Opening The Door to a Stranger

I just watched The Shape of Water. Have you seen it? Wasn't that a cute story, with nostalgic dance scenes and a tender message about acceptance of those who are perceived as being different?

Sure it was. Just look at the characters.

The ingenue heroine, Elisa, was alone and had no voice, literally: she's mute. Her only friends, initially, were a fellow cleaning lady named Zelda played by one of my favorites, Octavia Spencer, and a gay neighbor named Giles who was a gifted, but broke, artist. Elisa, Zelda, and Giles are all unappreciated by the outsiders in the movie, for one reason or another. You can see why they'd be fast friends.

That's the first layer of the onion waiting to be peeled back. I felt uneasy about the movie when I watched it, but those dance scenes and expressions of friendship were to darn sweet that I kept going.

After the movie was over, and each character was as developed as possible, I started to realize that anyone who was remotely conservative in the movie was portrayed in the worst light possible. Let's start with the primary bad guy, Stickland.

His brutality toward the remarkable and unique amphibious man is sickening and perverse. That alone makes the viewer loathe him, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. He's a misogynist, cheater, abuser, egotist, racist S.O.B.  And, he quotes the Bible. What a creep.

He's white, forty-something, educated, professional, and a family man. But he's also a real jerk and committed such ugly acts in the movie from the very start. At the very beginning, he loses two fingers to the bite of the beast, which he has reattached. They fester and turn black as the movie plays out. I'm sure this is just OK...most movies need a villain of some kind, so why not this ridiculous Suit? Moving on.

His wife, perky little mom with two adorable kids, is married to this creep, and all she wants is a shiny new Cadillac to ride around in. So she puts her hubby's hand on her exposed breast and suggests the purchase. He has sex with her (thank you for the naked butt bouncing up and down on the screen, Mr. Director. Actually, Strickland puts his nasty, bleeding hand over her mouth and tells he he prefers it if she's silent during their romantic interlude. But hey, there's a Cadillac coming soon, so she goes along with it. What a Caucasian, conservative, consumer. Disgusting.

There's also a General. He's a little more restrained in his bullying, but my goodness is he proud of the time and effort it took to earn his Five Stars, defending the country! He's the only one who keeps Strickland in his place. White, fifty-something, arrogant, and sees the beautiful amphibious man as just the sum of his parts, particularly if those parts are valuable to the US space program. Animal. War-monger. At least he hates Russians. (You know who likes Russians? Our President! You know...because they allegedly got him elected.)

And then there's the handsome soda jerk at the local diner, on whom sweet Giles has a crush. It turns out his southern drawl is just as fake as his charm, as he turns out to be a homophobe as well as a bigot, tossing both Giles and a black couple out of the restaurant. Y'all DON'T come back here, y'hear? White, thirty-something, clean cut and old school...that's what the Devil looks like.

But there's also Giles' former employer, white, fifty-something, using Giles artwork, but refusing to hire Giles back at the ad agency. In the script, there's the tiniest mention of Giles having an alcohol problem, which led to his dismissal, but is that really his fault? It's an ad agency, and aren't those guys all alcoholics? Giles, the alcoholic with poor work performance, is the hero, but the guy who's worked at the agency successfully for years is the bad guy. He probably won't hire back Giles because he's gay. It's not spoken, but we all know better. What a user! How unforgiving! Homophobe!

OK. Enough with the bad guys. Let's cleanse our palate with a look at the adorable heroine, Elisa.

I hope she gave the tub a good cleaning beforehand.
She's fastidious, lives in a small apartment, and is a creature of habit. She gets up, starts to run a bath, boils some eggs for her sack lunch, and then...masturbates in the bathtub. Thank you so much, Mr. del Toro (if ever the name of Bull was more fitting...) for adding that quaint bit of full frontal nudity and daily doses of self-pleasure. Character development is clearly your specialty, and my 90+ year old mother really enjoyed seeing that with us.

Let's talk about the Fish guy. To be fair, he was removed by force from his home, and then experimented on by some really awful people. He likes music and hard boiled eggs, so he's pretty  cool. He's alone in this cruel world, and he actually glows when he uses his magical healing abilities. Never mind that he ripped the head of Giles' cat and started eating it. "He didn't mean to. He can't help himself," said Giles, "he's a wild creature." It sounds like an ad campaign for California's many propositions that allow early release of criminals for non-violent crimes, such as rape by intoxication. No fooling, that's an actual proposition passed by California voters.

I'm sorry for spoiling the movie for you. I won't spoil it further by revealing the end, deal? Suffice to say there's some questionable relations between Elisa and her scaly friend. Kind of fun add-on...the villain proclaims the creature to be a god. So there IS a God, but he has scales and bites the head off cats. Nice work, Hollyweird.

But, darn it, those nostalgic scenes with Shirley Temple, and toe-tapping from Elisa and Giles, give the movie an innocent feel, borrowed (exploited) from the bygone Golden Era, so you can feel good about what you just watched. It's love in its purest form: Pity and sex.

And the movie has such a happy ending, so you finish with exactly the feeling you're supposed to have: Everyone who is a Caucasian conservative is evil. Everyone who is a minority, including Fish Guy, is beautiful and special. Acceptance and understanding should be humanity's highest aspiration. Unless, of course, we're talking about accepting people who serve in the military, hold steady jobs, wear suits, drive nice cars, have blonde hair, don't drink on the job... those people are the worst and should not be tolerated under any circumstance.

Hollywood is the stranger I opened my door to. I wish I hadn't but the trailer was so colorful and intriguing.

Their subtle emotional manipulations in tap-dancing, shiny wrapping are designed to make the world hate me: the consummate (materialistic), conservative (right-wing nut-job) housewife (moron), whose husband (misogynist) quotes from the Bible (religious fanatic) while he's beating up minorities (bigot).

Hollywood would like it even better, if I finish the movie hating myself.

Get out of my house, Hollywood, until you get some class. You are hardly the paragon of virtue you claim to be.