Shape of Water is Not A Win For Queer People

The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro, does a lot of things right. Del Toro inverts the classic monster movie of the 1950s and 60s, with the creature/monster representing the romantic hero and the able-bodied successful military white man representing the true monster. Elisa Esposito, a disabled woman, Zelda Fuller, a black woman, Giles, a gay white man, and Dr. Hoffstetler, a communist scientist, conspire to free a creature indigenous to South America from a prison-like facility. They literally free the creature from colonial chains and torture from the white man, whose toxic masculinity bleeds into every facet of his life making him ultimately irredeemable. What The Shape of Water does not do, is represent queer communities, let alone queer communities of color.

Movie reviewers have been lauding the film as the "queer", "race-aware" movie that everyone needs to see since its release, but this "queer" and "race-aware" movie is lacking both in queer representation and in the representation of people of color. As the Oscars approached, critic Alex Abad-Santos stated that if The Shape of Water won, it would signify "the Academy recognizing a queer love story with a happy ending." The relationship that people are reading as a queer relationship is the relationship between Elisa, a mute white woman, and the creature. The creature is coded as extremely masculine, both through pronouns (he/him, signifying a masculine identification) and through his body (del Toro spends a few minutes explicitly explaining that the creature has a penis despite appearances). The creature may appear fish-like, but is coded as a cisgender man. For queer audiences, watching a woman fall in love with a man is nothing new. The creature is also coded as indigenous, as the white male antagonist captures the creature in South America (yeah...this is as specific as the film gets). Also, throughout the film there are references made that native people from...somewhere in South America think of the creature as a god. Coding the creature as indigenous fulfills a trope in science fiction critiqued by Nalo Hopkinson. In her speech "A Reluctant Ambassador from Planet Midnight" she discusses how in science fiction written by white people, people of color are transformed into blue people, as in James Cameron's Avatar when the blue people represent indigenous people. In The Shape of Water, the creature is coded as an indigenous man, but inside that suit is Doug Jones, a white actor.

The film also falls short in disability representation. In the movie, Elisa is mute and signs to communicate. Instead of using a mute, Deaf, or hard of hearing (HoH) actor, Guillermo del Toro used already successful actress Sally Hawkins for the role, and told her to study silent movies to prepare to play Elisa. Elisa's friends also don't seem to fully see her as a person. Giles, Elisa’s best friend, jokes that Elisa is not much of a “conversationalist,” which is bullshit because he understands Elisa’s sign language and they are able to communicate easily. At another point in the movie, Elisa is sitting at the dinner table with the creature when she gives up signing and tries to speak. This turns into a musical number in the style of old black-and-white musicals where Elisa sings about how he’ll never know how much she loves him. It’s an initially moving sentiment, but combined with other instances of Elisa internalizing ableism, the scene appears to indicate that Elisa is unable to communicate her love to the creature, despite the couple communicating through sign language and intimacy. While del Toro embellishes his lead female character with sexuality and agency, he falls short by delegitimizing sign language as a form of communication, which is extremely ableist.

The movie also falls short in its representation of people of color. Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, is Elisa's best friend at work and the only main character in the movie played by a person of color. Zelda represents the inversion of the jealous woman trope from old monster movies. Instead of hindering Elisa in her longing for the creature, Zelda assists Elisa multiple times in her freeing of the creature, often putting herself at extreme risk. Yet, del Toro takes this inversion to the extreme so that every action Zelda takes is to help Elisa. Elisa as a white woman takes many risks that Zelda as a black woman cannot, putting Zelda in more danger. In one scene, Elisa slowly signs F-U-C-K Y-O-U to the white male antagonist, and Zelda has to step in, pulling Elisa out of the office as the white man yells at Zelda to translate. He gets angrier and angrier at Zelda, not Elisa. Elisa’s provocation of the antagonist only puts Zelda at more risk, especially since he has previously implied that he does not see Zelda as human. Historically and in this political moment, black women have been expected to take care of and even to save white women, and The Shape of Water is no exception. While del Toro gives his female characters agency as far as they are women, he does not write them with the freedom to be unapologetically disabled or unapologetically black. While The Shape of Water is being discussed as a win for queer people, it does not actually represent any queer relationships, or queer people of color. However, last year's Oscar winner, Moonlight was a groundbreaking win that was overshadowed by chaos at the Oscars.

On Sunday, The Shape of Water won the Best Picture award at the Oscars, beating other groundbreaking films such as Get Out. It is no secret that the Oscars favor white performances, popularized by April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign which began in 2015. This Oscar season, white actors won in all four acting categories, beating Daniel Kaluuya’s performance in Get Out and Octavia Spencer’s performance in The Shape of Water. Daniel Kaluuya’s loss of Best Actor is especially painful because he lost to Gary Oldman, who has been accused of domestic abuse and has also defended Mel Gibson’s racist comments.

Sources:

#OscarsSoWhite: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/04/politics/oscars-so-white-april-reign/index.html

Nalo Hopkinson: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/en361fantastika/bibliography/2.9hopkins_n_2010guest_of_honour_speech_from_icfa.pdf

Monster Movie Analysis: https://youtu.be/YesMWAxqJ60

Discussion with Alex Abad-Santos: https://www.vox.com/2018/3/1/17040692/oscar-shape-of-water-best-picture-win-lose-fish-man

Disability Representation: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/disability-coco-star-wars-shape-water

Gary Oldman: https://www.thedailybeast.com/gary-oldman-the-oscar-frontrunner-with-a-dark-past

A Bad Take: https://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/the-shape-of-water-guillermo-del-toro-metoo-race-lgbt/346246

More about the Oscars (and Get Out):

Oscar Diversity Chart: http://blog.leeandlow.com/2014/02/20/wheres-the-diversity-hollywood-85-years-of-the-academy-awards/

April Reign's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReignOfApril

New Oscar Voters Talking Trash About Old Ones: http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/how-new-oscar-voters-are-changing-the-way-the-academy-thinks.html

Analysis of Black Women in Get Out: http://www.vh1.com/news/303642/black-women-in-get-out/