Gunnar
Nystrom
Ms.
Waggoner
Intermediate
Composition
21
November 2014
The Great White Inequality
In the summer of 1975, something
incredible happened, but only those who witnessed it will understand it. A
cultural revolution was created, it was a revolution that hit home for many
people, one that encouraged fear and created what is known today as the summer
blockbuster. After all, this was the year when the White Shark finally became
known as “Great”. It was the year of Jaws.
The movie Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg, may have incited a global fear
and a cultural transformation, but it was a change that resulted from a
structural inequality. When looking at the film industry, the Representation
Test is a way for Hollywood to determine a movie’s structural inequality. The
Representation Test is a media tool used to score a movie’s overall diversity
through a variety of different criteria. According to Andrea Lunsford in her
book Everything’s an Argument,
“authority can be conveyed through fairly small signals that readers may pick
up almost subconsciously”(Lunsford 59). It should be noted that this test does
provide a level of authority even though some of its points may be hard to
recognize and comprehend.
The first category of the Representation
Test concerns the issues and ideas associated with women in the movie. The
first criterion associated with women asks if the protagonist is a woman and if
so, is the protagonist a woman of color? The protagonist is in fact not a
woman, but rather Chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider. Chief Brody, the chief
of the Amity police department is a typical American white male who is married
with a family. In addition, there aren’t any women of color with speaking roles
in the movie. However, Jaws does
score one point in the women category because it portrays women as something
more than “objects for the male gaze”. For example, in one of the first scenes
of the movie, we see Chief Brody with his family sitting on a public beach. His
wife and the other women in the scene are wearing sunglasses, a sunhat, and a
one-piece swimsuit causing them to seem pretty covered up when realizing that
they are at a public beach. The director seems to have wanted the audience to
focus more on the beach environment and the mood of the scene. This allowed the
movie creators to develop an emotional appeal as the blissful mood is instantly
destroyed by the eruption of the shark into the scene.
The second category for the
Representation Test involves the determination of structural equality
concerning men. According to the test, Jaws
receives two of the four possible points because it avoids glorifying
violent men, and it avoided perpetuating an extreme and unhealthy body ideal
for me. Take Robert Shaw’s character, Quint for example. Quint is a master
fisherman who is hired by the council of Amityville to hunt the shark, and he
is probably the only violent character in the movie. Yet, his violence is not
glorified because of the fact that he is killed in a rather vicious manner by
the shark. This also allows the movie to
generate a slight feminist perspective since it is the so-called “best man for
the job” that is devoured by the shark.
The next two categories include whether
or not the film avoids celebrating racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes,
and if the protagonist or other characters are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or
transgender. Unsurprisingly, Jaws
doesn’t really display any racial stereotypes, possibly because the director
and producers did not want any racial stereotypes to take away from the
storyline and cinematography in the film. But it is important to point out the
fact that the movie is centered in a town dominated by Caucasians with the city
council being made up of only white males. In addition, there are no lesbian,
gay, bisexual, or transgender characters in the movie that would result in an
overall increase in diversity. The film continues to show a decrease in
equality as the last category for the Representation test is approached.
The
last section refers to the inclusion of people with disabilities, and when
considering the circumstance that the protagonist is not a person with
disabilities and that there are no characters with disabilities, no points are
rewarded. The film also neglects to earn any bonus points when cogitating about
the fact that the movie was written and directed by white males. By the end of
the Representation Test the movie Jaws was
able to score a 4, resulting in a C grade in terms of equality. This brings up
a point of conflict, because it doesn’t make sense how such a critically
acclaimed (8.1/10 on IMDb) and historically classic movie can be considered
structurally unequal. Yet, American society continues to accept inequality in
film as a socially tolerable ideal even if a movie is of sub-par achievement.
In the end, the results of the
Representation Test do not seem that surprising because the film and production
industry is a business engendered by white males. It’s also important to
recognize that Jaws is a 29-year-old
movie and while gender and racial inequality were an issue in 1975, they are
nowhere near as big of an issue as they are today. Therefore, it’s
understandable that an older movie would not score well on the test for
fundamental equality. However, that’s not to say that the Representation Test
isn’t a fair scoring system. At a first glance, the test definitely appeals to
a more “feminist” type and genre of film, but on deeper investigation it is
just checking to see if a movie portrays women as less intelligent, worthy, or
sensible than men. After all, the test allows 24 possible chances to score a
point when only 11 points (~46%) are required for an A grade.
The Representation test provides a movie
with an incredible amount of opportunities and practically serves a passing
score on a silver platter. So the fact that a large proportion of popular
movies fail this test is absolutely shocking. In addition, Jaws should only be awarded 3 pickles for its average, passing
grade. The argument can be made that we live in a world where the “screens are
dominated by soulless movies full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing”(Giannetti 35). As a result, directors and producers of various movies
may place less importance on equality if the “sound and fury” is what is going
to make the most money. This leads to the continuation of inequality as a
problem in current film, because society will still gather at movie theaters to
watch blockbuster hits like Jaws. Sometimes
inequality is the price we must pay for invention and creativity.
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