Author: Marcia Raymond

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The Shape of Water (Home Screening)

Guillermo Del Toro’s latest film, The Shape of Water, has not officially been released, but I was fortunate enough to attend an advanced screening with a Q&A with Del Toro post-screening. In his Q&A Del Toro brought up great points about the antagonist of his film. He stated that in earlier film eras the rigid, alpha dog , Col. Richard Strickland, would not have only been the protagonist of the story, but the hero as well. In The Shape of Water it is the good looking commander in chief who is the real villain, terrorizing the monster & tugging at viewers’ heartstrings with every blow. Throughout film history, monsters have always been the big bad. From The Blob to Cloverfield, the humanity of the monster is disregarded because at the end of the day – it’s a monster. Colonel Strickland himself says while the monster of the story may look like the human characters, it is far from one.

Classical Hollywood films tended to follow the same formula. The films followed an innocent main character who finds a fairytale love with the innocent or sometimes rough around the edges next door neighbor. In film 212 we discussed what makes a character a “hero” or the “good guy” and the narrative shift from portraying innocent main characters to films starring anti heros. Anti-heros are the leads in many films of the films screened in Film 212 like Blow Up and In A Lonely Place. Both films star male leads that can be difficult to root for. To many viewers the men may not even qualify as anti-“heroes” and serve as the protagonist and antagonist of their own stories. Rather than swooping in and saving a love interest at the climax of the film, the men are their own sabotage-rs.

In The Shape of Water instead of being the villain, the monster is the love interest and ends up being one of the most sympathetic characters in the film. So much so that it is almost uncomfortable to refer to him as a “monster.” Del Toro created a character with such care and precision, even without words, viewers could understand “Sparkle’s” plight. To further distance Sparkle from the regular big bad monsters in film, Sparkle wasn’t created with fear in mind. Del Toro stated that it took years to put together the materials, bodywork and technology needed to give Sparkle his smooth, mosaic texture that never settles on one color the entire film. The artists wanted Sparkle to be beautiful, the type of thought that usually goes into casting pretty boy actors as the lead and not designing the monster of a film. The Shape of Water attempted to redefine the meaning of the word monster not only through metaphors, but through the visual creation of Sparkle. Teaching viewers to not only be wary of wolves in sheep’s clothing, but to never forget there can be beauty in a beast.

Bonus: I got Del Toro to take a snapchat video with me!

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“Mudbound” Theater Ethnography

On November 20th I was lucky enough to attend a showing of “Mudbound” at the Titus Theater inside the Museum of Modern Art. I had recently been gifted a membership card which allowed me free entry into the theater. I had never attended a screening at MoMa and was shocked at how large the auditorium was. The room was flat, so there were no levels nor did the seats ascend upwards towards the back. Because of this I chose to sit in the front row towards the side. Usually I prefer the seat dead center in a row that is fairly far back, but because the seating did not raise upward like a standard theater I chose to sit somewhere my view would be completely unobstructed in case someone taller sat in front of me. I was also anticipating having a good view of the director Dee Rees during her post screening Question&Answer session. The screen seemed to be a similar size as one in a regular theater, however I didn’t notice the curving of the screen on the sides that I typically do while watching a movie. Eating was not allowed so I had a light snack before the movie started at 7:30pm. My favorite time to see movies is at night on weekends because I love hearing the reactions of other audience goers during the film and feel it makes the experience more memorable.

The people at the MoMa were relatively older and few of them had questions for the director Dee Rees after the screening. One woman burst into tears while explaining that her own relative had undergone a similar fate as one of the main characters. After the Q&A, Rees spoke with the young woman and many others, including myself about the topics seen in the film. I snapped a photo with Rees and spoke to her about her first film, Pariah, which I adore. Once everyone had spoken to her, her handlers rushed her off and viewers were allowed to walk through the exhibits to exit the museum. All in all it was a great experience and I can not wait to put my MoMa membership card to use again.

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Paper Proposal Option A: The Handmaiden

For my research essay I would like to make a case for The Handmaiden directed by Park Chan Wook. The relationship between queer female characters and live action fiction is a rocky one, filled with premature deaths and tragic endings. Queer female characters in the specific genre of horror is no exception. The number of queer female characters who make it to the end of a horror film are few and far between; lessening when narrowed down to lead characters. The Handmaiden, released in 2016, was a refreshing change from the “psycho lover” queer women stereotype and was filmed with a comparably higher budget than the majority of queer led horror. It also accomplished the goal of feeling like a love story set in a horror movie rather than a horror movie with a love story subplot. Something that fans of the novel, Fingersmith by Sarah Smith, were worried of when they heard the film would be a loose adaption of the beloved novel. In my paper I will explore The Handmaiden‘s place in redefining the queer female character arc, it’s reception and inclusion on numerous highly praised critic lists, like Roger Ebert, and closely examine the relationship between the film and similar ones before and after its release. My sources will include:

Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability by Patricia White

“Vampires,Psychics, and Ghosts: A Look at Queer women in Horror” by Sara Century

And many others from sites such as AfterEllen.