[Jaws] is the ritual retelling of an essential patriarchal myth—male vanquishment of the female symbolized as a sea monster, dragon, serpent, vampire, etc.—administering a necessary fix to a society hooked on and by male control. The purpose of Jaws and other myths of its genre is to instill dread and loathing for the female and usually culminate in her annihilation. (p. 305) The great white shark in Jaws,… actually represents the primordial female and her most dreaded aspects. (pp. 307...

With a shark for a villain, Peter Benchley could hardly have missed making Jaws a best seller, nor is director Steven Spielberg likely to miss with his film adaptation. Benchley and Spielberg's only problem was that a shark is almost too good a villain. What way could they find to oppose such unadulterated power? Put up against the Muhammad Ali of sharkdom, the whole human race looks like a Joe Bugner. The trouble is that where a shark is simple by nature, man is various. Where a shark is unmistakabl...

The right things certainly happen in Jaws. At given moments, the images before us lead to frissons of dread anticipation. The pulses pound. Excitement escalates. And by climax time, when it is impossible to disbelieve that one of the leading actors, screaming and vomiting blood, is actually being swallowed alive by a gigantic shark in an unnerving series of gulps, we are watching movie magic of the highest order. Trickery has mastered the illusion of truth. The film is a condensation of Peter Benchley...

Jaws' singular financial performance is ultimately a matter of the craft of the film-makers involved. Not the art, the craft. Jaws is an extraordinarily well made entertainment…. There isn't an ounce of dead wood in it; it is the sum total of thousands of 'effects' (special and otherwise) tested and tuned to produce the desired response in the audience. Jaws is a landmark of modern cinematic engineering. It is, therefore, something like the ultimate Hollywood movie. Not on...