Babe vs. Jaws
Alien vs Predator. King Kong vs Godzilla. Freddy vs Jason. Cinema is built on the backs of titans clashing. Today pig and shark go head to head in Babe vs Jaws. Not literally, but in a figurative cage match of Hollywood’s most memorable animal stars.
Babe (1995); directed by Chris Noonan, written by George Miller — based on the novel by Dick King-Smith.
Having been spared the abattoir in order to serve as a prize in a village fair, Babe (our titular pig-tagonist) must prove his value by herding sheep in order to dodge the chopping block.
Babe is not just a clever pig, but a downright sweetheart too. Urban legend has it that Babe is so loveable that in the year after the film’s release he caused pork sales to drop by 25%.
But life on the farm is dictated by value, not charm. The horse pulls the cart, cows make milk, sheep grow wool, and sheepdogs herd sheep. They all agree that “the way things are is the way things are”, and ever shall it be so.
Babe is content to accept what looks like a life of free lunches. But once he learns that he’s being fattened up to feed the farmer’s family ( and that his parents and siblings shared the same fate) “the way things are” suddenly doesn’t seem so fair, and Babe sets out to prove his use as a compassionate sheep herder.
If all of this weren’t enough, the farm is in crisis. It’s hemorrhaging cash, the prize sheepdog is nearly deaf, and rustlers keep stealing the sheep. It’s no wonder that despite his wife and peers’ shock and mockery Babe’s farmer is desperate to make his ‘Sheep-Pig’ a thing. Desperation is the film’s driving force, for pig and farmer both.
As cruel as Babe’s destiny may be, it applies to all of us. Prove your worth or else you get the chop!
Surprised as I was by Babe’s brutal thematic undercurrent, I thought that Jaws would be tame by comparison.
Wow, was I wrong!
Jaws (1975); directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Peter Benchly and Carl Gottlieb — based on the novel by Peter Benchly.
When a killer shark stalks the waters off idyllic Amity Island, the town Mayor refuses to close the beaches. Police Chief Brody must overcome his fear of the water to hunt down the shark himself before there are any more needless deaths.
You’d think by the film’s title that the shark was the main character, but in fact it gets barely any screen time. It would have been more accurate to call the film ‘Brody’, but that wouldn’t draw the crowds.
Chief Brody is a strange hero. He’s set up as struggling with a phobia of the sea, but from watching him you’d think he has an allergic reaction to authority which causes him to spontaneously jettison his backbone. From the very moment that he sees a shark attack victim’s mangled corpse, his gut reaction is to close the beaches. But every time he tries the mayor says no, and he just goes along with it.
Stuck between his joint phobias of water and authority figures, Brody opts to overcome the former and head out to help a hired shark hunter — but only after it nearly kills his own son!
Jaws is barely about the shark. It’s barely even about Brody. In reality it’s about power struggles, and how dire straits expose the cruel pragmatism that governs all of our lives.
Quint, the shark hunter, tells a story from earlier in his life: the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. The TL;DR is that over 800 crewmen died because the US Navy’s goal was to hide their secret delivery of the “Little Boy” nuke that would soon be dropped on Hiroshima.
The message is clear: your life is in the hands of the highest available authority, and you better hope they value your life as much as you do.
It’s telling that the film’s pace slows to a crawl once Brody gets on Quint’s boat. Life is simple in Darwinian moments of life-or-death. You can kill a great white shark, but you can’t kill your boss.
Both films are about their protagonists finding a way to do the things they’d been told they couldn’t, and both use animals to blur the line between the natural and the unnatural.
But ultimately both movies are about heroic failures.
Neither Babe nor Brody manage to change the broader injustices in the world.. Neither hero has the power to stop tomorrow repeating the mistakes of today. There will be other public figures who put economic livelihood ahead of lives; there will be more pigs sent to the slaughter.
This piece was written to accompany the podcast Bigger Pictures season 3 episode 1 “Babe vs Jaws”, available here and through your podcatcher of choice.
