45 Years Ago, ‘Jaws’ Predicted We Wouldn’t Close Beaches For Public Safety

“Larry, if we make an effort today, we might be able to save August.”

I’ve been thinking about that line, spoken in desperation by Roy Scheider in Jaws, a lot recently. In the context of Steven Spielberg’s classic 1975 thriller—which celebrated its 45th anniversary last month, and is currently streaming on HBO Max—it was the Amity chief of police pleading with the mayor to let him shut down the beaches. There had been two fatal shark attacks in the area. The mayor had brushed aside the first as a “boating accident,” and Martin had let it happen. But this time, a little boy was dead. Surely he would listen to reason now, right?

“August?” The mayor replies, incredulous. “For Christ’s sake, tomorrow is the 4th of July. It’s going to be one of the best summers we ever had. Those beaches will be open for this weekend.”

Murray Hamilton, a character actor who also appeared in films like The Graduate and The Amityville Horror before his death in 1986, hits the exact right note of despicable, willful ignorance. The famed mechanical shark may be terrifying, but the real villain of this story—adapted from Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel, who co-wrote the script with Carl Gottlieb—is the politicians who put money before their citizen’s safety. You hate the mayor so much in this moment, and lately, I’ve been hating him even more, because “Those beaches will be open for this weekend” sounds so very similar to the sound-bite Donald Trump gave the press when discussing the national coronavirus-related shut-downs back in March: “I’d love to have it open by Easter.”

Spoiler alert: The mayor doesn’t close the beaches. Or, he does, but only for 24 hours. Other steps are taken: An expert oceanographer, Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) is hired to help identify the deadly shark, and a team of men is sent out to hunt the beast. And they do, indeed, catch a shark. Both the mayor and Chief Brody are elated—until Hooper informs them that the bite marks on the victims don’t match up with this shark’s jawline. The wrong shark was caught, and the real killer is still out there.

The mayor refuses to hear it; refuses to let Hooper perform an autopsy. It’s not the news he wanted to hear. Apparently, the mayor never had any intention of listening to the scientist, despite hiring him for his opinion. Instead, he insists that Brody and Hooper don’t understand this town. Brody only moved in this year, and Hooper’s from out of town. Neither of them, he says, are familiar with how damaging closing the beaches would truly be.

“I think I’m very familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass!” Hooper yells at him. The mayor is unmoved, insisting that the real concern is the vandals defacing their tourist-aimed billboards.

“Amity is a summer town. We need summer dollars. If the people can’t swim here, they’ll be glad to swim at the beaches of Cape Cod, the Hamptons, Long Island,” he insists.

So the beaches re-open. Tourists and citizens flood the shores on the 4th of July. People are nervous, at first, but after gentle nudging from their mayor, they happily splash into the water. After all, it’s summer, it’s a holiday, and they want to have fun. Their government told them it was safe to swim; said that the danger was past. Why not?

Do I even need to outline the parallels? The scientific community told us the COVID-19 pandemic was going to be bad. They told us to the solution was to shut down. They told us it was too early to re-open. They told our governors, and they told our president, and they didn’t listen. They insisted we needed to save the stock market first, and human lives second. We haven’t caught the real shark yet; yet we re-opened the beaches for the 4th of July anyhow. In the case of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, this is not so much a metaphor as it is a literal description of exactly what happened. There have now been over 5,000 COVID-related deaths in the state, with cases peaking the week after the 4th of July holiday. Nationwide, numbers continue to climb. The US death toll from the virus hit more than 146,000 on Sunday, as officials debate the re-opening of schools in September.

On the fictional, re-opened beach of Amity Island on Independence Day in 1975, the shark attacks. Again. It kills a boater, and it nearly kills Brody’s own son. The Amity mayor visits Chief Brody at the hospital, visibly shaken and ashamed.

“August…” he stammers. But he’s lost all right to his authority, and both he and Brody know it.

“What are you talking about? Larry, the summer is over,” Brody says. “You’re the mayor of shark city.”

“I was acting in the town’s best interest,” the Mayor replies weakly. Then: “My kids were on that beach, too.”

It’s a moment of sweet satisfaction for the audience. Finally, finally, the gravity of this situation seems to have gotten through to him.  It took three deaths for the Amity mayor to realize he’s made an irrevocable mistake; but he did, at least, realize it. He must live with their deaths on his conscience for the rest of his life, and the look on his face makes clear he doesn’t take that punishment lightly. The villain has gotten his comeuppance, and now it’s time for the hero to save the day.

That beautiful fantasy seems increasingly unlikely to unfold in our parallel reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our leaders have hundreds of thousands of deaths on their hands, but some of them remain resolutely unwilling to face the consequences of that deadly mistake. If they’d made an effort earlier, perhaps they could have saved August. But there is no saving August now. The summer is over. We’re living in shark city.

Where to watch Jaws