Sara Ezzat – March 2020

Guillermo Del Toro’s 2017 film The Shape of Water and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film Strangers on a Train are themselves an example of alterity, being opposite to each other in most aspects; tone, theme, character, meaning, yet similar enough in style and technique to highlight those oppositions. The most striking contrast is the way both films portray otherness and the outsider. In Hitchcock’s film, the outsider is a threat; a destabilizing force come to wreak havoc on the good man of the establishment. Del Toro sympathizes with the outsiders, the threat in his film comes from the establishment and its man. He shows not one other but several different others. These opposing views of otherness reflect the politics of their times and the shift in how the world sees the outsider.

To have an outsider one must have an inside, an establishment from which the outsider is separated. In Strangers on a Train this is embodied in Guy Haines; a smart, talented tennis player with a beautiful fiancé and a future in the senate if only he can rid himself of his adulterous wife and later her killer. In The Shape of Water, the establishment man is Colonel Richard Strickland a man of authority in a secret government research facility; he’s on his way up too, with a new Cadillac and a family in the suburbs. To the outside world, both men are successful, masculine ideals. Each has a paternal mentor to emulate; Guy in Senator Morton and Strickland in General Hoyt. Yet for all their similarities their respective cameras see them very differently. Hitchcock’s camera is on Guy’s side, he is framed and lit in a flattering way. He is rarely shown expressing anger, and when he does the viewer feels it is justified. Strickland is the villain in Del Toro’s film and he is framed as such. He is always dark and angry. Michael Shannon’s performance is expressive and intimate. Strickland is threatening, while Guy is the one being threatened.

Strickland is dark and threatening because in Del Toro’s film the establishment is dark and threatening. Strickland’s hegemonic world of the military and suburban heteronormativity is a threat to the lonely outsiders of the film. Guy is honest and straightforward because in Hitchcock’s film that same hegemonic world is the good world, the safe world, and Burno is the outsider that threatens Guy’s place in it.

Both views of the hegemony can be viewed as a product of their times. Hitchcock made Strangers on a Train in 1951 not long after WWII. The war had destabilized normal society, splitting families up and opening people up to new possibilities many of which were frightening. Mainstream culture was reasserting old values and cinema was part of that. This was also the time of the Hays code, a system of self-imposed censorship in Hollywood that was intended to make cinema reflect conservative family values. Evildoers must be punished, wrongs must be righted, and authority must be viewed in a good light.

Del Toro created The Shape of Water in 2017, long after the Hays code era and in the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump. There is no body directing how authority is depicted in media.  Film can show the divisions in society much more than it could in Hitchcock’s day, can explore the danger authority poses to individuals who do not conform. Del Toro, in particular, is a Mexican filmmaker working in America, he has reason to be wary of the hegemony of Hollywood and wider American society. He is an outsider himself and intends his films to be political, to challenge the establishment.

If Guy and Strickland embody hegemonic masculinity in their films, Bruno Anthony and Giles are the representation of nonhegemonic masculinity, of men who are “unmanly” and “effeminate”. Both characters are implied to be gay, though their sexualities are never explicitly spoken. Bruno’s sexuality is implied by queer coding, the old practice of using stereotypes and clichés to show what cannot be spoken aloud. Bruno is extravagantly dressed and theatrical in his voice and gestures. His mother is the only woman in his life and he hates his father. Moving beyond shallow stereotypes; there is the longing way he looks at Guy, his near desperation to form a connection with this man he admires. Their initial meeting mirrors the way a heterosexual man might flirt with a woman; from the way, he looks at Guy to his body language, to the way he tries to establish intimacy and insistence that they dine together. To modern eyes, his behaviour looks predatory because Guy is clearly uncomfortable, and Bruno is not listening. To a contemporary viewer, the predatory nature would be part of the coding, his queerness itself is the threat.

Giles’s sexuality is as obvious as Bruno’s and as unspoken, but from a vastly different perspective. There is coding with Giles too; he is gentle and meek, artistic and worried about his appearance. He loves music and musicals, owns cats and while he has a friendship with a woman, it is clearly asexual. Like Bruno, he is desperate for a connection with a man, looks longingly at the Pie Man just as Bruno does with Guy. However, Giles is no threat to anyone, his pursuit of the Pie Man is not predatory, it is barely a pursuit. He too mistakes friendliness for connection, but it is only for a moment, and he accepts rejection. The Pie Man at this moment embodies Giles’s contemporary world and its rejection of him, the implication that Giles does not belong in a space for families illustrates how the world sees Giles, as the other, as a monster.

Another man hiding his perceived monstrosity is Dimitri Mosenkov a KGB scientists masquerading as Dr. Robert Hoffstetler. Throughout the film, there are fearful whispers about Russian agents, a looming threat to Strickland and the establishment. But for all the fearful whispers, Dimitri is a gentle man. He is not the hegemonic model of masculinity like Strickland or Guy nor does he want to be. He isn’t coded as effeminate either. He is quiet, curious, and respectful, the opposite of the KGB thug Strickland and his cohort imagine they are facing. Dimitri is the passing other, the one who appears to be a part of the norm.

If Dimitri and Giles are hiding what the world sees as monstrous in them, the Amphibious Man cannot hide. His otherness in every cell of his body; he looks alien, green-skinned and scaly. He doesn’t even share the same environment as the humans, living in a saltwater tank, breathing through gills. He cannot hide what he is. That he has in common with Giles and with Bruno, but in him, it is amplified, made inhuman. But beneath the surface, the Amphibian Man is not as different as he appears. He listens, and learns, likes music and watching dancing. He is gentle and curious, and above all he is lonely. Deeply lonely, so far as we know, he is the only one of his kind.  In this, he is like Giles and Dimitri and Bruno too, the profound loneliness of being the only one. That is the truth of being one who is othered, of being the freak, to be denied admittance to the norm is to become a lone island in the sea of humanity.

Then comes Elisa Esposito. She is as othered as the others, isolated in her silence, and yet she doesn’t hide. Strickland, the norm of this world is not repulsed by her, he is compelled by her. To him, she is the exotic other. Being exoticized is as dehumanizing as any other form of othering but in different ways. Strickland does not see Elisa as monstrous, he simply doesn’t see her. He sees what he wants to see in her, and the rest is invisible. In her silence and invisibility, Elisa is able to move about as she pleases. She can even tell him off without him knowing what she said. He only sees her on his terms.

Elisa is far from the model of hegemonic femininity expected of the establishment. She lives alone, works for a living, mixes freely with people of other races and sexes, and most threatening of all, she is comfortable with her sexuality. Del Toro shows the audience who she is in the opening of the film. Quiet, yes, and lonely, but she is comfortable in her life. He shows her comfort with her own sexuality by showing her masturbate, but the camera doesn’t linger or exploit. This is part of her routine as much as cooking breakfast.

Hegemonic approved femininity would be more like Strickland’s wife, a happy homemaker there to serve her husband’s needs. She never occupies the center of the frame, always orbiting around him visually the way she does in life. She is another other to Strickland. The way the camera shows her is indicative of the way Strickland sees women, as objects to use as his will. This view would be typical of his contemporaries, but to the modern watcher, it is predatory and disturbing. It is more in line with Bruno’s behaviour to Guy than Guy’s treatment of women.

There are three important women in Guy’s life; his wife Miriam, his fiancé Anne Morton, and her sister Barbara. The Morton sisters fall into traditional hegemonic femininity, though it is kinder to them than Mrs. Strickland. Anne is beautiful, rich, and utterly devoted to Guy. She defers to her father in all things and her only ambition is to help Guy follow the path of her father.  Anne clearly is intelligent and observant, but she isn’t independent. Hitchcock does show the audience her point of view, film her gaze. She is presented as nearly equal to Guy, but she is frequently filmed from a higher angle. The audience looks down on her slightly. Thus, Anne is othered, in the binary of man and woman, but she is granted a higher place because she accepts her role. Her sister is the ingenue, innocent and bright, she has leeway to be herself as the pure innocent good. Both Morton sisters represent the ideal womanhood of their time, beautiful and pure.

The woman who is not pure is Miriam. She has violated the rules of the establishment. She dared to leave her marriage, to have sex and to become pregnant by a man who isn’t her husband. In the eyes of a contemporary audience, Miriam has othered herself, made herself a monster. She is even more of a monster with what they would see as her shrewish behaviour, arguing with her husband, manipulating him. The camera enhances this shrewishness, the lighting is unflattering, and the camera lingers on her physicality. Miriam is undeniably a sexual being, unlike Anne and like Elisa. Her body movement is sensuous, and the camera lingers on her movement, like Del Toro’s camera lingers on Elisa. But with Elisa, the camera moves as if it is dancing with her, while Hitchcock’s camera is stalking Miriam. Elisa’s movements are often slightly imprecise and accompanied by a shy smile, while Miriam’s are calculated, and her smile is anything but shy. The two women are very different; however, the wider society of their worlds would not judge them by their differences, but by their mutual transgression of embracing their sexuality.

A key difference in the films’ view of the other can be seen in the different ways Miriam and Elisa are treated by the outsiders of their particular worlds. Miriam is Bruno’s victim, he stalks and kills her with ease. To Bruno, her life is nothing but an offering to Guy, a way to bind the object of his affections to him. In stepping outside the bounds of hegemonic acceptability, Miriam has lost society’s protection. She is fair game to any predator. Though Miriam has two men with her when Bruno stalks her, they offer no help. They are nothing to her, and she is nothing to them. Here is the stark 50s Hays code morality at work. Miriam is an Eve, she has tasted the forbidden fruit and been cast out. She is a fallen woman. This is a black and white world; morality is as binary as the filmstock.

Elisa lives in a world of glorious colour. The majority in her contemporary world might be ready to judge her for her sensuality if they noticed it, but the other outsiders of her world are not. Nor are the outsiders a threat to her. She initially sees Dimitri as a threat, but soon recognizes he is frightened but willing to help. She is the first to see that the Amphibian Man is not a savage beast, but capable of tenderness and care. Far from posing a threat to her, he is her love interest and eventually her saviour. Giles, the most like Bruno, is the least threatening of all.

Giles is the narrator of this story, he frames this world and it is through his eyes that we see Elisa. He describes her as a princess and sees her as a whole person, a good person. Far from Bruno treating Miriam as disposable in his pursuit of Guy, Elisa is his confidant and companion. The one who bears witness to his longing for the Pie Man. This witnessing too is a form of othering; to be seen by another, seen and recognized, is to feel less alone. Elisa bears witness to all the outsiders in this tale and in that she gives the outsiders in the audience to also feel seen.

Being seen is not a healing act for Bruno, particularly being seen by a woman. In Barbara’s eyes, he sees himself a monster. The moment spurs him on to be even more monstrous. There can be no healing for Bruno. Because he is an outsider in this world he must be a danger to it, he must be punished and removed from the world. His difference is like the runaway carousel, it keeps picking up speed and will inevitably lead to a crash. The contemporary audience expects this death and for the good Guy to be rewarded for his adherence to social norms. The hierarchy is restored, and the queer threat is excised. That is what the writers of the Hays code wish the audience to see, that is what Hitchcock enjoyed delivering.

Del Toro is not interested in delivering comforting messages upholding the status quo. The establishment man in his film is not a good guy to be rewarded, Strickland is the true monster of The Shape of Water. He is the one who poses a threat to Elisa, and to all the outsiders. Del Toro’s camera shows him as the villain he is. Giles may be like Bruno in his queerness, but it is Strickland who shares his predatory nature and the camera and lighting highlight it. It is Strickland who is on the accelerating carousel of madness, and it he who will meet the grizzly end.

There is a catharsis in Strickland’s end as there is in Bruno’s, but Del Toro’s catharsis is quite different from Hitchcock. The comfort here is for the outsiders of the world, to see a bully defeated and to imagine Elisa happy and beloved. This is a fairy tale for the downtrodden and the ostracized. For the immigrants and the disabled, for the queer and the vulnerable. For those who know that true monstrosity comes from power, that the danger is not an outsider, but the hegemony itself.