The reading
The bead. A great white turns a summer town into a killing ground, and three men go out to meet the threat head-on and make the water safe again.
Engines
- security/safety · content · spine · ~ — the engine in its native form: a lethal external threat (the shark, and the town's denial that compounds it), and the wish for a defense that holds — the hunt mounted at real cost (the Orca destroyed, Quint killed) until the water is safe.
- mastery · content · also-runs · ~ — Quint's hunter's expertise and Hooper's science; competence brought against the threat, though it is improvisation (the tank, the rifle) that finally wins.
The bundle. A security/safety spine (the threat met and ended) with mastery as the means — the primal make-it-safe wish against a thing that eats people.
Dual-use read. Security/safety's counterfeit is the protection racket — the threat inflated to justify submission/payment (Hobbes' Leviathan, counterfeit-catalog). Jaws inverts it: the denial of the threat (the mayor keeping the beaches open for the money) is the villainy, and the honest reckoning with the danger is what saves people.
Verdict. The reference security/safety thriller — a real threat, a defense built and held at mortal cost, the water made safe.
Evidence. ~ reviewed — from the film (in-copyright; from Benchley). Security/safety's slot-proven home: Treasure Island.