Steven Spielberg’s Jaws opened across North America on June 20 1975, and immediately tapped into the primal human fear of being hunted by a huge, savvy predator.
Set on a fictional island off the coast of New England, the film depicts an epic battle between three men on a boat and an enormous great white shark. Jaws was hugely popular, grossing a record US$100 million in its first 59 days.
Young and already mad about sharks, I left the film wanting to know more about their behaviour and ecology. But films affect people in different ways, and the movie has since spawned what social scientists call “the Jaws effect”.
