Charlotte Troy
In 2017, renowned Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro released The Shape of Water, asking his audience to find comfort in his sympathetic monsters and further question the slippery boundary that separates the natural from the unnatural. Arguably, Del Toro’s filmography has been largely defined by his fascination with mythological and fantastical creatures including everything from vampire slaying half-vamps attired in leather trenchcoats (Blade trilogy) to cigar-smoking half-demons with an adoration for kittens (Hellboy franchise). In both literary and cinematic form, monsters act as the “patron saints of otherness” (Del Toro, “At Home with Monsters”) who are condemned, alienated and even killed “because their physical existence defies our expectations of normality in ways that offend us” and in turn threaten our social reality (Davies 29). Admittedly, monsters appear in Del Toro films as both protagonists and antagonists, but I argue that their central role as unlikely, sympathetic heroes raises questions about how true monstrosity is not synonymous with the nonhuman.
Following this trend, The Shape of Water depicts the Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) as a compassionate humanoid creature who is brutalised and exploited under the supervision of Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), who encounters the monster in the Amazon River. Samuel Crider in his own analysis of this film details how it evolves from Del Toro’s childhood fantasy to retell The Creature from the Black Lagoon franchise and allow the Gill-Man to fall in love (“The Shape of the Creature”). However, I focus less on the romantic revision of this classic creature feature and more on Del Toro’s use of space and place. The Amphibian Man’s emergence from the Amazon demonstrates how even familiar aquatic settings that are attached to the nonhuman become sources of ambiguity and fear. Scholars such as Natalie Deam argue that “Gothic studies have rarely considered the marine world and almost entirely overlooked the Gothic potential of marine biology,” potentially because these settings appear familiar but also non-agential (260). Because the Amphibian Man is native to the Amazon River, he restructures aquatic environments into unsettling spaces that host nonhuman monster. In doing so, The Shape of Water moves from being a “whimsical fairy tale” into an ecohorror classic that interrogates the human urge to conflate monstrosity with the nonhuman and reinstates aquatic environments as sources of tension (Lankauskaitė 41).
Here I borrow from Stephen A. Rust and Carter Soles’ expansive definition of ecohorror as “instances in texts when nature strikes back against humans as punishment for environmental disruption” to further contextualise the Amphibian Man’s surfacing from the Amazon River (509). Intentionally, Del Toro introduces the Amphibian Man as a prisoner at the OCCAM facility in Baltimore and outside of his natural habitat, to further emphasis his otherness. In doing so, the Amphibian Man becomes a monster out of place, whose appearance outside of the Amazon River disturbs societal norms and order. Ann Davies asserts that, as “inhabitants of marginal spaces,” monsters remain nonthreatening until they invade “nonmarginal spaces” and in turn challenge “those who occupy the spaces of mainstream bourgeois society” (31). In simple terms, society desires to confine and restrain monstrous entities to undesirable and unfamiliar landscapes to avoid contact with these creatures, and in turn preserve their fragile social order.
Yet there are remaining questions in how monstrous out-of-placeness is complicated by its intersection with ecohorror, which predominantly features narratives in which humans incite violence from Nature after acts of environmental exploitation and disruption. The Amphibian Man never intentionally violates the unspoken boundary that separates marginal and nonmarginal spaces but is instead forced to do so by his human antagonists. US government officials led by Colonel Strickland abduct the humanoid creature from the Amazon River and trap him at the OCCAM laboratory. Back at the facility, Strickland relays his repulsion towards the creature to his commanding officer:
“[a]in’t that something? Ugly as sin. The natives in the Amazon worshipped it. . . . They were primitives sir. Tossed offerings into the water—flowers, fruit, crap like that. Tried to stop the oil drill with bows and arrows. That didn’t end too well.”
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann elucidate how this dismissive comment about the Amphibian Man’s abduction is “inextricably connected with environmental resource exploitation,” illuminating how the monster’s invasion of nonmarginal spaces is catalysed by acts of “environmental degradation” caused by man’s own erosion of marginal spaces (226). In turn, the Amphibian Man’s eventual revenge against Strickland becomes retaliation for his own personal victimisation as well as for additional acts of human interference in the nonhuman world.
I highlight how Strickland interlinks monstrous entities with marginalised communities as he attempts to rationalise the native settler’s unusual reaction to the Amphibian Man. In traditional horror films, monsters elicit revulsion from humans who perceive the creatures they encounter “as abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order” (Carroll 16). Those that arise from aquatic environments further “challenge notions of anthropocentricity” (Alder 12). Yet, the natives fail to recognise anything unnatural or unusual about the Amphibian Man who is indigenous to the Amazon River. Strickland attempts to dismiss this reaction by describing the natives as “primitives” and in turn ascribes their actions as signs of lower intelligence and backwardness. He argues his case further by noting how these “primitives” would throw “offerings into the water—flowers, fruit, crap like that” and attempts to portray their kindness as reminiscent of some alternative and archaic religion.
As this is a fleeting moment in the film, it is difficult to truly delve into the depths of the natives’ complex bond with the Amphibian Man beyond emphasising that they were not threatened by his appearance. However, I assert that this relationship offers further insight into how ecophobic responses are not deeply embedded in humans but a central aspect of western modernism. Michelle Pond articulates that ecophobia lies at the core of capitalism because for this system to exist, it is necessary to perceive the nonhuman world in terms of control and oppression (qtd. Alonso 154). Rather than accepting that the “human and nonhuman are never truly separate,” humans attempt to place conditions and boundaries on their relationship (Tidwell 539). In ecohorror narratives, humans learn the severe consequences of asserting their imagined dominance over the nonhuman natural world, which often results in vengeful animal attacks or apocalyptic disasters.
Additionally, the natives’ response – their “offerings” – depicts a new method of analysing aquatic environments as well as other nonhuman spaces in order to reduce their sense of monstrosity. Del Toro details how the natives have been living in proximity with the Amphibian Man, long before Colonel Strickland uncovers his existence. Thus, nonhuman creatures only become monstrous if they are unfamiliar, which is a clear result of the way that anthropocentric thinking popularises the concept of humans and nonhumans living separately. The Shape of Water depicts harrowing images of violence being inflicted upon the Amphibian Man as well as the dehumanisation of other characters who do not appear as fully-fledged human subjects such as Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), Zelda Delilah Fuller (Octavia Spencer), and Giles (Richard Jenkins). As a result, audiences eagerly wait for the moment in which the nonhuman manages to exact revenge against the human subject for their inhumane cruelty and violence.
Amphibian Man reunited with Esposito
The concluding moments of The Shape of Water do not disappoint, with the Amphibian Man exacting revenge not only for himself but for his desecrated home. In his final encounter with Strickland, the Amphibian Man swiftly slashes his throat after the colonel attempts to murder Esposito. With Strickland dead, the Amphibian Man dives into the water where he is reunited with Esposito who has formed gills after adapting to her new aquatic environment. Del Toro reinserts hope into the narrative as the couple embrace one another, showing the monster as a character deserving of love. Most importantly, the final shot transforms our understanding of aquatic environments from homes to monsters to mystical places of sanctuary and refuge.
Works Cited
Alder, Emily. “Through Oceans Darkly: Sea Literature and the Nautical Gothic.” Gothic Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1–15.
Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror; Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge, 2003.
Crider, Samuel. “The Shape of the Creature.” HorrorHomeroom, 4 June 2022.
Davies, Ann. “Guillermo Del Toro’s Monsters: Matter Out of Place.” The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo Del Toro. Edited by Ann Davies, et al. Palgrave, 2014.
Deam, Natalie. “Victor Hugo’s Pieuvre and the Marine EcoGothic.” Gothic Animals. Edited by Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson. Palgrave, 2020.
Del Toro Guillmero. “‘At Home with Monsters’ and That Missing Sketchbook—Exclusive.” IndieWire, 8 Aug 2016.
Lankauskaitė Viktorija. “Beyond the Fairy Tale of the Shape of Water. Reimagining the Creature.” Relations (Online), vol. 9, no. 1–2, 2022, pp. 41–57.
Murray, Robin L., and Joseph K. Heumann. “The Shape of Water and Post-Pastoral Ecohorror.” Fear and Nature. Edited by Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles. Penn State University Press, 2021.
Rust, Stephen A., and Carter Soles. “Ecohorror Special Cluster: ‘Living in Fear, Living in Dread, Pretty Soon We’ll All Be Dead.’” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 21, no. 3, 2014, pp. 509–12.
Sanz Alonso, Irene, and Universidad de Alcalá (España). “An Ecogothic Reading of Sea Monsters: Deep Blue Sea (1999) and the Meg -2018.” Revista Canaria De Estudios Ingleses, no. 89, 2024, pp. 153–67.
Tidwell, Christy. “Monstrous Natures within: Posthuman and New Materialist Ecohorror in Mira Grant’s Parasite.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 21, no. 3, 2014, pp. 538–49.
Charlotte Troy is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of English at University College of Cork and is a recipient of Research Ireland’s Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship. Her research addresses the fragile relationship between nonhuman and human agency through an analysis of literary gardens in mid-twentieth to early twenty-first-century American Gothic novels. On top of her research commitments, Charlotte is the editor-in-chief for Aigne and a postgraduate representative for the IAAS (Irish Association for American Studies).
