Until the shark was killed?
shareThat would be the ethical thing to do obviously, but a few days of no business is A LOT of lost revenue for a small tourist-based town.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jk4ExFF3tg
I would have posted big-ass "Swim At Your Own Risk" or at the very least "Stay In Ankle-Deep Water" and still kept the beaches open. Seriously, you think the crowds would really stay away in droves from a beach with known shark attacks? I bet you'd get huge crowds perfectly content to just go wading and looking for a shark fin from the beach.
Jaws is my favorite movie but some of the logic in the story has always missed me.
"Can I use her underwear to make soup?"
Consider the number of people who were not swimming compared to the number of people there with binoculars. It's a long trip out to the Island just to not go swimming.
🇦🇺 All the little devils are proud of Hell.
Think about a theme park with a few dodgy rides. The owners wouldn't want to close them down for repairs and have that in the national papers after two people have already been killed; one a day after the other and on the same ride, which was kept operational in spite of the safety officer's objections. It's about rolling the dice that it will be ok, because the alternative is possible bankruptcy.
🇦🇺 All the little devils are proud of Hell.
Fair point and well-put.I never thought of it like that.
Of course, that logic makes Jaws 2 even dumber than it already is, when Vaughan and the city council just **** all over Brody when he says that there's another shark problem and that they should act ASAP.
"Can I use her underwear to make soup?"
[deleted]
Well in the New Jersey shark attacks that Jaws is based on the attacks happened over a wide area with lots of big hotels. In Jaws it seems to me a fairly smallish island.
Washington Racists
Contrary to popular belief, Jaws is not based on those NJ attacks. Benchley came up with the idea after reading about a 4500lb Great White caught off the beaches of Long Island in 1964.
His simple premise was, what if a shark like that came into the waters of an island resort and wouldn't go away? He has never said he was inspired by, nor loosely based his novel on, those 1916 attacks.
True, and in fact Hooper and Brody even make reference to the Jersey shark attacks when trying to convince Vaughan to close the beaches. If this story were "based on" those attacks there'd be no point in referring to them historically.
Here's what I think. As some others have said, they could still have kept the beaches open. It was still a holiday town and businesses don't necessarily profit from just swimmers and/or surfers but on food, drinks, arcade machines and so forth.
I wonder why there wasn't a plan to maybe section off the pond to keep it free from predators. This could have been a permanent precaution in fact and a sturdy one as opposed to a net of some arc since there are other sharks in the area as seen with the capture of the tiger shark.
They should have used the presence of a Great White to attract enthusiasts - use it to their advantage...
"These days you have to boil someone before you can sleep with them"