The Jaws Argument - Tumblr Posts
I'd really like to address the Jaws part of this, because I actually have a post regarding that in my drafts ready to go, but OP makes a very valid, brilliant statement:
It didn't cause shark attacks to rise. It caused fear.
Jaws had no actual impact on sharks in terms of what the sharks did. Jaws didn't inherently increase the danger level of sharks. That stayed exactly the same. Sharks did as they've always done; existed in the ocean and occasionally hunted food that turned out to be a person. Because they're sharks and we chose to be thrashing, yummy prey in their natural habitat.
What Jaws did cause is a widespread misconception about that danger. Which resulted in voluntary human action. We, as people, actively chose to decide this risk factor was suddenly tenfold, and we had to mitigate it by immediately going out and killing as many sharks as we possibly could to reduce it again.
Except. It never changed. Because again; the risk was always exactly the same. And likewise; it didn't actually remove the risk at all. There's still sharks. We're still going in the ocean.
You choose to swim in the ocean, there might be hungry sharks that mistake you for brunch.
And that's not even touching on other arguments like intent and indirect influence.
I just feel like Pete Davidson’s SNL monologue shows the whole proshipping discourse boiled down to the most fundament difference between pros and antis.
Because like.
We have his sister, sitting down to watch GoT with him, and she is a person who has a very clear understanding of fiction vs reality. So when Pete starts getting all puritanical over how the villains are twincesting right in front of their eyes, she’s just like “well, it’s not real, you know.” And he jokes that he’s thinking “am I about to bang this chick?”
That is a direct quote from him, btw.
So there we have it. Sister understands that GoT is fiction, and that fucked up things happening in the fiction we consume does not mean we want to do those fucked up things. And Pete goes “oh, she’s ok with fictional incest in a TV show, clearly my sister would want to fuck me.”
And I get it, it’s a joke. But it’s a joke that so clearly shows the disconnect all this shipping discourse and dark themes in fiction discourse and… and it’s just. That disconnect.
And I don’t know if the antis will ever wrap their minds around “fiction isn’t reality” and before anyone brings up Jaws let me say I KNOW. But also: Jaws didn’t cause shark attacks to rise. It caused fear. Which is what a scary movie is supposed to do. It did it well because thalassophobia is fucking real. Not because sharks are wanton killing machines. Because it was tapping into a primal fear that most of us experience to some level.
"Fanfiction is not a 1:1 reflection of reality."
"But Jaws—!"
