‘Jaws,’ capitalism and Fidel Castro

“It was 1975, and Fidel Castro was reading ‘Jaws.’” 

Wendy Benchley shared that complex shard of history with me. She’s the widow of Peter Benchley, who authored the best-selling novel that would inspire the Hollywood blockbuster that this week celebrated the 50th anniversary of its release. It was hard to miss all the hype and the kitsch that is marking the anniversary, with the Chamber of Commerce sponsoring a full calendar of events. The over-the-top marketing seemed about as distant from Fidel Castro as one could get.

Wendy, a world-renowned conservationist and producer of the just-premiered National Geographic documentary “‘Jaws’ at 50: The Inside Story,” said that the novel was actually quite different from the movie in some regards, including a deeper exploration of the economic forces that lurk beneath the surface in this film. And until meeting Wendy, I had never pondered “Jaws” through the lens of a Marxist critique of American capitalism. It’s an idea that is both perfectly profound and perfectly ridiculous, and that’s what grabbed me. 

The simple declarative sentence, “Castro was reading ‘Jaws,’” captures the deeper, hidden currents of meaning as well as the unique strands of fear and anxiety that run through the film. And those currents are what makes it a timeless classic. I was 12 years old when “Jaws” premiered in 1975 here on this Island, and I can guarantee you I was not searching for an allegorical, Marxist interpretation. Just like every other kid, I remember sinking into the theater seat with buttered popcorn and Sprite, and leaning back and being delightfully horrified when it came to hearing those two simple but ominous notes that signaled the shark was near. 

Dun, dun. 

I had the great pleasure of meeting Winifred (“Wendy”) Benchley, 84, when she came to Martha’s Vineyard last month, and I saw her again this week at the Harbor View Hotel afterparty for the premiere of her National Geographic documentary. We had dinner together in the home of Rose Styron, poet and human rights activist, and the widow of the acclaimed novelist William Styron. In Rose’s home, the walls and book shelves are curated with black-and-white memories of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The two women are old friends, and remember well that summer of ’74 when “Jaws” was filmed on the Island.

Rose’s home was a perfect stage set to spend an evening reflecting on the meaning of “Jaws” at 50. And we discussed in detail how the year 1975, a year of economic anxiety and political malaise, seemed to have many echoes to this current year. 

Our dinner took place just before the usual storm of activity of the summer. The pressure thrust upon our small Island, where the population suddenly surges by a factor of five as summer residents and holiday travelers show up, is of course very well captured in the film. It was set in the fictional town of Amity Island as it braces for the Fourth of July, but the film put Martha’s Vineyard on the map. 

In the summer of 1974, the film was shot by the then upstart and now legendary director Steven Spielberg. When it premiered the following summer, it was an immediate blockbuster, serving packed theaters and grossing $260 million in the U.S., and nearly $500 million worldwide, which was a record at the time. 

We have all learned a lot since then about the true nature of sharks and the irrational fear they can produce. Wendy’s work as a conservationist has been focused on saving oceans and saving sharks. We all love to be afraid of them, but the truth is they are in need of protection around the world, and Wendy has been a leading voice for that. Still, the shark in “Jaws” came to symbolize the deep fear we have for what we cannot see down in the depths of the ocean.

And, in 1975 America, there was much more than just a mechanical shark lurking beneath the surface. There was an age of uncertainty bubbling up at the bitter end of the war in Vietnam and the political violence and corruption that culminated in the Watergate hearings and the historic resignation of President Richard Nixon the summer before. There was rising inflation, surging gas prices, and a shift in the global economy that was impacting just about every home. Terrorism was defining the era, with active campaigns by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the militant Marxists of the Weather Underground. There was campus unrest and a time of deep political division. Sound at all familiar? 

“There certainly are comparisons worth pondering” between the years 1975 and 2025, as Wendy Benchley put it. 

But another difference she wanted to discuss was between the book and the movie. If you read the book, the storyline takes on a different tack. You quickly are introduced to the idea that there are hidden forces behind the Island’s tanned power broker and mayor of Amity known as Larry Vaughn, who keeps a tight control over the Island. It was Vaughn, as it turns out, who was pressuring the initially acquiescent police chief, Martin Brody, to keep the beaches open so that the cash registers at local shops and restaurants would keep ringing from all the summer crowds. Vaughn, we learn in the book, was entangled with the Mafia, an interesting plot twist for a book that came out just between the two enormous Hollywood successes of “Godfather I” and “Godfather II,” the second premiering just months before “Jaws.” 

So here is where Castro, the late leader of the Cuban revolution and global icon of communism, might have taken the more keen interest, and it is definitely a very interesting subplot to the book that the forces of capitalism — or just good old-fashioned greed — set up the plot for the chief to delay in reporting the first shark attack, which of course precedes the series of bloody attacks that will follow. And it is the greed of the mafia that pushes Vaughan to convince the chief to delay closing the beaches, resulting in a young boy with a yellow raft being devoured on the shoreline with his mother left to try to find him amid a blood-dimmed tide cluttered with the shredded pieces of the raft. 

So how did Wendy know about Castro’s interpretation of the film as the shark representing the voracious jaws of capitalism? Wendy said that a close friend, Frank Mankiewicz, a former aide to Bobby Kennedy, had been in Cuba, and saw Fidel Castro with a copy of “Jaws” in his hands. Wendy remembers that Castro told Frank that the book spoke to him specifically because it captured the way capitalism destroys communities through its “moral decrepitude.”

As Wendy writes on her website, “At a time of change and uncertainty, ‘Jaws’ functioned as an allegory for whatever scared or angered the reader. Even Fidel Castro was a fan, describing “Jaws” as a ‘splendid Marxist lesson,’ one that proved that ‘capitalism will risk even human life in order to keep the markets going.’” 

This in many ways is the unique power of the story of “Jaws,” that the shark can come to symbolize whatever it is that we fear most. In Hollywood, I can assure you, the Marxist critique was not what turned this film into a blockbuster. The producer for Universal Pictures, Richard Zanuck, was clear about that, as Peter Benchley notes in the introduction. He shares that Zanuck told him, “This picture is going to be an A-to-Z adventure story, a straight line, so we want you to take out all that mafia stuff, all the stuff that’ll just be distracting.”

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the producer’s wishes were granted, and that the movie did indeed focus on suspense, not economics, and set new records for profitability in the film industry, and in some ways set the standard for how to develop and market a blockbuster. 

So what about the comparison between 1975 and today? Who is going to make a new movie about the fear we all sense beneath the surface? What streaming series already does that? Wendy, Rose, and I and other dinner guests had some fun discussing that. But what struck me the most is that the difference between “Jaws” and what we are watching unfold these days is that the community ultimately did come together. 

Three brave souls — Chief Brody, a salty fisherman named Quint, and a marine scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute named Hooper — set out in a weathered fishing boat named the Orca to slay the killer shark and save the day. Quint is devoured by the shark, but Brody and Hooper close out the movie clinging to a piece of the boat and making their way to shore as the sun sets, and the Island can get back to enjoying its summer. 

Man, given the leviathan of problems and depths of fears we are all facing these days, it seems we really could use a Chief Brody, Captain Quint, and a science geek like Hooper. And, oh yeah, we’re definitely gonna need a bigger boat.

Charles M. Sennott, publisher of the MV Times, is the founder of GroundTruth, and a version of this column first ran in his GroundTruth newsletter on Substack, charlessennott.substack.com.