Lessons From Jaws
Everybody knows Jaws, right? I mean, even if you've never seen the film, you know it's about a great white shark terrorizing the tourists in an American beach town, and the heroic endeavors of the film's protagonist who in the end manages to kill the man-eater.
Image by Loren Javier - source: Flickr
So what do we learn from this classic motion-picture? Is it that great white sharks are dangerous? Or that the mountains are a much saver destination for your next vacation? Do we learn something about how perseverance, courage and self-sacrifice saves the day? Or that music is essential to creating the ominous atmosphere needed to convey a sense of fear and immediate urgency in the audience? I mean, the John Williams musical score has become even more famous than the film itself. All of the above are good answers, but the most important one is missing. Here's the voice-over from the original trailer:
There's a creature alive today, who has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating-machine. It will attack and devour anything. It is as if God created the Devil, and gave him... Jaws!
Then we see an innocent girl being pulled down in the water by an unseen underwater predator; this film is truly masterful in creating suspense, and that's what it's remembered for mainly. However, the film carries a far more important message, and that is that capitalism is evil. That capitalism values money over human life and human safety. Let me refresh your memory and explain what I mean by that.
In the film's opening the protagonist Martin Brody, who is the new sheriff of the fictional Amity Island beach-town in New England, discovers the mangled remains of a young girl. After investigating he learns she was the victim of a shark-attack. Naturally, Brody immediately goes to the town's mayor to inform him that the beach should be closed to prevent further mayhem and loss of human lifes. What follows is a display of the power of money; the mayor and several businessmen oppose the idea of closing the beach, which would cost the town a lot of tourism money, especially with the 4th of July celebrations just around the corner. The mayor wants Brody to say the victim's death was caused by a motorboat propeller instead of a shark, because the thought of a shark in Amity's waters would drive tourists away from Amity. This is a clear case of suppressing information in order to safeguard profits.
Later in the film we're introduced to a rugged fisherman, a genuine shark-hunter named Quint, who offers to find the shark and kill it. The town's mayor decides against it; he thinks saving the lifes of innocent townsfolk and tourists isn't worth the 10,000 dollar price asked by Quint. Noteworthy is also that the mayor rejects the findings of the scientists' conclusions and warnings throughout the film; he ignores the science when it stands in the way of making a buck. Where have you heard that before? The phrase "climate change is a hoax" comes to mind. The mayor even goes so far as to encourage the people to go swimming on the 4th of July, just like the American government keeps encouraging the fossil fuel industry. Only when yet another tourist is killed on that day, and only when the mayor learns that his own kids are on the beach as well, he agrees to hiring Quint in order to find and kill the shark.
Jaws Official Trailer #1
That's what we learn from Jaws. Go back to the voice-over text from the trailer; except for the "millions of years of evolution" everything there could well be said about capitalism. It truly devours anything in its path because of its unwavering tendency to commodify literally everything, to the point that there's a price-tag on human life itself. Right now the whole world is anxiously watching the spreading of the coronavirus, and in America we're already seeing how capitalism and the profit motive will decide who will survive. The problem with capitalism, with its core structure is that everything is reduced to the individual, and that there's no room for any sense of community. In America therefore your health is your responsibility, and yours alone. This is completely ignoring the reality; if you catch a cold, chances are you got it from someone else. My health directly influence the health of everyone around me; healthcare, like education and many other things we all want and need in life, is a shared responsibility, and this recent outbreak illustrates that truth perfectly.
The responsible thing to do is to do everything possible to prevent further spreading of the virus, so authorities everywhere are starting to advice people to let themselves get checked by a doctor. But if you live in America and are poor, there's no way you can afford that check. How many people do not go to a doctor because of the huge costs for doing so? This is why healthcare should always be free at the point of service. This is the only way to give substance to the most basic so called "unalienable rights" which the United States Declaration of Independence says have been given to all humans by their creator, and which governments are created to protect. But that's not the news. The news is how the virus will cost the aviation business and airlines, just how the news around climate change is around what a transition to green and renewable energy is about what it will cost. One of the criticisms against healthcare for all is how it would make thousands of people in the health insurance industry jobless, just like going off fossil fuel would eliminate thousands of jobs in the fossil fuel industry. Well, stopping wars would cost thousands of military personnel their jobs; is that a valid reason to not stop wars? Some things, and I would say many things, should not have a price-tag...
Now, in closing, the news about the Democratic primaries from today, the day before supertuesday. The developments today are another sign of how we're in a race of money against human decency. Today the Warren campaign openly admitted what we already know: she will stay in the race ONLY to stop Bernie Sanders from getting a majority of the delegates and to ENSURE a contested convention as much as possible. In an effort to stop Bernie Sanders, and possibly under pressure from his big money donors, who certainly don't want to see Sanders win, Pete Buttigieg stepped out of the race. Hours later, Klobuchar followed suit and dropped out as well, but she also announced she'll be endorsing Biden. So now we have the two horse race we've all been expecting since this charade began more than a year ago, with the added spice of back-stabber Warren thrown in just to be able to play the role of "kingmaker" for Biden in a brokered convention. Today's dropouts might very well cause Biden and Warren to reach the 15% threshold needed to be eligible for delegates in California, Texas and many other supertuesday states, taking many delegates previously expected to go to Sanders... The net is closing in on Bernie. The Democratic party establishment is unified against him, and consequently unified against their own voter-base who overwhelmingly support Bernie's proposed policies. They already admitted that they don't care if this damages the party, they don't care if this results in Trump easily winning the general elections; they don't care about you, your well-being or the country. Like Amity Island's mayor and businessmen they care only about their own position and their own income. The Jaws musical score would be well suited to accompany the suspense that's building in this real world race against the monsters that lurk beneath the swamp's surface...
BREAKING: Klobuchar Dropping Out & Endorsing Biden!
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