Welcome to 50 Years of Jaws

 How many times this week did you hear that it was the 50th anniversary of Jaws?

Well, I’m here to mention it again. 

I’m a fan of the first Jaws movie. I haven’t seen any of the sequels except for Jaws 3D (though not in 3D) - and I actually kind of like that one. I have ridden “Jaws the Ride” at Universal Studios Osaka - this was a really cool experience ride that I only partially understood  since the “guide” only spoke Japanese. I think we rode it about three times. I also got a hat, which I still wear.

I did not like the Jurassic Park ride.

Jaws is not my favorite movie, but it is one that I can stream on a hot summer day and pretend I’m at the beach. Not that I want sharks to show up at my favorite beach, but one of the incidents Jaws is based on happened near my favorite beach town in New Jersey.

Side note: my favorite movie is a different Steven Spielberg movie that also features practical effect monsters.

Jaws changed the way people went to the movies. The term “blockbuster” (may the store rest in corporate afterlife) was coined because people liked up around the block to purchase tickets. Soon after, any “big” movie with a large audience was branded a blockbuster and advertised as such (gotta maximize those profits).

It also changed the way people viewed sharks.

Prior to the 1900s (the century not the decade), most people didn’t interact with sharks unless they were fishermen or caught in a shipwreck. 

However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, seaside vacations became popular with the upper classes. Cape May became one of the first beach resort towns that New Yorkers flocked to. It was in 1916 when a series of shark attacks took place off the coast of Ocean City, New Jersey (this is explicitly referenced in the film). It caused a panic, like in the movie, but the casualties were spread out all along the south New Jersey coast.

More than half century later and there were far more people frolicking in the water. Peter Benchley came to regret his 1974 novel of the same name as the movie because of the increased fear of sharks. This fear may have led to more people killing sharks and causing their populations to decrease. Yes, shark attacks continue to increase, but that’s because humans are encroaching more and more into their territory, not because they like the taste of human. 

Consequently, Benchley became a shark conservationist and dedicated much of his later life to educating people about sharks. Apparently, there’s now even a shark named after him colloquially known as the ninja lanternshark (Etmopterus benchleyi), which was confirmed in 2015.

I consider Jaws to be an adventure horror movie - a very rare mashup in my opinion. Like many films by Spielberg, there’s a sense of wonderment and exploration that blankets the film through the horror of the shark attacks. Even John Williams score volleys between suspenseful and creepy (the shark’s theme) to whimsical and thrilling (Chief Brody’s ending theme while shooting at the shark). 

It’s also rated PG instead of PG13 (mostly because PG13 wouldn’t come around until Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984). 

Jurassic Park (also directed by Spielberg) has a similar adventure horror mix as Jaws, as does The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (though those two aren’t Spielberg’s). The scary parts are still there, but I feel like I’m on an adventure when I watch them.

And 50 years later, Jaws still holds up. The practical effects are great, the characters believable and relatable, and the shark is still scary. 

Fun fact: the shark’s name became Bruce on set after Spielberg’s lawyer. 

There were multiple versions of the shark, none of which worked quite right nor looked very good, which is why you don’t see much of the shark. This caused creative use of the camera and shots taken, adding to the film aging well. I saw a version of Bruce at Universal Japan as a kid (that same trip mentioned above). 

I’m also not afraid of sharks and never really was. My biggest fear in the ocean as a kid was seaweed. My grandfather told me seaweed was mermaid hair and that really freaked me out. I didn’t go in the water for three years. Drove my parents nuts.

I recently won a copy of “Robert Shaw: An Actor’s Life on the Set of Jaws and Beyond” from GoodReads. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to cracking it open on a sunny day at the Jersey Shore. Maybe I’ll even pick up a copy of the original “Jaws” book too.

Happy 50th birthday Jaws. May Jurassic Park age as well as you. 

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off), please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.

Welcome to Women in the 1970s

What does it mean to be a “traditional” woman?

I have no idea because the definition for “traditional” women that certain people keep espousing has never existed. Women have always worked (out of the home), women have always had opinions, and women have wanted to be in the driver’s seat of their own lives. 

I recently read two books about women in the 1970s. The first was The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America, 1963-1973 by Clara Bingham. The second was The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. You are likely somewhat familiar with the second book. Not only does The Stepford Wives have two movie adaptations (the 1975 version is way better than 2004 version), it’s also become part of the American lexicon to mean the perfect, if creepily robotic woman whose only interest is keeping house and pleasing her husband. Trad wife is a close synonym (in my not to humble opinion).

Reading The Movement before The Stepford Wives helped me to better understand the references and mindset of the latter. The Movement is “a comprehensive and engaging oral history of thedecade that defined the feminist movement” that incorporates intersectional view points that aren’t just from middle aged white suburban women. Bingham makes sure to include view points from more conservative feminists (well the moderates), radicals, LGBTQIA+ people, Black women, Latinas, and their allies. 

Technically, The Movement covers more of the 1960s than the 1970s. The 1960s is when the ball started rolling for the second wave feminists. The National Organization for Women (NOW) was started in the 1960s, Project Jane (abortion access in Chicago) was being set up, and Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to the US Congress in 1968.

The 1970s part of the book shows the accomplishes made after a decade of fighting for Women’s Rights and what fell through the cracks. The 1970s feminist movement stemmed out of the 1960s sexual revolution and adapted techniques used by the Civil Rights Movement to promote equality of the sexes. NOW was literally supposed to be the women’s version of the NAACP. It’s in the text of The Movement.

The book is all interviews. There are three parts that divide up the decade. Each part has 19 to 21 chapters. Bingham conducted interviews, reviewed archived interview transcripts, and pulled quotes from primary sources to piece together the many moving parts that defined the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. 

It was fascinating and showed the importance of balancing the moderate and the radical in any movement anxious for change. It warned about the problems that happen when progress isn’t followed through with (think the Equal Rights Amendment) and how one person can ruin everything for political clout (like Universal Childcare that was a bipartisan bill vetoed by Nixon). 

It’s not a map or guide for how to create change. The book shows how the US got to where it is today, how hard people fought for the good things we have now, and how those things are threatened today.

Which brings me to my next book.

I first saw the movie, “The Stepford Wives” (1975) in my late 20s. The scene that always stands out to me is when Joanna goes to confront her “changed” friend Bobbie hysterically asking her if she bleeds. Joanna is desperate, she knows she’s going to “change” next, and she realizes how much her husband and the other men in the community have betrayed her and their wives.

Fun fact, the guy who wrote The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin, also wrote The Boys From Brazil and Rosemary’s Baby. How this man is able to tap in the very real paranoia and anxiety women feel and authentically bring it to the page is amazing. I knew the ending of The Stepford Wives going into it. That didn’t stop me from hoping Joanna would do the selfish, yet self preservation choice of leaving her kids, not confronting her husband, and just driving far away. The kids weren’t even in any danger. She could have gotten them back later.

It’s a slow burn thriller that knows how to use gaslighting to the max. It’s also only 120 pages - a weekend read.

I have some many questions following up on The Stepford Wives. Do the kids, especially the girls worry that their fathers will “change” them, too? How do the “changed” women age? Why don’t the pets react negatively to the “changed” women? Do their families outside the area not question ANY of this?

Though I don’t feel capable of writing it, I would like to a follow up to The Stepford Wives following Joanna’s daughter Kim’s point of view. She would have been in the early years of elementary school and would have had memories of her mom before she “changed”. She could compare notes with her childhood friends and older brother, slowly peeling away the horror that her father put her mother through. 

Someone who is not me, please write this.

If you want to make a better future for the next generation, it’s good to know the history of the foundation you’re building a movement on. It’s important to know how hard the people who came before fought to get we are now, how easy it is to backslide, and why these things are important. I’m an independent person who doesn’t want to answer to anyone (especially after reading The Stepford Wives). I don’t want to take for granted the rights I have.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off), please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.