The Shape of Things to Come

The Shape of Water: a Review

Part I: The Plot Synopsis They Didn't Show You

Our protagonist is a mute, Hispanic woman with a sexual fetish for eggs oppressed by the ableist, patriarchal and white supremacist society of 1960s America, who by nature of necessity works in a secret US Government research centre. Her only friends are an equally oppressed dysphoric homosexual and African-America co-worker, who is in fact so oppressed that she works as a cleaner despite being arguably the most empathetic woman in the whole country at the time. Soon enough, before any of our oppressed friends can say "patriarchy", chief bad guy, Colonel White Supremacy brings an amphibian humanoid swamp-lurker into the centre against its will, and places it in captivity, much to the swamp-lurker's despair. At this point the audience realises how important it is to go vegan. 

In between Colonel Supremacy's sadistic cattle-prodding of the lurker, solely because he's that mean, our mute protagonist starts feeding eggs to the lurker, and soon it becomes clear what sort of bond the two are developing. The more that Colonel Supremacy tortures the lurker, the more the protagonist's relationship with the non-human creature, which initially could have been no more serious than a human feeding their pet goldfish, becomes a tale of romantic development. 

Now enter General 'Murica from the US Army, who, placing all ends of the American State above basic human decency, orders Colonel Supremacy to kill and dissect the lurker. Undercover Soviet spy Dr. Mole pleads for its life, and is ordered by his paymasters to kill the lurker. Since, as it happens, communist traitors are so much more compassionate and in love with diversity than ordinary Americans of the 1960s, the protagonist frees the lurker from captivity with the help of Dr. Mole, and of course Mr. Dysphoria. The crux of the narrative probably lies here, as each of these different individuals set apart from the power structures of their times - one disabled, one gay, one communist and one plain non-human - rebel against the conformity expected of them and lift the middle finger to the sadism of Colonel White Supremacy and General 'Murica. In a comic yet deeply telling turn of events, Mr. Dysphoria makes a pass at a male pie shop waiter, only to be rebuked by his bigoted homophobic crush and ordered not to return, only for the crime of "being himself."

Colonel White Supremacy returns home to his ideal American family with his gorgeous blonde-haired wife and two young children. "This is America" he mutters, as if a symptom of the febrile seizure which is his life within the power structure of ethnostate USA. The embodiment of the reactionary, stubborn ultraconservative, even Colonel Supremacy's character displays echoes of discontent. Meanwhile, the protagonist smuggles the lurker into her bathroom, before flooding it so she can commit bestiality - er, have misunderstood and passionate lovemaking - with it. 

Eventually, Dr. Mole is betrayed by his own paymasters, and after some blood-curdling dramatic tension, Colonel Supremacy kills off the remaining commies before torturing the poor, empathetic traitor on the floor before him. In a classic example of Hollywood poetic justice, the lurker kills Colonel Supremacy in a final victory for diversity and tolerance, before transforming the protagonist into a lurker herself, so that the two of them can live happily ever after.

Part II: Analysis

There honestly isn't much more to be said after the satire above (and to be clear, it is satire). The media jumped on Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, as the infamous fash bashing director takes the stage once more with this highly allegorical film about tolerance and fear of difference, at least, according to the left. There is, nevertheless, a problem, which is that however much del Toro and the critics may like to present The Shape as an "ode to 'the other'" or a treatise on tolerance, dressing up your 'other' as a non-human creature and including gratuitous scenes of a woman performing sex acts on an amphibian is just that - a woman performing sex acts on an amphibian - and most ordinary people will come out of such an experience disgusted rather than inspired. 

It is interesting that this film has been compared to the 1954 horror movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon, which took quite a different tack, the creature there being explicitly malicious, eventually sent back to its lair at the end of the story under a hail of bullets. A sign of the times, the critics might well tells us, that in the '50s we feared and fought the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and in 2018 we have sex with it. If that is not a sign of cultural and moral degeneracy, then it is hard to tell what is. To be perfectly honest, it is not even as though del Toro has tried to keep the deviancy of the story under wraps: admitting that the bathroom sex scene between Elisa and the fish-man was inspired by his childhood memories of watching Black Lagoon and wishing that the creature would have sex with Julia Adams. Disturbing? Quite so. 

Ultimately, bestiality is still bestiality. It was amusing to read in British media last week about the outrage with which the public met the story of an 80-year-old man being caught engaging in sex acts with a herd of cows. The judge hasn't even passed sentence, and already the papers are crying out about the "perverted pensioner" etc. But is what Elisa does to the fish-man in The Shape of Water much better than what this pensioner did to the cows? In reality, it's rather hard to argue that it is. 

Therefore, The Shape of Water might as well have been a film about a woman fisting cows - and no matter which way you spin that, it's still absolutely abhorrent.