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ThinkforYourself's avatar

I once taught a university course on animals and religion. The connection I made between Jaws and religious violence among human beings is that both are examples of scapegoating, identified by the theologian Rene Girard as a largely unconscious phenomenon running throughout human history. It serves the function of unifying the group doing the scapegoating and venting aggression in a socially acceptable way that relieves pressure in the group. A and B feel hostility but prefer not to break the social contract with one another, so they vent their aggression on C, who is considered expendable. We see it in witch burnings, pogroms, stonings, and lynch mobs. Leftists and Islamists do it regularly; both groups like to scapegoat Jews in the name of defending Palestinians. They don't give a damn about Palestenians; that is just a pretext for scapegoating Jews.

In the movie Jaws, the animal is demonized. One could argue that it is the result of Jungian psychological projection of the Shadow archetype. As noted above, throughout human history, different groups and individuals have been demonized and scapegoated, including (obviously) Jews, culminating in Christian pogroms and the Shoah, and more recently, anti-Zionism. Animals have always also been scapegoated, and there is interesting parallel in our language, using animal names to dehumanize (e.g., rat, cockroach, shark, snake, bitch, pig, dog, wolf, etc). The reference to Jews as rats by the Nazi is a key example. Animals are already regarded as lower and possessing undesirable traits by most of humanity, so naming humans with these names is regarded as an insult.

The Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer compared Nazism to human speciesism: " "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." This comparison is insulting to those who regard animals as lower, but perhaps the point is that we ought not to denigrate any group, including animals.

In the course, I also taught the pro-animal theologies of different traditions. Judaism has a strong tradition of animal welfare, resulting in the emergence of several rabbis advocating plant-based diets for ethical reasons, as consistent with the halachic rejection of animal cruelty (see https://jewishveg.org/rabbinic-statement/). All religious traditions have some pro-animal element in them, though they follow them inconsistently because most people prefer to be meat-eaters. Only Jainism is consistently vegetarian.

As for Jaws, it demonized sharks, who, as it happens, are the victims of a hunt for their fins (for shark-fin soup), driving them to the brink of extinction. It is more of a statement on our own psychology than a statement about any one animal species. The enemy is us, so to speak. This is apparent with the demonization and scapegoating of Jews throughout history and to the present time, especially since Oct 7th when the radical Left erupted in hatred against Jews and gave tacit support for Hamas in countless protests. These are the same useful idiots whose worldview allows the immigration of millions of Islamists and their supporters into their midst, now resulting in the UK and Western Europe being unsafe for Jews. Ironically, this is done in the name of tolerance, leading to a more intolerant society.

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Rebekah Lee's avatar

A ride on the muse. Musing while writing? Often amusing. Nun - factoid of note.

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