There are a few movies that have a big and lasting impact on you. For a 13-year-old kid from Ashdown, Arkansas, one of those was Jaws; the story of a great white shark that ate people off the coast of New England.

But it wasn’t just kids from southwest Arkansas who went to see that movie. For that matter, it wasn’t just kids. Everyone in the world, just about, went to see Jaws.

It was 1975, and no one had seen anything like Jaws since possibly Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds 15 years prior.

Even then, there really wasn’t any comparison. In The Birds, the attacks on people were either inferred or softly presented. In Jaws, you saw people eaten.

The fear this movie created was very real. Suddenly, people who’d never given swimming in the ocean a second thought, now wouldn’t step foot in a kiddie pool.

Jaws was a phenomenon.

T-shirts, lunchboxes, board games, and other merchandise were everywhere. Comedians did Jaws jokes. There were novelty records about Jaws played on the radio.

The man who wrote the book Jaws, Peter Benchley, found himself going from obscurity to being front and center in pop culture.

So did the movie’s director. A guy named Steven Spielberg.

Prior to the unbelievable success of Jaws, Spielberg’s few claims to fame included directing an episode of Columbo and the TV movie Duel, which starred Dennis Weaver.

Jaws also made stars of its cast members, including Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw. Arguably, Shaw was already a star, but his role as Captain Quint, the guy hired to catch and eliminate the shark, didn’t hurt his salary demands for projects that came after Jaws.

The impact of this movie is hard to explain to someone who wasn’t here in 1975. If you were around in 1997 when the film Titanic came out, you have some idea. But Jaws was even bigger than Titanic as far as its cultural significance.

The movie spurred me to seek out and read the book, which was the basis for the film.

And the book was far more graphic than the movie. As often is the case, the book was also better than the movie. If my mom had known I was reading it, I likely wouldn’t have been allowed to read it.

If my teacher had known that I would select the story for my oral book report, I probably would have been told to pick something else.

I say that because about one-third of the way through my presentation, my teacher stopped me and told me that was enough. When I explained that I wasn’t finished, she assured me that I was.

I made an A. I’ll always believe that the A was her way of reminding herself that she should preview all seventh grade boys chosen topics before allowing them to get up in front of a room full of kids. Especially if the room has a lot of girls.

The look on the girls’ faces is something I’ve only seen one other time. That was when Roseanne Barr sang the National Anthem at a baseball game.

Jaws didn’t just influence people and culture when it debuted; it influenced people and culture afterwards.

Blockbuster summer movies didn’t exist before Jaws. Today, a movie is considered a failure of it doesn’t make millions. That’s changed the content of films from creative to cash-driven.

Jaws was one of the first films to be advertised and marketed heavily. Today, that’s a given.

Sequels weren’t that common before Jaws. Today, it’s expected. Jaws itself has had three sequels. Not all were good, but most made money.

Before Jaws, a film’s soundtrack might be popular, but Jaws’ accompaniment became its own entity. The two notes that signaled the shark was about to appear could be solved by almost anyone if they were playing, “Name That Tune.”

Jaws was based on a true story that happened on the Jersey Shore in 1916. A period of 59 years passed between then and the movie in 1975.

The year 2025 marks 50 years since Jaws’ theatrical debut.

Anyone who hasn’t seen the movie should. Anyone who has deserves to view it again.

It’s a true American classic. And it’s a much better option than listening to Roseanne sing the National Anthem.

 

©2024 John Moore

John’s books, Puns for Groan People and Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, are available on his website TheCountryWriter.com, where you can also send him a message.