So 2017 was a momentous year in which a mainstream movie finally went where scores of women had wanted it to go for decades. The Shape of Water takes the monster-movie in a new direction, conceding that, Hey, maybe the maiden isn't terrified of being carried off by the fishman. Maybe she relates to the fishman. Maybe the fishman is lonely like she is. Maybe the fishman is treated the same way that you, a woman, or a disabled person, or gay man, or person of color, in your unfair era feel treated by society. Maybe that fishman just wants what most of us want, which is to feel loved and safe, Wait, he ate your neighbor's cat? And you find a lot of people, but especially women and LGBT people, who were super excited that del Toro was going there, and... just as many people who were kind of bewildered that there were people who were excited that Del Toro was going there. The Shape of Water is not necessarily the first piece of media that goes there, but it does mark a turning point in taking that idea and turning it mainstream. The monster in The Shape of Water is not a changeling; he does not turn into a prince at the end. There is no transformative change brought on by contact with beauty. He is an anatomically correct fish man, and she's super into that. "Does he... Have a...?" (nods) "Mm-hmm." But the ideas in and of themself are not new and unique. That all of this is present in a critically acclaimed mainstream movie is new and unique. And there are those out there that are like, "What happened? Why are women suddenly into this idea of boinking monsters?" And, it's not that they suddenly are, it's that there is a mainstream filmmaker who is ready and willing to go there. Obviously, this is nothing new, this is, dare, I say it, A tale as old as time. "Tale as old as time" "True as it can be" The folkloric monster is always a sort of embodiment of cultural anxieties. Either ones that must be understood, endured, or empathized with, as in the case with Beauty and the Beast, or one that must be vanquished. Historically, the beast in Beauty and the Beast stories is an animal. Wolves, bears, or some sort of chimera of the above that posed an existential threat to our ancestors. There are folk tales about animal bridegrooms in every storytelling culture, And in Western culture, it often acts as stories of transformative redemption. What author and folklorist Maria Tatar has described as "The transformative power of empathy, that encodes messages about how we manage social and cultural anxieties about romance, marriage and the Other." In the 20th century, the Beauty and the Beast dynamic evolved a more reactionary fearful stance, where the beast was a giant ape, or a Gillman, or an alien, or... (sigh) We'll get to that. The 1950s horror monster is particularly noteworthy with regard to The Shape of Water. Not only because of the time period, but because of the anxieties the monsters are inspired by. The Cold War, desegregation, decolonization, and so on. As Tatar points out, in the future, the Beast may take the form of an Android or a cyborg. Machines that embody our anxieties and phobias. "I'm half machine." "I'm a monster!" "AAAAAAH-" So, beasts, whether they must be vanquished by the hero or they turn into a prince at the end, must also have elements that make them attractive. The Greek word for monster "τέρας" captures the paradox of monster hood, designating something both repulsive and attractive. Which brings us to why beasts are so often paired with, and ultimately transformed by, or killed by... Beauty. "It wasn't the airplanes." "It was beauty who killed the Beast." Nearly every storytelling culture maps out dating practices with "beast partners." From ancient Rome with the myth of Eros and Psyche, to the old Norse folktale East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is nearly identical to the myth of Eros and Psyche. An Indian variant has a girl in an arranged marriage to a snake. And in doing exactly as she is told and being happy in her arranged snake marriage the snake turns into a fancy Brahmin. There is a Chilean version that is almost identical to the myth of Eros and Psyche, with the prince taking the form of an enchanted parrot. A Ghanaian variant features an inversion on the arranged marriage theme, in which a girl marries for love and oops, she married a hyena man. And that's why you should always listen to your mother and enter marriages arranged by your parents. These folktales originate in times when arranged marriages were the norm in pretty much
every culture on Earth. Many arranged marriages must have seemed like being tethered to a monster, and the telling of stories like Beauty and the Beast may have furnished women with a socially acceptable channel for providing advice, comfort, and the consolation of imagination. See, girls, he may seem like a horrible monster, but, you know, maybe if you're really nice and virtuous and self-sacrificing, You can change him! Common themes of Beauty and the Beast tales, the world over, include: -Beauty is "not like 'other' girls.” -She is exceptionally virtuous and self-sacrificing. -Other, less virtuous female characters, what we in the academic world call "jealous bitches." -Beauty is often punished for her curiosity about the beast, as with Psyche and East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Often, the jealous bitches coerce Beauty to look upon the Beast when Beauty was not supposed to, and then the Beast is like, "God damn it, Beauty, my enchantment was almost lifted. I was two weeks away from retirement and now I'm going to be Beast foreverrr" And now Beauty must go on some torturous penance journey to break his curse. Beast is usually materially wealthy, or at least has some sort of enchanted means for providing for Beauty's every want. This motif is as old as the written word, but the story that we know as Beauty and the Beast was penned in 1756 by Madame LeBrun de Beaumont, for her "magasin des enfant". The purpose of which was to promote "good manners in the young" and to indoctrinate and "enlighten children about the virtues of fine manners and good breeding." Beauty is predisposed from the very beginning to acts of self-sacrifice. Without question, she agrees to give her life for her father's. In the end, Beauty preferred virtue to looks. Not like her sisters. Who are jealous bitches. Beauty doesn't care that Beast isn't the wittiest man alive. He's nice! Also, rich! And the story ends with Beauty being rewarded with a handsome prince who was also secretly intelligent the whole time, and Beauty's haters being turned into stone and being forced to watch Beauty's happy life until they learn their lesson. According to Tatar, "Beaumont's take attempted to study the fears of young women, to reconcile them to the custom of arranged marriages, and to brace them for an alliance that required prefacing their own desires and submitting to the
will of a monster." Ain't history fun? Moving forward in time a little bit we get to another big monster milestone with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The rise of the Byronic hero made the Beast more of a metaphorical one, and relegated Beauty and the Beast stories to folklore and children's tales. But there was also the rise of a sort of byronic monster at the same time, as we saw with the creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Who, while a creature with pathos, is still an unholy abomination that needed to be vanquished. Though written by a woman, this monster isn't really positioned against fear or anxiety specific
to womanhood. Shelley famously wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, during a writing contest put forth by Lord Byron. She came up with the idea when she was listening to a conversation between Percy Shelley and Lord Byron talking about some rumored scientific experiments that may eventually lead to corpses being brought back to life, and it freaked her out so much she had nightmares about it. In the preface to the 1831 reprint of the book, Shelley wrote of her nightmare, that she saw the creature "show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world." Frankenstein was written at a time when there was a lot of mass anxiety about the scientific world rubbing up against a religious one, and Frankenstein's monster is very much an embodiment of that anxiety. Frankenstein was a seminal science-fiction novel, and its monster was not only a milestone for how we envision monsters, but it was also a milestone for how media envisions monsters, especially once Hollywood came into the picture. And with American visual mass media came the rise of the monster movie, And yes, you have your opera phantoms, your Nosferatus, your Frankensteins, all monsters who terrorized women. But we should, we should also talk about
Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation is a significant movie in many regards. But in this case I want to focus on the character Gus, played by a white man in blackface, who chases a white woman into the hills with the intent of raping her. She would rather die and she jumps to her death to escape. In response to this, the heroic KKK hunts Gus down and lynches him. This is framed in the film as good and heroic. And of course the "monster" in this movie very much exemplifies the anxieties of white America at the beginning of the 20th century. "Hey boys, look what I got here!" "Hey, where are the white women at?" Birth of a Nation is kind of under-discussed, at least recently, as to why it was so important for the formation of film. But a super under-discussed element is the way that it would eventually lead to the coding in monster movies, and the way that monsters relate to women as symbols of purity -- to white women. Flash forward a few decades and being quite so literal with what it is we're worried is going to come after our white women is perhaps a little gauche. "Hey, where are the white women at?" Enter the real early movie monster of Hollywood, the beast what was killed by beauty, King Kong. And 20 years after that, we have a whole host of sci-fi B movies. Oh, the women what were carried away screaming by these inhuman monsters. So societal fears and how they play into popular culture of the 1950's is a very very big topic, so I'm gonna try and keep this concise. In the post-World War II era we had this booming economy and really conservative culture rubbing up against the end of the colonial era. Fears of the commies, the anxieties concerning desegregation and miscegenation, the atomic bomb, and so on. Throughout the media of the 30s and the 50s, the difference, or lack thereof, between the primitive and the civilized was a popular theme. So it's not a huge coincidence that so many monsters of the 30s, 40s, and 50s came from Africa, or West of Sumatra, or in the Creature's case, the Amazon. A non-comprehensive list of films featuring missing-link style monsters would include "Bride of the Gorilla," "The Neanderthal Man", "Monster on the Campus", and of course, "King Kong". And this is to say nothing about the aliens that totally don't represent our anxieties about the impending communist invasion. "They have to be destroyed, all of them!" "They will be, every one-" But the most iconic from this era is The Creature from the Black Lagoon. According to film historian, Fatimah Tobing Rony, the basic narrative of the creature series, especially the first two films, is fueled by the violence of the Gillman's attraction to and pursuit of the female lead, and the hero's need to protect her from the monster. All of these films use womanhood as a sort of avatar for a precious status quo that must be protected, and not just womanhood, white womanhood. Rony contends that the portrayal of figures such as Ann Darrow in King Kong "reveals a cinematic fascination with beautiful white women as unconscious source of disorder." Both The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Revenge of the Creature end with the monster presumably killed by white men galvanized into action by the abduction of the various female leads. Hmm. (laughs) So it's not a huge stretch to draw a direct line from this... ...to this... ...to this... And again, to paraphrase Tolkien, I do not wish to confuse applicability with allegory. I do not think that the filmmakers deliberately went out to code The Creature from the Black Lagoon as a person of color that is threatening white female purity. That said, that does not mean that the Creature is bereft of coding, intentional or no. So, for the difference between coding and allegory, skip about to the 24 minute mark in the bright video. It's over here. But these monsters, unlike the blackface rapist Gus in Birth of a Nation, are portrayed with pathos, like a B-movie Shakespearean tragedy. King Kong's death is treated like an inevitability, but a tragic one. When Kong and the Creature are brought into violent contact with modernity, disaster occurs. They are incompatible with it, and then they are inevitably destroyed. There is a fear of the primitive and unknown embodied by the monster, But don't worry, modernity will mow it down in the end. So what changed? How did we get from this, to this? ~You went away, and my heart went with you~ Part of the major shift in storytelling and monster stories is the reexamination of what monsterhood actually entails. "I bring you love" "It's bringing love, don't let it get away!" "Break its legs!" "Yeah!" Namely, internal versus external monsterhood, a theme that is made explicit in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, "But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, For beauty is found within." in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, "Who is the monster and who is the man?" and in The Shape of Water. "And the tale of love and loss, and the monster, who tried to destroy it all." What we typically saw in those old B movies from the 1950s was that there was a strapping, white hero, and opposite to the brutish beast that lusted after beauty. But somewhere along the line we began to realize the insidious undertones of this whole dynamic. The monster who was minding his own business is then kidnapped into modernity, the strapping hero who only knows how to solve problems through violence, the passive woman who existed only to be carried away screaming by the monster. So later versions of Beauty-Beast monster stories changed a lot. Beauty is no longer so self-sacrificing, The jealous bitches are either relegated to ascended extras, "What's wrong with her?"
"She's crazy!"
"He's gorgeous." removed altogether, or actually loving and supportive. The character of Zelda in The Shape of Water is a total inversion of the jealous bitch archetype, even going so far as to act as an accomplice to protagonist Eliza, at great risk to herself. We also see a rising trend of an outside antagonistic force. Disney was not the original innovator of a hyper masculine yet foppish authoritarian Gaston in opposition to the Beast. That, like many things, was taken from the Jean Cocteau adaptation, but the handsome, or at least, normal-looking villain, became a popular addition to these stories to play up this idea of internal versus external monsterhood, another obstacle for the couple, who effectively embodies an unaccepting society. So, starting with the media revolutions of the late 60s and 70s, there was renewed interest in finding humanity, even the attraction, in the things that scare us. "It's probably just from some nearby cottage. Nothing to worry about. Where you going? Oh, you men are all alike! Seven or eight quick ones and you're off with the boys, to boast and brag! You better keep your mouth shut! Oh, I think I love him." But actually depicting attraction to a monster in a visual medium... It's really hard to do that well, and not be completely awkward. The 1976 remake of King Kong attempted to depict Kong and Dwan's attraction as... somewhat mutual... This is the very hotness. Hit me with that gorilla breath. Perhaps the Orion version of the 1950's movie monster in the 1980s is Swamp Thing, and his many knock-offs, wherein the romantic hero gets turned into a monster, and then he and his lady friend spend the entire rest of the movie fighting off bad guys in a... swamp. In the 1980s, CBS had a primetime version of Beauty the Beast starring Linda Hamilton opposite sexy, manimal Ron Perlman. "Katherine." Where the Beast, Vincent, remains in a constant state of beastliness, and Beauty, Katherine, lives a dual life between her day career as a New York City assistant district attorney, and her night career wearing silky pajamas. Here the Beast saves her from a violent assault and nurses her back to health, and he wants Katherine to be happy and supports her in her daytime career as badass lady lawyer. This is so unbearably sincere. I cannot believe this exists. What bombed-out wine mom wrote this? Really? Also mega-popular at this point in history is the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. By the late 1980s, the Phantom has evolved. He's no longer the evil golemy wretch of the Lon Chaney movie who gets torn apart by an angry mob. Now he's basically the romantic hero, and one third of a love triangle. He still doesn't get the girl in the end, but he is much more human, tragic, and apathetic. Most importantly, he is romantic. And then, of course, comes the Disney movie. "She's so beautiful, and I'm--" "Well, look at me!" "Oh, you must help her to see past all that." "I don't know how." A few years after that, DreamWorks Animation built effectively a cottage industry around fairy tale inversion. First with Shrek, a Beauty and the Beast story which ends with Beauty turning into a beast at the end. "I'm supposed to be beautiful." "But you are beautiful." After that we saw Megamind, which also has a story of transformative empathy, and includes a major plot element of trying to look normal. "Just a technical glitch!" "Don't look yet!" But in the end, he does get the girl, despite not changing his appearance. And then there's Monsters vs. Aliens, which features "the rare female monster". Susan's story is effectively about being comfortable in her own skin. "You're doing great!" "I'm doing everything!" Around this time in Beauty and the Beastdom, there was also this really lame trend in visual media that kind of walked back. There was a CW Beauty and the Beast series where the Beast has got, like, a scar, and I guess he's a beast because he Hulks out sometimes. "I could kill you in less than a second!" And then there was Beastly, starring Vanessa Hudgens, and the Beast is only a beast in that he has these rad, sexy scars and badass "Beast" tattoos. This isn't beastly, I want my Manimal! Whoa, not that Manimal, never mind. "Romeo and Juliet's my favorite play." "Urrg. Why is that not a surprise?" Oh, yes, my fantasy, a beast that nags. In more recent years we've seen be curious unabashed rise of self-published monster erotica on places like Amazon. We also now have super popular anime and manga Ancient Magus Bride, the author of which claims she was inspired to write it because she was disappointed with Beauty and the Beast stories always ending with the beast turning back into a prince at the end. And then, of course, The Shape of Water. The Shape of Water playing monster romance straight is not the first. Hell, it's not even the first for Guillermo del Toro, whose eponymous monster man, also played by Ron Perlman, "I wish I could do something about this." got the girl at the end of Hellboy, while the white guy who would have been the hero in a 1950s monster movie looks on sadly. Del Toro stated that the whole idea for The Shape of Water came to him after feeling sympathy for the Gillman, when he saw The Creature from the Black Lagoon as a child. Del Toro has always had a special fascination and even sympathy for monsters, and he was well aware of the racial coding in the original Creature series, which is why The Shape of Water turns into a deliberate inversion. According to del Toro, "I feel it as an immigrant that has been received by this country, but I still feel there's this sort of demonization of 'the other' very present. I needed to talk about the beauty of 'the other.' It's about celebrating imperfections celebrating otherness, falling in love with 'the other,' you know?" It's not so much tolerance as it is love." There's always been coding in stories like this, so it's no coincidence that eventually people from marginalized communities, immigrants, queer people, people of color, would not only see themselves in movie monsters, but kind of lean into this and then really start to invert what we even expect from monsters. Because there is some truth to this idea that there's allegory there to being a queer person, a person of color in America, or both... Hello? Hey Lindsay, it's La'Ron from the Youtube channel Readus101. So, my m'baku senses were tingling earlier, and I was just calling to make sure you weren't trying to speak for a group of individuals that you don't necessarily represent. No, no, I wouldn't, I-I'm woke. I'm the wokest. Oh good, that's, that's great to hear. Well, considering that I'm actually a queer person of color living in America, do you mind hearing my opinions on the matter? Yes, by all means, go ahead. Well, it's definitely like you stated earlier. Monster movies are the perfect allegory for what it's like being queer, a person of color, or both in America. Depending on the era the movie takes place in, racism and LGBTQ phobia ostracized a lot of individuals. And it's because of that ostracion that it makes sense that those affected would find the monsters in monster movies relatable. After being called an abomination for being attracted to the same sex, you might find the actual walking abomination that is Frankenstein's monster, and how he's treated throughout the film as relatable. In the original or Peter Jackson's 2005 remake-- King Kong's capture, enslavement, and the bond that he forms with Ann says a lot about not only the obvious oppression of African Americans, but is also a very well-done allegory for the, at the time, taboo subject of interracial relationships. Well, maybe the 2005 movie more than the original. Actually... forget I said that. Speaking of relationships, didn't you just do a video about The Shape of Water, and why certain people might be attracted to monsters like that in the first place? Oh, yeah, I did, I-- How did you do that? The same way you called me in the middle of a pre-written and recorded video essay. Touche. So does this mean that the fish man does it for you? Nah, I'm more into Moses allegory orcs and genius gorillas with glasses that shoot Tesla cannons. You? Anything you've heard about novel-length Starscream fanfic is a lie! Moving on... Part of what makes this movie unique is the intentionality with which it approaches coding. You see this in mainstream romance novels too, but romances written for women, especially Beauty and the Beast stories, tend to have a theme of the transformative aspect of love, --this being the whole thrust behind Fifty Shades of Grey, for better or worse-- And again, to be clear, that shit is my jam, I still pay to see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, Depending on who's the Phantom. It is relevant that the monster of del Toro's romance does not transform, either physically or internally. Del Toro was more interested in the empathy being there from the outset, and the creature being accepted for who and what he is without having to change. And that is reflective of changing sensitivities. People are more interested in relating to the monster's pain than in hunting down and killing him. Or, sometimes, her. A monster is always an embodiment of some kind of anxiety, but the fate of the monster depends on the anxiety and what angle it's approached from. And what moral the culture and the storyteller wants to push. The interesting change we're seeing now is concern for the well-being of the monster, which I think speaks to a broader trend of more empathetic storytelling. At the very least, it's a more interesting way to write the monster.
As with Movies with Mikey, discovered her videos by chance and spent the next day watching all of them. She has some really cool videos on Disney - she even put up an interesting case for Megan Fox in Transformers.
Lindsay has been my favorite video essayest since I stumbled on her Guardians Vol 2 video a few months ago.
I've been following Lindsay for a long time. Since she was the Nostalgia Chick on Blip.tv and officially with That Guy With the Glasses. I'm so impressed by her evolution as a media critic. I'll watch anything she puts out.
Lindsay Ellis is a unique genius. Every time I disagree with her, which happens more in her old Nostalgia Chick videos when she's just being snarky for laughs at the expense of my precious childhood favorites, I always find myself saying, "Well, she's kinda right though..."
I hope she revisits Shape of Water one day. A lot more to cover
She always puts out solid content, her videos are well worth the watch
I would have liked her to touch on The Creature Walks Among Us, the third Creature From The Black Lagoon movie, even though it didn't really fit the theme of the video essay (the Gill-Man doesn't kidnap any pretty white ladies) its my favorite in the trilogy (probably for that very reason). I remember being very affected by the movie as a kid, watching it with my dad late at night, at the end of a 50's B-movie marathon . It's super tragic. The Gill-Man is captured (again) and is burned so badly he loses his ability to breathe underwater and is essentially 'domesticated' by the scientists acclimatizing him to dry land, even making him wear clothing. The movie feels like even more of a precursor to The Shape of Water since the Creature is captured pretty early and is forced to live in the stifling and flawed human world. With one of the human characters emerging as the main villain of the piece, The Creature is (consequently) even more pitiable and empathetic than he was in the first two.
Is the video safe to watch if I haven't seen Shape of Water and haven't even seen the trailer for Shape of Water?
Another great video -Ellis reminds me that there are enough women or black or queer voices in YouTube when it comes to discussing media(or ones that don't succumb to mudflinging contests). Her long videos are really in depth and lovely.