Essay.

The media product I have chosen to analyse is the trailer for the famous film, ‘Jaws’. Jaws came out on the 26^th of December, 1975. The film was of the horror genre when it was first released. However, due to drastic changes in film SFX and technologies, the film has been now determined a drama / mystery, due to it’s more unrealistic visuals. The target audience for Jaws is mass. Since the film was released in the summer of 1975, most people had time off work – especially children and teenagers. Therefore, the film targeted a primary audience of teenagers, as they typically had the most time to watch the film. This target audience is also reinforced by the ‘15’ BBFC rating as it insinuates that anyone over the age of 15 can watch it. However, since the trailer of jaws includes adult actors who are seen as ideal selves and partners, ‘Jaws’ also attracts an older male and female audience. Lastly, due to the fact that famous Hollywood actors such as Roy Schneider are featured within the trailer, the film appealed to a secondary worldwide audience of men and women of various different ages, as Roy was very popular within society at this time. I think the film Jaws mostly had a negative rather than positive impact on viewers; the film greatly increased phobias of sharks and water, as it misrepresented sharks as terrorizing to create a bigger sense of threat and horror within the film.

George Gerbner and Larry Gross 1979 came up with the 'Cultivation Theory.' in 1979, this theory examines the long term effects of television. "The more time people spend watching TV, the more time the more likely they are to believe that they are to believe social reality aligns with reality portrayed on television.". I think this this theory is proven to be true regarding the film 'Jaws' due to facts found in articles online. For example, in the 'New York Posts' article (https://nypost.com/2015/06/18/why-jaws-terrifies-even-phobia-experts/), A man talks about how 'Jaws' caused him to change basic daily activities such as showering and taking a bath: “I thought there was open water in the bathtub,” he says. To avoid a drain-based shark attack, he’d take showers by standing on the edge of the tub. 

These phobias came from the fact that the film  misrepresented Great Whites as evil, portrayed via scenes where children are attacked on the beach in shallow water, as although this concept is very unrealistic, impressionable children and adults didn't know any better other than to believe it was true.  


Due to ‘Jaws’ clearly having an impact on how viewers felt mentally towards sharks, violent copycat behaviors were demonstrated all over the world by people who had witnessed graphic, aggressive  scene within the film. Such as the scene where Jaws the shark gets killed. In this scene Roy Schneider is on a boat with his friends in an attempt to shoot Jaws, after multiple tries they manage to get a tank of gas into the sharks mouth which they proceed to shoot, to which the shark blows up. 

 In 2007, Craig Anderson came up with a theory based on the fact that paced, violent media products can lead to changes in the brain function when processing violent images, including dampening of emotional response to violence. Which is known as desensitization. Meaning people are more likely to copy these violent behaviors as they’re used to seeing them and therefore don’t feel empathy towards suffering. This theory was shown to be true regarding the film ‘Jaws’ via articles found online. Since the movie was based on hunting ‘Jaws the shark’ down, viewers were subliminally told that it’s okay to demonstrait these violent behaviors in reality. Therefore, people started intentionally killing sharks due to the film misrepresenting great whites as evil. Reinforced in Gizmodo’s Article (https://gizmodo.com/40-years-of-bad-science-how-jaws-got-everything-wrong-1712384448) which reads  "Jaws even caused people to intentionally kill sharks by the thousands in a misguided belief that they were protecting themselves. It's not just misinformed fishermen who kill sharks to try and make people safer. Governments, most famously the government of Western Australia over the last two years, have tried the same nonsense. Dr. Neff calls this "the Jaws effect.", 

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