The Shape of Water & Female Sexual Desire.

This year’s Oscar Winner The Shape of Water was, let’s say different, firstly in that science fiction monster flicks are a rarity at the Academy Awards and, if they are they are only nominated for special effects accolades. Defying these odds The Shape of Water blasted on to the awards scene winning Best Director at the BAFTAS, and now winning the sought after Best Picture Oscar. But what makes this film so special? It has certainly caused quite the controversy online, with people getting rather hooked (excuse the pun) on the concept of fish/human intercourse.

Now although this is quite iconic, this is not what I found unique about the film. For me what I found groundbreaking (for a mainstream film) is the fact that in the first five minutes of the film, we see the main female protagonist masturbating in the bath, which, as the film goes on appears to be part of her morning routine. In popular culture, we see references to male masturbation everywhere, mainly in teenage comedies. However, women are overlooked. Because heaven forbid that women have sexual desire! Open sexuality has long been the realm of men. But shock, horror, guess what. Women kind of like sex. But movies don’t seem to get this. Female characters in films are rarely the active party in seeking out sex, men are a lot of the time the active pursuers. Yet in The Shape of Water, the woman has a clear and active sexual desire, she actively pursues the fish man, she is the initiator in all the romantic elements of the film.

I recently watched the 1984 film Splash starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah, and I couldn’t help but see parallels with The Shape of Water. The roles are kind of flipped in Splash, the woman is the sea creature, the man is the human. However, it is the woman, the mermaid who is quite active in her pursuit of Tom Hanks’ character, Allen. Yet in this film, it isn’t seen as a weird perversion, because on land, Madison (Daryl Hannah) looks like a human. Her desire in the film is presented as cute and naive. She is not human therefore doesn’t know the conventions of courtship that we have set in place, making her seem even more otherworldly. When we see Madison when she first arrives in New York, on land, she is completely naked leaving the humans who discover her are completely shocked, some disgusted by her open sexuality and others (the men) are excited by it, taking pictures and crowding around her like she is a magical rare being and that’s without her tail!

In Making a Splash, Philip Hayward describes the mermaid as a sexual being relying on certain aspects to achieve this, “predominantly, their representation as having the upper body of a young, attractive female; representation as actively in pursuit of human male attention; their seductive vocal skills; and their most complicated sexual aspect; the allure and symbolism of their tails” (98). He also highlights the importance of the modern mermaid being able to switch between forms in order to have sexual intercourse with a human. Therefore, making the sexual desire in these films more heteronormative and not as shocking or perhaps in some eyes perverse.

Yet in The Shape of Water Eliza is human, her desire is equally as different in her setting, one because of the time period (the 1960’s) and two because of the subject of her desire. He is not human. He does stand on two legs, has two arms and one head but other than that he is totally alien looking. Even though these films pretty much tell the same tale, of human falls in love with a sea creature, one is seen to be more perverse than the other. Is it because one creature looks more human than the other or, is it the fact that it is a human female who actively sexually pursues the creature? In The Shape of Water, I feel like it is perhaps both. Indeed, when discussing the male mermaid Phillip Hayward suggests that “mermen are symbolically unmanly due to lack of a penis” (151). Unlike their female counterparts, the representation of mermen as sexual beings is nonexistent, unless they turn into humans. Hayward states that mermen in films never have sex with women, in fact, he states, they are often feminized, for example, in the advert, Derek Zoolander features in Zoolander.

The Shape of Water explicitly solves the problem and mystery surrounding the sexual nature of fish creatures. Although the fish man in the film is not a merman. There is a distinct question that went through everyone’s mind when it appears that Eliza has sex with him. This is very quickly answered in a highly entertaining scene with her friend Zelda, who asks the question that everyone is dying to know. The solution is simple, the fish man’s sexual organ reveals itself, leaving Zelda shocked, stating lightheartedly, “Never trust a man”. This is perhaps what would happen in the case of mermen. But why are films so against showing this?  Because it is out of the realms of the heteronormative, breaking into the taboo subject of bestiality?

What then, does this say about Eliza’s desire? Is it perverse? If we were going to be black and white about it, then perhaps. However, it is much more nuanced than that. There was never a point in the film where I thought it was particularly strange. Yes, I have never seen anything like it before, but it was still not weird or perverse to me in the slightest. I found the whole thing rather sweet.

The narrative presents a setting in which traditionally, the monster would be the villain. He is totally otherworldly and highly dangerous. In the film The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which Guillermo Del Toro was hugely influenced by, the creature is dangerous and totally monstrous attacking anyone who goes near him. Yet there is a hint that it does feel an affinity for the woman of the group. In this case, he is the one who captures her, there is no element of courtship or tenderness, he aggressively takes her from the human, male group of explorers. In fact, in an interview with Variety, Del Toro when watching the part where the woman is swimming and we see the creature reach out to her “he thought it was so romantic and exciting that he assumed the two would end up together. He was shocked when they didn’t, “I decided I would someday have to correct that”.

 

Del Toro has stated that The Shape of Water is a sort of ‘what if’ narrative. What if the explorer from The Creature from the Black Lagoon had captured and brought the creature back to the US? In this case, the roles of villains are switched. The small amount of sympathy we may feel for the fish man in Black Lagoon is intensified. The villain is now the human male. Richard Strickland feels a complete and utter hatred for the fish man. We see him torture him with a cattle prod with apparent satisfaction, this is only intensified when the fish man bites his fingers off.

So, what is so different about the two monsters. One is traditionally monstrous, non-human and very dangerous. The other is a seemingly normal looking man, but what makes him more villainous? He commits acts in the narrative that made me more uncomfortable than anything that transpired between Eliza and the fish man. One scene, in particular, was when he is having sex with his wife after he had his fingers bitten off and then stitched back on. As he is stroking his wife’s face his fingers begin bleeding, as his wife tries to tell him, he then tells her to shut up and covers her mouth with his bleeding fingers, all the while still (quite forcefully) having sex with her. Funnily enough, the scene that made me most uncomfortable was a heteronormative one. The heteronormative sexual act has here been made uncomfortable and rather disgusting to watch. Which plays of the romantic and tender encounter that Eliza has with the fish man. We, as viewers are made to be disgusted by the heterosexual male’s sexual desire, it is terrifying and abhorrent. Made even more so later in the film where he sexually threatens Eliza.

In the final scenes of the film Strickland’s monstrosity reaches its peak, when he rips his fingers off in front of Zelda in a show of terrifying masochism, which “does not allow for sympathetic identification” as it is a “profoundly disturbing occurrence, one which emanates from both the unexpectedness of the monster hurting himself when his apparent role is to harm others” (Briefel 18). In this final gruesome act, Strickland has stripped any identification that we, as humans may have ever felt with him, and because of the tenderness and humanity expressed by the monster we choose to side with him instead. The fish man only ever hurts others either out of self-defence or in the case of the cat, out of hunger, however, this is quickly rectified as he is able to learn that some creatures are not for eating. We see him understand morals very quickly, while with Strickland we see his morals are non-existent.

It is not just female sexual desire that is explored in this film, it presents the notion that heterosexual male sexual desire in some cases is problematic and that the feminine, which has mostly been ignored in society and in film, is less harmful than the (sometimes) aggressive male sexual desire. The man in this film believes he has power over women, which is expressed numerous times in an oddly sexual manner. The woman, however, has a sexual desire apparent from the start that does not harm anyone, the film normalized women’s sexual urges and does so in a non-conventional manner.

By Siobhan Eardley

 

 

Works Referenced:

The Shape of Water. Dir Guillermo Del Toro (2017)

Briefel, Aviva. “Monsterpains.” Film Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, 2005, pp. 16–27.

Gray, Tim. “Love and Danger on the ‘Water’ Front.” Variety, 10 Jan. 2018, variety.com/2018/film/awards/shape-of-water-inspiration-from-monster-movie-1202659976/.7

Hayward, Philip. Making a Splash Mermaids (and Mer-Men) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media. John Libbey Publishing, 2017.