The Plastic Inevitable

“I love sharks. I adore sharks.” – Matt Hooper

It is impossible for me to talk about the natural sea predators we all know and love without referencing that movie. I was a young child when I viewed it in our very dark basement, Quint, Brody and the above Hooper hunting down a Great White Shark that had very serious boundary issues and carried a terrible grudge. If I think about it now, it was also the first movie that I can recall that made me consider the importance of a soundtrack, or at least a theme. John Williams’ score haunts me to this day. As a teacher of media studies, I try to point out to my students the importance of music in the movies they love (Ben Kingsley, at an Academy Awards ceremony, once described music as “the perfume you take with you once you leave the theatre,” and I cannot improve on that). My regret as a child is that I had no idea that I could buy a copy of the film’s soundtrack and use it to terrify my family by playing it at inappropriate times on my cheap turntable (oh, the regrets of youth). But there is something else worth mentioning.

“I always hated the water.” – Chief Martin Brody

“I can’t imagine why.” – Matt Hooper

The very last spoken lines in the film, with the greatest touch of irony, spoke to my young life. I also hated the water, which in a West Indian family is its own form of blasphemy. I did go to the beach with my family when I was a child and we made yearly visits back to the islands of the Caribbean, but I hated going in any deeper that the height of my shoulders or the impossibility of feeling the ocean bed. A local community pool would only find me in the shallow end, until my family decided to send me in for swimming lessons. To be afraid of the water and then suspect that even chlorinated public pools full of children could still retain the life of a killer shark did not help me dog paddle or do a competent backstroke. But I did manage to stay above the water and not hear Mr. Williams’ Stravinsky-derived notes in my head. And I gained a method of controlling my fears.

“See that? Sick vandalism!” – Mayor Larry Vaughn

Lego!

My parents bought me a Lego set that was space-themed and I quickly turned to repeating and recreating scenes from the film. Along with building a replica of the Orca, I somehow found a plastic shark (clearly a Great White; no other species were available) that was hollow enough to swallow my crew and crunch its way through the blue plastic hull. When I would do this, my mother would observe me at play and comment to whomever was available that she could not believe how creative I could be with the bits and pieces of my set. In other parts of my life (i.e. those moments at school that involved mathematics or sports), my creativity was not so obvious. To have anyone acknowledge a talent at that age, especially an adult was something that always stayed with me. Sharks, or at least the most popular movie about them, were a gift; a gift that I needed to rethink as the years passed.

“Do you realize that we have no idea how old sharks are?” – Chief Brody

And now I feel that there is a part of me that should apologize for all I thought I knew about sharks. We have more than enough evidence now that proves sharks are not the terrors of the ocean that we thought they were. In fact, many sharks – like most of the other animals in the ocean – just want to be left alone. The majority of sharks would never bother with humans as a food source if we did not consistently invade their feeding grounds. Even the film I have been referencing in my quotes is based on an extremely rare shark attack that took place in New Jersey in 1916 and provided a background to the novel on which it is based (not a great book, either, to be honest). There is the documentary “Sharkwater” and plenty of books and pages devoted to the study of sharks and there are truths that cannot be denied. Our obsession with them has made life impossible for many of them. Ever heard of sharkfin soup? This is a very real delicacy that I have seen on offer at restaurants. I once saw shark offered at a sushi restaurant (I could not make myself take the plunge and enjoyed the tamago and ebi instead). Perceptions change even if the truth does not.

But I still look around when I go into the water.

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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