Jaws, From the Shark’s Point of View

ABSTRACT

‘This is the story of my death’. How would the shark in Jaws (Spielberg 1975) make sense of, and respond to, the representational forms and cultural norms they are entrapped within? Would they see the story – and their role within it – in a manner akin to that the film offers to its assumed human audience? And what happens to the film, and anthropocentric understandings of it, if it is read by the eponymous shark? This creative-academic text explores these questions by imagining how a shark might respond to the ways in which American popular culture and academic discourse have represented sharks and projected different meanings onto them.

KEYWORDS:

• Shark
• Jaws
• monologue
• death
• anthropocentrism

This is the story of my death.

It is the story of how I was killed, and how I was made into something to be killed.

I died because a tale was told that required my death, and, in turn, that tale serves to justify my being killed.

My death is spectacular, and its spectacularity was vital. It was this spectacle that rendered my death cathartic, my existence obliterated completely.

But I survive, as a tale. I died and became a myth. And it was a myth that was needed, hence I had to be killed.

This is the story of my death, and how my death was made to be necessary.

‘Jaws’

They have given me, and the story they tell of me, the name ‘Jaws’.

I have had no say over this name, nor the story of which I have been made to be a part.

They assert their right to name me. They assert the right to tell my story. They assert these rights by the simple act of enacting them, never questioning their authority to do so.

And what does it mean to be called ‘Jaws’?

I am reduced to nothing other than a single part of my body, the part of my body that they fear.

Though this is an odd choice, isn’t it? Surely it’s not my jaws they fear; it is my teeth, or my mouth, or my throat or – if they could conceive of it – my brain, my intelligence, my agency, my desires. So why ‘Jaws’, when jaws are nothing without what they contain, and what they sit in, and what controls them? What stupidity led to them thinking of me as ‘Jaws’?

Though ‘Jaws’ is not the only name they have given me.

They divide the world into these organisational structures they call ‘countries’, and render unarguable these fictional boundaries through sheer will and ignorance of geography. These ‘countries’ mean little to me, their borders mere administrative oddities I cannot perceive when I inadvertently breach them.

And these things they call ‘countries’ use different kinds of noises to make sounds; it amazes me how committed they are to the idea that their multiplicity of languages is what makes them special, when it instead means they’ve no tools for understanding one another.

And this panoply of languages means I and the story they tell of me have many names, and so I remain entrapped in this linguistic complexity over which – ironically – I have no say. These are the things they call this story of my death:

• Sweden Hajen [Shark]

• Finland -Tappajahai [Killer Shark]

• Denmark - Dødens gab [Jaws of Death]

• Germany - Der weiße Hai [The Great White Shark]

• Italy - Lo squalo [The Shark]

• China - 大白鲨 [Great White Shark]

• Estonia - Lõuad [Jaws]

• Slovenia - Žrelo [Throat]

• Norway - Haisommer [Shark Summer]

• Greece - Τα σαγόνια του καρχαρία [Shark’s Jaws]

• France - Les Dents de la mer [The Teeth from the Sea]

Some of these render me in ways they deem factual – I am simply ‘shark’ or ‘the great white shark’. Others give me names they think of as factual – ‘killer shark’ – but which reveal their failure to see their own propensity to kill.

And then there’s others where I simply give up – calling me ‘jaws of death’ or ‘the teeth from the sea’ might helpfully display their hatred of me, and invites others to join in with that hatred, but is also a bit embarrassing. Elsewhere, I am a ‘throat’; I guess that makes a bit more sense.

But look at this array of names; they simply cannot decide coherently what they think, or how to name things, or how best to capture me in words.

That they can call me so many things shows how they assert their right to name me, to decide what I am, and to decide how my actions should be assessed. To name is to assert power over, and they do it again and again and again. And, it seems to me, they never consider what I might think of those names. They, of course, don’t see me as worthy of consideration.

‘Shark’

They name me in other ways too.

They have made me a ‘shark’; I am nothing other than my species.

But what is this thing called ‘species’? They seem to rely on it so much, and to think that its validity is self-evident.

But they do not realise that this is a thing they do to me, it is not who I am.

This thing they call ‘species’ is a ‘fictitious grid [they] place on nature’ (Ereshefsky 2010, 422). And this thing they call ‘Jaws’ is one of the ways they place this grid.

It is the way they choose to see the world, because it works for them.

And why does it work for them? Because it means they can convince themselves that they can make sense of everything. These categories help them believe in their own analytical superiority.

But, get this. Even they don’t know what ‘species’ means.

They ignore the ‘species problem’ – that is, ‘the difficulty of reaching agreement about the definition of the species category’ (de Queiroz 1999, 49). I could almost laugh: there is no agreed definition of this word they rely on so much.

They don’t know what it means, this word ‘species’ – and yet they yoke me into its realm, imposing it upon me, with all the consequences this causes.

For think how they use this idea of ‘the shark’, and the stories they tell of it. These are just some of the stories enabled because of their idea of ‘the shark’:

• Jaws 2 (Szwarc 1978)

• Jaws 3-D (Alves 1983)

• Jaws: The Revenge (Sargent 1987)

• Shark Night 3D (Ellis 2011)

• The Meg (Turteltaub 2018)

• 47 Meters Down (Roberts 2017)

• Deep Blue Sea (Harlin 1999)

• Sky Sharks (Fehse 2020)

• The Shallows (Collet-Sera 2016)

• Sharktopus (O’Brien 2010)

• 2-Headed Shark Attack (Ray 2012)

• 3-Headed Shark Attack (Ray 2015)

• 5-Headed Shark Attack (De Leon 2017)

• 6-Headed Shark Attack (Atkins 2018)

• Shark Attack (Misiorowski 1999)

• Shark Attack 2 (Worth 2000)

• Shark Attack 3 (Worth 2002)

• Sharknado (Ferrante 2013)

• Sharknado 2: The Second One (Ferrante 2014)

• Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (Ferrante 2015)

• Sharknado: The 4^th Awakens (Ferrante 2016)

• Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (Ferrante 2017)

• The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (Ferrante 2018)

Given their prevalence, I could be flattered. But look at what kinds of stories are told, and tell me you’d take it as a complement.

I am, of course, a fiction.

Can that be an excuse? It’s a story, just entertainment, a bit of fun. Why should I take it so seriously?

But they are the tellers, and I am the told. They are responsible for how they speak of me. That I’m a fiction makes it worse, as such stories rely on the possibility that all this could be true.

Their stories make sense – are comprehensible – to them. That is the problem. Why should they so easily believe this concoction of untruths?

I am clearly of use. After all, ‘no other animal, on land or in the water, generates the entertainment income that shark species do’ (Neff 2015, 2).

Well, lucky for them that I am such an income-generator. But what does all this mean for me?

‘Attack’

I entertain them, but they fear me.

And this fear – which I am told is just a story – affects how they treat me.

They say I ‘attack’ them, and they say this again and again, in their news stories. These are the headlines they tell of me:

• ‘Shark Attack: Teenage Surfer Bitten on Arm at Avoca Beach on NSW Central Coast’ (Taylor 2022)

• ‘Colorado Boy, 10, Survives Vicious Shark Attack in Mexico’ (Land 2023)

• ‘Tourist Killed in Shark Attack off New Caledonia’ (Damanhoury and Alberti 2023)

• ‘Shark Attack on Dolphin in Sydney Closes Popular Beaches’ (BBC 2023)

• ‘Hawaii Man Wrestles Out of Shark Attack and Makes It Onto Nearby Boat’ (White 2023)

• ‘In Rare Attack, Great White Shark Decapitates Diver in Mexico’ (Baker 2023)

• ‘Massive 15 ft Shark Attacks Swimmers in Popular Holiday Destination and Swallows up Paddle’ (Dooley 2023)

• ‘Girl Killed in Shark Attack on Australia’s West Coast’ (Reuters 2023)

• ‘Horrible Footage Captures Desperate Rescue Attempt of Shark Attack Victim’ (Rolfe 2023)

• ‘Snorkeler “Bitten” in Suspected Shark Attack Along UK’s Cornish Coast’ (Hardingham-Gill and Diab 2022)

So, I ‘attack’ them, do I? How blithely they use such an emotive word. Yet who usually comes off worse when we meet?

The category of beings they call ‘shark’ kills, on average, around six humans per year (Rice 2018).

And humans, in return, kill 100 million sharks per year (Matilda 2023). Let that sink in (excuse the pun). For me to kill the number of humans equal to how many sharks they kill in a year would take me over 16 million years.

Yet I’m the one who attacks? I’m the one who has to put up with story after story – both in the news and in fiction – of how I’m the attacker? I’m the bad guy here?

But, of course, they don’t see their killing of me as an ‘attack’. They resort to euphemisms, and call it ‘farming’, or ‘safety measures’ or ‘population management’ or ‘environmental protection’ or ‘sport’ or ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’. Their words are perhaps their most powerful weapons, enabling them to categorise themselves as benevolent and me a mere ‘attacker’.

It feels to me like they’re using me as some kind of distraction. It’s hard not read this as evidence of some kind of inadequacy. I mean, if they’re winning at this killing thing at a ratio of 16 million-to-1, you’d think they’d be comfortable enough to admit it.

But no; it’s me who attacks, and it’s me who must be called the attacker. And all the time I – and those they have decided are like me, and who can be called sharks – are attacked, and killed.

We die, and they call us monsters.

And in doing so the story they tell of me becomes the story of all sharks, my story the evidence for how they think of all sharks.

How they speak of me is how they speak of others, our specificity rendered null as we become nothing but our ‘species’.

If I am a shark then that is not all I am. If I am shark, that does not mean all sharks are like me.

For me, being a shark is one among many factors that constitute me; for those who use me for stories it is my beginning and my end.

By what right do they decide what I am?

Point of View

So, let me help. Can I offer you a way in?

Some people have, after all, wondered how things might feel beyond the human, and have pondered ways of trying to perceive what it might mean to be me, or to be one of the billions of others who are not human and who make up the vast majority of living things.

So there’s a human, called Jakob von Uexküll, and in his book A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with A Theory of Meaning (1934/2010) he wondered how humans might make sense of experiences beyond them.

He suggested that ‘everything a subject perceives belongs to its perception world [Merkwelt], and everything it produces, to its effect world [Wirkwelt]. These two worlds, of perception and production of effects, form one closed unit, the environment’ (42 italics in original).

A simple formula: I perceive, and I act. Just like them. It’s not too hard. But maybe thinking like this means I might not be thought of only as my jaws, or only as something that attacks.

I am a subject, and insist on my subjectivity.

I perceive my environment and I affect it.

And I am not alone. I – like you – live alongside billions of other beings, all with their own Merkwelt and Wirkwelt.

And we interact, and we live alongside. And sometimes we simply ignore one another.

Which means making sense of me requires adopting ‘a multispecies approach [that] focuses on the multitudes of lively agents that bring one another into being through entangled relations’ (van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster 2016, 3).

Given they seem to keen to tell so many stories of me, how about thinking about who I really am?

The problem is, they insist that I can already be conceptualised, that I am already comprehended.

They assert that this storytelling they use to entrap me – which they call cinema – is already capable of depicting my point-of view.

This story they call ‘Jaws’ begins with images in the sea, the (all-too-human) viewer shown pictures which, they assert, are my ‘point-of-view’ (McBride 2010, 246; Turner 2006, 75).

But it is not. Nor does it in any way approximate it. They live in a regime of image and sound: but I also sense the world through vibrations, through smell. My conceptualisation and understanding of this space is of a particular kind, and is as normal for me as the audio-visual is for them.

Think about this: for me, sight matters little. But for this thing called cinema it matters so much.

So how to solve this inconsistency?

Rather than accept that film cannot depict my point-of-view, because it cannot depict the senses that most matter to me, they instead reshape my engagement with the world into something that cinema can contain.

My point-of-view is remade, solely to render film’s limitations invisible.

They have accepted that it is right and meaningful to call this a point-of-view shot, because to do otherwise would require them to ponder the inadequacies of this medium, and the world they make with it.

Why do they not ask why it is this technology they revere so much is so limited, and so wedded to their sensory interpretations of the world?

Well, I don’t think they’re very good at seeing the flaws in the things they make.

But, more than this, this medium helps normalise their sensory engagements with the world, with sight and sound so normal as to be unquestionable. And in doing so they assert that their processes of meaning-making are the only ones that matter, rendering all of us not entrapped within the limitations of sight and sound as beyond comprehension.

This is not just about imposing meaning upon the world: it is about imposing upon the world the very ways in which meaning is made.

But, this is not my point-of-view; it is theirs.

And that’s what troubles them.

They cannot comprehend my point-of-view, and that disconcerts them.

For what is it to be human, and not comprehend everything?

I have my point-of-view, and they can never access it. And that’s fine by me, but really troubles them.

Why are they so insistent on their right to make sense of everything?

My Meaning

This story they tell of me, they analyse and critique.

They say the story is a classic, and assert their right to do so. I do not see this story as a classic, and query why they think they can judge the stories of others. Why didn’t they ask me what I thought?

They mine this story for its significance, for its meanings and its metaphors and its symbolism. Its power, they insist, arises from its universal truths, forgetting that their universe is not mine. And their only interest in those readings is them, their egotism rampant as they find – surprise, surprise – that this story of my death is actually a story of them. Do they never question their own self-centredness?

Oh, the symbolism they see in this story, and the symbolism they see in me. I am – it seems – able to stand in for so many things that matter to them, and which preoccupy them; all things which are, of course, about them.

You may be fascinated to know that I am, in fact, not a shark, but instead, a ‘toothed vagina/womb’ (Creed 2015, 58). It’s certainly news to me, and does make me think I need to reflect on myself more. Furthermore, I am, I am told, a ‘monstrous creature-as-phallic symbol’ (Hollinger 2015, 347). So I’m a bit confused now – am I a vagina or am I phallic? Or am I somehow both? It’s a lot of work for a shark, you know, being all these things at once.

And the story that they tell of me is not, it seems, about their decision to kill me, but is instead ‘the ritual telling of an essential patriarchal myth’ (Caputi 1978, 305). A ‘ritual’, a ‘myth’; I’m almost flattered to be such a vital part of the way they speak about themselves. I could be tempted to read the idea that I am ‘essential’ as something to crow about; until I realise this means essential to them, and not to me. I am useful, for things they deem they must do, but this considers not at all what this means for me.

And then it gets confusing, because it seems as if I am about everything and nothing. This tale they tell of me is ‘a propaganda film for America’ (Lemkin 1984, 287), and works through ‘the trauma of American defeat in Vietnam’ (Torry 1993, 27) while also being about Watergate (Branston 2000, 80; Miller 1999, 93; Turner 2006, 109). I mean, this is heady stuff. I’m pleased I can be about so many things; does this not attest to my usefulness?

And they seem to acknowledge the weight they attach to this story they tell of me, and the absurdity of the number of things it is purported to be about. There appears to be a tone of resignation in the statement that ‘It is about a lot of things’ (Andrews 1999, 3). Well, I’m glad that’s been cleared up. I might be tempted here to suggest this implies they decide what stories are about depending on what they need them to be about at that time, patting themselves on the back for their analytical complexity.

But note here how all this is about them. I, and the story I am entrapped in, is nothing but a symbol, enabling them to work through their traumas and make sense of themselves. Because here’s a thing; one thing recurring throughout these analyses is the implication that there’s one thing this story is not about: me. In their rewriting of me as phallic, as a vagina, as about Vietnam or about Watergate there is one key thing: their denial of me as a being. The work they do here is to deny that I have any meaning in and of myself; indeed, to suggest that I only have meaning if I manage to say something about them. It’s quite a considerable level of egotism to think that I only have meaning if I mean something for them, and about them. Why are such analyses so invested in ignoring the fact of my existence?

Indeed, they blithely write me out of their analyses in other ways too. There is a moment in this story they tell of me when the character Quint dies (of course, the story asserts that’s my fault). And in their analyses they say, describing this scene, that,

‘There is only one death [in the film] which is visible and this is it’. (Quirke 2002, 86)

This supposed fact is asserted to indicate the power of this moment, and to signal that in a story that is often understood to contain much that causes fear, death is actually largely absent. An interesting argument. Worth pondering on. Hmm.

If only it was true.

After all, there is another death in the film which is rather visible, and that death is mine.

This is a film – may I remind you – in which I die. Visibly, shockingly – some of it in slow motion, to ensure you really see it in detail. It’s not as if it’s hidden. I explode. My body and its matter fill the screen. I sink – now dismembered – down beneath the sea.

And not only is this death of mine seen, it is celebrated. A human, witnessing my obliteration, cheers. He looks at this carnage, and you look: that is the point of this sequence. So it’s not as if my death is hidden. It is visible, it is spectacular, and it is categorised as good.

So forgive me if I’m a bit confused by the assertion that there is only one death visible in the film. And forgive me if I rewrite this quotation, to make it more accurate. It is not the case that ‘There is only one death which is visible and this is it’. It is that:

‘There is only one human death in the film which is visible and this is it’.

There’s just one word missing here, and that is ‘human’. How could they make such an error of omission?

But it’s not an error, is it? They reveal themselves in this mistake. There’s no need for them to append ‘human’ to the term ‘death’ because, for them, it is only human deaths that matter. Why, they think, bother mentioning that I die too? It is of no consequence.

So in this little slip of the tongue they reveal themselves, and they reveal the assumptions they make. In a film whose climax depicts my evisceration, my death is not worth mentioning. Their story renders me invisible – and analysis of it does too. I am doubly erased – but of course that’s the point. My erasure is their goal.

And let me be an ally here. There is another death in this film which critiques of it fail to acknowledge. But it is, of course, not the death of a human, so why would they care?

A dog, called Pippet, is seen in the film playing with a stick in the sea, but later his owner cannot find him, and the stick is shown floating on the surface. Was I responsible? It is impossible to know. The film does not say – but given it blames me for everything, it certainly hopes you’ll assume I’m at fault. But this death, too, is typically absent in most analyses of the film. It is erased even more than mine.

This dog dies, simply to raise tension before the death you’re invited to see as truly mattering – that of a human. The film says this death doesn’t matter, other than to prepare you for that which is really of significance. And analysis of the film does the same, where you will find a noticeable silence on discussion of this moment, and the importance of the death of a dog.

So, I offer multispecies kinship here, in these moments of death. My death, and the death of a dog. Seemingly invisible. Certainly of less significance than those deaths of humans. Do you see how this film works to say only you – humans – matter? And do you see that analysis and critique of it does so too? Two processes, whose goal is to situate humans as all that matters.

It’s no wonder that I might find this difficult to take.

A Story

Yet elsewhere I am allowed to exist, when they summarise this story they tell of me. They reduce this tale to what they see as its essential, unarguable elements. They say it is a story about a

‘monstrous shark wreaking havoc on [a] Cape Cod town’ (Leitch 2004, 121).

Witness how casually they call me monstrous, and how they deny the havoc they wrought upon me. They say this tale

‘tells the story of a series of shark attacks on a small New England seaside town and the ensuing battle with the culpable shark’ (Beliveau 2014, 17),

with little regard for how easily they categorise me as culpable. How blithely they condemn others, with little energy spent on condemning themselves.

They call this story a

‘tale of shark terror’ (Gomery 2003, 72);

I think they aim to imply here that it is I who cause this terror, but I cheekily read this floating noun as pointing to the terror I felt instead. Is it okay if I wilfully misread what they intend, given they so insistently misread me? And they say it is the story of,

‘a killer shark’s effect on a New England tourist town’ (Quirke 2002, book blurb).

They are untroubled by the readiness with which they define me as a ‘killer’, in a story in which it is I who is killed.

See how in these summaries they blithely construct me as the problem, and them as the innocents?

Well, I reject this. It is not only them who gets to decide how to summarise this story they tell of me. I’ll have a go too. So, how would I describe these events that led to my death? Simple.

This is not a story of my ‘monstrousness’ or ‘culpability’ or ‘terror’. It is, instead …

‘a story in which a fish eats food, and is killed for doing so’

or …

‘a story in which an animal disturbs capitalism, and capitalism says it must be destroyed’

or …

‘a story in which some humans decide they should control the seas as much as they control the land’

or …

‘a story in which violence is legitimised as a tool to reassert human dominance over animals’.

Why not? Why are these summaries any less useful, any less true, any less meaningful, than the ones they offer?

An End, and My Beginning

So, to conclude.

In their story they kill me, and because of the ways in which their stories work, their story ends as I die. There is no more story because there is no more me: there is no more me because there is no more story.

But here I am, continuing to be. This story may end, but mine does not. I refute this ending, as it is an ending that serves their purposes alone, and these are not mine.

This is the story of my death. But I will not allow it to mean it is the story of my end.

I live, I persist, I continue.

I insist on being.

I deny their right to kill me.

Does that worry you

Good.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brett Mills

Brett Mills is a member of the Centre for Human-Animal Studies at Edge Hill University, UK, and an Honorary Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. His most recent book is Animals on Television: The Cultural Making of the Non-Human (Palgrave, 2017). He belongs to the AHRC-funded project teams Multispecies Storytelling: More-Than-Human Narratives About Landscape (2019-22) and Multisensory Multispecies Storytelling to Engage Disadvantaged Groups in Changing Landscapes (2020-22), and as part of the CULIVIAN research group at the University of Valencia, Spain, to the research project Representations of Masculinities in Animal Advocacy Documentaries in English (2000-2021).