Jaws vs. Enemy of the People

Approximately 88.32% of world governments are corrupt. What classifies them as this? Perhaps it’s the inability to be truthful with the majority. The power within these governments does not corrupt, truth and fear corrupts them. Possibly the fear of a loss of power. The truth is what enlightens peoples’ actual feelings. It corrupts people, making them irrational and unpredictable in their behavior. Truth of a great white roaming the waters in Jaws is hard for authority figures, like the mayor, to grasp. Instead of polluting the water with a toxic agent, Spielberg polluted it with a gigantic shark. Similar to An Enemy of the People, in Jaws, the residents of Amity Island on the Atlantic coast, who are dependent on the tourist trade for their livelihood, keep their beaches open in spite of warnings from Police Chief Martin Brody and scientist Matt Hooper that a gigantic great white shark roams the waters. In An Enemy of the People and Jaws, Jaws conveys a stronger message of truth to the audience through the visible danger of the infested waters overlooked by the authority figures of the town, demonstrating that the truth must not be hidden or diluted even if it counters the wishes of the authorities.
Although both mayors put the economic well being of their town above safety, mayor Larry Vaughn of Amity Island proceeded to keep the beaches open when the danger was much more apparent than that in An Enemy of the People. Mayor Larry Vaughn was faced with a decision at the beginning of Jaws. He could either admit that a terrible shark attack had occurred on his island and ruin the town’s prosperity for the summer, or suppress the real truth from the community in order to preserve their economic well being. In one aspect, Mayor Vaughn was self-centered. He thought that if he let his economy prosper, he would most likely be re-elected in the next term. In An Enemy of the People, the Burgomaster had the same idea. The only difference is the perceived level of