My friend took one look at promo staring Rob Lowe, “water-skiing” two harnessed sharks while tossing chum from a bona fide chum-bucket to the great whites leaping behind him and joked, “Shark Week has officially jumped the shark.”
But that arguably happened long ago, when Discovery Channel’s Shark Week decided to play up its popularity, not with more of what made people love it in the first place—educational shows about sharks—but with shark-themed ridiculousness.
There’s the mascot Bob the Shark, live kick-off parties in California, and ideas for how to hold your own Shark Week party at home. And just look at these actual Shark Week show titles: Lair of the Mega Shark #ExtraSharky, Zombie Sharks, Sharkageddon. (Looks like someone’s trying to compete with the hype over Syfy’s so-bad-it’s-good TV movie Sharknado.)
I personally lost faith in Shark Week when the network captivated and confused audiences with the well-disguised mockumentary Megalodon. I was far from the only one who Googled this mysterious, ancient shark of the deep, only to find that it’s not a modern-day monster, but long extinct. Like many viewers, I felt duped. Turns out, they’re at it again with yet another “dramatized” story of a giant shark of dubious existence.
And yet, here I am, tuning into yet another Shark Week, with all its campy, over-the-top programming. Even the ads get me—from the poster in the train station of a great white rising from foamy waters to the promos on Facebook. In my house, Shark Week has consistently succeeded at getting all five of us in one small room, in front of one small(ish) TV without arguing about what we were going to watch for a bit once they come in from playing. The decision is made for us. Duh, it’s Shark Week.
There are still minimal shark-related lessons to learn through Shark Week, but beyond that, it has become more of a shared cultural phenomenon than an educational experience. Millions of people are watching Shark Week—in fact, more than ever thanks to a boost in female viewers.
While I doubt we’ll ever get asked, “Where were you when you watched your first Shark Week ?,” it has become part of our pop culture fabric. On 30 Rock, Tracy Morgan spouts the advice, “Live every week like it’s Shark Week.” And Macklemore’s sings lyric, “And I’m eating at the beat like you gave a little speed to a great white shark on Shark Week. Rawr.”
With all the hype and silliness, Shark Week plays up the death tolls and dangers of these sharks more and more, with great whites seemingly the star of every show. But at the heart of the programming there used to be this tension between our fear of sharks and their natural prowess and the relatively unlikelihood of ever being caught up with one. It revealed the irrationality yet prevalence of our human fears.
Like many people, I love water, but I’m more than a little afraid of much of what lurks beneath the waves. I love to swim, but I hate to think about what swims alongside or below me in lakes or oceans. Be they tiny fish or huge, be they harmless or deadly. But of course, I’m afraid because I do not understand. Which is true for most things.
We have good reason to fear—in the biblical sense—sharks. But being wiser about them, their behavior, their location, the literal warning signs and signals, help. This understanding not only keeps us safe from them, but keeps them safe from us. To move from being terrified of an animal to being in awe of its beauty and strength and smarts and teeth is to move toward being better stewards of these creatures we were called to care for on this earth.
An increasingly slimmer portion of Shark Week shows that focus on sharks, as they are, without gimmick. It’s in these clips that Shark Week inspires worship (or at least it once did). Ultimately, I’ve realized, I love Shark Week because I love the Creator of Sharks. And in learning more about these amazing predators of the deep, ones I pray I will never, ever swim alongside or above or below, I learn more about the amazing God who made them.
Who knows what first sparked the first shark-thought in God’s mind. Who knows what he was thinking as he pored over the initial designs, row after row of teeth, the telltale fins, the hammer head? These are thoughts of God I might otherwise never have had. I suppose the thoughts may have flitted in and out as I turned the pages of the shark book my kids have or as I walked around the Shedd Aquarium, in neither place am I seeing sharks in their sharkiest sharkiness. Shark Week has the potential to give us that, in full doses and in giant gulps. And in doing so they also give (unwittingly, most likely) full doses and giant gulps of our Creator in all his Creative Creat-i-ness.
If you’re too distracted by Rob Lowe and everything else on Discovery to marvel at the God-made sharks, try the straightforward National Geographic Sharkfest. Well, until they inevitably jump the shark one day, too.
