What Do the "Jaws" Movie and WWII Have in Common?

American WWII soldiers. Credit: Flickr, "England."

Or put differently, what does the Jaws shark symbolize?

At least for some Americans, I think the Jaws shark symbolizes...the Japanese in World War II. What Quint said about the shark would have applied to the stereotypical Japanese soldier as well: "He's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye." Both the shark and the Japanese soldier were made out to be a relentless enemy that hides in the water (a Japanese submarine), and an enemy that suddenly attacks the nation on its own soil (the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor, like Amityville being attacked on the 4th of July).

Japanese Submarine. Credit: Flickr, Marion Doss.

Shark fin. Credit: Flickr, Anita363.

But it's both more specific and broader than that. Jaws tells us a lot about stereotypes, war, and the challenges of understanding other cultures.

I'm referring to the scene where Quint, the fisherman, describes the shark attacks that followed the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine.


(Video clip of Quint's speech here.)

Quint says, "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. It was comin' back from the island of Tinian Delady. Just delivered the bomb--the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour."

Quint's speech not only refers to real WWII events, but his description of the shark's eyes is very similar to American stereotypes of the Japanese soldier. Here's what Quint says: "You know the thing about a shark? He's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ‘ya, doesn't seem to be livin'." Quint could just as well have been describing the American stereotype of the inscrutable Japanese soldier with lifeless eyes.

Part of the power of Jaws, then, is that it allows Americans to explore their complicated feelings about WWII. When the shark gets blown to pieces at the end of the movie, viewers are encouraged to feel that such destruction was fully justified. In real life, though, Americans have felt increasingly regretful, or at least conflicted, about dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese. Even many of those who thought the atomic bombings were justified because they saved thousands of American lives later felt misgivings about killing women and children. Jaws plays with these ambivalences and vexing ethical issues, always in a non-obvious way.

Hiroshima bomb cloud.

Jaws ending.

Jaws in Germany
This analysis also applies to American attitudes toward German soldiers in WWII. For example, here's what one American soldier remembered about a battle on the front lines near Cologne, Germany:

"We were passing the Germans we killed. Looking at the individual German dead, each took on a personality. These were no longer an abstraction. These were no longer the Germans of the brutish faces and the helmets we saw in the newsreels. They were exactly our age. These were boys like us. ...Once the helmet is off, you're looking at a teenager, another kid." --Robert Rasmus, interview reprinted in Studs Terkel's book The Good War: An Oral History of WWII.

This soldier's story sounds like Quint's points about the shark's eyes--how they seem "lifeless," or as this soldier put it, like "an abstraction." German soldiers with helmets that hide their eyes also fit Quint's image of the shark, which is the underlying stereotype of all enemies in modern Western warfare: lifeless, inhuman, animalistic.

U.S. wartime poster of German soldier.

But as noted by the American soldier, all this changes when the enemy helmet comes off, when you get up close and see that the supposed monsters are just teenage boys like you. Quint notes this same type of sudden switch in perspective when he says, "Until he [the shark] bites 'ya and those black eyes roll over white..."

In other words, Jaws and WWII both create strange oscillations between media stereotypes and individual personalities, abstract concepts and real beings. The shark seems dead but then you realize how alive he is...just before he kills you; WWII enemy soldiers seem like abstractions, but then you realize they're humans...just before you kill them.

21st Century
But what does any of this have to do with 21st-century viewers, most of whom have no experience with World War II or shark attacks?

These days, many Westerners are trying to see the positive aspects of other cultures...but we still do so through mass-media abstractions, and struggle with jarring contrasts between cultural stereotypes and real people that we meet in our travels or workplace or corner grocery store. Quint's war references and the shark imagery dramatize these intercultural challenges in a visceral yet non-obvious way, which presumably helps explain why Jaws has continued to fascinate new generations of viewers, not just WWII veterans.

I find it comforting to hear the American soldier (Rasmus) say he eventually recognized the humanity of the German soldiers, and I gather other WWII soldiers did the same thing. For example, you can listen here to a strangely beautiful, 2-minute Story Corps interview with an American talking about his deep feelings for a German soldier.

American helping wounded German soldier. Credit: WWII in Color.

Anyone want to suggest other stories of soldiers, on any side of any conflict, who have transcended stereotypes and recognized the enemy's humanity in a sudden, dramatic moment? I like those stories.

Further Reading:
My post about USS Indianapolis Survivors and Their Tears

My other posts related to Jaws

Full text of our book chapter about Jaws (with more on Japan, and Hooper/Dreyfuss as an anthropologist figure)

Robert Willson Jump Cut journal article, where he shows the resonance between Jaws and submarine movies.