'Jaws': The Shifting Models Of Masculinity In Steven Spielberg's Blockbuster

One of the funniest moments in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” – released 45 years ago this week, and out in a new anniversary 4K edition from Universal Home Video – is also one of the simplest. Its three protagonists – resort town police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), grizzled shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw), and oceanographer Matthew Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) – have set out on Quint’s boat to hunt down the shark at the story’s center. Quint, sitting on the deck with his feet up, finishes a beer and, staring young, brainy Hooper directly in the eye, crushes the can with his bare hands. Hooper, without breaking eye contact, finishes the tiny, paper cup of water he’s been sipping, and crushes it right back, with a sad little fold.

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It’s a fun bit of character comedy, underlining that the reason this film connected so strongly with audiences upon its release in 1975, and has maintained that hold ever since, was not simply a matter of special effects (since the mechanical shark barely worked) or jump scares (which are only occasional). “Jaws” works, to a great extent, because it’s not about a shark but about people, these three people in particular, and the tension between their distinct personalities. The beer can/paper cup moment is funny, but it also summarizes and symbolizes the thematic conflict at the center of the movie – and the era.

So it’s important to recontextualize the picture to its moment. And “its moment” isn’t purely about the vaunted New Hollywood (though that matters), or the political atmosphere of a film about a weasely, corrupt government official released the year after Nixon’s resignation (ditto). What’s fascinating about “Jaws” from a sociological standpoint is what it has to say about masculinity, and it was released into a world where those ideas were shifting beneath people’s feet. The woman’s movement was in full flower; Ms. Magazine was in its fourth year of publication, the Equal Rights Amendment was working its way through the states, and figures like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan were driving the conversation. 

And thus, conventional notions of masculinity were in flux, throughout the culture but particularly in the movies. Paul Newman and Robert Redford were among the biggest stars of the day, the perfect mixture of winking intelligence and matinee-idol good looks, but less conventionally handsome actors – Dustin Hoffman, Elliot Gould, George Segal, and even Walter Matthau – were also landing roles that placed them at the center of contemporary stories.   

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So in “Jaws,” director Spielberg and screenwriters Peter Benchley (adapting his bestseller) and Carl Gottlieb craft three protagonists that fall on distinctive points in the masculinity continuum. Quint, the traditionally “macho” figure, is heard before he’s seen, running his fingernails down a chalkboard and growling his inflexible offer for hunting down the shark that’s brought the island town of Amity to its knees: “I’ll find him for three, but I’ll catch him, and kill him, for ten.” And that price comes with a condition: “Ten thousand dollars for me, by myself,” because he’s the lone wolf, the hunter, the cowboy.

Brody sits somewhere in the middle. He’s a fairly traditional figure, in terms of gender roles: a family man, with a housewife, kids, truck, white picket fence, and the square-jawed profession of lawman. But he’s also not a vulgarian like Quint, nor as chest-pounding macho; for example, he harbors an unapologetic fear of the water and doesn’t care who knows about it. And he’s capable of admitting his mistakes – when confronted by the mother of a child who died on his watch, Brody resists the deflections of the mayor (“I’m sorry, Martin. She’s wrong.”) because he knows she’s right. And he takes responsibility.

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And then there’s Hooper, an “expert from the Oceanographic Institute on the Mainland,” who first appears among the lunkheaded fisherman swarming the town for the grieving mother’s reward money. Attempting to lend a hand, he’s immediately jeered and condescended to by the fishermen, who see him as an egghead, a four-eyes, and (later) a trust fund kid. A movie from before this era might have cast him in the same light. But the fishermen are clearly viewed as yahoos in the out-to-sea scene that follows, hooting and hollering and tossing firecrackers, and when they return from their expedition, Hooper’s got their number, fully aware that “the chances that these bozos got the right shark” are slim to none. In his case, it’s not presumption based on appearance; as he explains to the mayor and the chief, “The bite radius on this shark is different from the wounds on the victim.” He’s right, of course, but the politician doesn’t want to hear the inconvenient facts, to the science, from the expert. (Sound familiar?)

One of the most perceptive touches in the script, in fact, is how quickly Brody and Hooper size each other up and know they’re in this thing together – and that they’re up against a bunch of morons. “You know, you’re gonna be the only rational man left on this island after I leave tomorrow,” Hooper tells Brody, though he sticks around long enough to fight a bit more, which leads to the eventual team-up of these three very different men. 

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When Brody insists that all three men go on the voyage, Quint isn’t hearing it: “Mr. Hooper, I’m not talkin’ about pleasure boatin’ or day sailin’. I’m talkin’ about workin’ for a livin’. I’m talkin’ about sharkin‘.” He challenges the younger man to tie a basic knot – forcing him to prove himself a worthy seaman – and growls, “You’ve got city hands, Mr. Hooper. You’ve been countin’ money all your life,” a none-too-subtle anti-Semitic dig. The harassment continues as they load in, and Quint jeers his high-tech equipment (“What are ya, some kinda half-assed astronaut”), and throughout that and the scenes that follow, Quint uses his off-color jokes and sea shanties as an intimidation tactic – one familiar to any bookish kid who’s ever been dragged along on a hunting or fishing trip with a beer-swilling relative. (There’s also a class element to Quint’s resentment, most clearly articulated when he sneers, “You wealthy college boys don’t have the education to admit when you’re wrong.”)

So it’s telling that in order to finally win Quint’s respect – and to stymie the non-stop stream of ball-busting – he has to meet the salty old seaman at his level. Down in the mess, they compare battle scars, trying to top each other (“You wanna see something permanent?” “I got that beat”) and when Quint sees that the young man has, in fact, been through a battle or two, he finally looks at him with affection and asks the question that amounts to tacit approval: “You want a drink?” The two men, and Brody as well, drink together and sing together, and let down their guard; it’s only when that guard is down that they find out why Quint harbors this very particular grievance against sharks. The justly celebrated Indianapolis monologue is a crackerjack piece of writing and spellbinding piece of acting, but it’s also a deliberate bit of myth-making; the filmmakers are giving this character the space to tell his story, and showing him the courtesy of trying to understand why he’s the way he is.

That mythmaking continues into the following scenes when the chase escalates and Quint is seen astride the boat’s front bridge, speargun in hand, as adventurous high-spirited music soars. It’s a hero shot, and a strangely placed one, since he resumes acting irrationally immediately thereafter: smashing the emergency radio, and pushing the boat harder than it can go, over Hooper’s objections. And why? Just to be obstinate? Whatever the reason, they pay for it; the engine billows black smoke and explodes. Only then, when all else fails, does he ask, “Hooper, what all can you do with these things of yours?”

Quint, for all his bluster and bravado, dies screaming in the shark’s mouth. Hooper, for all of his great ideas and high-tech equipment, fumbles in the clutch, and disappears entirely during the final confrontation. That leaves Chief Brody to finally get the job done  – overcoming his fear, improvising a semi-scientific solution, and even dropping an action movie quip before pulling the trigger on the beast. From an analytical perspective, it’s a fascinating choice; Hooper is clearly the Spielberg stand-in, mirroring the director not only in background but appearance, but that character ultimately proves just as ineffectual as the story’s roaring Ahab. The main who solves problem, the movie seems to say, is the one who treads the middle ground – the compromise candidate, if you will, not too tough, but not too brainy either. The egghead couldn’t save the day in 1975; baby steps were necessary. But one can’t help but wonder what kind of an outcome we’d expect today.