You know the saying: life imitates art. But sometimes art takes a chunk out of life and doesn’t let go. That’s what Jaws did. It didn’t just reshape cinema—it rewrote the cultural script for what a shark was, what the ocean meant, and who we were when we dipped a toe in the surf. Spielberg’s fake shark may have been rubber, but the fallout was all too real.

Because when Jaws hit theatres in 1975, it didn’t just break box office records. It detonated a planet-wide phobia. Rational adults who’d swum in the sea their whole lives suddenly refused to go waist-deep. Boating trips were cancelled. Beaches posted shark patrols like they were expecting Normandy-level invasions. People weren’t afraid of sharks before Jaws. After Jaws, they couldn’t stop picturing themselves inside one.

It’s not hard to understand why. Spielberg’s shark wasn’t just a predator—it was a force of nature, a myth made flesh. It was death from below, unknowable and unstoppable. Williams’ theme didn’t help either—it drilled into your brain like a warning siren. And once the public bought in, they didn’t just flinch at the water. They went hunting.

In the years following the release of Jaws, shark killings skyrocketed. Fishermen organised tournaments with the explicit goal of slaughtering as many as possible. Some sharks were mutilated for sport. Others were left to rot as trophies. The film had awakened an ancient fear and rebranded it as a civic duty. Sharks weren’t just animals anymore. They were villains. And the public wanted revenge.

Peter Benchley, who penned the original novel, would spend the rest of his life trying to undo the damage. He became a staunch conservationist, publicly lamenting how Jaws had fed hysteria. He wrote editorials, gave speeches, funded marine science. But the cultural machine had already chewed through the facts and spat out something far juicier: the monster myth.

And that myth still lingers.

Modern marine biologists have tried for decades to rehabilitate the shark’s image. We now know most species are shy, endangered, and critical to ocean ecosystems. We know attacks are rare—freakish outliers, not targeted carnage. But Jaws set the template. It tattooed an idea onto the global psyche: that beneath the surface lurks something ancient, evil, and waiting.

Here’s the kicker: Spielberg didn’t set out to demonise sharks. The terror came from budget constraints, not bloodlust. Bruce the Shark barely worked, and so the film’s horror became abstract, psychological. But abstraction has consequences. When the threat is offscreen, your brain fills in the blanks—and public imagination filled those blanks with teeth.

Yet maybe there’s something poetic in that. Because Jaws isn’t really about a shark—it’s about fear. Fear of nature, of losing control, of our place on the food chain. It’s about how humans respond when faced with something vast and indifferent. We named it. We hunted it. We called it evil. And the sea just kept rolling in.

Fifty years later, we’re still wrestling with the aftermath. Not just in how we make movies, but in how we treat the planet. The irony of Jaws is that it scared us away from the ocean, when what we really should’ve been afraid of was ourselves.

• Saul Muerte

The scariest thing in Jaws isn’t the shark—it’s the sound of the shark. Two notes. Half a heartbeat. A musical ellipsis that creeps up from the seabed and drills straight into your spine. John Williams didn’t score a monster—he sculpted a presence. One that lurks just outside the frame, gnashing in silence, until your chest tightens and you start checking the shadows under your seat.

In truth, Bruce the Shark barely works on screen. The rubber betrays the realism. It’s stiff, sluggish, and allergic to saltwater. But Spielberg, handcuffed by malfunctioning mechanics and a limited budget, turned to the invisible: sound. And sound became the soul of the film.

Williams’ score is almost mathematical. Minimalist to the point of menace. That primal, pulsing motif—da-dum… da-dum…—doesn’t just suggest the shark is coming. It makes the water itself seem sentient, malevolent. No visuals necessary. Just rhythm. Just dread. Williams said the theme could be interpreted as “relentless, unstoppable,” like fate itself. And he wasn’t wrong. It’s practically aquatic Morse code for you’re screwed.

But the real genius lies in when the sound disappears. The opening attack? No music. Just ambient waves and ragged breathing. Chrissie’s screams. The sound of helplessness. Spielberg and editor Verna Fields trusted the silence—weaponised it, even. They understood that real horror isn’t the monster leaping out, it’s the waiting. The not-knowing. And they cut this film like a time bomb—tick, tick, breath, splash, gone.

Verna Fields deserves sainthood. She didn’t just edit Jaws, she saved it. She built its rhythm with a razor blade and a stopwatch. The cuts are precise, but never sterile. The pacing lets the tension throb, then twist. Her instincts gave Jaws its pulse, and her ear gave it breath. Fields’ decision to linger—on a bobbing raft, on a shark’s-eye view, on a reaction shot just a beat too long—makes the film feel like it’s constantly holding its breath with you.

Sound designer Robert Hoyt and mixer John R. Carter also understood the assignment. The underwater acoustics are muffled, dreamlike, warped—as if you’re already halfway gone. The difference between wet and dry audio isn’t just technical, it’s thematic. The ocean is a place where rules collapse. Where your screams don’t travel. Where your senses betray you.

And then there’s the famous Ben Gardner jump scare—maybe the purest blend of editing, timing, and sonic sabotage ever captured on celluloid. Spielberg throws the entire audience into the ceiling, not with a shark attack, but with a silent, bloated corpse slipping out of a hole in a boat. Fields cut it in her swimming pool. Spielberg added the shriek later. Together, they created a moment that still makes audiences flinch five decades later.

This is the power of Jaws—not just what’s seen, but what’s felt. And feeling is built from rhythm. From restraint. From silence. From two piano keys, repeating like a death mantra.

Other films used gore. Jaws used suggestion. Other films shouted. Jaws whispered.

And we’re still hearing it.

• Saul Muerte