It’s the peak of summer, and that means one thing: Shark Week. After nearly 30 years on the air, the Discovery Channel’s week of fishy programming is probably television’s most reliable pop-culture juggernaut
My students in the Media School at Indiana University have never known a world without Shark Week. I once asked a class of 125 undergraduates how many had watched it
and just about every hand went up. I then asked how many had ever actually seen sharks in the wild. Just a few hands were raised.
For my students—and most Americans—this means that the overwhelming majority of our exposure to sharks is through Shark Week. In other words, our interaction with sharks is mediated through a screen
What we know about them is gleaned through the cinematic version of a shark’s world that we see on the Discovery Channel.
So what is that world like? You only have to glance at the titles of this year’s specials to get an idea. The prime Sunday night slot presents “Great White Shark Serial Killer Lives,” which documents the true story of shark attacks on the California coast. Other titles include “Shark-Croc Showdown,”
pitting the two predators against one another, and “Great Hammerhead Invasion.” You already know what these programs contain: amazing footage of sharks, especially their teeth, in slo-mo or quick edits for maximum dramatic effect
often interwoven with stories of shark attack victims and/or marine scientists who lend credibility to this modern scary story.
