison and he's about to be eaten, and Brody and Quint pull the cage to the surface and it's empty, so it seems like Hooper is dead. The shark is now eating the very sinking boat. This is the part where Quint basically falls into the shark's mouth. It is brutal.

00:47:32
Speaker 3: It's brutal. It's all you're like, mm hmmm, symbolism maybe yeah, yes, maybe either way, he's cooked. I also I liked the behind the scenes detail that they like that in the book, Hooper also dies, but they brought him back to life so that they could use a very specific shot of a real life shark attacking an empty cage.

00:47:55
Speaker 2: Yes, kind of.

00:47:56
Speaker 3: Fun because I also because I appreciated context for that, because I because I was like, he's also just because I don't like Richard drys But I was like, huh, he could have died. Yeah, I get that Brady's gotta live, but like he could have.

00:48:10
Speaker 2: Died well, because there's all these weird class implications. Now when you kill off the poor you know, the working class character, and you keep the more educated, wealthy guy alive.

00:48:21
Speaker 3: But I appreciate that that is not what it was. That was not the intention, right, It just was like, I do appreciate what it's like. There's a pretty simple explanation for what seems like a pointed choice. But they just wanted to use that scary shot of shark. I was like, okay, well then I will give you a pass on that. What.

00:48:40
Speaker 2: So Quinn is dead, we think that Hooper is dead. The shark comes back for Brody, and Brody throws one of the tanks of compressed oxygen into the shark's mouth and starts trying to shoot it. He keeps missing and missing, until finally he shoots the tank and it and the shark explode into smithereens. And then guess who resurfaces. It's Hooper, who did not get eaten, and he and Brody paddle back to shore on the barrels the Yeah, so let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

00:49:30
Speaker 3: Done done, and we're back. Okay. First thoughts on this movie. Obviously, we don't have women in it really, so really note number one, there's really not many women in it. I would say there are three, and one is chunkified by the shark in pretty short order. However, what I think this movie is great at is showing different shades of masculinity. I think that it is really really good at that. So it's an interesting conversation to be had because there are two women in particular who are generally kept to the side. They're generally defined by their marriages and motherhood. But the performances are really good, and they're I guess in movies of this nature, there is more than I expect it. I guess true with the two women we have. So I guess let's start there and then we'll talk about masculinity.

00:50:28
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah, So, I mean, like many movies, this is a story about an important and dangerous task that needs to be carried out and who's gonna do it. Well, it's a bunch of men and women have to stay home and take care of the kids. Yeah, So, as we already talked about. Like Ellen again, played by Lorraine gary Is, she's a fun character when she is on screen. She's dynamic and she has a few fun lines here and there where she says want to get drunk and full around.

00:51:06
Speaker 3: That's to her husband, kind of her most icon like, that's her most iconic negligent parent moment. I love it. I love it, And.

00:51:15
Speaker 2: Then I also enjoy the part where she when Hooper comes over and she's like, oh, so my husband says that you're in sharks as if Like it's a like a division of sales that he's into. Pretty funny line. Yeah, But other than that, yeah, I mean, she's not given a whole lot. Apparently in the book, the Ellen character is given a much larger presence. In the book, she's more complicated and flawed.

00:51:47
Speaker 3: He's fucking Hooper, right.

00:51:49
Speaker 2: She's having an affair with Hooper.

00:51:52
Speaker 3: I'm yeah, I did not miss that.

00:51:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's glad the movie got rid of that. But it's also at the expense of we don't see her on screen, although the movie could have just written a different subplot for her or whatever.

00:52:08
Speaker 3: That's the thing. It's like, I don't like that. I don't like the way the book goes with her character. It feels like that is just a thing to give the Brodie character an excuse to be a misogynist. But I also think that there could have been more that she could have been involved in. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, they in like, there's no reason theoretically to me that the Hooper character specifically could not be a woman. I think would actually be far more interesting if the Hooper characters specifically were a woman, definitely a well educated woman of the seventies. Why not. I understand that quint. She's kind of inextricably a man. Fine, fine, fine, because a woman could not have been on the USS Indianapolis. But anyways, and it's not like I want girl cop. It's a complicated discussion. What I did think, I thought that the character of Ellen, she is present at moments that I didn't think she would be. This is peanut, but like, I did appreciate that there. Spielberg is really good at this of adding these like quiet family moments inside of genre movies that I feel like really make his movies special. And there is one of them here that I thought was very memorable, where it's like Brody is sitting with his youngest son. He is like really upset, understandably because the only other woman in the movie has just slapped him and said, my son's death was preventable, you bitch. Yeah, and she's right, and she's right, and he is like he knows it, and he knows it. And then his kid is sitting next to him, a clear reminder of like a kid around the age of the kid who died. And there's just like this really sweet moment that Ellen sees and is clearly very affected by that I thought was like just the moment you don't get in most genre movies. It's really good where you know, his kid is kind of like mirroring him like kids do, and then it's like, why are you upset? And he's like, I kill the kid. But just and that moment between like father and son of just like a moment of real affection and emotional honesty. It's just something you don't really see a lot, and it really endeared me to everyone in that scene totally.

00:54:26
Speaker 2: I made the same note because I mean, think of how many scenes where you see a man in emotional turmoil and he deals with it by trashing a room or lashing out in some a violent way, and to instead have this like very tender moment between father and son. I mean, the bar is low, but it was like a very refreshing moment that I appreciated.

00:54:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, and I think that like for its time, even though we're not lit, it seems like, honestly, the way that they're doing their family is very similar. It is very common for middle class and specifically white middle class families of this time where the wife does not appear to work. She seems to be a stay at home mom. Oh she does work. She's a stay at home mom, and the father is the you know, money breadwinner, right, But it seems like their relationship is pretty equitable, which I also appreciated. There's not a moment where Brody like keeps things from her. There's not really a moment where I feel like, again, just like what you come to expect in movies like this of this time, where the husband would be like, you don't get it, you can't. I was this again. It's a small thing, but the fact that she's in the room with Hooper and Brody the whole time they're talking about the shark again, I feel like a lesser movie, he'd be like, go, tuck the kids in or whatever, like she would be off doing woman stuff, and then she'd come in and be like, what's going on, And it's like she doesn't. She doesn't totally get what's going on, But neither does Brodie. And it's not like, you know, he is presented as hyper competent in comparison to her. I think really the only edge Brody has over his wife is that he is I think concerned the correct amount about sharks, and she's maybe not quite concerned the right amount about sharks because she's listening to the mayor and the media, which I don't think makes her a dupe. I think that she's kind of the stand in for like, well, what do you mean they said it's fine, they got a shark. I don't know. I just I liked how her Her character should have had more to do, but whenever she was present, I felt like she was a treated as an equal and had like a personality that was her own, which is the bare minimum you can ask of a character, but still in a genre movie in nineteen seventy five, I was like pleasantly surprised by it same and that she's allowed to be horny, want to get drunk and fool around public She well, she didn't publicly say she was hardy. She said she was harny. She didn't even know that there are people filming that. She said she was horny, and she didn't die. Again in the nineteen seventies, that didn't happen very much.

00:57:12
Speaker 2: I mean, well, let's look at what happens to the woman in the first scene, shall we.

00:57:17
Speaker 3: The first horny woman. Yeah, she is sacrificed to the shark god.

00:57:22
Speaker 2: So she again played by stunt performer an actor named Susan Jane Beckliney. She is naked and doesn't need to be, which is, you know, the common trope in horror movies that we've discussed a lot, where it's just like the sexualization of a woman as she's being brutally killed. Yeah, it's something we see all the time in horror movies.

00:57:49
Speaker 3: And this is not the worst offender of it. Which is interesting because I feel like when I think about that original death, I remember it as more sexualized than it actually.

00:58:01
Speaker 2: Is same And what is that? What are our brains doing?

00:58:07
Speaker 3: I think it's because there's just so many scenes that are inspired by it that are boy sexual. I don't necessarily think it's it's not it's it's not an US problem. I don't think, right, I remember it as we're sexualized, but I and I don't know. It's like Spielberg is not particularly guilty of over sexualizing women characters. I don't think, if anything, he's not. He's very like sanitized vibes. There's plenty to be I mean, we've talked about Steven Spielberg many times, and let's not forget the Zionism. Let's not in terms of how women are generally cheated. I think in his body of work, women don't tend to be hyper sexualized to the point where this almost feels like an outlier moment.

00:58:46
Speaker 2: Right, And maybe you can just chalk it up to this was his first big movie in the book, right also, and so maybe he's like, I'm not a huge fan of that. I'm not gonna do that again. And like, she is naked, but a lot of the naked, a lot of the nudity is implied.

00:59:04
Speaker 3: Although it's a very dark scene too. I think it's because like which I would imagine was related to just like production. But you really can't see very much. You can't because of how it shot. I don't know if the brightness on my TV is turned up too high. But for the first time watching this movie, I did you can see her nakedness under the water, like in the underwater shot or I like, yeah, like kind of an upshot. It's it's still pretty obscured and faint and difficult to see, but like you can see enough that I was like, oh, she's got full bush and good for her. But nineteen seventy five right back.

00:59:42
Speaker 2: Remember, right, So, but it's a quick shot and the rest of the time, you don't see nudity.

00:59:50
Speaker 3: Really so well. And also, I watch, like you said, it's not the worst defender. But but but and I don't know how involves Spielberg was in this, but that is an image that is harped on in marketing. I also think that that's another reason we remember it as more sexual than it actually is, because it is used as a selling point to imply that you're going to see and be titillated more than perhaps you actually are. I'm also pretty sure I didn't watch any of the sequels. I thought about it and then I thought, I'm not going to do that. But I do think that that is something that subsequent movies are in the Jaws fronchies are more guilty of Jaws hive if you've watched Jaws. I've weirdly seen Jaws four, but it was on one of those. I was on a show in New York that was like, we're making fun of Jaws four. Okay, so I don't really remember anything, but if the marketing is to be believed, it seems like this idea of sexy women being torn to shreds by a shark is an image that they return to time and time again. But in the movie itself, I think it's telling in that I mean, it is what it is. It is the movie with a young woman who is expressed that she's horny being torn to shreds by an animal. That's not great, made worse by the fact that she is one of three women in the entire movie. A batting average of one for three in terms of being torn to shreds is pretty bad. There are two men torn to shreds by the t and then one child. Yeah, there are two men, but there's so many men that I think that, you know, the batting average is actually not as bad by a long shot rip to her. And the thing that the other thing that frustrated me was that when the second victim of the shark, Alex Alex the kid, Yes, when he dies, there are narrative consequences for that. People do not seem to like there's no one from Chrissy's life that is like, she doesn't seem to be particularly grieved, which I also think, like is unrealistic given how the meeting tends to narrativize white women's death like sensational eyes. Yeah, like, yeah, I was kind of adrift by that because obviously I'm not that like Jaws eating a child. That's bad, that's no good. Yes, but it was just weird that, Yeah, there is this weird lack of reaction to a teenage girl getting eaten, right.

01:02:23
Speaker 2: I My head canon was like, oh, the mayor is like keeping it under wraps, which he can't do because everyone saw this child get killed. That was a very very public thing versus no one saw Christy get killed.

01:02:41
Speaker 3: That makes total sense. But I don't.

01:02:43
Speaker 2: But that's not that's again just my head canon. It's not explicitly in the movie Mayor.

01:02:48
Speaker 3: That mayor he's like, yeah, He's like, Okay, if there's a shark attack and everyone sees a ten year old tornish reds, I guess I have to be like, oh no, he I mean that scene is interesting, though, I mean that's well, actually sorry, let's let's talk about the third woman. Yes, there's there's but one woman to go another. I think terrific performance by an actor who has not given much to do but really makes a meal of what she has. I am talking about Lee Fierro playing Missus Kittner has two scenes, plays both of them incredibly. I think like the scene where she everyone's running out of the ocean and she's the last person there is heartbreaking. And then when she shows up in like with all I mean, she's with all due respects, very party city coded morning clothes.

01:03:44
Speaker 2: It was the seventies. Who knows.

01:03:46
Speaker 3: It's no I'm calling them out, it's look at her. Her outfit looks like shit, but she pulls no punches with this, you know, like with this piece of shit cop that let this happen. I love that scene. I wish that we had any more of her after that. I wish she didn't just disappear into the mist. But I really, uh yeah, I thought that that was an incredibly played scene that you know, I don't know, I just wish that there was a woman involved in the main action. It's not like the actions of women have no consequence in this world, but they don't get to They're mostly in a reactionary position. They're not very active.

01:04:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, it's more like the emotional through line of the movie versus the more active events that take place.

01:04:39
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, they're the victims, are They're they're reacting to the decisions that men are making.

01:04:46
Speaker 2: Right. But a great performance, indeed, and then there's the men. I guess starting with Brodie. Sure, as you said already, this is copaganda this movie. The movie humanizes police, that perpetuates the idea that cops are here to keep our community safe when.

01:05:14
Speaker 3: Well and does challenge that, I just think, because I mean that scene with Missus Kittner does challenge that, but not in a very it's not a comprehensive like he's still the hero at the end of the day. It's like, I'm sure and like, I like this character, and that's copaganda done well, I know, which is a scary thing. But yeah, Missus Kidner, Like, I think it's so interesting the way that the city and this cops are presented in opposition to each other in the space of this movie, but in a way that feels very unrealistic. Where as we know, so, I mean, we like live in Los Angeles. There's I mean, it's all cops, but we live in a pretty egregious area for cops and the city being very much aligned more often than not when it comes to terrorizing their own people. Right, it is very much playing into this narrative of the heroic cop fighting against the evil mayre and there's no shortage of evil mayors in the world. But it's very unrealistic and very movie coded to be like the cop is trying to do their job, it's just the cities in the way. I think that that is just like so observedly, not how things are I.

01:06:36
Speaker 2: Mean, And that's what I mean about, like the movie perpetuating the idea that cops are here to keep our communities safe, because the reality is that cops are there to protect the property of the ruling class and to incite violence at protests and to union bust and all of those things. So this is why this is effective copaganda. But yeah, it's weird because the movie is critical of institutions such as capitalism, or it's critical of the mayor wanting to keep the beaches open so that the town can profit from the tourism, but it doesn't it doesn't apply that same criticism to police cops.

01:07:14
Speaker 3: Which is why I think it's so effective, honestly, is because it is not completely uncritical of the society that it's released into. It is critical of some stuff, but not all stuff, and like it almost perpetuates the idea that like the only thing preventing the cops from keeping you safe are your elected representatives, which can which is just well, actually that like you know, there's no world show me a police department where they're really trying to do the right thing. It's just that yeah, yeah, like that is observably untrue. But it's complicated because yeah, like the movie is criticizing the mayor. But it's like, I think that this is sort of a works great in terms of like it's a great movie beat, but like the mayor sort of is like capitalism the guy in a way that you know, capitalism is presented in this movie, which is fascinating. Doesn't happen in like blockbuster movies often, and it's something like Steven Spielberg is pretty willing to engage with, but it's just him. It's not presented as the very complex issue that it is, because this movie can't be too complicated and work allegedly. Yeah, I don't know. I like there is that one moment that I think is interesting in the hospital after Brody's son Michael was almost sharcked and was kind of like in shock and he's in the hospital and Brody you know again, it's like it's well, it's all of a sudden a problem now that it's on my doorstep, which is the story of time immemorial, of like, well, it's one thing if Alex Kittner dies because I don't know him, to the point where, even after Alex Kitner dies, Brody continues to cooperate with the mayor. It's only when his kid almost dies that he is like, I refuse to cooperate any further. And the only reason the mayor actually shows the beach down is because his kids were there, right, which I think is a very smart It's weird because in the movie it's presented as like I don't see it as a particularly critical moment, but it does feel very real of like that would be the only circumstances under which these characters would take the safety of everyone into account is if they're if they specifically happened to also be threatened by it, which is how I feel like most decisions that are made that are generally good for everyone tend to happen because it also threatens the ruling class and it benefits them to make that choice. Right.

01:09:57
Speaker 2: It feels cut from the same cloth, like whatever shitty men being like Happy International Women's Day to my wife and daughters, and that's it only.

01:10:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I also think the performance from Murray Hamilton, who's in Fucking Everything, Babe. He gives a really good performance. I enjoyed it. He plays a villain very well. I also remember when he was in The Graduate. He's mister Robinson. Oh that's right, he's mister Cocked. He's cooked, he's cocked, and he's sort of cocked in this movie spiritually as well. Wow, when you think about it.

01:10:44
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about it, thank you.

01:10:47
Speaker 3: He's also in the Amityville Horror. Have you ever seen it?

01:10:50
Speaker 2: You know what I've seen the Ryan Reynolds one.

01:10:54
Speaker 3: Oh they're both bad. Yeah, they're both bad. I guess that's all we are. They're both bad, but in very different ways. Sure, but he is also at that he's very When I think of a movie that came out in the seventies, there he is.

01:11:07
Speaker 2: Sure. The last little piece I think of Copaganda here is the scene where Brody and Hooper are on the boat at night looking for the shark, and Brody is drunkenly after his pint of wine talking about being a cop, and he's like, oh, yeah, New York City, there's violence, there's muggings. But you know, in a town like this, one man can really make a difference. You know, in twenty five years, there's never been a murder here. And he's chalking that up to police being effective at their job, ignoring that, you know, in a place where they are, which is basically like Martha's vineyard or Nantucket or a similarly like wealthy place or you know, an island full of mostly upper middle class people that you know, there isn't crimes of desperation and stuff like that. And he's like, no, it's because of cops being competent, of course. Yeah, and we know that that's not true.

01:12:16
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the fact that that's what a drunk cop would say is I believe in the power of world, like right, right, sure, yeah, akeb includes Officer Brody. Yeah, and again not the worst example of it, but also a really good example of it in a way, because I still like him in spite of it all. Then we have our college boy Richard Dreyfus Hooper, the Marine Biologist. Another interesting little piece of gristle here because the movie does not with him shy away from class, it doesn't do much with it. Well, actually, maybe that's not true, Like I did appreciate that like this he both needs Hooper. It's not disparaging of his higher education, but it also acknowledges why he has it, and I appreciated that, like he basically admits he's like the rich boy. Allegations are true, I'm a rich boy. I guess in the book he is way more of an asshole about it, and he's hooking up with with Ellen, so I think he's again the book, honestly, I considered reading it, but I'm like, it sounds like a bummer. I would much rather watch the movie Jaws, unfortunately, but in this world he is, you know, highly educated, very necessary. Like I think that between Quint and Hooper there's an interesting balance struck of like they're from very different classes. They resent each other for it, which makes sense and is like something that we've all seen in either direction, but that they are also both totally valid, but they're they're also both like very needed on this mission, and they're like you could argue the person who is basically useless is Brodie totally like like.

01:14:11
Speaker 2: I'm scared of the water. Why am I even here?

01:14:14
Speaker 3: He's mister chum, Like it is kind of like why are you here, mister chump? But like that Robert Shaw is from uh, I mean, working class background. We don't really know much about him other than he was in the service, but you know, he's a veteran. It doesn't seem like he given his reaction to Hooper, I don't think that he like has a lot of higher education. But he knows how to fucking drive a boat. He knows like, he knows.

01:14:40
Speaker 2: The ocean, he knows fish, he knows sharks.

01:14:43
Speaker 3: He has the experience. Yeah, like and and he's like literally how he's introduced is as an authority, even though people are still like, oh, he's weird and like, to be honest, he is weird. They're not so wrong. It's not necessarily classes of people to say quint is weird, because also, like he's weird, and people of all classes could be weird, and there he is being weird. But anyways, but he has presented as an authority whose labor has extreme value. I mean, granted, he doesn't really get to use the money because he's eaten by a shark, but he he gets his rate. Yeah, and I hope to one day get my rate before being eaten in a sod and half yeah, so I don't know. I appreciated that with both of these characters, the movie realizes that they are both integral to this mission working like the mission does not go off the way it does without Hooper's expertise, and it certainly doesn't go off without Quint's expertise. Hooper's annoying, but I also do I like. I don't like Richard Dravis, but I do like the character, like I do think outside of what you pointed out before, where he's like suspiciously very uninterested in conservation, which feels just like a bad writing choice that feels unrealistic because it's also very incurious for someone that's like I love sharks to be like and so let's kill one, kill it, and I'll dissect it, Like wouldn't you want to observe it? Wouldn't that be useful?

01:16:20
Speaker 2: And he's a scientist, like, he's not a hunter, he's not a fisherman like you would think he would be.

01:16:25
Speaker 3: He would understand it makes sense that Quinn wants to kill the shark because that's his job.

01:16:29
Speaker 2: Right, But Hooper, he would know how important sharks are to the ecosystem of the ocean. And that you shouldn't just kill them, and honestly would have been a more interesting narrative choice if like Brody and quint are like, no, this shark needs to die for public safety reasons, and by contrast, Hooper was like, no, we can't just kill a shark, Like sure, we can try to catch it and contain it and transport it elsewhere or some thing.

01:17:00
Speaker 3: And you can argue that like, no, this shark needs to live for public safety reasons, like you know, by observing, like even if you're strictly thinking about sharks as they relate to people, it's like understanding the behavior of sharks would be far more valuable, right than just Yeah, that really feels like a writing error more than anything else, because I think, like you know, scientists were not let's say, consulted on the writing of the book specifically, and I agree, it is like a more interesting dynamic, and then it would be interesting to see what does Brodie think about that that it just like adds an element, a more complicated element to everything versus Okay, so we're all on the same page. We've got to kill this shark. It's just the how that we're struggling with like the whether to do it or not is very interesting. But it feels like maybe there's the script of the production, like they did not do research like that is what it sounds like.

01:18:02
Speaker 2: Could be. Could also be that there again wasn't that much shark research available at the time, but there were marine biologists, there were people who this was like, we're experts in this area.

01:18:14
Speaker 3: So who's the French guy in the hats? You wonder Cristo? Yeah, this is Custo era, Jacques Custo, remember him? Is kind of yeah, he's the French guy in the hat. Wait, let me check. What if I was wrong?

01:18:28
Speaker 2: I know the name, but I just guess I don't know what he does.

01:18:31
Speaker 3: He's a famous French marine biologist, like I think he had a yes, okay, yes, oh he looks like Steve Zisu and all the thing that seems that's okay, that makes sense, And actually Steve Zisu did not make that up. It was jac Cousta. Yeah. I believe he is very popular cultural figure in the seventies and may in fact have something to do with why this movie was even made because it was like it and uh, listeners, correct me if I'm wrong. If you are a knowwher of ocean facts or a Cousteau head. My vague understanding is that Jacques Custeau was a very popular figure in like the sixties, seventies and eighties and was kind of like one of the first, if not the first, like mainstream oceanography expert to become very popular. So like, I think you're right, like there is an interest in the ocean at this time, but perhaps not a lot of like commonly accepted I mean, which is wild because you think about the impact of Jaws and like there's no world where there's you know, remember the ten consecutive years we're noal which shut the fuck up about Shark Week. Oh yes, And it's just like you've got to shut the fuck up about Shark Week. There. I'm not I'm not interested, but like, I don't know, that's one of the interesting things. I mean, even with Peter Benchley, like we were talking about this movie, Like I don't think anyone's arguing that this is a correct scientific representation of a shark. It's like projecting a bunch of symbolism and moby Dick kind of shit.

01:20:09
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a whole section on this, Oh Okay, you'll indulge me.

01:20:13
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Let's do it.

01:20:14
Speaker 2: I guess to start though, with the and this is like pretty well known knowledge, so I'll just make this really quick and irad stuff off about the sorry well known knowledge about the like behind the scenes making of the movie. I'll start with that, and then we'll go into sort of the like public reception of the movie. So for anyone who doesn't know, this movie was a very difficult shoot. It went over budget and over schedule by like triple. The script kept being rewritten during the shoot. The ocean and the weather were very temperamental, The cast and the crew were largely miserable the whole time. The studio kept almost pull the plug on the production, and the mechanical shark famously rarely functioned, which ended up again famously working to the movie's benefit because they basically ended up having to imply the presence of the shark rather than show it on screen as much as they initially intended to amazing, which lended a sense of like, the shark is looming around, but we can't see it, and that makes it scarier.

01:21:26
Speaker 3: That Plus John Williams core, Yeah, great perfection.

01:21:31
Speaker 2: So difficult shoot, but against all odds, the movie was finished and made into a really good movie and released and it became a smash hit. It was, like you said, the first blockbuster is wild.

01:21:43
Speaker 3: It made half a billion dollars in nineteen seventy five. Many that's approximately three trillion dollars. So yeah, yeah, nine million dollar budget, and that was twice, Like I think it went over its budget twice, so it was technically a four point five million dollar your budget movie that went to nine million dollars and then made one trillion billion millions. Everyone saw this movie seven times, yes.

01:22:09
Speaker 2: And it was also one of the first movies that got a very big release everywhere simultaneously. Because prior to this, it was like, you know, a movie would open in this city over here, and then maybe a little later it would open over here.

01:22:23
Speaker 3: It would spread it if it did well in a certain like market. Yeah, like if you lived in the if you lived in any far flong area, it would take a long time for a movie to get to you because it would be tested in a bajillion markets before it got to you, for sure. But everyone got Jasa also like a real big especially because it's like I had to keep reminding myself. Star Wars comes out after that, and so this movie also sort of sets the precedent of like a huge marketing and merchandising push as well.

01:22:53
Speaker 2: Definitely, this is one of the first movies that sold a bunch of merch that people absolutely gobbled up. There's t shirts and posters and toys and games like all these tie.

01:23:03
Speaker 3: In shark underwear. You're like, why not.

01:23:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly all this stuff. Yeah, And the movie's approach to marketing was fairly new for the time, where it ran a bunch of trailers as ads on TV, which was not very common at that time. That contributed to the amount of people that saw it. Yeah, it stayed in theaters for like a year in some places, Like this was the first blockbuster and like not a whole lot of movies have like rivaled its impact and popularity since. And obviously after this, Spielberg was given a blank check to do any movie he wanted for the rest of his career, and he did, and he did. He's obviously, I mean another really ice cold take here. He's made some great movies. Many of them are my favorite movies of all time, which is difficult to reconcile right now, knowing his relationship with Zionism, which we talked about to a pretty large extent on the ET episode we did last year.

01:24:13
Speaker 3: It's not too long ago, so as far as far as we know, I double checked going into this, as far as we're recording this right now, which is June twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, our conversation that we did in our ET episode is from what I can tell still up to date. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like inextricable from the conversation about him and also the fact that like it's that he's one of the greatest directors of all time, and like we have to hold these two things together. Also, I mean, I don't know, no, sorry, continue to continue.

01:24:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the point here is that this movie was the biggest movie of all time up until that point, more or less, and well you'll never believe this, but it impacted the public perception of sharks. This movie famously made so many people afraid of sharks, afraid of going into the water at the beach, also afraid of going into lakes and swimming pools, places where sharks would never be because of how the shark is represented. In the movie, which is you'll never believe this not very accurate. And I'm not saying that sharks have not attacked and bitten and killed people throughout history. That has happened. Obviously, sharks can be dangerous, but again, the way the shark behaves in this movie is not accurate. As author Peter Benchley put it, because, as we said, he and his partner Wendy would go on to become advocates for ocean conservation and for the protection of sharks later in their lives. Peter Benchley said in two thousand and six, quote, sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges. There's no such thing as a rogue man eater shark with a taste for human flesh. In fact, sharks rarely take more than one bite out of people because we're so lean and unappetizing to them.

01:26:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Benchley stuff, I think is very, very fascinating, and I appreciate, like truly as someone who could not have anticipated his work being as impactful that it was, like he was basically writing a pulp novel at the time, that he did so much to course correct that I think is very admirable, and it seems like the oceanography community agrees. And it's also one of those complicated relationships where I think it's referenced in the documentary we both watched that While yes, there's a lot of there's inaccuracies that you're taking us through about how sharks are represented, this movie also inspired a lot of future oceanographers, like it's very, very interesting.

01:26:55
Speaker 2: That's the benefit of the impact of this movie globally. The detriment of the global impact of this movie is that because the shark was presented in such a bloodthirsty, vengeful way that you know, great whites are just gonna go and kill a whole town of people if they aren't exploded. This led to people like shark hunting for sport and trophy and stuff like that. So this is from the Smithsonian magazine from twenty twenty two, a piece entitled Steven Spielberg regrets how Jaws impacted real world sharks. It says, quote Jaws spearheaded a collective testosterone rush in the East coast of the United States, leading thousands to hunt sharks for sport. In the years following the film's release. The number of large sharks in the waters east of North America declined by about fifty percent unquote, and then a couple other stats here, about seventy five percent of oceanic shark species are faced with the threat of extinction due to I mean to some degree. It's like fisheries overfishing. Some experts are like, well, you know, we can't give all the credit to the movie Jaws, Like it's just that fishing practices are largely not are horrific.

01:28:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is, I mean, there's yeah, it's like, yeah, it's overly simplistic to suggest it's all because of Jaws, but it's not. Not like Jaws is a contributing factor for sure. So yeah, basically, in the years that followed this movie coming out, a lot of people just started shark hunting. And it's because of the representation of sharks.

01:28:50
Speaker 2: In this movie. It's because not very much was known about them at the time. According to Sharksteward's dot Org, which is an organization that seeks to save endangered sharks from overfishing and the shark fin trade. According to them, over five hundred species of sharks are not dangerous to humans, and only a few species have been involved in serious or fatal attacks on humans. But this went ignored and people were just murdering millions of sharks every year right and.

01:29:25
Speaker 3: Left, which is horrifying.

01:29:27
Speaker 2: Horrifying, yes, and ignoring the fact that again, sharks play a crucial role in maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems.

01:29:37
Speaker 3: It's the same. I mean, it's like not the same conversation, but it's like about bees and like an animal that is critical to our ecosystem that it is just very socially acceptable to kill because they're viewed as being overly aggressive or as pests. Right, thank you for doing that research. I sure. Yeah, it's this movie is like legacy in so many different areas is gigantic. I mean even now, speaking to like the marketing side of stuff. I was at the grocery store yesterday and there's like Jaws fiftieth anniversary wine at the front of Vaughn's what And there were people at the front being like, oh my god, Jaws wine, And I'm like, it's still working. It's so like people will buy anything with this damn shark on it. Like so literally, there were two women who didn't know each other at the front of Vaughn's being like, I'm getting the Jaws.

01:30:33
Speaker 2: Pino Gregio like, wow, do you think that's what Brody pours into his pint glass when he drinks Josta wine?

01:30:42
Speaker 3: I think, I think, I ironically, I think all I think. Would Quint fuck with Jaws? Pino Gregio, I think not? No, I think not speaking of Quint. Oh yes, my good pal Quint. So with Quint. I think it's interesting to refer to what your referenced earlier in that documentary, which if you're interested in the production of Jaws, it's very marketing. It's not like revolutionary, but it is free on YouTube if you want to watch it. There's also a new fiftieth anniversary documentary coming out July tenth. It's about two weeks from now, so I will be watching it. But are there stories left untold or does everyone just look ten years older? We don't know. We'll find out.

01:31:25
Speaker 2: We'll find out.

01:31:26
Speaker 3: But in that documentary, I mean, I think it was interesting having the perspective of actual veterans whose experiences were referenced. I like, if Robert Shaw's performance was not good, I think I would find this character somewhat offensive. But like, and I do think that, you know, there are probably cases to be made, but I just think that, like he plays Quint with such bravado for sure, but like with so much humanity. It is like, for what it is, still a very thoughtful performance, and I I think it's tragic, you know how his story ends, But knowing that Hooper was originally supposed to die, I don't necessarily hate that he goes because that just feels like a pretty broad like Moby Deck style reference, right of like he will die pursuing this thing that he has projected the trauma of his entire life onto, because it's not about the money. For him, it's about and again it's like gets into this masculinity thing. It's like it's about accomplishing this thing that you can't really get your head because it's for him. It's not about the money. It's not really about protecting people, So like, what is it about? It's like this it's all inside of him, what he's It's about the sharks that ate allegedly ate six hundred of his friends. That's what it's about, right, And it's a trauma shark for him, and he's consumed by the trauma shark. I don't know. I just think story dramaturgically it makes sense. Yeah, and I think the performance is like unbelievably great. Yeah.

01:33:09
Speaker 2: I did not realize that he was like a Shakespearean actor from much of his career.

01:33:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he was like a fancy guy. Yeah. He he was like Oscar and Golden Globe nominated and like he played such a wide birth of characters. There is this I'll just glaze over it. I watched a like short doc about the uh, the rivalry between Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw, because there was a big onset beef between the two of them, which everyone involved in the movie is confirmed. I think it is kind of funny and sweet that Roy Scheider. They were like, oh, he was pretty chill, and he mainly went swimming and sometimes he'd go to the gym. So Roy Scheider was minding his own business. But Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw, I mean kind of weirdly two sides of the same coin. Where Robert Shaw was a later stage actor, he wasn't that old, but he was very like generationally, there was a big difference between the two of them. Where Robert Shaw was famously a very very hard drinker. He eventually died in his early fifties due to complications from drinking, and Richard Dreyfus was kind of like a coked out young star who had a big ego, and Robert Shaw wasn't having a bar of it. He like it seems like they, you know, in a very like competitive actory way, had issues with how the other approached acting, how the others approached substance use. Robert Shaw, would you know, say pretty It sounds like Robert Shaw was the antagonist. But again in this whole thing where it's like a masculinity story inside of a masculinity story, where you know, Richard Dreyfus seemed to dislike Robert Shaw so much that it made his performance better. Like that whole little thing where he does the little thing with his he's like, eh, making faces behind Quinn's back. Those were mainly improvised because he didn't like Robert Shaw. And like when he's mumbling about, oh well, if I had to do this anymore, I would be shell pissed. This because he didn't like Robert Shaw. So when he's being a little brat, it's because he's actually being a little brat because Daddy is not being nice to him. It's a masculinity soup, like no one is right in this situation, but it does seem like, you know, for what it's worth. And then I don't we don't need to talk about Richard Dreyfus any further. But with regards to this, as time went on, like Richard Dreyfus was like, I'm you know, it ended with like mutual respect, and he like reached out afterwards and was like I think he was kind of like what happens in Vegas days in Vegas as a way of being like, I treat you like shit on Martha's Vineyard, but we're cool, right, And I think Richard Dreyfus was like, yes, so all's well. That ends well there. Unfortunately, the Robert Shaw he passed in seventy eight. He died not too long after the making of this movie. But I just getting back to quint, I don't really know. I mean, there are so many factors that you're like that I feel like would normally paying for me that just don't.

01:36:17
Speaker 2: I It's it was almost one of those instances where I like forgot to do my job as one of the hosts of the Bechdel Cast, because I was just like, I was just so immersed in the story and the characters. So yeah, I don't even think I wrote anything down about Quint other than something I already mentioned, which is, you know, the class war between Quint and Hooper, and again, hooper surviving at the end was more of a like logistical production choice that they made retroactively rather than something that was written in the script, because otherwise that would have like pretty nasty implications of like, well, yeah, the rich educated scientist gets to survive and the working class fisherman has to die. But that isn't a narrative choice. It was just because everything kept going wrong with the production.

01:37:19
Speaker 3: Right, So it's fine. Yeah, I do think it would be more narratively satisfying if Hooper also went down, because then it's not like endorsing one philosophy over the other. But knowing that it wasn't intended that way is fine. And Quint also like makes his feelings about Hooper very clear in a way that I think as the audience we don't disagree with even if we like Hooper. Like there's that line where he's like, you wealthy college boys, can't admit when you're wrong. He does, I think, you know, in keeping with the generational stuff. There's like one the scene where like where Brodie saying goodbye to Ellen, he's kind of just like shouting random misogyst stuff in the background, and you're like, all right, okay, he's kind of just like HM, or we're.

01:38:04
Speaker 2: Singing about Spanish ladies or something.

01:38:07
Speaker 3: Let's go swimmen with bow legged women. You're like, okay, here's this swim with bow legged women. And for some reason I am not mad at him about that. You get the cage, getting the water sharks and the water like, he's just too like I would let him be misogynist to me because I like him, and after nine years should be saying that on the show.

01:38:29
Speaker 2: Well, I just we contain multitudes, yeah, listeners.

01:38:33
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the fact that like he and again I understand that it's very over the top, but that like, ultimately he is his like demise is very related to the fact that he has all of this unprocessed trauma. And that is and I don't mean to say like and that's the story of every veteran. Obviously they're not a monolithm but but that that is a very common experience for a veteran instead of seen horrific things and are not given the tools to process them. And it's like, especially the further back you go in history, it's thought to be unmasculine and unacceptable to have those traumas manifest in your life. And so what we see with Quint, however cartoonish it can be, is you know, he's not able to get past this, which totally makes sense, but it's like not socially acceptable for him too. I mean he has to be drunk and in the middle of the ocean to even talk about it, and that's really sad.

01:39:36
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I honestly found it surprising that the Brodie character was imbued with a fear of the water and a fear of drowning and all that stuff, because I think that was added for the movie. It was not in the book. Okay, I mean it makes for good characterization in the sense that you know, someone who has to go out onto the water to complete a task is afraid of the water. That's just like no good storytelling. Yeah, but for a man to have a phobia, that's not masculine. So for a movie from the seventies, to imbue a character who's a man with a fear that he has to face. And granted, this fear does not really manifest in any significant way because it's sort of it goes away mostly and he's just like, I'm on the boat now and I'm actually okay. So it doesn't have a huge impact on the story. But I found it kind of interesting. I guess that a man was allowed to be afraid of something and then he communicated that to the people around him. Yeah, I agree again, low bar, but I thought that was interesting. I don't think I have really much else to say. Oh, this movie was edited by a woman, Yes, Verna Fields, who is I believe.

01:41:04
Speaker 3: Every Pete Spielberg collaborator. Am I wrong? I don't. Oh, she worked with Peter Bogdanovich a fair amount. Yeah, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg earlier. And so she did What's Up, Doc, which is Bogdanovich, American Graffiti, Jaws.

01:41:21
Speaker 2: Paper Moon, handful of others.

01:41:24
Speaker 3: I mean, that's pretty great. Oh, and then I was like, why does I was like, did they just drop her? No? She was hired by Universal as an executive consultant. So we love to see that. We love to see that she did great work and then got promoted. That never happens to women. Right in the seventies, unheard of shout out to Verna Fields, which also, I mean, I don't know, I really appreciated again in a movie, In a movie that takes place quite a bit on the beach, I feel like there I'm not really getting a lot of male gaze out of it outside of that opening sequence, which obviously it's the creature from the Black Lagoon shot, you can't get around it. But in the other beach sequences, I feel like in subsequent beach horror there is almost always some male gazy shots of like, oh no, what if this hottie got eaten? Uh? But for the most part, it is just like people on the beach. Yes, and it presented very matter of factly in a way that it just feels like unusual. I don't know.

01:42:27
Speaker 2: That reminds me of a documentary I watched to prepare for this episode. It's a Shutter original documentary called Shark's Ploitation.

01:42:39
Speaker 3: Nice.

01:42:39
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it, and it's basically about all the movies that fall under the shark'sploitation subgenre and if you're thinking, oh, yeah, of course, like Jaws, and you know, Sharknado and the Meg and a handful of others. There are hundreds and hundreds of mostly B movies, mostly horrible bad movies. But basically Jaws started this subgenre. Not to say that Hollywood had not been making like horror creature feature movies about monsters lurking in the sea or lurking in lagoons before this, because they had been making movies like this for decades prior to Jaws. But again, none of them had the cultural impact that Jaws had.

01:43:34
Speaker 3: So wild, it's like, but none of them were good like this, like right, why, Yeah, none of them were good for sure.

01:43:42
Speaker 2: And so Yeah, just examines this subgenre and talks about the tropes that start to emerge in these shark movies, one of them being the exploitation of especially women's bodies. Some of these movies have rather gratuitous, neuted revel in violence against women, stuff like that. But overall, yeah, I thought it was a very interesting documentary that I would recommend. Oh yeah, that's pretty much all I had.

01:44:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last thing I want to say, it's more of a fun fact, but I just thought it was interesting, just in terms of how much this movie changed marketing and how marketing narratives work for art in general, which is like Steven Spielberg's career alone is like a fascinating look at that. But this book. I don't know how this book came across Steven Spielberg's desk. I think it was mentioned at some point, but I forget in one of the documentaries I watched, but that Jaws was like, Oh, it's this best selling book. Everyone loves it. Well, guess what, you know why I was a best selling book because Steven Spielberg and Universal bought hundreds and hundreds of copies of it to send other places to people to be like, hey, what do we think of this book? Because they just wanted to make a movie of it. I just I've that. I feel like it's a victimist crime. We love to see a book selling copies. Me personally, someone should do that to my Oh my god, I was so scandalized.

01:45:11
Speaker 2: If what should people buy Raw Dog?

01:45:15
Speaker 3: Oh, they should buy hundreds of copies and just send and be like should we make a movie about this? I would be like, that's so controversial. You shouldn't do that that's dishonest, but that I just thought that was like funny that they, you know, part of the whole idea of like this best selling book, everyone's talking about it. That may not necessarily have been true. It sold a lot of copies, but who was really talking about it. I just think that's funny. Does it pass the buckle test? No?

01:45:45
Speaker 2: No, But on our nipple scale, yeah, where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I mean again, women largely are not included in the movie. Yeah, it is a very white movie. It's a movie that asks us to root for a cop, so, you know, I just don't know. But the movie does have some interesting things to say about masculinity.

01:46:16
Speaker 3: Question mark, I'm gonna give it two nipples.

01:46:18
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds great.

01:46:20
Speaker 3: Because for well, I agree with everything you're saying, and they're therefore could not in good conscience rank it higher. And maybe I'm ranking it a little higher than I normally would because it's just such a damn good movie. I do think that we have two strong performances from women in this movie.

01:46:39
Speaker 2: They're fleeting.

01:46:40
Speaker 3: The fleeting. What you do see is good, but their their performances are great. I really like Ellen. I wish that we had more of her, but I like seeing a just like a full Even though you don't get to spend much time with her, you feel like you know her, which I think is very rare in terms of like quote unquote Mom or what characters they're written in this very one dimensional way, and this character is kind of written in a one dimensional way. But I think like her ability as an actor. Even though it was suggested that it was a NEPO pick because she was married to a producer, Fuck you, Lorrangengery is amazing in this movie, and so if it is NEPO, I don't care. And then Lefierra's performance another fleeting but really impactful performance. She is a legendary stage actor and teacher who just passed away a couple of years ago at the age of ninety one. And also shout out to Chrissy, who is definitely underappreciated by the film. But again, a great performance from a stunt actor, and stunt actors are so rarely treated with the respect that they deserve, and.

01:47:51
Speaker 2: We were just talking about that on the Blue Crush episode. Another movie that takes place at the beach.

01:47:57
Speaker 3: In the beach, yeah, so I shout out to Susan backline who also passed away somewhat recently. The women we do meet, I really appreciate their at least their performances, if not the writing itself. And I think mainly these two nipples are going towards this movie's ability to explore masculinity and dick measuring contests across the class spectrum. It is a very white movie, it is, I mean, as you said, but I do think it's interesting having these three very different class perspectives, and again, the copaganda of it all, you can't excuse it. But ultimately you do have like someone from the lower class, middle class, and upper class on this boat and they're all working towards the same goal and they have to communicate with each other and it doesn't really work, and it's just it feels like kind of a reality show nightmare experiment, like these three men for world We're I think it's fascinating and I think it's like all of the care characters are treated with respect by the writing in the plot, and I like it too. Nipples and I'm gonna give them to I guess I'm going to give one to Lorraine Gary, and I'm gonna give one to Lee Fierro because they made a meal of what they were given.

01:49:23
Speaker 2: I agree. I think I'll go down to one and a half. If I'm reading it on a scale of is this movie really good, it gets top marks rating it on the nipple scale. The copaganda thing is what's getting me because like these like gentle tender, like loving father character, sure who we're supposed to be rooting for her the whole time, is a cop and it is effective copaganda, and that's the sneakiest Yeah, so I resent that. But as we keep saying, I like the Brodie character and that's why it's so effective. So I just feel tricked by the movie. And yeah, it's a really good movie and I'm gonna watch it every summer. Yeah, so one and a half nipples and I'll give them to Bruce the Shark the mechanical.

01:50:25
Speaker 3: Also fun that they ended up naming the Finding Nemo Shark after this shark. Cute shark fans will know anyways. So that's our Jaws episode, folks. I really love watching this movie. Yeah, I'm a I'm a simple person. I see Jaws, I say, hey, I like that movie.

01:50:46
Speaker 2: I'm smiling.

01:50:47
Speaker 3: So here's here's to you, listener. We're pouring out a class of Jaws Pedo Grisio to you and and with that, thank you for thank you for listening. This is pretty similar if you're not a member of our Matreon, our patriot aka Matreon. These are episodes that are mainly just Caitlin and myself having fun talking about a movie that you very often will request. So if you enjoyed the vibe of this, a little bit Looser, a little silly joyin our Matreon, it's five dollars a month, and it gets you access to two new episodes every month on a theme that you will generally choose and sometimes we will impose our will and we will choose it. And Casper is going wild right now, being so cute. He's being a real cudler. He's saying hi, mother, and he's saying Hi Casper. But yeah, and then access to almost two hundred back episodes.

01:51:43
Speaker 2: It sounds like you're saying, we're gonna need a bigger Matreon subscription.

01:51:47
Speaker 3: We're gonna need a bigger Matreon subscription. Just kidding. It'll always be five dollars, but we could just use more people having it.

01:51:55
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I mean.

01:51:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

01:51:57
Speaker 2: Oh, and also, we haven't actually announced at the time of this recording, but maybe if you like checked our link tree, we're going on tour. We're going on tour and we're going to the Midwest, and you'll see a few links already to some shows that we're doing at the end of August slash early September. Be on the lookout for a more official announcement and more news about that tour. But just give me a little a little shark finn if you will, a little to tease.

01:52:33
Speaker 3: Us heading to Chicago. We love you so much, Thank you for listening, and we will be back next week with another brand new episode. Bye bye.

01:52:45
Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our low go and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash bechtelcast