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The Shark in Modern Culture: Beauty and the BeastSean Morey
ABSTRACT
There is a creature alive today that has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill; a mindless, eating machine. It will attack and devour anything. It is as if God created the devil and gave him…jaws.
-From original theatrical trailer for Jaws, narrated by Orson Wells
Ask almost anyone who has seen it, and the viewer will tell you that Steven Spielberg's Jaws was one of the most terrifying movies they have ever seen. While many horror movies exist, some more bloodcurdling, Jaws terrifies because of its basis in reality and the implications of that terror. This movie not only scared beachgoers away from the ocean surf, but also caused many to think twice before entering the calm waters of their swimming pools. The movie endowed sharks so well with the qualities of a "mindless eating machine," and moreover a man-eater, that the stigma continues to attach itself to sharks like a remora. However, while looking directly into the jaws of a shark may instill fear into the viewer, this vantage point of shark iconography denies them access to other aspects that compose shark behavior. Despite the efforts of scientists and conservationists who try to portray sharks in a more insightful and illuminating way, pop culture in modern times depicts sharks as either antagonists in fictional narratives, or else comic or lampooned personifications of seedy human characteristics.
Some of the earliest representations of sharks in art appear in paintings and mythical stories by ocean dwelling cultures, primarily in the Pacific region. Australian myth tells of a shark-god named Bangudja, who "attacked a dolphin-man in the Gulf of Carpentaria, leaving a large red stain that can still be seen on the rocks of Chasm Island" (Ellis 170). The aborigines use the shark in this context as a figure in an etiological myth to explain the origin of the red rocks at Chasm Island. This origin myth functions in the same way that the ancient Greeks explained the seasonal changes through the abduction of Persephone by Hades. Moreover, Australians regarded the shark more as an economic commodity, indicated by the focus on the liver, an organ of great nutritional significance.
Gaius Plinius Secundus, famous as the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, detailed the behavior of sharks in Book 9 of his Historia Naturalis:
Pliny, though detailing the method of attack that sharks use to strike at men, does not overly demonize the shark any more than he might demonize other potentially dangerous animals. Unlike snakes and reptiles, which are transformed into mythical dragons, sharks are portrayed by Pliny as a part of the natural marine environment, just as one might discuss a lion in a field guide on African wildlife. Pliny does not speak of the shark as a mindless eating machine, but shows in the shark timidity and the capacity to fear humans.
As Western Civilization developed, and man no longer found himself as a part of nature, but now something distinct and removed from nature, the conflict of man against the natural world arises and takes a forefront in the developing mythology. The Puritans bring this mode of thought with them when they come to the New World. Their community constitutes a type of safe-haven from the wilderness that lies beyond the town or church. The Indians represent satanic creatures--demonic forces that are present to advance the cause of Satan in his war with God here on earth. To the Puritans, this war was not metaphorical. When John Winthrop speaks of a "city upon the Hill" in A Modell of Christian Charity (233), he elevates and removes the Puritan establishment from the rest of the world who wish to ruin it. From this the Western movie portrays the frontier fort as the sanctuary from Indian attacks. With much of our terra firma explored and explained, the next unknown is the vast ocean. Peter Benchley, in Jaws, can take the Puritan metaphor and replace the wilderness of forest with wilderness of sea. The shark now becomes the satanic image in our continuing struggle against nature.
Thus, because of this mythology, the context suggests that Western peoples have adopted a markedly different perspective of viewing the shark than their non-Western counterparts, such as the Aborigines and Indonesians. This Western view looks at the human as beyond the food chain and as one outside of nature. This exclusive consciousness allows paintings like John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark (1778) and Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream (1899) to present the theme of man versus nature, or more pertinent to this study, man versus shark. Homer's painting shows a man battling the swells on his small sailboat, sharks circling close by waiting for the easy meal. Watson's painting shows a nude figure overboard with both men racing to get him out and sharks racing for the tender flesh. These two paintings demonstrate the Western psyche that continues to permeate and in which man forms the world around his own centrality, even during the years that Copley painted, the so-called Age of Reason. These paintings also serve as an example of how the widespread demonization of sharks developed. An observer may now look back and recognize how these painting adumbrated the production of Jaws a century after these two paintings were unveiled. It does not take much imagination to get from Copley and Homer to Benchley and Spielberg.
The reason I attribute the mass phobia of sharks to Jaws is that, as A.M. Olsen explains, "until World War II sharks were never a significant part of popular mythology. They were known to attack and eat humans but were seen as 'chinless cowards', in the words of one naturalist, and their major importance was as competitors for food or as food themselves." (207). The major event that brought attention to sharks in World War II (dramatized by the monologue that Quint delivers in Jaws) were the attacks during the disaster with the U.S.S. Indianapolis, where countless numbers of sailors were prayed upon while treading water. Once witnesses observed sharks eating humans in such large numbers, their stock as a natural enemy instantly rose. However, though Jaws endowed the white shark with demonic and what we might call human motivations of violence, the shark nonetheless acted and looked (more or less) like a shark. The shark made a meal of men, but seemed only to eat them for nutritional purposes, without any malice or satanic intent.
The sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live quickly attempted to debunk the seriousness and terror that Jaws instilled in its viewers. In their opening season following the release of the movie, the show developed a skit focusing on a clever creature called the "landshark." The landshark, as described by John Belushi's characterization of Matt Hooper, was the "cleverest species of them all," and attacked young women in their apartments. However, the show was not trying to portray sharks in any particular way per se, but instead spoof the movie, and perhaps the hysteria that flared up because of it.
With a recent shark attack media frenzy occurring during the summer of 2001--dubbed the "Summer of the Shark" by Time magazine, mainly due to the bull shark attack on Jesse Arbogast--cartoonists have launched a series of illustrations highlighting different aspects on sharks. However, these aspects do not reflect sharks as monsters or beasts, but instead demonstrate the over-reaction and panic that infuse a large portion of the population whenever attacks become over-publicized. The media, from Time magazine to every local Florida paper, has exploited the shark-wary psyche of people leaving rationality behind onshore. For all but the smallest percentage of a percentage, the risk of being a meal for a shark is nil. One might speculate that what amounts to the yellow journalism of shark attacks and the psyche that the media whips up may undermine the "watchdog" role of the media, and that these attacks, therefore, seem to divert the media from truly life-threatening and rational fears such as automobile accidents. For some reason, people fear being sliced in half by the fifteen-foot fish more than being sliced in half by the mangled steel of an automobile accident. Yet, the chances of the later happening are infinitely greater. Cartoonists, meanwhile, use humor in an attempt to debunk misconceptions and show sharks in a more anthropomorphic fashion, instilling them with middle-class roles and lives and replacing the shark's demonic agenda.
Why have sharks been picked-on over animals that are more dangerous? The answer seems simple enough: they look the part. A torpedo-shaped pack of muscles crowned with a giant arch of razorblades inspires fear. A movie depicting the most dangerous animal to humans, titled "Hips," would cause more laughter than fear of the seemingly pacific hippopotamus. The hippo, which claims more human lives than any other macro fauna per annum, demonstrates the double standard when considering their role in Disney's Fantasia as prancing ballerinas. Meanwhile, the shark in Disney's The Little Mermaid is a menacing beast that only serves as a threatening antagonist.
Using sharks in movies is not wrong, per se, as long as the audience realizes it is just a movie. The perception of sharks as man-eating monsters carries over into real life. Critics often point to movies as causes of social ills--racism, sexism, and other bigotries. The same applies to shark loathing. Social ills become ecosystem ills. Losing the apex predator in a marine ecosystem disrupts feeding hierarchies and could lead to unforeseen consequences. Just as movies can provide advocacy for animal rights and focus attention on problems, as Free Willy did for Orcas whales, so movies should present more balanced views of the shark, perhaps even producing a "Free Jaws."
Today, just as the Australian aborigines did, the American economic machine sees sharks as a way to make a profit. However, very few commercial shark fishermen make money from the physical products that sharks offer in terms of meat or even liver oils. Instead, media, film, television, print, etc., all exploit the terror and psychological impact that sharks have on people. Popular culture has elevated the shark to a place of mystique and wonder, and has been interwoven into, if not Western culture, at least the ever-evolving American mythology. While the fear of sharks seems to reign supreme, the more modern attempts to balance this emotion with humor may help to save the shark, even if the anthropomorphic association of sharks with lawyers does not improve much upon the shark's character. Though little harm arises in comedic portrayals of sharks, a tragedy occurs when media portray sharks so monstrously and satanically that this causes people to hunt and destroy them. Sharks, as an apex predator, serve an important role in the ecosystem, and their removal becomes detrimental to this balance. Though the result of such a loss is uncertain, this largely unforeseen effect should possibly instill more fear into humans than being eaten alive.
WORKS CITED
Ellis, R. "The legendary shark." Stevens 170.
"Jaws ad frightens bathers." BBC News [Online]. 14 July 2000. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_832000/832892.stm>
Olsen, A.M. "Using sharks." Stevens 207.
Pliny. Natural history. Trans. H. Rackham. Vol. 3. London, Great Britain: Harvard University Press, 1983. 3 vols.
Stevens, J.D. Sharks. New York, New York: Weldon Owen Pty Limited, 1999.
Winthrop, J. "A modell of Christian charity." The Heath anthology of American literature. 3rd ed. Ed. P. Lauter. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.
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