Netflix’s Shark Whisperer wants us to think ‘sexy conservation’ is the way to save sharks – does it have a point?
- Written by Susan Hopkins, Senior Lecturer in Education (Curriculum and Pedagogy), University of the Sunshine Coast
In the new Netflix documentary Shark Whisperer, the great white shark gets an image makeover – from Jaws villain to misunderstood friend and admirer.
But the star of the documentary is not so much the shark, but the model and marine conservationist Ocean Ramsey (yes, that’s her real name).
The film centres on Ramsey’s self-growth journey, with the shark co-starring as a quasi-spiritual medium for finding meaning and purpose (not to mention celebrity status).
The film, and some in it, are happy to attribute Ramsey’s success as a shark conservation activist to how driven and photogenic she is. Ramsey says “People look first and listen second. I’ll use my appearance, I’ll put myself out there for a cause.”
Her husband, the photographer Juan Oliphant, enthuses she is good for sharks partly because she is so beautiful and uses all the attention she attracts in the selfless service of sharks.
The image of the long-haired, long-limbed young woman in a bikini swimming above an outsized great white shark is not a new one.
Primal fears and fantasies
Since Jaws (1975), generations have been fascinated and titillated by filmic images and promotional materials of bikini-clad young women juxtaposed with dangerous sharks.
The heroine of Deep Blue Sea (1999) is a neuroscientist – however the film and its promotional materials still require her to appear in a wet t-shirt and underwear while pursued by a massive shark monster.
The Shallows (2016) presents countless images of its bikini-clad heroine, with partially exposed bottom and long legs marked by bite marks as a kind of meat to be consumed – not least by the voyeuristic lens of the camera.
The poster for 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) features a bikini-clad young woman with legs dangling precariously in front of the gaping jaws of an unnaturally large great white.
I have previously explored the psychosexual symbolism of these films and images. These films were never really about actual sharks. They are about very human fears and fantasies about being exposed and vulnerable.
Whisperer and the Ocean Ramsey website tap into the collective fascination with dangerous sharks fuelled by popular culture. Many online images show Ramsey in a bikini or touching sharks – she’s small, and vulnerable in the face of great whites. As with forms of celebrity humanitarianism, what I have dubbed “sexy conservationism” leaves itself open to criticism about its methods – even if its intentions are good.
The paradox of Shark Whisperer – and indeed the whole Ocean Ramsey empire – is it both resists and relies on Jaws mythology and iconography to surf the image economy of new media.
Saving, not stalking
Ramsey and Oliphant are on a mission not just to save individual sharks, but to change the public perception of great whites to a more positive one.
This mission is reiterated in Shark Whisperer and in the Saving Jaws documentary linked to the website, which also promotes a book, accessories and shark-diving tours.
It is reassuring to know proceeds from the bikini you buy from the official website are donated to shark conservation. But the (often sexualised) media attention which fuels the whole enterprise still depends on tapping into the legacy of popular culture representations of great whites as fearsome monsters.
In footage, Ramsey seems to spend most of her time with smaller tiger sharks, yet her website and the Shark Whisperer film foreground her rare close encounters with an “enormous” or “massive” great white as the climax and cover shot.
Shark Whisperer also includes the kind of “money shots” we have come to expect: images of a large great white tearing at flesh (here, a whale carcass) with blood in the water. Images like these arouse our collective cultural memory of the filmic great white as the ultimate bestial predator.
In its climactic scene, Whisperer strategically deploys eerie music to build the suspense and foretell the appearance of the enormous great white which rises from the depths. Again echoes of Jaws are used to stimulate viewing pleasures and sell the mixed messages of sexy shark conservation.
A story of (personal) growth
The self-growth narrative which underpins Whisperer will feel familiar to shark film fans. Jaws was always about overcoming fears and past traumas, as in the scene where Quint and Brody compare their real and metaphorical scars.
The poster for the 2022 film Shark Bait.
IMDB
Over the past decade, a new generation of post-feminist shark films have used sharks as metaphorical stalkers to tell stories about women overcoming past trauma, grief, “inner darkness” or depression.
In The Reef: Stalked (2022) the heroine must overcome the murder of her sister. In Shark Bait (2022) the heroine must rise above a cheating partner. In The Shallows, the heroine is processing grief.
Whisperer also leans into the idea of Ramsey fighting inner demons on a journey to self-actualisation.
And while Ramsey has undoubtedly raised the profile of shark conservation, as a model-designer-conservationist-entrepreneur she has also disseminated another more dubious message: that the way to enact influence and activism is through instagrammable images of beautiful models in high risk situations.
Happy endings
The end credits of Whisperer are a montage of happy endings: Ramsey frolics with sharks and shows off her diamond ring. There is even an ocean-themed wedding scene.
Yet beneath all the glossy surface lies a sombre reality: globally at least 80 million sharks are killed every year.
The Ramsey website and the film rightly remind us of this. They also remind us that, thanks in part to the hashtag activism of Ocean Ramsey and her millions of fans and followers, Hawaii was the first state in the United States to outlaw shark fishing.
So, Ramsey may be right to argue her ends justify the means.
Authors: Susan Hopkins, Senior Lecturer in Education (Curriculum and Pedagogy), University of the Sunshine Coast
