Jaws and the Town of Friendship, Maine

Like any connoisseur of media, when analyzing a film, I do my best to scrutinize lapses in logic (which are usually required by the more pressing matter of narrative flow, but who cares?), and to draw parallels between real life and fiction for the sake of being a nerd. While I try not to go so far as to ruin the experience of subsequent viewings (except in the case of the Star Wars prequels - which beg to never be enjoyed) I do take pleasure in figuring out why certain films resonate and stick with us forever.

For me, whenever I experience a film that withstands initial analysis and has the ability to make me want to watch again I will continue to do so while making heavier and heavier the weight of my audit with each viewing. Side-effects of this procedure include my mind absorbing the cadence - if not the verbiage itself - of notable lines of dialog. One particular line from Jaws came to mind when I was reading an article about the town of Friendship, Maine. The line is spoken by Larry Vaughn, the Mayor of Amity as he is trying to assure the news that the waters surrounding the island are safe. It goes, "…and as you know Amity means Friendship." I thought it was too much of a coincidence for there to not be a parallel between fiction and reality. So, I looked deeper to see if, perhaps, the inspiration for Amity came from this little town in Maine.

Out of fairness I will first make an argument against my own contention, which is that the town of Amity was inspired by Friendship, Maine: Amity is an island, where as Friendship is not. And to further refute my own claim there has never been a recorded shark attack off the coast of Maine. The inspiration for the shark attacks came from a string of attacks off the coast of New Jersey in 1916. Novelist Peter Benchley upped the ante of the story when he first heard of a shark called a Great White.

All we know of Amity Island is that it is somewhere in New England. The first parallel, as I mentioned, is that the name "Amity" means "friendship." This seems to be the clearest tie, because Friendship, Maine is in New England (obviously). I speculate that the inspiration to create a variation of that name came from the sense of irony created by setting a rather violent tale in a town of that name. Also, allowing a place called "Frienship" to be terrorized by anything natural (or quasi-supernatural) creates a sense of innocence. By simply moving it to an island it creates a sense of isolation and entrapment - the idea of not being able to escape the terrorizing.

The details of the town life are briefly shown in the film, but from those few images an audience can grasp the concept of a quaint oceanfront town. While the film wasn't shot in Friendship (it was shot at Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard) the architecture and aesthetic is almost identical.

So was Friendship an actual inspiration for the setting of Jaws? Perhaps. I'm sure there are a lot of factors I ignored which would work against this argument - but, I'm open to debate. Seems interesting enough to consider, though, and why else do we take the time to debate such trivialities? Because we simply enjoy dissecting the films and stories we love? Because we're dorks? Because we like to pretend to be smarter than others - to say to the world, "Hey, look what I figured out!?"

Actually, yeah, that's probably it.