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Forty-eight Junes ago, summer changed. A twenty-seven-year-old, as yet unknown Steven Spielberg released a shark movie, and thanks in part to some stunning casting choices-Roy Scheider as a decent police chief, Richard Dreyfuss in peppery scientist mode, the flinty British actor Robert Shaw as the Ahab-like fisherman Quint-the result ate the box office. "Jaws" shifted Hollywood, which shifted the culture as a whole. At sea, when a whale dies, it can fall to the ocean floor and decay into a nutrient-rich structural reef, the basis of a food web that can last for decades. When "Jaws" landed in 1975, it generated its own ecosystem, too. The modern movie industry, with its summer tentpoles, youth-oriented programming, and marketing blitzes, was born in its guts.
"The Shark Is Broken," a play by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, now at the John Golden Theatre, also takes shelter in the "Jaws" skeleton: it's a behind-the-scenes comedy that imagines frequently irritable chats among the movie's three main actors as they wait around for weeks, delayed by the movie's malfunctioning rubber-skinned star. Scheider (Colin Donnell), Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman), and Shaw (Ian Shaw, both writing about and playing his own father) idle away the time on the set's lobster boat, which bobs in the ocean off Martha's Vineyard. They talk about everything under the New England sun, like Dreyfuss's yearning for fame and Shaw's constant boozing, and we see how desperate the eager pup (Dreyfuss) is to impress the salty dog (Shaw). There's also a certain amount of meta-theatrical ironizing, subtle as a harpoon. "Do you really think anyone will be talking about this in fifty years?" Robert Shaw scoffs at the two younger men. Thunk.
This story is from the August 21, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the August 21, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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![A Cult in the Forest - The vast majority of Kenyans are Christian, a faith that arrived with early colonization. A group of Finnish missionaries brought Pentecostalism in the nineteen-hundreds](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1803857/nKf0F9oJi1724155736647/crp_Kenya-evangelical-Christianity-large-congregations-Paul-Mackenzie-religious-festival-Mackenzie-Catholic-church-Pentecostal-church-Good-News-International-Ministries-Malindi-Shakahola-Kenia-secta-religion-streme-religions.jpg)
A Cult in the Forest - The vast majority of Kenyans are Christian, a faith that arrived with early colonization. A group of Finnish missionaries brought Pentecostalism in the nineteen-hundreds
The vast majority of Kenyans are Christian, a faith that arrived with early colonization. A group of Finnish missionaries brought Pentecostalism in the nineteen-hundreds. The colonial government tried to suppress it, because a faction of pro-independence freedom fighters belonged to the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa, which included messages about decolonization in its hymns. But after independence, in 1963, Pentecostalism and other forms of evangelical Christianity spread. They emphasized charismatic forms of worship—visions, spiritual healing, speaking in tongues—and a gospel that promised prosperity to the faithful. “If you want your church to be full, do what I call ‘spiritual gymnastics,’ ” Martin Olando, a scholar of African Christianity at the Bishop Hannington Institute, in Mombasa, told me. “Jump up and down, prophesize good tidings, tell people what they want to hear.” By the nineties, Kenya’s President, Daniel arap Moi, enjoyed a beneficial relationship with Arthur Kitonga, an influential Pentecostal bishop. “President Moi has been appointed by God to lead this country,” Kitonga said at the time. William Ruto, Kenya’s current President, and its first evangelical one, brought gospel singers into his campaign team and party, and has donated cars, and thousands of dollars, to evangelical churches. His wife, Rachel, invited the U.S.-based televangelist Benny Hinn to preach with her at a crusade. (This year, Hinn apologized for giving fake prophecies. “There were times when I thought God had showed me something that He wasn’t showing me,” he told the Christian podcast “Strang Report.”)
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FAITH HEALING
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DEVIL MAY CARE
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FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY
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THE COLLECTOR
Bonnie Slotnick, the downtown food-history savant.
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A geologist reflects on her life.
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THE PARTICLES OF ORDER
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