Jaws is a classic film that has inspired fear in the hearts of children and adults alike for decades. Its classic horror premise and suspenseful cinematography have secured it as a film that will be remembered and cherished for decades to come as well.
The central premise of Jaws is fear. The people fear this monstrous threat coming from the ocean, stealing the lives of the inhabitants and visitors of Amity island. The fear tactics used in the film are very real and very effective. To this day, it is hard for almost anyone to enter the ocean without at least a trace of fear concerning what lays below. However, if we look at the film in a modern context with our increased awareness of the threat we ourselves pose to the ocean, the fear and monstrosity have a totally new victim in mind.
My goal in this revised version of the classic Jaws movie poster was to emphasize the real threat. The woman who is originally dwarfed by the massive great white below her is replaced by a large pile of waste and debris that rests just above the tip of the shark’s nose. It looks as though that is what the shark will be consuming rather than the woman, which may seem a lot less scary for us, but the reality is the number of people killed by sharks is minuscule when compared to the threat of plastic and other human waste on sea life.
The shark is also now missing teeth. This is representative of the fact that intimidating creatures like sharks cannot even possess a threat to us when we kill them with our carelessness and waste of resources. The toothless shark poses no threat to us, and yet we nearly kill it with our lack of regard for the environment.
I also changed the “Jaws” text to “Waste.” This is a synonym for ocean pollution, but it also implies a waste of the beauty of the ocean and ocean life. By filling the ocean with plastic, overfishing, and other harmful practices, we are wasting this beautiful and once abundant resource. A change must be made soon if we do not want to lose it entirely.
Abby Rose 