Would you lose respect for someone who hated a cherished film/novel?

[DerekG]

I have nothing but admiration and fondness for a friend who radiates intelligence, acerbic wit and overpowering compassion. She is, as they say, one of the good ones.

But.....she hates JAWS. Worse yet was her justification for loathing said film, claiming it was "unrealistic," like it was supposed to be a documentary about marine life--does anyone level such criticism toward Melville's Moby Dick? JAWS is my absolute favorite, and I would go out on a limb to say that only Coppola's first two Godfather movies were as well crafted as Spielberg's first masterpiece.

This pained me: it's worse than hearing someone savage Milton's Paradise Lost, or Shakespeare's Macbeth...comparable to seeing someone burning the Bible.

I know this is weird, but I actually lost some respect for this wonderful human being. I'm the one with issues, I know, but the film is just sublime. She didn't have to love it, but any person possessing a modicum of taste would admit it was a laudable effort! Damn it, the musical score alone.............!!!!!!!

Is anyone else this defensive about a work of art they cherish?

[muchacho]

1. me too...

My wife hates Jaws as well. Some nonsense about sharks not being able to eat boats and tolerate Roy Schieder's acting.

[mouse7]

2. You better not hold JAWS out as a test

If you're going to hold a belief that JAWS was a masterpiece of cinema, prepare to be disagreed with.

Personally, I see JAWS as a slasher flick with a fish cast as Freddie Krueger. I don't hold slasher flicks in very high esteem. I might watch one occasionally, but I recognize it just an exercise in watching repeated car-wrecks for 100 minutes. Nothing but a violent spectacle.

[DerekG]

6. You might be mistaking it for the sequels...

The original made the list of the American Film Institute's 50 greatest films ever made (#43).

If JAWS is a slasher flick, then Hitchcock's PSYCHO is a slasher flick.

[mouse7]

11. No... I'm not mistaking it for the sequels

PSYCHO had no gore.

JAWS was full of gore. JAWS was a only half-decently made film with shocking amounts of gore for it's time.

[DerekG]

14. It wasn't "full of gore"...

There were three instances of bloodshed in the film:

1. The attack on the boy. (7-10 seconds long)
2. The severed leg dropping to the ocean floor. (5 seconds long)
3. The death of Quint--admittedly the most gruesome death in a PG film (40 seconds).

Barely a minute long...comparable to Marian Crane's death scene in PSYCHO (and that chocolate syrup was as disturbing as fake blood).

[mouse7]

15. It was full of gore for mid 70's

There were no severed limbs and people getting bit/torn in half in mainstream cinema in the 70's. The fact that they were present makes my case that it was an incredibly gory spectacle for the time it was made.

Psycho? Please. As you pointed out, chocolate syrup could be used for blood because it was filmed in black and white. Claims a black and white film was a gory spectacle falls on deaf ears. Color had been around since Gone with the Wind. Psycho could have easily been filmed in color if gore spectacles was the object. It wasn't.

[DerekG]

16. No, I'm saying the amount of gore was comparable in respect to era...

You'll recall that an inordinate amount of blood was not seen in American movies until the release of The Wild Bunch and Bonnie and Clyde in the late 60's.

Psycho's release predated these films, and the scant amount of blood shown during the first murder (to say nothing of the splatter of crimson we see when Arbogast is killed) WAS shocking for its time. And Hitchcock's intention was exactly that--to shock.

[mouse7]

18. You're wrong on every point.

Completely wrong. There was no dismemberment in mainstream movies before JAWS. There was absolutely nothing in comparison to Quint death in mainstream film. Psycho was shot in black and white long after color film was regularly used in film. Shooting in black and white and gory spectacles are mutually exclusive.

DerekG... I don't know what it is about you and JAWS. You're fanatic about this flick. You just plain shouldn't talk to others about it if you are going to hold their responses against them, because very, very few people are going to hold similar opinions to you.

[jobycom]

9. Nah, no way

The first Jaws was not a slasher film. There was very little blood and violence in most of the film. The suspense of the film was earned by great filmmaking, by character development, not by shock and gore. There were deeper psychological and cultural issues, such as the mayor's concern for money over the lives of the city, and of the town's value system. In the end you cared about the characters, and wanted them to live, you didn't just sit tensely waiting for the next stream of blood to spurt.

It wasn't a deep message to center your life around, but it was a great film, not some Jason nonsense.

And yes, the sequels devolved into that, but even the first sequel tried to be better than that.

[mouse7]

12. What do you call the guy getting bit in half in first JAWS?

Blood exploding out of his mouth, etc. For the a mass-market flick in the mid-70's, JAWS had extreme amounts of gore.

JAWS was a B+ gory movie in genre normally filled with B movies. You point to character development init as if character development had never been in movies before. It had. Since the silent movies. Just because JAWS actually had elements considered necessary to making a movie a decent movie, doesn't make JAWS a good movie. Decent flick, maybe, but that's all.

[jobycom]

22. I've seen more gore in Shakespearean stage productions

Would a man's tongue being ripped out onstage during a production of Julius Caesar qualify it as a slasher play?

There was very little blood and gore in MOST of the movie, as I said. The fear and suspense of the film was created by story, not by onscreen mutilation. The climax had one bloody scene. It wasn't done for shock or titalation, it was done to be explicit, to raise the horror level. That's as different from a slasher film as Juliet's kiss on the balcony is from a sex scene in Debbie Does Dallas.

As for being a B movie, not by any standards could that label fit. It was high budget, it was the highest grossing film of all time then, it had a star cast, several of whom are Oscar winners, the movie itself was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture (and it only lost to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), and won three of them, including musical score, which launched John Williams on his course to the greatest movie scorer title, and the American Film Institute puts it at 48 in the Top 100 of all time.

You may not like scary movies, you may not like this one, you may not like any movie where seafood seeks revenge on its predators (being vegetarian, that moves me a bit), but to call it a B movie is just unwarranted hyperbole.

[gottaB]

3. My wife just recently agreed with me that Irma Vep is funny

She had always been annoyed by it, but suddenly, after hearing me defend it as a masterpiece of farce for the last three years, she finally succumbed to another viewing. Now she agrees with me that it's funny and intelligent.

And once again I can look her in the eyes and see her for the wonderful human being that she is.

Whew.

[TexasProgresive]

4. Swim with the sharks

Derek. Here is Texas we have a couple of sayings:
1) There's no acounting for taste.
2) Opinions are like assholes; everyones got one and they all stink.

You like Jaws and she doesn't - it's not the end of the world, and this is not a good basis to judge a relationship. Your friend's main criticism of Jaws is that it is not realistic. But guess what? She might have deeper issues with it that she is not aware of yet. Then again, your love of Jaws may point to something similar in yourself. The answer to this is in you. Do some soul searching focused on what it is about Jaws that speaks to you so loudly.

[jobycom]

5. Not for Jaws, c'mon!

If the great work she hated was the type that said something about her soul, or her intelligence, or spoke to great distances between your world views, I'd understand. If she did not like Shakespeare because he valued love too highly, or if she did not like The Color Purple because of it's spirituality, or she didn't like To Kill a Mockingbird because of its multicultural respect, then I'd say you had a point.

Jaws was a clever horror flick with some mild psychological overtones. Good movie, still (I watched it recently), but to judge a person on whether they like it or not is silly. It has no deep insight into a person's soul or the condition of humanity, there is no underlying identifying metaphysics behind it. It's just a tale, and it speaks to someone no higher than that.

And careful, she might lose respect for you for raising a superficial film to the level of a religion.

[Brotherjohn]

19. Ditto. This perfectly states everything I would have.

Your friend should rightly lose respect for YOU if you lose respect for her over such a movie.

I liked it, too, but it's a movie. And it doesn't even reveal differences over important spiritual and moral issues like some of the examples cited above would.

It simply reveals you have different tastes in movies. Different people have different tastes in art. You should no more lose respect for your friend for this than if they didn't like a vegetable you liked.

[jobycom]

21. I once broke up with a girlfriend over food

She ordered a fish sandwich, and I dumped her. Eighth grade. Had to do with a crush she had on someone who convinced her to eat fish.

But that wasn't a movie!

[Brotherjohn]

23. Well, two important differences right up front:

1) You were, what, 13?

2) She was obviously going with the wishes of her crush (not you). That's a real slap in the face to a 13-year-old!

[jobycom]

24. See? If only she'd understood!

Well, I'm almost over it. 25 years have passed. But thanks for listening.

[izzie]

7. No I do not care if people like what I like or not.

I also do not care what they like. I do think we should have to read some of the great works as it makes you better educated. Some were so dull to me I wondered why they called them great and some I wish I had been made to read.I also sometimes read best sellers if people talk about them as I feel I am missing something and it drives me nuts.You know, what are they talking about?

[DarkSim]

8. I despise Titanic lovers.

That movie was purely terrible. I'm not sure what it's message was or what it was trying to portray. All i know is that it was -in a word- shit.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

10. I agree with you wholeheartedly

about Titanic. Pure pile of dung.

[trotsky]

13. Hey, Titanic had one redeeming feature.

The cinematography. It was fascinating to see that beautiful ship recreated in nearly perfect detail.

The rest of the film? Pure trash.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

17. God no. If I did, I'd never speak to anyone ever.

[bleedingheart]

20. no - people are entitled to their own opinions...that is what makes them

interesting...