Religious symbolism in Jaws?
 

My girlfriend is trying to do a little research on the religious (specifically Christian) symbolism in the movie "Jaws" for work (she works in a church). I've never been aware of any such symbolism, and my google searches have come up empty, but at least one coworker of hers seems to think that it exists. Can anyone help us see the light?

Roy Schieder blew up a great white shark.....just like Jesus did.

Hmm...she says a hail mary during the opening attack.

Early trailers referred to the shark as "the devil himself."

Brody overcomes his own fears of water to put his community before him, and all without want of reward. This fits in well with Romans 15:1-2, as well as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

...Hmm, it's as if I recently did a project similar to this...

you could cross parallel the Jaws story with the Exodus story or Noah and the Ark (the Jonah story ;) )

I don't know. Is there anything in the Bible about "seeing things that aren't there"?

I agree. This a huge stretch and I think most of the references are pretty weak.


You could consider the "breaking bread" scene biblical when Hooper offers Broody a pretzel.

The references are thin.


SPOILER:


You could say that Quint's final pose is very Christ-like, but that's stretching it.

Bruce is King of the Sharks (Jews). The fisherman (Romans) killed him.

I guess you can find religious symbolism in anything if you try.



http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/projects...oc_2002/A7.htm

Of course, hidden biblical characters do not have to be limited to human beings to have religious import. For example, critics have considered the marauding Great White Shark with its smart, malignant disposition in Jaws as a nature symbol of “menacing evil” (Malone, 1988, p. 35), or as “a demonic representative of the Dark Force” (Drummond, 1996, p. 219), possibly “the devil incarnate” (Kozloff, 1981, p. 82). Mythologically speaking, Lee Drummond (1996, p. 205) considered Jaws to be “old semiotic wine in the new cultural bottles of the moving picture” whilst biblicists Jewett and Lawrence (1977, p. 142) considered the filmic narrative as an American monomyth that had fused together “Apocalyptic...[and] retributive ecstasy.” They considered the story to be situated in an “Edenic setting...Amity Island...[which] suggests paradisal qualities” (p. 149), indeed, “Amity is Eden compared to New York” (p. 151). It subsequently featured “a disruption of paradise by evil” (p. 149) in the form of a killer shark variously characterised by Lee Drummond (1996) as “a demonic being unleashed from the dark recesses of the Death Force...[it was] Animal as an Evil Other” (p. 219), it was “the face of Evil itself” (p. 220), “an evil, malignant thing of the sea” (p. 221).

Jaws had plenty of blood (itself an iconic feature of Christianity) and was a film which Jewett and Lawrence (1977, p. 156) characterised as a “redemption drama with a sexually segmented redeemer.” This redeemer was in the form of Sheriff Brody, the resident “patriarchal savior of the community” (Ryan & Kellner, 1988, p. 57) who had to combat the evil shark as his professional nemesis (biologically, socially, spiritually, metaphorically). Indeed, Jane Caputi (1978, p. 309) argued that: “Christian symbolism in Jaws extends beyond its echoes of Leviathan,” that is, the biblical forerunner to the monster shark (Ps. 74:13-14). She considered that the film’s three main protagonists, Sheriff Brody (Roy Schneider), shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) are a “surrogate Christian Trinity” (p. 310). “We need not strain to discern that these three men are the superstar surrogates of three other well-known figures, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of the Christian religion [Matt. 28:19], performing their appointed and mythic mission” (pp. 310-311).

In any case, “Jaws affirms that we live in a good world which, despite horrors, is not destroyed by an evil principle” (Malone, 1988, p. 35), but who is itself obliterated by Sheriff Brody as the conquering Christ-figure. The sacred had once again defeated the sinister. Why is Brody triumphant? In addition to it being an expected Hollywood convention, the shark is “a metaphoric projection of fear” (Ryan & Kellner, 1988, p. 168) and so this “Evil must vanish from the face of the earth” (Britton, 1979, p. 54) to ensure everlasting peace. Well, almost, until its many filmic sequels with its equally menacing relatives arrived! Indeed, the death-based “reward for the audience conforms to a Deuteronomic pattern of compensating every virtue and punishing every vice” (Jewett & Lawrence, 1977, p. 159). Sheriff Brody (metaphorically Jesus/Good) wins, the shark (metaphorically the Devil/Evil) looses, and safety and order (moral, spiritual, physical, social) returns to Amity Island (metaphorically a peaceful Edenic world once again).

The shark is Catholic.

Amity is populated with communion wafers that use wine as blood.

I'm sure if you researched the religious symbolism of Moby Dick you could find a lot of similarities with Jaws. Just replace "Ishmael" with "Quint" and "White Whale" with "Great White Shark". :D2:

It's a place to start at least.

Oh my freaking God, my wife's gonna have to take me to the hospital, I'm laughing so hard! :lol:

Actually, wasn't the original tagline: "JAWS...what would Jesus chew?"?

Didn't Brody and Noah's wife say "You're gonna need a bigger boat". ??

:thumbsup:

"That's some bad hat, Harry." can also refer to the Crown of Thorns.

Yeah, I got nothing.

What does it say about all the supposed Christian symbolism in Jaws, when you consider it was made by a Jew?

Speilberg must be laughing himself silly. I would.

Just goes to show you that there's no greater delusion than self-delusion.

three people went after the shark, I have had lots of classes on symbolism, and anytime there are "3" of anything it means something...

Reminds me of this girl I knew who was writing a detailed thesis on the Christian symbolism in Kafka's work. She asked me to read it and give my opinions. I took the copy she gave me and I gave it back to her with only one note:

Kafka was Jewish.

Jaws is actually about the birth of Christ.

If someone can claim a homosexual subtext in Happy Feet, why not religious symbolism in Jaws?

how wonderfully short-sighted of you!!! :) :) :)

"Jaws" real title was "Jews".

Jaws 3 (that is the one that takes place at Seaworld isn't it?):

Man kills baby shark (Jesus). Mama shark (God) gets pissed off and dooms man.

So is Spielberg.