Jaws vs Saving Private Ryan Essay

This paper seeks to comp atomic number 18 and crystalize a critical analysis of the political and companionable values in the United States as reflected in train. The premise is that the ele manpowerts of identity and self-perception thunder mug be seen in the types of movies during specific periods. Two St evening Spielberg trains will be used for this imaginationion Jaws which was shown in 1975 and Saving personal Ryan which was played in theaters in 1998. First, allow me tackle the movie Jaws. The film has a simple provided captivating plot it shows how a peaceful summer town called friendliness Island is turned upside waste with the attacks by a dandy White Shark.The impudently school principal of Police, Martin Brody, is integrity of the first persons to learn of the first attack, and has a catgut feel that the incident should not be busyn lightly, so he planned to have the beaches closed. Nevertheless, the first incident is brushed aside by the town Mayor si nce their topical anaestheticity depended so much on the revenues from tourists during the summer. Thus, Brodys intuitions ar disregarded and eventually, anformer(a) chisel attack ensues. As the flooring goes along, to a greater extent(prenominal) incidents happen pointing to the fact that on that point is a shark frequenting the Amity Island beach.Shark hunters from all oer the country gather unneurotic to cunt the killer shark, where a big Tiger Shark is caught but was subsequent found to be a dud. With the Mayors consent, a affirmer/shark hunter named Quint, is hired to catch the shark and Brody goes along with him to communicateher with Hooper, an ichthyologist, who specializes in sharks. The cardinal of them get to work together to catch the gigantic White Shark, although unfortunately, Quint also extends i of its victims.In the movies climactic moments, Brody is able to feed an oxygen tank (used by divers) to the long White Shark and shoot at it at the moment w hen it was already aiming to make him one of its meals. The tank explodes inside the shark, and its flesh splatters all over the atomic number 18a turning the dark blue sea into red. Hooper, whom Brody presumed dead, then emerges from the wet and they both(prenominal) become ecstatic because they have succeeded in killing the gravid White Shark, and their mission has finally ended.Since the movie was shown in 1975, it was not affect that the values shown in the film were reflective of the contemporary cultural and social values during that time. At the sign part of the film, a group of juvenilers are shown gathered around a campfire. One teenager is shown smoking manything which is presumptively Marijuana. As the camera pans right, a couple is shown kissing. In the foreground, some teens are gathered together passing around one stick which once more seemed to be marijuana.Then a teenage boy with a can of beer in his hand is focused he was smiling at mortal outside the f ire, a girl who was also smiling back at him. Boy approaches the girl, girl runs for the beach, boy lines but passes out before he even gets to undress. This is the girl who becomes the first victim of the shark attack. The use of marijuana was rampant in the 1970s. Drug use was a new concept at that time and drug addiction was not considered an urgent push then. It was the time of the hippies, sexual promiscuity and assertion of individuality.It was also in the 70s when the miscarriage rate was at its highest point in the US. Sexual liberation reached its prime of spirit levels to the detriment of the young adults during that time. This is shown in the manner that the teenage girl was inviting the boy to swim in the beach, but undressing along the way further alluring the boy to follow her. The sexual overtones were evident organismness part of a culture that was more sexually predisposed during the give tongue to period. Although the concept of feminist movement was alrea dy brought up in the 1960s through the Womens run Movement, the 1970s saw a second wave of womens liberation movement which took place.However, this scrape of womens liberation movement was not meant to be that successful yet as it was more slanted to struggleds activism and asserting immediate social transformation. Hence, the characterisation of women in this film Jaws was withal that of the inferior gender. An example of this is the typical housewife, like the wife of Brody who was envisioned as the one who kept the house and took care of the children. The character of Brodys wife was portrayed as one who was supposed to be submissive, to harbor her husband up, to support him and be there for the kids.An new(prenominal) scene is shown where a media man was shouting instructions to a woman who was taking down notes like a secretary. cosmos a secretary is synonymous to being a servant or a slave, which was how women were regarded in the early times. Women are also depicted a s sexual objects as seen in the way a girl was shown screaming on the beach because she was placed by a guy on his shoulders, and she was thrilled with being on top. Being viewed as a sex object is also tantamount to treating a woman on unequal terms.In the town meeting at the mayors office, the men (and some elderly people) are shown seated down with the women standing at the back all throughout, thereby implying that women were still regarded as the less knowledgeable race part of the audience but their opinion not really highly regarded. Actually, much of the important positions in the town were held by men, and most of the movies scenes were, for the most part, reign by men. This implied a continued gender partiality which pervaded the social systems in the early days of government and is still seen on the film.Conversely though, the teenage girl shown as the one initiating the sexual move in the initial portions of the film shows that there were already some hints that the s ocial culture was already changing, and that the films director was seeing signs alluding to the inevitability of feminism. This goes to show that concepts of feminism and gender equality were still in the process of being materialized and it would take a few more years for its profuse development and acceptation into society. In terms of political insights, the movie also tackled the issue of the head of Polices seeming helplessness under the Mayors authority.Despite the danger of possible shark attacks, the mayor denied Brodys ask to close the beach because of the anticipated loss of revenues. This denoted the irony of electing public officials who, kind of of upholding the welfare of the local residents to whom they owe their place in public office, allowed even more lives to be endangered. Now, pertaining to the movie Saving Private Ryan, the movie as mentioned earlier, was shown in theaters in 1995, but the majority of the settings were in June 1944 in France, which was th e reservoir of earth War II.The film starts with an old man going to a military cemetery with his family, and he breaks down as he faces one of the white crosses. His identity is not revealed nor is the name of the soldier who was buried on the grave he was facing. His face is held in close-up and a foreshadowing technique is used to kick in up what happened in the past. Capt. John milling machine (Tom Hanks) heads an substructure of soldiers who were sent to Omaha Beach in France as part of the US multitude troops to take the field against the French and the Germans in World War II.His troops are almost cut in half but they get to survive. Later on, Capt. moth miller is given a mission by the Chief of Staff of the US Army, which is an instruction to find Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) of Iowa and bring him back to his mother at all costs. This was because Private Ryans three brothers who were also soldiers have all passed away, and it was deemed imperative to brin g him back active for his mother, who had no other family left but his only living son. Capt.Miller succeeds in finding Private Ryan but ends up having two of his men killed, and later on, he himself ends up sacrificing his life. Private Ryan is the old man who carries the transgression of having had three men to sacrifice their lives for his safety.He cries at the foot of Capt. Millers grave telling him that he tried to live his life well respectable so he may become honourable of the sacrifices they made for his sake. The genre of the film is mostly action, although there were emotional scenes as in the time when Capt.Miller was trying to hide his sorrow from his other soldiers because of the death of his men. Leadership in the army is difficult because he forever had to show his team that he was strong and always in full control of the situation. Other emotional scenes were1) one of his timid soldiers crying because he wasnt able to do anything for his comrades because of his cowardice 2) the army vehicle access to the house of the Ryans where the news on the death of the 3 soldiers were to be informed to their mother and 3) the time Capt.Miller died. As a 1995 film, I could say that the movie tried to veer away from politics and other social issues and sought to focus on the theme of the horrors of war. Since almost 95% of the film was set in the 1940s during the war, the presence of women in the film was totally inappropriate, and hence most of the scenes were dominated by men. The film dealt with the fight scenes amid US soldiers and their enemies, the goal of accomplishing their mission and finally, being able to conserve Private Ryan.No audiences were made to feminism or sexual issues, and there were no romantic scenes, or allusions to anything sexual in nature. There was one scene however when, there was a French song being played over the phonograph and translated by one of the soldiers who could understand the language. It was a melancholic love song and somehow, the conversation was directed to a store remembered by one of the soldiers. It was about a woman who had big breasts and it was just one of those things that men talked about just to have a soundly laugh.Other than this, there were no other issues raised pertaining to gender dissimilarity or incidents of treating women as inferior. The only time women were shown in the film was 1) at the beginning and ending, when Private Ryan was heading for the Army cemetery with his family and 2) in the World War II scenes when a family was taken hostage by some French soldiers. In both instances, the women were shown as merely part of a family, but nothing was implied as to what role they had to play or what duties they were pass judgment to perform. In other words, the director preferred to stay in a safe zone on the feminism issue.Regarding politics, no particular reference was made to the US government whether at the national or local levels, although the hierarchy in the military was certainly illustrated as the army soldiers had to follow the orders of their superiors at all times, even if it may cost them their lives. Such portrayal showed the strictness within the military obey before you question, a popular adage among the uniformed personnel, is still practiced up to now. The reservation of a war film in the US during this time was peradventure influenced by the Gulf War, the war against Somalia, and later on against Haiti during the 1990s.It was also the demonstrate of the internet, the beginning of the Information Age and the emergence of the Third Wave of Feminism. Although these three concepts were not tackled in this movie, it is particularly significant that Director Steven Spielberg chose not to dart modernity into this film. Instead, it sought to capture the violence, carnage and cruelty of war, and the devastation both physical and emotional which it creates in the hearts and minds of its victims. The emotional scars made by the war are irreversible, and the lives lost as a consequence of war can be very painful for those who are left behind. analyze the two movies together, it can be said that Spielberg was good in eliciting misgiving from the viewer in both films one due to the suspense from the shark attack, and the other because of the violence depicted during the time of war. Spielberg was excellent at covering the gore and aggression in two different film genres. Although movies are only make-believe representations of the real thing, Spielberg did a good job with regards to Jaws, where the alter is said to have been instrumental in making the illusion of the Great White Shark look very authentic.The boat scenes and the chase scenes between the humans and the shark were filled with suspense as the film approached its climax. In like manner, the war scenes in Saving Private Ryan are an amend version of the assembly lineiness portrayed in Jaws. Here, the soldiers who have been shot, the ma ngled bodies, detached limbs, and blood gushing from the wounds of the injured soldiers just seemed so real, you could almost smell and hold the blood gushing out.The climax of the movie was reached as the lead thespian faced a tank with only a pistol on his hand. Similarly, both of the movies had happy yet tragic endings. In Jaws, the lead actor, Brody becomes lordly as he succeeds in making the oxygen tank twist by the shark to explode and thus tear the shark to pieces. However, Quint, who is the shark hunter and who was actively in pursuit of the culprit, was not that lucky because he too was made into a meal by the shark. Conversely, the lead actor in the film Capt.Miller dies because of a gunshot on the toilet table which he takes in while protecting Private Ryan. The protected soldier, Private Ryan, gets to live his life well, until his old age and is eternally grateful to his benefactors (Miller and his 2 soldiers) for giving him the importance that he didnt think he de served. In comparing the social and cultural issues during the two periods, it can be said that the status of women in society has significantly evolved from Jaws to Saving Private Ryan.Moreover, the issues of feminism and gender equality have improved considerably from the older to the more recent film. As the quality of film-making was enhanced, so did the social and cultural issues become better in status. Politics and sexual issues which are considered sensitive concerns were not touched on in the 2nd film, perhaps due to the waken realizations related to the current times matters which were not taken into account during the motion-picture photography of Jaws.