He stands over seven feet tall, has steel teeth capable of biting through cables and chains, and survives plane falls, train crashes and shark bites. Jaws is the ultimate goon of spy cinema: a silent, indestructible mass, the "perfect brute" made for spectacle. For two films he seems to be proof that there are bodies born only to destroy. And then, at the crucial moment, Jaws does what no genetic brute should be able to do: he chooses.
// The theoryThe textbook brute
Jaws is the myth of the genetic brute reduced to pure entertainment: the enormous, unstoppable body, without dialogue or interior, existing only to hit. He is the XYY "supermale" turned into a fairground attraction —a villain from whom no one asks for motives because his physique is the motive—. For almost his entire screen time he embodies the cliché without a crack: look at Jaws and you will see the fantasy that some bodies come into the world programmed for violence, played entirely straight and for a good time.
But the cliché carries its own refutation inside it, and Jaws fires it. In Moonraker, the villain Drax plans to exterminate humanity and repopulate it with a "perfect race" of physically flawless specimens. And Jaws —a giant with steel teeth, anything but Drax’s blond, symmetrical ideal— realizes something terrible: the machine of perfection would discard him too. In that realization he does what the brute should not be able to do: he judges his boss, he chooses a side, he falls in love with a small, slight woman, and he crosses over to the hero’s side. The villain who seemed to be pure body reveals, all at once, agency, moral judgment and a heart. He was never just a body.
Even the brute chooses
Jaws defuses the trap of the cliché from within. If even the most cartoonish "body born to destroy" turns out to be capable of judging and choosing —of falling in love, of rebelling against the ideology that was using him—, then the premise that a physique dictates the man is simply false. The refutation does not come from outside, with statistics: it comes from the character himself, in the instant he decides. That is the blow: the villain designed to prove that biology is destiny ends up proving the opposite. No body, however colossal, closes the door on agency —and where there is agency, there is no genetic determinism that holds—.
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// The subjectThe giant who did not fit in paradise
Jaws’s turn is sharper than its comic tone suggests. He serves Drax with the loyalty of a weapon until he sees the paradise his master is building and understands that he has no place in it. He is the outsider even among the villains: too big, too strange, with those teeth that no catalogue of "perfection" would accept. The eugenic machine he serves treats him as a disposable instrument, just like everyone who does not measure up. And his answer —falling in love with Dolly, a tiny woman in glasses, as "imperfect" by Drax’s standards as he is— is the human heart of the joke: two rejects who choose each other in the face of a perfection factory that wants neither of them. It is played for laughs, but the idea is serious: the fantasy of the perfect body ends up discarding everyone, including its own executioners.
Jaws
// The crackThat it is a comedy, for a start
All honesty up front: Jaws is comic relief, a cartoon in a tuxedo, and Moonraker is among the most preposterous of the saga —reading criminological theory here is almost mischief—. His "redemption" is a screenwriting move for laughs, not a character study, and it does not erase that he had killed wholesale as a henchman beforehand. It is best, then, not to take Jaws more seriously than he takes himself. But even reduced to a joke, he leaves a residue worth keeping: that the writers needed, in the end, to give him a choice —that not even the textbook brute could stand two films being only a body— says everything about how flimsy the cliché is. The myth of the genetic monster does not hold up even in a comedy.
The body does not dictate the man
Jaws closes the XYY theory with the simplest and firmest lesson: the body does not dictate the man. If the flattest archetype of the "brute born to kill" collapses the moment he is granted a decision, what is left of the serious attempt to read violence in the chromosomes of real people? Nothing that holds. And Jaws leaves, as a gift, a warning that anticipates far less comic horrors: the ideology of physical perfection —Drax’s "superior race"— has no winners; it discards even those who serve it. Distrusting anyone who promises a perfect body, and refusing to read anyone’s destiny in their physique, is the same lesson by two paths. Not even the giant with steel teeth was his body: he was, it turned out, someone capable of choosing.
Three key takeaways
- Jaws is the myth of the genetic brute (XYY) in full spectacle mode: a colossal, indestructible body, made only for violence, played straight for almost his entire screen time.
- But he fires the refutation from within: on seeing that his boss’s "perfect race" would discard him, he judges, chooses and switches sides for love. If even the textbook brute chooses, the physique does not dictate the man.
- The crack: it is comedy and his turn is a screenwriting move, not a serious study. But his lesson holds —the body is not destiny— and anticipates the critique of the ideology of physical perfection, which has no winners.
Sources · further reading
- Gould, S. J. (1981). La falsa medida del hombre. W. W. Norton.
- Witkin, H. A. y cols. (1976). «Criminality in XYY and XXY Men». Science, 193.
- Jacobs, P. A. y cols. (1965). «Aggressive Behaviour, Mental Sub-normality and the XYY Male». Nature, 208.
- Raine, A. (2013). The Anatomy of Violence. Pantheon.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Jaws?
Jaws («Dientes de Acero») es un villano de La espía que me amó, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. He stands over seven feet tall, has steel teeth capable of biting through cables and chains, and survives plane falls, train crashes and shark bites.
¿Por qué Jaws (Dientes de Acero) se convierte en villano?
James Bond and the myth of the genetic brute: Jaws is the textbook goon —seven feet tall, steel teeth, indestructible—. The perfect "body born to destroy". Until he discovers that his boss’s plan would discard him too, and he chooses.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Jaws?
El caso de Jaws se analiza desde la Cromosoma XYY. Jaws, the giant goon of two James Bond films, is the myth of the genetic brute in full spectacle mode: a colossal, indestructible body, without words or inner life, made only for violence. For almost his entire screen time he embodies the cliché without a crack. But in Moonraker the refutation is fired from within: when he discovers that the villain is planning a "perfect race" that would leave him —a giant with steel teeth— out, he does what the brute should not be able to do: he judges, he chooses, he falls in love and he switches sides. The character who seemed to be pure body reveals agency, love and a moral line. His lesson: not even the textbook brute is determined by his physique; the body does not dictate the man.
