Deep Fantasy and The Shape of Water
Deep Fantasy Tropes
Okay, read no further if you're intending to see The Shape of Water, as this blog is full of spoilers. I saw the film because my cinema-phile daughter (who holds a Masters in Cinema) was in raptures about it and, of course, seeing what was so obviously a Deep Fantasy trope in the trailer, intrigued me.
Duality in Deep Fantasy
The key element of Deep Fantasy is the making explicit of the unconscious element of the hero's physical journey. This duality can be expressed in a range of ways including: Male-Female aspect (Luke and Leia); human-transcendent (Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White); killer-healer (Aragorn); conscious-unconscious (Furiosa [Mad Max - Fury Road] on her quest into the desert to find the Green Place [with-in]), as well as the more common method of showing the hero as a different person at the end of their journey.
The Duality of Amphibian Man
In The Shape of Water (a title that hints at the second hidden element: that which gives form to the formless), what The Guardian calls a 'fishman' is an amphibian in human-form, hauled from the waters of the Amazon to serve the US in their Cold War struggle with the USSR. As an amphibian, the creature is an inhabitant of two worlds: air and water, in Deep Fantasy terms, the conscious and the unconscious (more the latter, as with all creatures that inhabit the unconscious, it cannot survive long in consciousness). And like other archetypes that inhabit the unconscious, its form is more primitive than the human form (in popularly accepted terms) of consciousness.
Beyond its duality as an amphibian, the creature is viewed as god-like by 'primitive' peoples but viewed as a low-level life-form by its captors; it is voiceless but able to communicate in a relatively sophisticated way; and is perhaps an hermaphrodite (its penis hidden behind a generalised swelling more characteristic of female genitalia). While its form is fish-like, its ability to heal (physically and psychically) marries the physical and transcendent.
I can't leave the idea of duality without commenting on the creature's eyes, which worried me throughout the film. The creature is tall and muscular (and tortured to the point of violence and savagery) and yet has puppy-dog, kittenish, baby-round eyes. I wondered if Del Toro had simply got them wrong, but they're more likely to be another element of its duality when contrasted with the hulking threat of the creature's body (innocence -experience).
In the final scene, the female hero 'dies to her old self' (in Joseph Campbell's terms [think how Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White]) and takes her first full breath under water (having assimilated what her unconscious offered). Water is a common symbol of the unconscious (as are tunnels, caves and places descended into) and is used in many clever ways in the film (too many to include in this blog).
The Purpose of Amphibian Man
Its key purpose is to give the voiceless back their voices (power). The unconscious is empowering, but only when brought to consciousness and integrated (ie wholeness is achieved). The female hero is mute and the creature restores her actual voice, but also her power to tell the antagonist, Strickland (Stricken-land? Constricting-land?) to eff off in sign language; it allows the female hero's best friend Zelda (voiceless as black and a woman) to seize back agency from Strickland and her husband, and it gives the isolated gay man Giles pride in himself as a worthy human being. It also provides a tool to contrast the sneeringly referred to 'primitives' of the Amazon with the sophisticated brutality of those 'civilised' folk of the Cold War.
The motif of muteness (disempowerment ) is pervasive in the film. Strickland silences his wife with his rotting fingers during sex; Dimitri (the Russian Agent) is shot in the mouth; and Strickland himself is smashed in the mouth at the film's ending.
Apart the motif of water in the film, other motifs of interest are the 'representations of life' (for want of a better term): TV, theatre, cinema, Giles' pictures and Strickland's home-life (the American dream); exclusionism: homosexuals, blacks, the unemployed, the lowly employed (Strickland urinates in front of the 'piss-wipers'); hand-washing: Strickland washes his hands before he urinates but won't after; his wife tells him to wash his hands before sex; Strickland allows his re-attached fingers to rot to a stench-generating, nauseating point before he hygienically pulling them off.
Happy viewing.
Okay, read no further if you're intending to see The Shape of Water, as this blog is full of spoilers. I saw the film because my cinema-phile daughter (who holds a Masters in Cinema) was in raptures about it and, of course, seeing what was so obviously a Deep Fantasy trope in the trailer, intrigued me.
Duality in Deep Fantasy
The key element of Deep Fantasy is the making explicit of the unconscious element of the hero's physical journey. This duality can be expressed in a range of ways including: Male-Female aspect (Luke and Leia); human-transcendent (Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White); killer-healer (Aragorn); conscious-unconscious (Furiosa [Mad Max - Fury Road] on her quest into the desert to find the Green Place [with-in]), as well as the more common method of showing the hero as a different person at the end of their journey.
The Duality of Amphibian Man
In The Shape of Water (a title that hints at the second hidden element: that which gives form to the formless), what The Guardian calls a 'fishman' is an amphibian in human-form, hauled from the waters of the Amazon to serve the US in their Cold War struggle with the USSR. As an amphibian, the creature is an inhabitant of two worlds: air and water, in Deep Fantasy terms, the conscious and the unconscious (more the latter, as with all creatures that inhabit the unconscious, it cannot survive long in consciousness). And like other archetypes that inhabit the unconscious, its form is more primitive than the human form (in popularly accepted terms) of consciousness.
Beyond its duality as an amphibian, the creature is viewed as god-like by 'primitive' peoples but viewed as a low-level life-form by its captors; it is voiceless but able to communicate in a relatively sophisticated way; and is perhaps an hermaphrodite (its penis hidden behind a generalised swelling more characteristic of female genitalia). While its form is fish-like, its ability to heal (physically and psychically) marries the physical and transcendent.
I can't leave the idea of duality without commenting on the creature's eyes, which worried me throughout the film. The creature is tall and muscular (and tortured to the point of violence and savagery) and yet has puppy-dog, kittenish, baby-round eyes. I wondered if Del Toro had simply got them wrong, but they're more likely to be another element of its duality when contrasted with the hulking threat of the creature's body (innocence -experience).
In the final scene, the female hero 'dies to her old self' (in Joseph Campbell's terms [think how Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White]) and takes her first full breath under water (having assimilated what her unconscious offered). Water is a common symbol of the unconscious (as are tunnels, caves and places descended into) and is used in many clever ways in the film (too many to include in this blog).
The Purpose of Amphibian Man
Its key purpose is to give the voiceless back their voices (power). The unconscious is empowering, but only when brought to consciousness and integrated (ie wholeness is achieved). The female hero is mute and the creature restores her actual voice, but also her power to tell the antagonist, Strickland (Stricken-land? Constricting-land?) to eff off in sign language; it allows the female hero's best friend Zelda (voiceless as black and a woman) to seize back agency from Strickland and her husband, and it gives the isolated gay man Giles pride in himself as a worthy human being. It also provides a tool to contrast the sneeringly referred to 'primitives' of the Amazon with the sophisticated brutality of those 'civilised' folk of the Cold War.
The motif of muteness (disempowerment ) is pervasive in the film. Strickland silences his wife with his rotting fingers during sex; Dimitri (the Russian Agent) is shot in the mouth; and Strickland himself is smashed in the mouth at the film's ending.
Apart the motif of water in the film, other motifs of interest are the 'representations of life' (for want of a better term): TV, theatre, cinema, Giles' pictures and Strickland's home-life (the American dream); exclusionism: homosexuals, blacks, the unemployed, the lowly employed (Strickland urinates in front of the 'piss-wipers'); hand-washing: Strickland washes his hands before he urinates but won't after; his wife tells him to wash his hands before sex; Strickland allows his re-attached fingers to rot to a stench-generating, nauseating point before he hygienically pulling them off.
Happy viewing.
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