jollityfarm:

Alerta! Alerta! Anti-fish-ista!

The Shape of Water doesn’t tokenize its characters, and it manages still to stick up for the underdogs of the world.

While all the reactionary chuds online are caterwauling about SJWs and soy boys and cucks ruining the Star Wars or whatever, I got to see a movie where two janitors (a mute Latina and a black woman), a gay artist, a commie scientist, and a fish man went up against a villain defined by his straight white dude-ness and love of hierarchy. The Shape of Water’s vulnerable people are treated with dignity, kindness, and warmth. But it’s not “the old liberal order but with a slightly more colorful cast,” it’s not “more female CEOs,” it’s not “people of color playing slaveowners in a musical.” The characters’ identities as marginalized folks shape their revolutionary potentials, but do not define them totally. The main character could not be a non-disabled non-Latina non-working class non-woman, but Eliza Esposito is her own person, a fully realized human being whose character goes beyond her labels. The Shape of Water is never self-congratulatory in its casting.

Also it’s a love story and we get to see the fishbutt.

Yes, Star Wars movies are morality tests designed so ten year-olds can understand which side is the ‘good guys,’ but even then, it’s sometimes difficult to extrapolate political lessons from them. The Shape of Water is blatant, and the villains get no sympathy. No cinematic shots lingering on sexy evil spaceships, no Wagnerian swells of scores. The villain is a man who thinks washing hands after pissing shows weakness. He spends most of the movie with dead, decaying fingers sewed to his hand. He is at once ridiculous and horrifying. He is perpetually, constantly being ownt. This is del Toro’s fairy tale, the characters are metonymic, and nuance isn’t needed. We already know evil is banal. Articles about how murderous reactionaries could be your next door neighbors were at one point useful and enlightening, but now they’re only depressing. Sometimes you just want to watch an unambiguous fascist get his ass handed to him.

The only thing that kind of annoyed me about The Shape of Water was that it was infatuated with cinema and Old Hollywood or whatever. Maybe that emphasis is meant to parallel the magical love story, and iirc del Toro was influenced by a movie about a fishman and a human woman in love from his childhood. Maybe the constant theme of films and tv was meant to drive home the idea that we can rewrite our own fairy tales, and remake the world in a kinder image. Which, okay, sure, that’s cool. Maybe I’m just being picky.

The Shape of Water is also a visual treat, like all del Toro movies. The palette reminded me a bit of The City of Lost Children.

Guys, it was… so good. I usually can’t deal with romance movies for whatever reason, but this one was perfect in every way.