Personal Response
I watched the movie by myself on my TV with my super cool audio system. It was dark, nobody interrupted me, and I watched it in a single sitting. I really enjoyed the scenes with the barrels. They helped build suspense without having the shark in every scene. I think they didn’t want to show the actual shark too much, but that was great because it would have gotten old.
My favorite character development was Brody. I loved how he got the courage to get in the water, even with his fear, and by the end he totally got over it. The shark effects were probably very advanced for 60 years ago; however, today they weren’t amazing. One thing I really liked was the POV shots from the shark under the water.
I think the movie has many different hidden meanings and interpretations, like the male archetypes shown in Brody, Quint, and Hooper, or the distrust of authority, especially during the Cold War. Nevertheless, I’ll talk about capitalism versus public safety. It is very obvious how the mayor insisted on letting people go into the water just for the profits. He didn’t care about safety, and we can see similar things happening even today.
The government knows the health industry has major issues, and they still allow medications, drugs, and ingredients that could harm public safety because of politics and profit. Here, the shark example is very literal, but in today’s capitalist world we have many “sharks” swimming around, maybe even more than in the ’70s.
