OPINION:
Not that anybody needs reminding, but “Jaws” really is the greatest movie about America ever made. Sure, “Casablanca” is about an American named Rick — but that movie is more about the larger world than it is about America.
And yes, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is about two of the greatest Americans to ever live. But then they go to South America and supposedly die in a shootout with Bolivian soldiers. For those of us who still believe in America, we know that Butch and the Kid actually survived that shootout and are still alive knocking off the easy banks in Australia, where the women are easy, ripe and luscious and everybody speaks proper English.
But the story of “Jaws” is all about America. You have the annoying professor enthralled by science. You have the lawman. You have the quintessential buccaneer-for-hire hellbent on adventure — and a sizable payday for killing the shark terrorizing the town.
And then you have nature lurking in the unknown that all three men are pursuing — even as it pursues them, knocking incessantly at the tarred boards of the boat’s hull while they get drunk telling war stories.
The greatest scene in the movie, of course, is when the lawman realizes they are outmatched by nature and goes below deck of the crippled boat to call for backup on land.
When Quint realizes what the police chief has done, he takes a baseball bat and smashes the radio — and with it all connection to civilization.
America is not about safety. It’s about freedom, adventure and facing nature.
In the movie, the annoying professor is brilliantly played by Richard Dreyfuss. As scientist Matt Hooper, Mr. Dreyfuss is so naturally annoying that you figure he must really be that annoying in real life.
Apparently it takes someone as annoying as Mr. Dreyfuss to finally call out Hollywood for all its unbearable excesses and moral hypocrisy. Specifically, Mr. Dreyfuss attacked the people who give out Oscars over their new rules for choosing best picture.
Now, in order to be considered for best picture, a movie must star “a person of color” or someone who “identifies” as “LGBTQ-plus,” whatever that means.
This comes after years of Hollywood being mercilessly mocked for its overall general Whiteness and its highly privileged annual self-congratulation gathering that one year earned the social media moniker #OscarsSoWhite.
These new rules, Mr. Dreyfuss said, “make me vomit.”
It’s a little like being the tallest person at a midget convention, but congratulations to Mr. Dreyfuss for stating the obvious. He is among the few of his privileged class brave enough to call it out.
“This is an art form,” Mr. Dreyfuss said. “It’s also a form of commerce and it makes money. But it’s an art.”
In other words, it’s not exactly like these people are saving lives in an emergency room. Still, there should be some hint of integrity to art.
“No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is,” he said. “What are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. And you have to let life be life.”
As if all this were not dangerous enough, Mr. Dreyfuss went straight for the third rail, defending Hollywood’s use of blackface. Specifically, he defended Laurence Olivier’s famous performance as a Moorish military commander in Shakespeare’s “Othello.”
“He did it in 1965 — and he did it in blackface,” Mr. Dreyfuss said. “And he played a Black man brilliantly.”
“Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?
“This is so patronizing,” he concluded. “It’s so thoughtless, and it’s treating people like children.”
While Mr. Dreyfuss preaches pure truth here, he is still not able to correct one of the great injustices in the history of American film.
In “Jaws,” Quint the buccaneer is devoured by the shark, along with one of the oxygen tanks Professor Hooper insisted on bringing on the boat. America would be a better place today if it had been Professor Hooper who got eaten by the shark and Quint had made it back alive.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor of The Washington Times.
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