Is That A Gun In Your Pocket?

After lunch Quint and Brody indulge in some male bonding by shooting at empty beer cans. Quint's weapon of choice is an M1 Garand, which - like the Marine Corps fatigue cap he wears to keep the sun off his bald head - is probably a memento from his days in the service. Using a device that looks like "a potato-masher hand grenade", Brody fires an empty can into the air and Quint - like an expert gunslinger - hits it  with "a loud whang" as it drops into the ocean. Skeet shooting - of which this is an improvised form - was used in Thunderball to allow Bond to present his macho credentials to arch-villain Emilio Largo, and it is a sport at which Spielberg came to be an expert under the tutelage of gun-loving John Milius.

When Brody takes a turn, he misses his first shot and is only able to hit a floating can twenty yards from the boat with a less impressive sounding "plop". Was it this scene that inspired the movie's explosive finale where the chief has to shoot at a much larger metal container?

Hooper declines to take a shot, and is mocked by Quint for his antipathy to firearms and his lack of a service record. The gun has long been a potent phallic symbol and the subtext of Quint's dismissive remark -"Christ, I'd even bet you're still a virgin." - draws a parallel between Hooper's refusal to use the rifle and an implied impotency.

In the next chapter the tables are turned when Hooper flourishes a "bang stick" with which he intends to kill the shark. Tellingly, Hooper's weapon is much smaller than Quint's M1 and it prompts the fisherman into more derisive mockery ("If that doesn't work you can tickle him to death."). Hooper calls Quint's own manhood into question (" ... I think this fish is more than you can handle.") and accuses him of inaction ("You'll be dead of old age before he comes up ..."). Stung by these remarks, Quint automatically reverts to calling Hooper a "boy" and goads him into getting into the cage and going to his certain death.

The film transforms the cruel pissing contest between the two men into something comic. When Quint crushes his can of Narraganasett beer, Hooper imitates the action by crumbling an empty Styrofoam cup in his fist. As Pauline Kael observed in her original review "the director ... sets up barechested heroism as a joke and scores off it all through the movie."