Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel Jaws was an immediate success upon release and was subsequently adapted into the blockbuster Steven Spielberg movie of the same name the following year. But despite the book putting Benchley on the map and making him a millionaire, the author began to second-guess his work as time went on. “What I now know, which wasn’t known when I wrote Jaws, is that there is no such thing as a rogue shark which develops a taste for human flesh,” Benchley was quoted as saying in 2000. “No one appreciates how vulnerable they are to destruction.”
Furthermore, Benchley explained that he never would’ve written the hit novel if he’d realized how much damage it would do to the reputation of the great white shark. After the book’s debut, Benchley became a shark expert and spent the rest of his life advocating for the creatures he’d unintentionally demonized. “Considering the knowledge accumulated about great whites in the past 25 years, I couldn’t possibly write Jaws today…not in good conscience, anyway,” Benchley told the Cape Cod Times ahead of the premiere of his National Geographic documentary Great White, Deep Trouble.
According to scientist Simon Thorrold of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Jaws helped legitimize shark hunting. An estimated 50 to 100 million sharks are killed by humans each year, but sharks are only responsible for a small number of human deaths by comparison. “If you bought into the fact that you had this rogue, cold-blooded killer going around hunting humans, then obviously anything you could do to stop those sharks was good,” said Thorrold. “It provided cover for people who simply wanted to go out and kill sharks under the guise of somehow making people safer.”
However, Benchley, who died in 2006, insisted that reports of him regretting the book were untrue. “Regret is a waste of time in a case like this,” he argued. “There’s nothing I can do about it.” He eventually learned that stories revolving around sharks attacking boats and staying in a single area to feed on humans were implausible. As he tells it, things wouldn’t happen that way in real life because the animals have a tendency to spit people out.
The post The Author of ‘Jaws’ Said He Could Never Write the Book Today. Here’s Why. appeared first on VICE.
This story was originally reported by Brooke Migdon of The 19th. Meet Brooke and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters in central Florida in August, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds denounced his soon-to-be general election opponent for governor, Democrat David Jolly, as a “Trojan horse” for progressive politics in the reliably red state.
“David Jolly is somebody who thinks it’s still OK for boys to be in girls’ sports,” said Donalds, purposefully misgendering transgender girls. “Just pure insanity.” A day later, he secured the Republican nomination.
In a Facebook post earlier that week, the Republican Party of Florida had claimed “boys WILL be allowed to compete in girls’ sports” if Jolly, a former Republican congressman who has objected to sweeping state bans on trans student-athletes, is elected in November. The group shared a video of an AI-generated brawny, masculine figure in a women’s bathing suit smirking on a winner’s podium, strutting through a women’s locker room and ripping open a shower curtain.
“Will I have to race someone like that one day?” a young girl asks in the video. “David Jolly says we have to let them play,” her mother replies.
But Jolly, who secured the Democratic nomination for governor last month, would not have the authority to do so: Florida law has prohibited trans student-athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity for more than five years. Jolly has said he has “no plans” to change the current law.
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