“The strangest thing...[Donald Trump] was watching 'Shark Week' and he was watching a special about the U.S.S. something and it sank and it was like the worst shark attack in history...He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks. He was like, 'I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.'” —Stephanie Clifford (professional name, Stormy Daniels), 2011 interview about a sexual encounter with Donald Trump, as reported by InTouch Weekly, Jan. 29, 2018.
(Seems probable the documentary was “Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever.” The program launched the 20th anniversary of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. The show recounts the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. It initially aired on July 29, 2007. Per Wikipedia.)
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Donald Trump may look a picture of bragging self-confidence, but in fact, he reportedly is dogged by multiple, irrationally exaggerated fears--including terror of blood, germs, poisoning, stairways, memory loss and signs of aging [Fire and Fury, by Michael Woolf], and haircutting -- not to mention the all-too-obvious xenophobia -- a prejudice that BTW has been linked with germophobia. (Oddly, however, his germophobia reportedly does not extend to unprotected sex.)
The most bizarre of these reported fears might be the alleged obsessive fear of sharks (technically known as selachophobia or galeophobia), as described by Ms. Clifford.
Of course, sharks can be dangerous in some situations. But in reality, fatal shark attacks on people are extremely rare, much less likely than death by lightning strike. Sharks usually have more reason to fear us than we have to fear them. (And despite—or because of--Trump’s reported hostility to them, shark-related charities have seen a recent increase in donations, according to The Guardian. )
Donald Trump would seem well insulated from any danger of shark attack, since--despite his property on the Florida coast--he appears to avoid the beach itself, never mind the water. However, "[s]ufferers from this phobia experience anxiety even though they may be safe on a boat or in an aquarium or on a beach," notes MedicineNet. “...Hollywood films depicting sharks as calculating, vengeful diabolical monsters have no doubt enkindled the fear of sharks in many persons.”
The Discovery Channel initiated its annual “Shark Week” in 1988, originally with a strong focus on science and conservation, at which time Donald Trump was already 42 years old. The earlier movie, “Jaws,” traumatized impressionable viewers, especially children, and even left creator Steven Spielberg with a case of PTSD, he later asserted. Trump would already have turned 29 by the time “Jaws” was released in 1975. Did one of both of these media events trigger a full-fledged phobia? Or could a much younger Donald Trump already have been traumatized by earlier exposure--for instance, something like the header illustration above? Or do even deeper psychological currents swirl around this fear?
Some apology may be due for asking such an apparently idle question during a national crisis, with innocent persons in very real, not imaginary, danger. The only excuse: the topic of shark-fear leads down entertaining byways. So if it’s not too scary, here goes….
(The header picture is American Manhood magazine, June 1953, cover art by Peter Poulton. Donald Trump would have been turning seven years old in June, old enough to notice it on a newsstand, perhaps. A June-dated magazine would generally have been on the street by May, if not in April. Borrowed from "American Manhood Magazine Didn't Ask and Didn't Tell — and Joe Weider Didn't Care...” at MensPulpMagazines.com.)
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What may be the first specifically shark-focused, dramatic work in Western art—and still IMO one of the most terrifying--depicts the ordeal of Brook Watson, victim of a shark attack in 1749. The 14-year-old Watson, crewman on a merchant vessel, had gone for a swim in Havana Harbor.
The shark is anatomically inaccurate, but the distinguished painter John Singleton Copley did make it very different from the scaly fish familiar to most.
Copley’s painting leaves the viewer nervous about the outcome, but in fact — whew! -- Watson was pulled from the water and survived with loss of his right leg below the knee. He went on to become a military officer, a merchant, chairman of Lloyd's of London, and ultimately, Lord Mayor of that city. The painter met Watson in 1774; this picture resulted.
Sharks had been depicted before, by natural-historians,
but Copley upped the ante for excitement, creating what could be a template for later artists — mostly in the ephemeral field of illustration.
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Scary but less nightmarish, more reassuring than the Copley, this rescue drama was painted by Anton Otto Fischer (1882-1962). A highly accomplished artist, Fischer studied with, among other teachers, the great illustrator Howard Pyle. Ocean scenes were a specialty. Fischer became Artist Laureate of the U.S. Coast Guard.
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Monster
Virtually all folklore traditions include tales of death-battles against monsters.
Giants, trolls, the Minotaur, dragons, Scylla and Charybdis, vampires, Grendel, zombies, sea-monsters, The Mummy, Daleks….
The true Monster (IMO) is not only frightening but inhuman, supernaturally strong, merciless, and “unnatural" (foreign to human comprehension) in feeling if not in fact.
The Hero may be forced to battle the Monster all alone, for his (usually) own survival….
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...or may do so in company with a band of allies. The monster may threaten more than his individual existence.
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”Jaws” is a simple story of this latter kind, at least "on the surface."
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“[I]f this movie is an allegory or a dream, it is one that is reassuring because it takes our most primal fears and masters them. We beat the monster. My daughter told the story of her high school teacher, who stated that he was afraid to walk across the puddles to get to his car after seeing the film in the theater. If so, I think he missed the point.” --The Reluctant Psychoanalyst (on BlogSpot)
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Freudian Symbolism — Pussy Bites Back?
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“The term ‘vagina dentata’ [toothed vagina] was first coined around 1900 by...psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud to describe the idea of "devouring or being devoured" manifesting as the equation of the mouth and the vagina. But that idea can be found in the annals of history before Freud,” reported Vice magazine last year.
The Vice story features ten examples of this concept from folklore all over the world.
The header art and photo at left both feature a toothy mouth threatening a relatively smaller, phallically armed male figure.
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Might it be suspected that in this case of sharks, an oral orifice is not always just that?
(Check again the header art on this diary before scoffing it entirely away?)
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Freudian Symbolism — Predatory Phallus?
No comment necessary?
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BTW, an alternative analysis of "Jaws" (from 1976!) parses the movie as a sadistically misogynist and classist statement of a historical transition:
The hippie-skinny-dippy chick representing the 1960s and the independent, sexually liberated woman is punished, becoming the first fatality;
The second death is a child, representing an attack on “family values";
The third victim is symbolically castrated;
A trio of men come together to defend the “women and children,” and the community at large;
The white-collar, middle-class, young-middle-aged white fellow succeeds where the younger college boy fails, and becomes symbolic heir to the rough-and-tough adventurer, who perishes in the climax.
Whatever anyone thinks of that analysis, it’s an interesting essay, among other things about “escapist” versus ”serious” art.
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Can such contradictory “meanings" really be attributed to a single object?
Sure...as the continuing psychologist character, Susan Silverman, in Robert Parker’s “Spencer” series of detective novels is always commenting, in one way or another: “Nothing is ever just one thing.”
Poetry is similar.
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The Shark
Lord Alfred Douglas
(1897)
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A treacherous monster is the Shark
He never makes the least remark.
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And when he sees you on the sand,
He doesn’t seem to want to land.
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He watches you take off your clothes,
And not the least excitement shows.
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His eyes do not grow bright or roll,
He has astonishing self-control.
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He waits till you are quite undressed,
And seems to take no interest.
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And when towards the sea you leap,
He looks as if he were asleep.
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But when you once get in his range
His whole demeanour seems to change.
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The Competition
“Shark” is perhaps the most common, traditional metaphor for financial and business predators.
Back in 1988—following-onto a spate of happy-warrior business manuals like Winning Through Intimidation (1974) — entrepreneur and envelope manufacturer Harvey Mackay managed to hit the best seller list with his first how-to volume, “Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition.”
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Perhaps coincidentally that year, 1988, was also what Politico has characterized as “Trump’s most pivotal year— until 2016.”
“By all accounts, Donald Trump went crazy in 1988,” the periodical reported. “He spent more on a hotel than anyone else in history, he bought an airline shuttle for more than the vendor thought it was worth and he spent months negotiating for ownership of an Atlantic City casino doomed to face bankruptcy. At the same time, Trump was rising as a celebrity. He hosted everyone from Madonna and Sean Penn to George H. W. Bush at his glitzy hotels and even sponsored a boxing match and befriended Mike Tyson."
Apparently Trump wasn’t afraid to go near the water in 1988, for he also acquired a yacht, paying
$29 million. He sold the vessel at a loss a few years later, when the “sharks” may have appeared to be getting the upper hand.
(Mackay went on to write a whole raft of business best-sellers and recently started his own "university." "For just $990 you can now access $150,000 in transformational business advice and life savvy,” Harvey Mackay University advertises.
Among Mackay’s endorsers, as listed on the website, are Billy Graham, Ted Koppel, Gloria Steinem, Shaquille O’Neal—and Donald Trump.)
Then there’s Shark Tank, a reality television business-oriented series in the U.S. since 2009, and so in a manner competing with Trump’s "The Apprentice."
“Shark Tank has been a ratings success in its time slot and has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Structured Reality Program four times, in all four years of that category's existence,” according to Wikipedia. Trump failed to gain similar honors and has complained that he felt the Emmys were rigged.
Meanwhile, the Trump's interim director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has announced a rule review that could end up making loan sharks very happy.
Mick Mulvaney “called the CFPB a ‘sick, sad joke’. But he is now in charge of the bureau as it considers delaying or scrapping tough payday loans rules introduced last year,” The Guardian reported recently. “...The controversial industry has been a source campaign contributions for Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman. He denies any undue influence.”
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The Maldive Shark
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
About the Shark, the phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth,
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat—
Eyes and brains to the dotard, lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.
Mortality
The vulnerable human being on a dismasted vessel, between the sharks and the waterspout, isolated from the human community suggested by the distant ship, a few stalks of sweet sugar cane for sustenance...it’s not going too far to see in this classic image a commentary on the fragile nature of human existence.
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Perfect metaphor for the riddle of life and death.
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The Rejected Self?
“We become what we behold.” — William Blake (1757-1827), Jerusalem
Mindless, inhuman greed, cruelty, violence.
The ultimate Other.
Shark attack, panic attack.
But if the truth be known, their frightening qualities are found among humanity.
Nor are they, in truth, all that our terror makes them out to be.
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Do we fear...the mirror?
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(More shark poems courtesy of the Academy of American poets.)
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More Literary Diaries on DKos:
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