PARENTAL GUIDANCE
Ducked out of the rain to catch the 50th anniversary re-release of Jaws and soak in the sea-salty, blood-stained atmosphere of Amity Island with Chief Brody, Matt Hooper, and Captain Quint—only to find a mostly empty cinema, save for a young mother with two small children sitting half a dozen rows down from me.
My first thought was what a great mother she must be, bringing her kids to see a classic movie. Then my moral conscience kicked in: what on earth is she doing to those kids? They’re going to be traumatised and never go near water again. I once made the mistake of joking to my daughter that baby sharks could swim up through the U-bend of a toilet, and she never forgave me for the terror that idea induced.
I waited for screams and tears (especially during the Ben Gardner boat scene), but they never came. I started wondering what kind of mutant children we’re producing these days—kids more upset by having to sit still for a few hours than by being paralysed with fear in their seats, clearly desensitised to the horrors of the deep that Spielberg and his crew so expertly crafted. If a grown man (i.e., me) can still feel his pulse quicken after watching the greatest jump scare in film history more times than he can remember, how can a four- and five-year-old boy and girl not scream the place down?
Tired from munching on carbs, I’ll admit I dozed off for a bit during the movie. I woke up around the second half and enjoyed that woozy, dream-haze feeling of being on the Orca with Quint and the boys—through the engine steam, the tying of rope knots, those macho monologues, and the firing off of yellow harpoon barrels. There’s something about the second half of the movie that seems to exist in its own space and time, free from the land-bound anchor of the first half, where everything feels reactive to events rather than proactive, as it does at sea.
It also amazes me how many different shots Spielberg managed to employ on that small, beat-up vessel over such a considerable stretch of screen time. We’re not talking about the HMS Surprise here.
As the credits rolled with Brody and Hooper paddling back to shore after blowing up the beast, and John Williams’ score shifted into a more serene orchestral resolution after the endlessly stalking two-note dread motif, I made my way out of the cinema—only to find a massacred frenzy of popcorn all across the seats where the kids had been sitting. It looked as if they’d devoured it as viciously as Jaws did with Ben Gardener and his boat.
Perhaps they weren’t frightened by the shark because the little terrors had the exact same instincts as the Great White.
Just with popcorn!