Reading the politics of films, smokers’ corner

Jaws

Peter Benchley’s novel “Jaws” was published in 1974 and in 1975 it became a movie. For years various cultural critics, especially the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, have deconstructed Jaws to mean over just a story a few fictional tourist spot.

Jaws Struck

Peter Biskind in his 1999 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls writes that, since the novel and its film adaptation arrived during a very severe economic and political crisis within the US, Jaws immediately struck a chord with an audience disoriented by the indefinable nature of the crisis.

Homogeneity

In 2012, Žižek saw the shark as a mix of prejudices and fears that are encapsulated into one definable entity, so that a bemused polity can perceive it because of the explanation for society’s dread.
To Žižek, the shark of Amity Island can thus be understood as a metaphor of any community seen to be existing outside the homogeneity of the bulk community and is thus suspect.
These may be immigrants like Muslims in Western countries (and now in Modi’s India), non-Muslims in Muslim countries, non-whites in white-majority societies, etc.

Germany

For Žižek, the fictional shark was just like the Jewish community in ■■■■ Germany. An existentialist enemy was created to clarify the humiliation that Germany had to face after its defeat during the war I.
With the formation of the Jew as an entity that was diseasing the national body, an enemy was created so ‘unmasked’ to allow the disoriented polity a face to channel its anger at.
Maybe this is often exactly what the ■■■■■■■■ Ahmadiyya community faced in Pakistan furthermore when the country lost its eastern wing in 1971 after a devastating war.
Films often reflect social, political, and economic conflicts that are hidden behind their more audience-friendly and entertaining narratives. they only require some decoding

Shark Attack

Others have delved deeper still to catch the metaphors within the seas of Amity Island. A recent video-essay on the educational website Then & Now sees the shark even as Žižek had understood it.
Despite the shark attacks, the character of Larry Vaughn in Jaws refuses to shut down Amity Island’s beaches because it’d be bad for the economy. So, the essay sees Mayor Vaughn as a metaphor for unrestrained and amoral capitalism.

captain

The island’s chief of police, Martin Brody, who insists that the beaches must be closed, is seen as symbolizing the rational state, whereas marine biologist Dr. Hooper represents science.
But since science during this context can only help explain the malaise, and can’t eradicate it, enter Quint, a veteran shark hunter.
Quint is uncouth and a loner. He symbolizes the excesses of behavior that are often understood to exist outside the norms of ‘civilized’ societies. But it isn’t Quint who kills the shark. he’s an outsider. He gets killed by the dreaded predator. it’s Brody (the state) who kills the shark.

1970s

Jaws surfaced within the 1970s when the state was still seen as having control over political, economic, and social outcomes. But the 1970s were also a decade when, due to certain unprecedented global events and economic stresses, the state began to struggle to regulate these outcomes. So, Jaws reinforced the trust in a very faltering state by making the captain kill the shark.

Indian film Deewar (1975)

This makes an analogous reinforcement. Released during intense political turmoil in India, the film’s three main characters include a downtrodden mother and her two sons.
One son grows up to become an officer while the opposite, still vexed by the way during which society had treated his mother, becomes an amoral ‘angry young man.’ He climbs his thanks to the highest of the criminal underworld with great care he can build a grand house for the mother.
The mother disapproves and decides to remain along with her other son, the honest officer. The angry son is eventually shot ■■■■ by his brother.
In her 1996 book Ire within the Soul, the Indian film critic Nikhat Kazmi describes the mother in Deewar as a metaphor of Bharat Mata (Mother India) or the national personification of India as a mother goddess.
The goddess sides with the law officer who symbolizes the state. The angry son is that the culmination of the wayward and amoral impulses which will ruin societies. he’s thus eliminated by the state.

Economics upheaval

The British documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, in his 2016 film Hyper Normalization, is of the view that, because the state did not control the outcomes of skyrocketing economic upheavals, it began to ‘outsource’ its responsibilities to the private sector.
This led to ‘globalization.’ John Hardy, during a 2008 essay for E-International Relations, writes that globalization tosses out the homogenizing tendency of contemporary economics with a more heterogeneous process that interlinks international economies, further shrinking the role of the state in an increasingly interdependent world.

Private sectors

The receding state and ascent of the private sector are satirized within the 1988 film They Live, during which a person stumbles upon a pair of glasses with which he can see through the illusions of capitalism. as an example, when, after he wears the glasses, he sees a harmless billboard of a brand and may only see the word ‘obey.’

A Few Years Later

Years later, within the TV series Breaking Bad (2008-2012), the state is entirely tossed away. within the series, a ‘normal’ middle-class man who has cancer, decides to form and peddle crystal ■■■■.
The state cannot fully acquire his medical expenses. He starts to sell ■■■■ so that he can save enough money for his family. Much of the series is him battling other (but darker) forces of cynicism, whereas his brother-in-law, a cop, is brutally assassinated by people who also are peddling ■■■■.
The state thus dies within the crossfire between two tendencies of amoral private enterprise gone wrong.

Pakistan

In Pakistan, between 2007 and 2014, when Islamic militants were running wild, exploding ■■■■■ and assassinating opponents at will, one often heard commentators warning that the state was failing.
The 2013 Urdu film War tries to bolster the message that the state was still strong. Interestingly though, in the identical year, another film Chambaili doesn’t see militants because of the enemies of the state, but ‘corrupt’ politicians.

Chambaili

Chambaili could be a middle-class political fantasy within which a ‘patriotic’/pro-state movement emerges against corrupt politicians and feudal lords. this is often supported by the narrative formed in 2011 by Imran Khan’s PTI.
If seen within the context of the symbology of Jaws, one can conclude that Brody, during this case, is that the amalgamation of pro-PTI urbanites and also the state (mainly the military-establishment) retaliating against ‘corrupt’ intruders (the shark) disturbing the calm seas of middle-class righteousness.

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