{"id":7590,"date":"2017-07-12T16:12:01","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T20:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crookedscoreboard.com\/?p=7590"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:35:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:35:46","slug":"consider-this-jurassic-park-a-feminist-remake-of-jaws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/consider-this-jurassic-park-a-feminist-remake-of-jaws\/","title":{"rendered":"Consider This: <i>Jurassic Park<\/i> a Feminist Remake of <i>Jaws<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I love rewatching my favorite movies. When you sit down to view <i>any <\/i>film, you approach it with your own experience and meet it in the middle. Then, over time, you change and your viewpoints change and you can derive <i>and<\/i> add new meaning by rewatching something that, unless George Lucas was involved, hasn\u2019t changed at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That gives us the opportunity to look back and see what\u2019s changed in the meantime. We can see some distinct differences between two great American classics, <i>Jaws<\/i> (1975) and <i>Jurassic Park<\/i> (1993), both in Spielberg\u2019s approach and in the way we personally and collectively read his works in retrospect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jaws (1975) - Chrissie&#039;s Last Swim Scene (1\/10) | Movieclips\" width=\"760\" height=\"428\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yrEvK-tv5OI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Jaws<\/i> starts with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yrEvK-tv5OI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s2\">this scene<\/span><\/a>. The film was edited by the incomparable (and female) Verna Fields. (You could learn more about editing and pacing from the first five minutes of <i>Jaws<\/i> than I\u2019ve learned in entire semesters of editing courses.) It\u2019s difficult to imagine a more invasive view than the underwater perspective shot of poor nude Chrissie. She\u2019s naked and drunk, which serves multiple purposes: it draws in male viewers to be titillated by the view, but it also effectively blames the victim. It\u2019s hardly even a metaphor for rape \u2014 this scene is essentially a depiction of the act itself. It\u2019s unrelenting; it\u2019s shocking; it\u2019s horrifying and prolonged. When the attack is over, we\u2019re left with devastating silence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We then see scene after scene where the shark attack is denied, explained away, justified, and ignored. Brody is convinced a predator is on the loose, but the girl was probably drunk and probably got hit by a boat. No reason to cause a panic. Chief Brody, a newcomer to Amity Island, allows himself to be slowed by the criticism, bowed under the weight of his new duties. His political clashes slow his response, up until the next attack. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This leads to the critical feminist point of the film, when Mrs. Kintner confronts Brody at the pier for his inaction. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AJLqTYAhlgk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span class=\"s2\">This scene<\/span><\/a> is the one moment in the film where a woman is neither a helpless mother nor a helpless wife. She walks onto a dock full of men celebrating the death of the wrong shark and confronts patriarchy with an open hand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"wrong\" width=\"760\" height=\"428\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AJLqTYAhlgk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While this is a redeeming moment for Mrs. Kintner and a turning point for Brody, it is not quite a redeeming moment for Spielberg. It doesn\u2019t make up for the childish voyeurism or the passive and sparse female characters. Ellen Brody, our protagonist\u2019s worried wife, exits the frame in tears at around the 60% mark after telling her husband she packed his socks, and the only women mentioned after that are ye fair Spanish ladies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Jaws<\/i> is a masterpiece; it\u2019s a product of its time; it\u2019s brilliant, groundbreaking, pulp cinema with depth. It\u2019s one of my favorite films of all time. It\u2019s also not perfect. There\u2019s only one perfect film, and that\u2019s <i>Herbie Fully Loaded<\/i>. <i>Jaws<\/i> could never be perfect to every person because we approach films with our own perspectives. If you\u2019re a woman, you\u2019ll see a different film than a man sees. It\u2019s unavoidable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As has been beaten into the ground by now, any feminist analysis of Spielberg\u2019s works has to take into account the serious lack of female representation in general. But we shouldn\u2019t dismiss any film just because of its apparent lack of progressive perfection. There\u2019s interesting stuff to be learned through others\u2019 shortcomings, especially such beautifully executed shortcomings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Spielberg knows he was young and foolish. He was 27 and unmarried, making a movie on a famously disastrous production schedule. Just a couple years after its release, in fact, he\u2019s quoted as saying, \u201cI have very mixed feelings about my work on that picture, and two or three pictures from now I\u2019m going to be able to look back on it and see what I\u2019ve done.\u201d He later said in an interview for <i>Jaws\u2019 <\/i>home release bonus features, \u201cWhen I first hear the word \u2018Jaws,\u2019 I just think of a period in my life when I was much younger than I am right now and I think because I was younger I was more courageous. Or I was more stupid. I\u2019m not sure which. So when I think <i>Jaws<\/i> I think about courage and stupidity. And I think about both of those things existing underwater.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the film is what it is. You can\u2019t change it; you can\u2019t determine how people will receive it. You can just make another film. Which, of course, he did. A decade and a half later, married, with kids, Spielberg remade the quintessential monster movie with different priorities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Jurassic Park<\/i> has many things in common with <i>Jaws<\/i>. There are scenes and beats recreated throughout the two films that stand out when watched together. There\u2019s a hint of the monster\u2019s arrival \u2014 a ripple in the water. There are beautiful, dimly lit contemplative moments around a dining table. There are detached limbs, and men with funny accents who get eaten.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s also easy to see some of the ways Spielberg learned from his experience with <i>Jaws. <\/i>One of the most obvious ways is in withholding the reveal of the monster until you\u2019re begging to see it. With <i>Jaws<\/i>, that was a necessity: it was an improvised strategy to cover for malfunctioning robotics. With <i>Jurassic<\/i> <i>Park<\/i>, it was intentional. It worked so well the first time and it works again. There\u2019s a joke, a laugh to get you off your guard, and then the monster is there in plain view. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Other similarities are thematic. They both deal with the hubris of man thinking he can resist the ferocity of nature through sheer will, and the men who are destroyed because of it. But they also diverge here. <i>Jurassic Park<\/i> jumps from this point but also seems to make a statement about men <i>specifically<\/i>, not mankind in general. Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) drives it home with her response to Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum):<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">IAN MALCOLM: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">ELLIE SATTLER: Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the earth. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Jurassic Park<\/i>\u2019s first victim is a male park worker who was killed because of the park\u2019s lax stance towards safety. <i>Jaws\u2019<\/i> first victim is a nude female. Granted, the shark in <i>Jaws<\/i> spends the remainder of the film attacking male victims, but in <i>Jurassic Park<\/i>, there are no female characters killed. Rather, the female characters, while still sparse, have prominence in the story, being the figures who at nearly every turn make the decisions to bring the park back online. Timmy and Lex got gender-swapped from Crichton\u2019s source novel, putting Lex as the older sibling, computer-savvy and protective. Dr. Sattler is fierce and wise, feminine, motherly, and solution-oriented. And, of course, the dinosaurs are all female.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Change is unavoidable. All of us change. Viewers change. Filmmakers change. That\u2019s a really good thing. It\u2019s good that none of the work I produced at age 27 will ever be as widely scrutinized as <i>Jaws<\/i>, but that\u2019s the double-edged sword of creating a pivotal piece of art. (Nobody\u2019s dissecting the feminist values of <i>Baby Geniuses<\/i>.) Spielberg didn\u2019t turn from a talented scoundrel to a perfectly progressive inclusive icon in the years between <i>Jaws<\/i> and <i>Jurassic Park<\/i>, or in the years since, but when comparing the two there is a distinct change in perspective. Those films, prominent and pervasive, stand as touchstones in popular and personal history where we can measure our growth against them.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/daxson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Daxson Hale<\/a> lives in Provo, Utah, where people are named things like &#8220;Daxson.&#8221;\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love rewatching my favorite movies. When you sit down to view any film, you approach it with your own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":509,"featured_media":7593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[337,1399,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-looking-back","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}