The Shape of Water is a masterfully written and directed narrative by Guillermo Del Toro in 2017. It is a contemporary fantasy romance set at the height of the Cold War. The film is devoted to reminding the audience of the beauty of each individual, especially those whom society seems to alienate (Scott, 2017). Simultaneously, the film Master, akin to the Shape of Water, provides spectators with encoded messages about issues of deeply engraved discrimination and prejudice. In addition, the film Master focuses on the issues of gaslighting and identity crisis. The theory of encoding and decoding, as well as the theory of spectatorship, are known for their approach to analyzing media through the different perspectives that the viewers have. The main characters’ appearance and life situations make it the best choice for analysis through these methods. In a way, the films demonstrate how modern-day issues remain dreadful in the affliction of otherness on people that belong to the same nation and negatively affect societies. The Shape of Water demonstrates that the world of today is similar to the Cold War era negativity, which did not vanish but rather preserved itself to this day, while Master focuses on societal difficulties humanity faces today.
By decoding various details of the film, it is possible to observe the hidden messages the spectators experience. First, the usage of repressed but secretly rebellious female protagonists with terrible pasts, magical talents, and impairments which are often in their early teens or mid-twenties, makes del Toro’s work appealing from a feminist standpoint. Vivancos (2012, pp. 883–884) observes that by having these women silenced or denied the ability to take action and reduced, del Toro demonstrates how female characters select their destinies by deciding whether to submit or assert autonomy. In The Shape of Water, the female protagonist Elisa Esposito and the female supporting character Zelda Fuller are consistently neglected. Due to the fact that Elisa is deaf and Zelda is black, these women cooperate and support one another in secret, seizing control of their lives in the face of difficulty and oppression from Strickland and achieving their independence. Elisa is crucial to the plot in rescuing the amphibian asset, as she and Giles devise an escape strategy for the creature and subsequently gain assistance from Zelda and Hoffstetler. In doing so, the five oppressed and disenfranchised people are able to fight Strickland’s white supremacist and dominant regime.
The Shape of Water’s subject focuses on illustrating the maltreatment and marginalization of others. This is shown by the terrible torture and abuse of amphibian assets in service of the space race and the Cold War. It is also reflected in the marginalization of lower-class characters, such as Elisa and Zelda for being deaf and black, respectively, and Hoffstetler for being an enemy as a Russian and a traitor for aiding in the creature’s rescue. The asset is subjected to continual torture since it is an unnatural entity with magical abilities that are difficult for humans to comprehend. The topic may be connected to del Toro’s experience with racial exclusion in the United States. As a Mexican, del Toro is very aware that his presence has often been viewed as the other – foreign, detached, and shunned – which matches the qualities of monsters.
For the visual strategy, del Toro employs a set of unique colour selections. In The Shape of Water, del Toro has mostly employed teal, a medium blue-green hue, for the amphibian humanoid and the water, as well as red and dark green for the clothing of the human characters. These two hues play a crucial role in highlighting the melancholy and sad ambience of Elisa’s subdued environment and her bond with the amphibian creature, as well as the rigorous, perfect, authoritarian world of the military authorities. Dan Laustsen, the cinematographer for The Shape, reveals in an interview how Guillermo del Toro instructed him to use certain colours in the Oscar-winning film. Greens and blues were picked to symbolize water, and crimson was added to signify life, love, and death (Pritchard, 2018).
The most prominent characteristics of del Toro’s themes in The Shape of Water are the pervasiveness of water, the sombre hues of green, teal, and red, and the fluidity of movement and metamorphosis. It could be argued that the metaphorical sensations that people typically associate with water and deep ocean diving into the representational zone of bleak corridors of the lab and dimly lit bathroom – where many of The Shape of Water’s activities take place – are essential in representing the uncertain future of the Cold War era.
During the Cold War, the United States fought an intellectual war against the Soviet Union. However, the country faced issues of division across race, socio-economic status, and gender lines that threatened to rip the nation apart and ruin America’s image abroad (May, 2008, p. 8). In their propaganda efforts, American leaders advocated a style of life that was strongly associated with the exaltation of capitalism. Wealth, suburban living, and the white bourgeois nuclear family were portrayed as aspirational images of the stable household ideal that was pushed (May, 2008, p. 8). However, poverty and racism remained, resulting in discrimination, segregation, and violence, in which people of colour were unable to enjoy the benefits of American prosperity (May, 2008, p. 9). Consequently, an argument could be made that del Toro’s depiction of the perfect, well-ordered, and futuristic world of Richard Strickland is meant to expose the faults in an inflated idealized American image.
The film’s ideological content seems to align with del Toro’s assessment of modern US immigration and foreign policy, which, around 2017 and 2018, became more nationalistic. This technique focuses on the manner in which patterns of racial exclusion and social inequality are studied and utilized to depict the lifestyles of others – each in its unique aspects. Connected to the years 2017 and 2018, del Toro was undoubtedly aware of the election of a white, Republican businessman-turned-president whose platform centred on altering immigration policy by erecting barriers along the Mexico-United States border, thereby affecting the fate of younger immigrants colloquially known as “Dreamers” (Parker et al., 2019). This resonates powerfully with del Toro’s position as a Mexican immigrant, a fact he has emphasized in his descriptions of enduring marginalization in the United States.
In contrast, the film Master by Mariama Diallo is focused on the instances of discrimination that are commonly unseen by legislation but persist in the world of today. It is nothing less than a study of the discrimination encountered by the black community, a third party’s viewpoint on the issue, and the extent to which these racial biases are ingrained in the human mind.
In the film, Regina Hall portrays Gail Bishop in “Master,” who has just been named the renowned Ancaster College in Massachusetts’ head of school, or master. Gail arrives to her new destination with confidence in the ability to change the reality. At the same time, the entrance of Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), a freshmen that finds her way to the campus with a similar blend of confidence and wariness, coincides with Gail’s initiation. Their lives and future in the Ancaster and are now driven by the hopeless reality of the white world.
The movie is an enhanced thriller that aims to highlight the psychological violence and displacement that Black people frequently encounter when entering historically White areas. It could be seen in various scenes. For example, Jasmine’s White roommate casually toss her a rag to wipe up a mess they produced in those uncomfortable times. These instances can vary from embarrassing microaggressions and careless assumptions to open malice. One of the best scenes in the film shows Jasmine at a frat party, moving expressively to a happy pop tune, only to discover later that her White friends are gleefully chanting the N-word.
The film’s plots are interwoven with themes of concealment, alienation, and isolation felt by three persons who are attempting to find out who they are. The tone, atmosphere, and Kafkaesque images skillfully blended by Diallo evoke physical, emotional, and psychological reactions. Diallo’s narrative focuses on the personal experiences of microaggressions and injustice by utilizing history and social reality to demonstrate how racism exists and functions at the heart of its institutions.
In the last scene, the protagonist has an epiphany of sorts. She confronts the primary adversary in front of everyone. She labels herself a con artist and undermines her altruistic motives. She observes the photographs on the side tables and on the walls being duplicated in reality. The guys in the images come to life, and she finds them seated at the table with her at the party as if they had never gone. While surrounded by her coworkers, she blurts out, “And it’s never going to change.” The director metaphorically represents that the world has never altered. People, their prejudiced attitudes, bigotry, abuse, and prejudice are all still prevalent in the modern day. No matter how hard she tried, she was unable to alter the situation. She believed herself to be the “Master,” but in fact, she was only a cleaner hired to clean up the mess and boost the institution’s image. In the last scene, the security guard requests identification and inquires if she is an employee. But Gail had already made a decision. She resigns from her position and departs the organization permanently.
Del Toro is regarded as excellent in imbuing his films with hideous creatures that symbolize otherness. In The Shape of Water, the abducted amphibian asset represents the downtrodden, whose rights are often ambiguous and violated by the dominant authorities. Despite being set against the background of the Cold War, the film symbolizes the current social and political difficulties happening in the United States under the Trump administration, which are strikingly comparable to those shown in the film. The date of the film’s release, the director’s visionary themes and concepts, the picture’s originality, and its success in winning high praise and significant cinema prizes may all have contributed to the film’s status as an iconic example of social commentary and movement.
However, the film Master is similarly worthy of the same praise in the light of the skillful ability of directors to incorporate central social themes in the setting that directly translates to the modern day despite representing a similar Cold War era. The films are brilliant in their execution and development, captivating the spectators and invigorating feelings of compassion and worry. The sadness within the stories, discriminations and difficulties in the path of the protagonists create movies that demonstrate how vulnerable is the society of today as it faces numerous challenges in acceptance.
References
May, E. T. (2008). Homeward bound: American families in the Cold War era. New York: Basic Books.
Parker, A., Nakamura, D., & Rucker, P. (2019). Trump’s wall: The inside story of how the president crafts immigrartion policy. The Washington Post. Web.
Vivancos, A. (2012). Malevolent fathers and rebellious daughters: National oedipal narratives and political erasures in El laberinto del fauno (2006). Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 89(6), 877–893. Web.