Did Jaws make people fear sharks, and did that change how they were treated?
The author of Jaws spent his later years campaigning for sharks and said he regretted the fear his book fed.
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Jaws certainly made many people more afraid of sharks, and some say it also changed how sharks were treated, though that part is harder to prove. A Gallup poll in September 1975 found that 18 percent of respondents called the film the most frightening movie they had ever seen, and 35 percent said it increased their fear of swimming in the ocean.
The book and the film portray the white shark as a ferocious man-eater. In reality, white sharks normally do not prey on humans. One account says Jaws gave people an unrealistic view of sharks, so that they feared sharks more than they probably should.
The film is also blamed for what is called the : it allegedly inspired legions of fishermen to pile into boats and kill thousands of sharks in . Note the word allegedly. White sharks were already a popular target for sport fishing because of their size and reputation. Conservation groups say the film made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected.
The people behind it later looked back. Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, said Jaws was entirely a fiction and campaigned to stop the depopulation of sharks. Director Steven Spielberg said he regretted the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film.
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Recap
Jaws is widely blamed for fear of sharks, the killing it inspired is only alleged, and its author came to regret the fear it fed.
💡 A trick to remember it · A story can cast a long shadow: the film's shark was fiction, yet the fear it fed became real.
Surprising fact · Benchley and Spielberg both later expressed regret over the harm to sharks.
Sources (5)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (16 claims) cites at least one of these.