When the film Jaws (1975), about a rogue shark that terrorised a small seaside island community was released, it had an unprecedented paranoia effect on its audience that became entrenched into the psyche of bathers around the world; a fear that media hyperbole exploited. At the same time, the film was also responsible for a surge in scientific interest in sharks and the media responded by giving more attention to the important role of sharks in the marine ecology. In the long term, social perceptions of sharks, changed from fear to conservation, influencing local, national and international government conservation and management policies. Nevertheless, there persists the initial media frenzy after any shark attack and Jaws remains the touchstone for media reporting

Francis, Beryl

English

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    BEFORE AND AFTER JAWS:  CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS OF SHARK ATTACKS     BERYL FRANCIS STUDENT NUMBER: 19820117      THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE BACHELOR OF HISTORY WITH HONOURS AT MURDOCH UNIVERSITY  OCTOBER 2011           I DECLARE THAT THIS THESIS IS A TRUE ACCOUNT OF MY OWN WORK, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED   ………………………………………………………………………………………………..  BERYL FRANCIS OCTOBER 2011              COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT  I acknowledge that a copy of this thesis will be held at the Murdoch University Library.    I understand that, under the provisions of s51.2 of the Copyright Act 1968, all or part of this thesis may be copied without infringement of copyright where such a reproduction is for the purposes of study and research.   This statement does not signal any transfer of copyright away from the author.   Signed: …………………………………………………………...   Full Name of Degree:  Bachelor of History with Honours in History.   Thesis Title:  BEFORE AND AFTER JAWS: CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS OF SHARK ATTACKS.  ………………………………………………………………….....  Author:    BERYL FRANCIS……………………………………………...  Year:      2011………………………………………………………………..   i ABSTRACT When the film Jaws (1975), about a rogue shark that terrorised a small seaside island community was released, it had an unprecedented paranoia effect on its audience that became entrenched into the psyche of bathers around the world; a fear that media hyperbole exploited. At the same time, the film was also responsible for a surge in scientific interest in sharks and the media responded by giving more attention to the important role of sharks in the marine ecology. In the long term,  social perceptions of sharks, changed from fear to conservation, influencing  local, national and international government conservation and management policies. Nevertheless, there persists the initial media frenzy after any shark attack and Jaws remains the touchstone for media reporting.                 ii CONTENTS  Copyright Acknowledgment………………………………………………………………..…………..….….i Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………..…..ii Contents.....................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………….…………….....iv Abbreviations….…………………………………………………………………………………………………..…v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………...…1 Chapter One: History of shark attacks pre Jaws……………………………………………..........7 Chapter Two: Jaws the movie……………………………………………………………………………...20 Chapter Three: Shark attacks post Jaws……………………………………………………………….33 Chapter Four: Case study of media hype: Ken Crew, the day it all changed?……….50 Chapter Five: Shark conservation post Jaws…………………………………………………………69 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………87 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………90             iii  I would like to acknowledge the help given by the following people.  My Supervisor, Professor Michael Sturma, History and General Arts,  Chair of Murdoch University, for the encouragement and assistance in bringing this thesis together. Dr Helen Brash, Lecturer in History, for her support,  and instilling in me the confidence to undertake Honours. The Library and staff of the Department of Fisheries, Government of Western Australia.  Vicki Gouteff of the Library of the Department of Fisheries WA for her support and help.  Dr Rory McAuley, Senior Research Scientist, Department of Fisheries, Government of Western Australia for his time and expertise.  Ian Butcher for his patience and grammatical observations.                         iv  Abbreviations  ADTIC    Artic, Desert, Tropic Information Centre AMCS    Australian Marine Conservation Society ASAF                Australian Shark Attack File   CSFOP    Commercial Shark Fishery Observer Program  CSIRO    Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CITES     Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species GHOF    Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation HSUS     Humane Society of the United States IUCN     International Union of Conservation for Nature SHC     Shark Hazard Committee SMAC    Shark Menace Advisory Committee SMP     Shark Meshing Program  SSG     Shark Specialist Group SSC     Species Survival Commission                 v  1  Introduction History shows us that little was known about sharks. However, the prospect of falling overboard or being shipwrecked and eaten alive by sea monsters loomed large in the minds of ancient mariners. Old-world maps portray illustrations of fearsome creatures, many of which have a striking similarity to the sharks we recognise today. Sailors told terrifying tales, and the stories and superstitions were passed  down through the ages. As swimming gradually became an acceptable form of recreation, the average bather knew or cared little about sharks and the tales became accepted as simply sailors’ lore and legends.1 Yet both Australia and the U.S. had their share of shark attacks. Xavier Maniguet explains in his book Jaws of Death (1992) that the sharks left ‘the realm of myth and legend,’ when in 1916, off the coast of New Jersey, there were five attacks in ten days with four fatalities forcing authorities to question their attitudes.2  According to journalist and photographer Mac McDiarmid in his book Shark Attack (1996), U.S shark experts continued to deny sharks attacked human beings in American waters as late as the 1930s. He claims that it took an attack by a 2.4 metre hammerhead shark on a woman bather at Palm Beach, Florida, to establish the U.S.A. as leaders in research into sharks and their behaviour.3 Writing in 1940, Gilbert P. Whitley, who at the time was the ichthyologist at the Australian Museum, commented in his book, The Fishes of Australia, Part 1, Sharks &c., that apart from Australians, there were many people in the world who did not believe that sharks attacked people.4 He concluded that in Australia, ‘we have very little to fear from sharks,’  and observed that the larger and more dangerous species of shark, (one could assume that he was referring to the great white Carcharodon carcharias), do not frequent Australian beaches as a rule.5  He                                                            1 Victor M. Coppleson, Shark Attack, (Sydney, London, Melbourne, Wellington: Angus & Robertson,1958), 5.  2 Xavier Maniguet, The Jaws of Death, Trans. David Christie (London:  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd., 1992), 35-6. 3 Mac McDiarmid, Shark Attack, (Sydney: THE BOOK COMPANY INTERNATIONAL PTY. LTD., 1996), 50. 4 Gilbert P. Whitley, The Fishes of Australia Part 1, The Sharks &c., (Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1940), 13.   5 Whitley, The Fishes of Australia, 12. 2  was joined in this view by shark expert Dr. Coppleson, who claimed in his 1958 book Shark Attack that despite the evidence of sharks attacking people going back more than 2000 years, there was still an overwhelming number of disbelieving people, especially in the United States. He cites an article that was published in the American magazine Collier in 1944. It was during WWll and the author was possibly trying to assuage American servicemen’s fears during operations in shark infested water when he wrote, advising anyone who found themselves facing a shark, not to worry, but to grab the pectoral fin, swim with the shark, hold their breath and slit the sharks underbelly so that the water could fill its body and it would die.6  It would appear that in Western Australia there was a similar feeling of complacency in earlier days. Victor Courtney in his book Perth and all this! (1962), wrote that the majority of people in Western Australia believed that sharks in their part of the country were not dangerous. Regardless of an incident in 1925, when a man was attacked and died at Cottesloe beach one hot summer day and a fatality occurred in the Swan river in 1923, Courtney contends that as there had been no further attacks since 1925, sharks were not considered dangerous in that part of Australia unlike on the east coast. He gives  credit to the many safety measures carried out each summer by the city’s lifesaving groups, but said that the fact that there were many ocean races even as far as Rottnest island and no sharks had  ever been encountered, proved  that with reasonable precautions, Perth beaches were safe. But he does admit that in 1962, ‘there were frequent shark alarms on metropolitan beaches’ and that spear fishermen had seen many sharks cruising off the coast. So he concludes that while our beaches are ‘pretty safe’, there is always the possibility that some of the sharks, given the opportunity, could prove dangerous to human beings.7                                                             6 Coppleson, Shark Attack, 5. 7 Victor Courtney, Perth and all this!, (Sydney: Halstead Press, 1962), 252.  3  McDiarmid claims that  all this changed in 1974  with  Jaws,8  Peter Benchley’s best-selling book about a large rogue shark that terrorised a fictitious small island community off Long Island. When the book  first appeared in the bookstores, it thrilled the public with the idea that sharks could attack people. But, says McDiarmid, the subsequent film of the same name released the following year, had an even more sensational impact and broke all Hollywood box-office records. Shark hysteria gripped people around the world and the fear was reflected on shores and beaches in reality, just as it was depicted in the movie; bathers were afraid of the potential terror lurking below. As McDiarmid quite rightly states, the media were quick to exploit the public’s reaction and fed the paranoia that the film and its subsequent spin-offs generated; awareness of sharks was raised to unprecedented levels.9 Following the film’s release, Time magazine carried a terrifying picture of an opened mouthed shark across its front page with the caption, ‘The Super Shark’10 and its main feature was an in-depth article titled ‘The Summer of the Shark’. In a quote from the article, Time declared, ‘If the great white shark that terrorises the beaches of an island summer colony is one of nature’s most efficient killing machines, Jaws  is an efficient entertainment machine’.11  But is the ‘Jaws12 effect’ still working? Have the media continued to exploit the public’s fear?  Is the public still afraid to go into the water? Are they still afraid of what may lurk below or did Jaws raise the profile and understanding of sharks? In November 2000, The West Australian newspaper dramatically headlined a fatal shark attack at North Cottesloe Beach, continuing the sensational reporting within the paper, including  a  sombre  article titled ‘The Day it All Changed’  in the accompanying magazine.13  A year later, The West Australian revived the memory                                                            8 Peter Benchley, Jaws, (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1974). 9 McDiarmid, Shark Attack, 88. 10 ‘Summer of the Shark’, Time, 23 June, 1975, Vol. 105, No. 26, web page, http://www.time.come/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913189,00htm1 accessed 17/09/2010. 11‘Summer of the Shark’, Time. 12 Jaws, DVD, Directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Studios, 1975. 13 The West Australian, Tues. 7 November, 2000, Western Australia. 4  of the attack and dedicated much of its reporting to sharks, including a claim by reporter Frank Robson that ‘menacing great whites circle Australia’s coastline’.14  Similarly in the U.S. in 2001, according to Shark Savers org., when eight year old Jessie Arbogast had his arm bitten off in the waters of Pensacola, Florida it created a media frenzy.  Any shark encounter  after that,  no matter how insignificant was reported in prime time.15 In the same year, Time once again used its front cover to feature an open mouthed shark, but this time with the disturbing caption ‘Summer of the Shark.’ 16 Inside, an article by Timothy Roche, titled ‘Saving Jessie Arbogast’, graphically detailed the attack on the boy and his subsequent rescue.17 Moreover, the feature article by Terry McCarthy et al., ‘Why can’t we be friends?’, claimed that shark attacks had been on the rise in recent years and devoted his article to exhaustive accounts of attacks.18 This claim was dismissed by Shark Savers org. as untrue and simply media hype.19  30 years after the release of the film Jaws, Stephan Lovgren, writing for the National Geographic News in 2005, reported that the perception that sharks were ‘stalking, killing machines’  remained in the public’s psyche. He quoted George Burgess, shark biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville as saying that the shark population plunged after thousands of fishers attempted to catch trophy sharks after seeing Jaws. At the same time, the unprecedented success of the movie created invaluable scientific and public interest in sharks.20  So what is the public perception of sharks and shark attacks in 2011? Is Jaws paranoia still entrenched in the public mind, and if it is, are the media still                                                            14 Frank Robson, ‘A Monster of Our Own Making’, in Big Weekend, The West Australian, Saturday 17 February, 2001. 15 Shark Savers, 2007, web page, http://www.sharksavers.org/en/education/shark-myths/23-media-hype.htm1 accessed 10/12/2009 16 ‘The Summer of the Shark’, Time, 30 July, 2001, Vol. 158 No. 4, http://www.time.come/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000420,00htm1 accessed 17/09/2010. 17 Timothy Roche, Alice Jackson, ‘Saving Jessie Arbogast’, in Time, 30 July, 2001, Vol. 158 No. 4. 18McCarthy, Terry, et al., ‘Why can’t we be friends’, Time, July 30 2001 Vol. 158 No. 4, http://www.time.come/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000420,00htm1 accessed 17/09/2010. 19 Shark Savers. 20 Stefan Lovgren, ‘Jaws at 30: Film Stoked Fear, Study of Great White Sharks’, in National Geographic News, June 15, 2005, web page, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0615_050615_jawssharks.html  5  exploiting public fear? In his book The Encyclopedia of Sharks (2008), zoologist and author Steve Parker examines the life and biology of sharks and concludes that human beings have come a long way from an attitude of ‘disdain and kill-at-all-cost’, to one of respect and awe.21 This thesis will examine the devastating impact that the 1975 film Jaws had on world shark populations. In the process I will analyse the media exploitation of the unprecedented fear of sharks and shark attacks it produced. The film was also responsible for a surge in scientific interest in sharks. I will argue that as shark populations plunged, public and government agencies developed  a  greater awareness and consideration  of the shark and its environment,  which  shaped policies locally, nationally and internationally.  I will further argue that while the media  played a dominant role  in  changing attitudes,  there persists the initial media frenzy immediately after any shark attack and Jaws remains the touchstone for reporting. In Chapter One, I outline historical attitudes to sharks and shark attacks, and discuss the development of methods for shark protection. In the following chapter I introduce the film Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg, and show how the film entrenched ‘shark paranoia’ in the psyche of bathers worldwide; a paranoia that was exploited by the media. In Chapter Three, I examine the devastating consequences the ‘Jaws syndrome’ had on shark populations and argue that the media used the terror, generated by the film, to shape public attitudes of fear. Chapter Four is a case study of media hype that substantiates my argument. In Chapter Five, I examine the shark conservation issues and government policies that arose  from  shark population decline,  and  present my evidence of the changing community and government attitudes from fear to conservation.                                                                21 Steve Parker, The Encyclopedia of Sharks, (London: A & C Black publishers Ltd., 2008), 185. 

Before and after Jaws: Changing representations of shark attacks

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Before and after Jaws: Changing representations of shark attacks

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