Movies without Mexicans part 4

Jaws at 50 and metaphors for racism and xenophobia

Hi, folks. How are you? Yeah…me too. So, I found a piece that I started writing almost exactly a year ago. It’s scrawled on a handwritten note that I filed away after a recent viewing of the film Jaws (1975).

JAWS

There are no Black
or Brown people 
in Jaws
unless you count the shark
as a metaphor
for desegregation 
then, all of a sudden
it's a film about
white panic
over Black and Brown invasion
of white only spaces
and the replacement
of the white race
The fishermen, the sheriff and the mayor 
are every bit as relevant 
as the KKK and militias
of men hunting runaway slaves
or ICE hunting
‘illegal’ immigrants
which may as well be the same thing
When they kill the shark at the end
it signifies the death of
equal opportunity under the law
and the sacrifice of the idea 
that all men are created equal
or that there is indeed 
a thing called liberty
and justice
for all.

Jaws was filmed in 1975 and directed by Stephen Spielberg. The film is celebrating its 50th anniversary and I think it’s worth mentioning that it can be viewed in one of many ways. Sure, everyone has seen it a bazillion times but have you really seen it?

It’s based on a novel written in 1974 by Peter Benchley in which the author drew from real life accounts of shark attacks in the 1960s.

At the time in the U.S, racial tensions were high to say the least.

I’d argue they are just as high, if not higher, now. At that time, women were just barley allowed to apply for credit cards if that tells you anything about the political climate of the era.

You had Vietnam, race riots and then along came Jaws.

Long time readers will know that I’ve written a couple of these articles about ‘movies without Mexicans’ in a series here. You can find them here:

It’s always amusing to me to find films that are glaringly white.

I’m aware that Jaws is meant to be a movie taken at face value about a scary shark but I find it impossible to do so when things are so obviously skewed one way or another on the screen.

Truth be told, Jaws does, in fact, have a couple of Black people in it as extras, mostly on the beach. They’re hard to find if you’re not looking for them. So, I can’t claim it’s an exclusively white film but it’s pretty close.

Also, I’ll be damned if there are any Mexicans in that movie.

Should there be? Would it change the film if there were?? What if Quint were played by Pedro Pascal…?

The film feels alien in that it is so overwhelmingly white for most of its 124 minutes. And I realize that most people don’t go looking for this sort of thing but once you see it, it’s hard to ignore.

Considering that the film is so overwhelmingly white, and the era that it was made in, with just a teeny, tiny smattering of color here and there on the screen, I think you can make the shark an analogy for many things, none of them good.

Films are rarely literal; more often than not you will find hidden meanings in otherwise unassuming stories. In this instance, it occurred to me that, considering the era and the production, the film Jaws could very well be about forced integration and the white panic/violence that resulted from that in the U.S. during the civil rights era.

Has anyone ever asked Spielberg about that? I doubt it.

Try watching the film again from that angle and you will see a whole new film.

I would argue that the film Jaws viewed from the lens of right now could very well be seen as a tale of immigration in Trump’s ameriKKKa as told by demented ghoul Stephen Miller.

Jaws represents widespread white panic and violence in response to invading hordes of Brown and non-Christian gangs.

It represents a fabricated theory of “replacement” of white men at the top of the food chain.

The menacing shark is a vivid and bloody metaphor for illegal immigration who is coming to eat your women, children and to devour your economy.

The ending of the film is a giant metaphor for the public execution of civil rights for Brown/Black people in the name of keeping white ameriKKKa safe and making it “great” again.

Or not.

Art is, of course, subjective, but these are the kinds of things that speak through these kinds of films when there are such glaring omissions from them and such outrageous villains.

• S/C