I teach a film studies unit for my Intermediate Theatre class, and this year I replaced
The Dark Knight, which I had grown excruciatingly exhausted teaching, with
Jaws, which I
never get tired of ... anything. And while I was teaching it, I realized how much of it follows the "horror in the daylight" trope that Katya and I have spent much time discussing, and that Davey loves so much. (Someday Katya and I will do an episode on the
entire Jaws quadrology -- which is totally a word I just now invented and plan to use forevermore -- all four of 'em ... even
Jaws: The Revenge. Especially
Jaws: The Revenge.) It's bad enough that something horrible lurks beneath the surface of a place we treat as a recreational toy, waiting to explode from the water and chomp us to death in a horrible fountain of our own blood, but for it to happen in broad daylight, when we can actually
see, and should be able to defend ourselves ...? Unacceptable.
I started considering this post when I found this "deleted" image from an earlier trial of the Alex Kintner death scene (you know, the poor kid who finds himself on the wrong end of the shark's serrated titular teeth). Now, I love me the original scene (you can see it in gif format below), but there is something really, truly horrible about the maw of this leviathan beast just
looming over doomed little Alex and his soon-to-be-tattered yellow raft.
In broad daylight.
Ohmygod. You can
totally see his awful little eye and the top of his snout.
The schlub in the pond, otherwise known as "the estuary victim." The first time we get a pretty good look at the shark, and it's unnerving as hell.
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