On a lovely day on a lovely beach on Amity Island, Mayor Larry Vaughn stands in front of the cameras to kick off the Fourth of July festivities. Just days ago, a woman was killed by a shark off the coast of the tourist spot, making many consider avoiding the sandy beaches this year. But Vaughn assures his viewers that everything is fine.“I’m pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers,” the mayor tells the cameras, smiling as a gaggle of bathers stand behind him. “But, as you see, it’s a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means ‘friendship.'”cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});For 50 years, Jaws fans have pointed to this moment as one of the most despicable in the annals of cinematic villainy. Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) has overridden the orders of Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). He has ignored the warnings of expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss). He has put economic concerns first, opening the beaches out of fear of losing the tourists and their money. Movie fans aren’t wrong about what Vaughn did. But for too long, they have ignored the complexity of his situation, a complexity that begs for a bit more sympathy for the mayor and a bit more anger toward the movie’s true villain: capitalism.How to Earn a Living On Amity IslandWith it’s ear-piercing chalkboard scratch and idiosyncratic speech, Quint’s introduction in Jaws remains one of the most iconic moments in movie history. “You all know me, know how I earn a livin’,” Quint (Robert Shaw) tells the council meeting, once he has their attention.So iconic is the moment that it’s overpowered the reason that Quint had to scratch the chalkboard in the first place. He wanted to capture the attention of a bunch of squabbling meeting attendees who have been sent into an uproar because of some news from Chief Brody. After a second shark attack, this time taking a young local boy instead of the inebriated outsider who died in the movie’s opening scene, the city council has convened to face the crisis head on.“Are you going to close the beach?” asks one member, a question so pointed that director Steven Spielberg, who had been using Robert Altman-style overlapping dialogue up until this point in the scene, makes Scheider wait a beat in silence. As soon as Brody answers “yes,” the council members erupt, and not in happiness and relief. The chaos confirms something Vaughn told Brody earlier in the film: “Amity is a summer town. We need summer dollars.”Spielberg underscores the island’s fraught economic status with the lead-up to Brody’s earlier conversation with Vaughn. The sequence begins with Brody sitting in his office and typing up the death certificate for Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie), the woman who died in the opening. After getting confirmation from the coroner that Chrissie likely died by shark attack, Brody makes his way to the hardware store to buy signs to announce the beach closure. Along the way, he’s accosted by one storeowner, who complains that a truck parked in front of his establishment will take away from business, and he arrives at the hardware store to find another complaining that the supplies he needs won’t come in on time. Tracking shots capturing Brody’s walk reveal streets packed for a parade, with other store owners standing in their doorways, waiting for customers, or stopping Brody to talk about their concerns.As these scenes show, the entire island depends upon a sucessful holiday weekend. So why does Mayor Vaughn get the blame?We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Theory of Economic InterdependencyMayor Vaughn’s last scene in Jaws occurs about halfway through the movie in the aftermath of yet another shark attack. Full of righteous anger, fueled both by the fact that he was right all along and the fact that his own son was endangered in the attack, Brody pulls Vaughn aside and demands the mayor sign an order to hire Quint to hunt the shark. Viewers share in Brody’s anger, especially those who have seen the movie before, as the signing signals a shift to the second half of the movie, the men’s adventure section with Brody, Hooper, and Quint aboard the latter’s boat the Orca. So angry and excited are they, that they might miss that Vaughn isn’t arguing with the chief at this point. He’s working through his own guilt.“I was acting in the town’s best interest,” he mutters to himself, before finally looking Brody straight in the eye. “Martin, my kids were on that beach too.”Again Spielberg pauses the interplay to let that revelation sink in. Vaughn might have been the most prominent figure demanding the beach stay open but he wasn’t doing it alone or even, as far as we can tell onscreen, for his own gain. He was doing it because that was his responsibility as the mayor. He was doing it because that’s what his constituents demanded him to do.In fact the start of the deadly beach sequence shows that his only act of individualism came from his bravery to actually stand behind his decisions. He has to go up to the city leaders, many of whom were making big demands in the conference hall, and beg them to actually get in the water, to prove that they believe opening the beaches was the right thing to do. None of this is to say that Vaughn is some type of hero, that he did the right thing keeping the beach open. From the coroner’s clear willingness to back away from the first diagnosis of Chrissie’s death to Hooper’s expert analysis, Vaughn has had ample evidence that a shark was hunting swimmers. But it isn’t accurate to say that he’s a villain.Vaughn is a victim of a cutthroat economic system that hinges the livelihood of everyone on the island on a handful of months out of the year. If a single weekend of those months go wrong, then the entire community is sunk. Even Quint warns them earlier in the film if they don’t kill the shark quickly, they’ll be “on wellfare the whole winter.” So as mayor the mayor, the blame for that possible fate falls on Vaughn.Amity Means FriendshipFamously, Jaws made shark attacks look far more frequent and deadly than they are in real life, resulting in a stigma that Spielberg regrets to this day. A similar misrepresentation is happening with the mayor. People love to point to the mayor as a symbol of ruthless greed and incompetent governance. A meme started in 2017 and revived during the COVID pandemic urged people to vote in local elections with the reminder that “the mayor from Jaws is still the mayor in Jaws 2.” We repeatedly tell ourselves that if we could get rid of the one bad actor, we would be safe, as if Vaughn was like the lone shark hunting the beach (leaving aside, of course, the inexplicable familial blood feud added in the sequels between the Brodys and some fish).But the original Jaws is smarter than that in its depiction of small town politics and economics. Vaughn is just a symptom of the problem, and for that, he deserves the sympathy the movie gives him in his final scene. Treating Mayor Vaughn as the true villain of Jaws isn’t just a failure to pay close attention to the movie—it’s a failure to pay attention to our economic system.The post Jaws and a Mayor Who Has Been Misunderstood for 50 Years appeared first on Den of Geek.