4 Life Lessons we learned from ‘JAWS’
Recently, the internet celebrated the 42nd Anniversary of the Stephen Spielberg Thriller; JAWS. Now that it is summer, July in particular, we can turn our attention to Shark Week which will air at the end of this month. The line-up consists of several exciting events and shows, including Michael Phelp’s insane ‘race a great white shark’ challenge.
I don’t know about anyone else but the very first thing that I think of whenever someone says ‘Great White Shark’, is JAWS. The very first time that I saw the movie was at Wildwood, NJ when I was eight. My dad was attempting to teach my brother and I some sort of life lesson about going too far out into the water away from the shore. Let me tell you something, it certainly worked! As a matter of fact, I’m almost positive I took up shell collecting as a hobby that summer.
Nowadays, cage diving with great whites is something that is on my bucket list, despite the events that occurred in the movie ’42 Meters Down’. While I’m anxiously awaiting seeing nature’s most graceful and beautiful predators, I can’t help but reflect on certain events that occurred in JAWS.
Here is a list of life lessons that you could say I learned from JAWS:
- No one listens to the Shark Expert
I mean, why would anyone want to listen to the guy who spent a lifetime studying the creatures of the sea when you can say ‘to hell with it’ and get that summer tan. It’s not like he’s got a degree in this particular subject or anything, oh wait….
- Your Boat is NEVER big enough
Probably one of, if not, the most iconic line from the movie. The fair sheriff had a point, they did need a bigger boat. However, if you’ve seen the size of the beast himself, you know that no matter what the boat size was, he would have still probably taken it down.
- Nails on a Chalkboard is an Attention-Seeking Tactic
I honestly don’t know which scenes in the movie made me cringe more, the whole shark swimming around and eating people thing or this iconic scene where Quint scrapes his nails along the chalk board to get the attention of the room where he tells the mayor for $10,000 he will bring him ‘the head, the tail, the whole damn thing’. Since when did city hall meetings go from raising your hand to make a statement to shrilling your fellow townspeople’s ears? Sheesh!
- The key to defeating a shark is to get him to ‘smile pretty’
If kicking it doesn’t work, ramming it with your boat won’t slow it down and you can’t get a clear body shot… what do you have left to do in order to defeat a gigantic man-eating shark? Make is smile, apparently! After tossing an oxygen tank into the water for the shark to eat (weirdo shark… who eats metal?), all Sheriff Brody had to do was to get the beast to smile so that he could get his shot in and blow the shark outta the water, literally.
When was the first time you saw JAWS? Did you learn any fun or valuable life lessons!?
Julia recently published her first novel, titled; Anomic. She is currently co-authoring a novel called ‘Snow Falls’. She has a B.A in Communications with concentrations in Professional Writing and Public Relations. She is also in the United States Army Reserves as a Military Police Officer, and is currently in the process of going back to school for her Masters Degree in Business. When she isn’t writing, she is co-owner of a film production studio called ‘Valentine Productions LLC’ and she frequently spends her weekends acting in films, or being a stuntwoman.
