Word: sharked
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...happen often. Unlike The towering Inferno, which might strike one building in the whole country in an entire year, shark attacks can hit an area five times in two months as they did in Florida this summer. The point is that the chances of getting gobbled up by a shark, however slim, are good enough to get a lot of people thinking it could happen to them...
...pretty exotic. Sharks have been around in basically the same form they are in now for about 63 million years. They have some mysterious soft staying power that bypassed their early contemporaries the dinosaurs and icthyosaurs. Yet no one knows how many types exist or how many attack humans. No one can predict for sure how they will belive in captivity, much less in their natural habitat. Or as one shark expert told Time. "Of course their actions are predictable." The problem is that "we are still so totally ignorant of shark behavior that...
...cinematic entertainment Uaws is already overtaking the Godfather in box-office revenues). But its appeal transcends the fright of the victim. The audience can also identify with the aggressor. You don't see the first two attacks from the victim's perspective. You don't even see the shark. What you see is a naked pair of nubile legs fluttering several feet above, or two tiny feet kicking a rubber raft a short distance to the surface. You circle around, sensing your prey, and when you're sure, you rise up at full speed...
Jaws is almost like a latent dream. While the observer may not consciously realize it, the film offers a metaphor for aggression. It plays out violent tendencies willed but suppressed by the spectator. The relief that meets the end of each shark attack does not just come with the certainty of death, it also marks the relaxation following a thorough purge. Sort of like an easy feeling of release you'd get if you told off the bastard who just fired you. Earthquake had a similiar man-on-the street life gamble element to it but it played on violence...
...best-seller as well as most of the character conflicts and shoots for the thrills. The only problem is that character development in the novel not only served to relieve tension, it also offered several different, presumably philosophical perspectives on the beast. Matt Hooper, the icthyologist, sees the shark as a work of almost supernatural beauty. "It's the kind of thing that makes you believe in a god." To Police Chief Brody the shark is an invincible nightmare of violence and guts, a glittering evil intelligence that forces him into the ring to defend the good town of Amity...