The Bechdel Cast - Shape of Water

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Jamie and Caitlin fall in love with a fish person, discuss The Shape of Water, and celebrate Jamie's birthday!!! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, y'all. Niminie here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, The Story Pirates, and John Glickman, Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

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Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey Jamie. Hey Caitlin. It's your birthday so I brought you some hard-boiled eggs.

Yes! Do you want to kiss and then have sex in my bathroom? Let's see where things go. Yeah, that was a lot to ask at the top. I think people should be a little more direct. I'm just being clear with my intentions, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say, like, I just want to make sure that me, like, accepting the egg isn't, like, a metaphor in your eyes. And it's just a validation that I am hungry and I'm never going to turn down a free egg. That's so fair.

Honey, I'm not going to turn down a free egg under any circumstances. Someone presents me. That's like a disgusting free food to offer. Oh, I got eggs on the brain recently. Oh, I heard a wild story about eggs the other day okay but that's but i'll tell you off pod okay well you listeners can just wonder what jay's little egg story was the intrigue friend told me a really long story about eggs and it was um disgusting disgusting okay well i can't wait to hear about it thanks well anyway this is our

podcast in which we should we um that passed that passed oh my gosh look at us passing the bechdel test on your birthday two women talking about an egg anecdote because i wasn't specific about the gender of the person who had the egg experience true wow makes you think and eggs are um feminist icon eggs so feminist icon the egg um there's a great i i'm a big fan of youtuber jenny nicholson and she made a video about the land before time movies and singles out this song and like land before time 47 where they ran out of ideas and like the fourth one yeah and so in the 47th one the villain is like a raptor who loves eggs and he sings a song about eggs whoa okay yeah i love that egg culture wow egg culture is really strong um okay so this is our podcast it's my birthday it's your birthday happy birthday jamie um thanks a few things right

at the top so this is our show in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the bechdel test as a jumping off point. We can chat about that in a moment. But I just want to point out that this is our second attempt at doing this episode on The Shape of Water. What if we failed again? I mean, what if the egg thing was what took us down this time? First, it was the 311 cruise. Yeah, let's tell them what happened. Because it was, I think, as it was happening,

we were having so much fun, but we were also like a little, we were scaring ourselves a little bit. Yeah, we were like. Because it them what happened. Because it was, I think as it was happening, we were having so much fun, but we were also like a little, we were scaring ourselves a little bit. Yeah, we're like. Because it's never happened. Unprecedented. Truly. So what happened is that we were all set to record an episode on The Shape of Water. Totally prepped.

It wasn't a matrix situation. The intentions were clear and we were going to do it. We, however, both had a hard out. We only had about 90 minutes to record. And so we start recording, we start talking. And we were silly, we were feeling silly. We hadn't recorded an episode in a while because I am on tour in Europe. So you know, we were just catching up. The vibes were loose. And they were so loose that you got an email about a 311, the music group, cruise, which I still don't quite know what this could be. 311, the band.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so are they, do they perform on the cruise? Is it 311 themed? They do. Okay. All of the above.

Okay. Yeah. They're definitely there. I don't think that they have anything anything else going on needlessly cruel needlessly cruel they're on the cruise is the point great right so this like this alert that you got about this cruise sent us on a spiral in which we did not recover from and we spent a full hour and may never and we will never recover from it so i i believe at the time of the release of this episode on the shape of water matrons will have been

exposed to the episode that we are talking about right now this kind of we went off the rails and had a silly time episode I don't think and and and uh just to plug the matrion while we're uh while we're here sure hello I think it's been a while since we've had a truly off the rails matrion episode it's that's not usually how it goes we usually you know use the matrod to cover popular requests we don't usually have guests on the matriod it's a more loose format but it's the same bechdel cast flavor sure but occasionally i would say maybe once a year there's an episode that is just like what's happening and this is that episode yeah we hope you enjoy it. But nonetheless, we had prepared for an episode. So we're doing it now.

So we're doing it now. I don't know. I know. I feel focused. I feel good. The egg thing. We were in danger for a second. But I texted you the egg anecdote.

I got it. Thank you. And so now you have it. Cool. And now I release that perfect so from my mind we can move on to talking about what the bechdel test is which is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel yeah sometimes called the bechdel wallace test our version is this two characters of a marginalized gender must have names they must speak to each other and their conversation

has to be about something other than a man and ideally it's a substantial meaningful conversation yes so that's the criteria like two women discussing eggs exactly is an example that's not the let's be clear there's other ways that that's not the only way the test can work yes absolutely yeah um so today's episode is on the shape of water and this is your big birthday episode jamie yeah so why don't you tell me tell us all the listeners out there in the world your relationship with this movie well yeah i guess i am mostly telling newer listeners of the podcast because you you were there for my shape of water phase and um so were many of our uh day one ride or dies uh had a whole thing i did a stand-up joke about it for years really loved the fisherman from the shape of water was like why is this

horny mm-hmm slash I love how horny this is you know slash Wow Doug Jones like that's a Pandora's box of my favorite thing in the world, which is obscure details about character actors. There was just a lot of elements of this movie that was tick, tick, tick, tick, ticking for me. I love Del Toro, and I also love, I tend to skew more towards Del Toro's sentimental side of his catalog. mainly just because not yeah mainly

just because i'm not much of an action person so i was very excited i was like oh this is maybe the most sentimental one yet i i really enjoyed this movie when it came out i didn't think about it critically very much uh i know i feel like when it came out i feel like it was like people generally liked it but it was i think maybe considered to be a bit overrated in terms of how much awards attention it generated yeah but i didn't really care i mean i was like del toro won an oscar for this and i feel like people never win the oscar for the movie they're supposed to the point is that they get it so would it maybe have made sense for him to win for another movie sure panzla brinth perhaps panzla exactly um i remember seeing a lot of takes and i'm like you're not even wrong but i just you know leave leave del toro alone but they that was the same year that get out came out they're

like get out should have won best picture that's the most impactful memorable good picture of 2017 you might be right about that i think so i think i mean certainly cultural impact and good okay but we're not here to talk about i don't want to pit the boys against each other i love shape of Water it makes me cry it was it was interesting to prepare this episode because I do think that there is a lot to talk about in terms of the subjects it doesn't do well on or I think that you know in the five years can't believe it's been five years since I was seeing I, Tonya and or Shape of Water in theaters every day. Yeah. I guess also I do think that this is a thing like where end of 2017, bit of a low for your girl, you know, Jim. And I feel like, you know, the movies that you become attached to when you're at a bit

of a low in this era, Shape of Water and I, Tonya, they're just always a little special to you. But like, yeah, I think that there's a huge conversation about disability in particular and the portrayal of disability in big movies that needs to be had about this movie. I'm excited to get into it. And I'm excited to get horny for the fish man again. It's been a while. I remember how much you loved his fish butt and fish abs. I think you were really isolating certain parts of his fish body. And I was objectifying him. Fish thigh gap, I want to say as well.

He did have a, oh my God, I forgot. Not the thigh gap. I forgot that I was really fixated on the thigh gap. Yes. Wow. I wonder what's happened to me because I wasn't maybe maybe i'm making progress on my own body issues because the thigh gap didn't leap out at me this time huh so progress question mark we don't know could be that said yes the sexy fish does have a thigh gap um and that's just uh those

are facts indisputable truth i i don't think that they ever ended up making an action figure of him, which I feel like I need to check. But I feel like that was a miss. It was kind of just like much like I was waiting for the Babu Frick plushie to come out. You're like, it's going to happen. It's just a matter of time. I thought that having the fish man in my home would be inevitable, but it hasn't happened. Well, maybe you have to open

your birthday present from me just kidding i just like doug just pops out of a cake i don't want to make any promises i can't keep so maybe what's your history with the shape of water i saw it in theaters i think only one time oh unbelievable i think my favorite thing about this movie is the production design yeah and i like the story generally but it's not my favorite of del toro's and no i just didn't feel that much of an attachment to it i was kind of flabbergasted that it won Best Picture. Yeah, I thought there were other movies that were far more deserving. And I was so I kind of like, ended up having some resentment toward it because of that. And then I never engaged with it again.

So I don't I like this movie. I don't love it. It's just I feel kind of maybe even neutral, I suppose, about it these days. But it was interesting revisiting it. I noticed, do you remember when we covered A Little Princess and there was like this green motif? And everyone was like, what does green mean in this movie? Alfonso Cuaron, what are you trying to say with the green? And he was like nothing I just like green and I found I think maybe del Toro was doing the same kind of thing because so much of this movie is green or like little objects or just little flourishes in the

movie yeah are green and it has a very similar like yeah just like color palette and like lighting scheme as a little princess and I guess other of his movies I mean he's like pretty consistently like visually consistent in his work and yeah I think that's a major strength of his again but I was like there's a lot of green in this movie what does the green mean and I just want I'm hoping that someone asks Guillermo about it and then he's just like nothing I just like green we we can't get into it here because this is another yet another I think the other major derailer of our last episode but the timing of this episode is kind of fun uh not intentionally but because the new trailer for Guillermo's uh why am I okay

I'm not on a first name Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio movie right just came out yeah we can't talk about Pinocchio anymore no we cannot today and if you don't know why it's because we accidentally talked about Pinocchio instead of The Shave of Water for 45 minutes. Yes. Wow. I genuinely, my chest tightened a little bit, because I still want to talk about Pinocchio Gate 2022. Look it up.

Battle of the Pinocchios, coming to the Matreon this November. Okay. Shave of Water. Okay. So we both saw it in theaters. I really was attached to it at the time. I haven't watched it in a couple of years, honestly. The moment passed for me.

Unlike I, Tanya, which I still watch constantly. I don't watch The Shape of Water constantly. So it was interesting to revisit it with a few years distance. Still, I mean, the cast of this movie is rather wild. Oh, character actor after character actor oh oh just top marks across the board casting wise okay let's talk about the movie let's do it let's take a quick break first and then come back and talk about the movie okay we'll be right back splash splash so y'all this is quest love and i'm here to tell you about a new podcast i've been working on with the story pirates and john glickman called historical records it's a family-friendly podcast

yeah you heard that right a podcast for all ages one you can listen to and enjoy with your kids starting on september 27. I'm going to toss it over to the host of Historical Records, Nimany, to tell you all about it. Make sure you check it out. Hey y'all, are you ready for an explosive new podcast that brings together hip hop and history? My name is Nimany and I'm the host of Historical Records, a brand new podcast for kids and families that proves in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Flash, slam, another one gone. Bash, bam, another one gone.

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Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So, shall we get into what's going on and what... Did we ever figure out... Did we figure out what the shape of water

is? Oh, like what literally... Like, the answer to that question, like what is the shape of water? Is it just the shape of doug jones oh with his butt and abs and thigh gap you mean is it just that shape because i'm fine with that could be that it could be something a little more poetic like what isn't the shape of water or something you know whoa what and and the shape of water could be didn't ask that question the shape of water is is an idea the lie you tell yourself oh my gosh oh anyway okay sorry

what happens in the movie okay so we open on an image of like the interior of an apartment that's completely underwater we are also getting voiceover from someone who tells us about this tale. Yes. This tale of love and loss and a monster. And then we meet Eliza. That's Sally Hawkins

aka Mrs. Brown from Paddington. It is so wild. Lest we forget. I think we mentioned this in our Paddington episode with Demi Adejuibe um that you get to see Mrs. Brown's nipples in this movie it's very alarming for me Paddington imagine Paddington seeing Shape of Water I don't think he's allowed. Oh my God. He's too young. How old is Paddington? Paddington is a child? Then why does he have the voice of an adult man?

Because bears... And why can you... And then... He can't be a child. Wait, hold on. He can't be a child because he goes to adult jail and he has the voice of an adult man. He's an adult. He's... But that doesn't mean he should see his mother's nipples.

I'm just saying he's an adult. He's an adult. Hmm but that doesn't mean he should see his mother's nipples i'm just saying well yeah he's an adult hmm these are some interesting questions much like what is the shape of water uh how old is paddington we'll never know they should have sent paddington they would have sent him to juvie which i yep so we meet eliza we are in i don't know if it's like the late 1950s early 1960s it's like cold war era usa yeah post-world war ii it seems like we're we're in the trenches because there's a lot of Eastern European. Space race. Russia specific stuff. Yes. Yes.

And we are in Baltimore, Maryland. Ever heard of it? Yes. Oh, it's 1962. 62. Okay. Canonically. Got it.

Yeah. So we see Eliza wake up and go about her morning routine, which is that she boils an egg. She draws herself a bath. She jerks herself off and then she pays a visit to her neighbor giles played by richard jenkins and all of his cats as well a lot of cat visibility in the movie a lot of cat nipples as a result a lot yes um and then one cat casualty which is worst part of the movie can't believe that's in the movie okay yeah of all the things to cut that could be it okay sorry i yeah yeah okay it becomes clear that eliza does not speak with like verbal language she uses sign language to communicate

she then gets on a bus and heads to work she and her co-worker zelda played by octavia spencer work the night shift cleaning some kind of like science slash government facility and then while eliza and zelda are working the kind of like scientists and lab technicians and various other personnel bring in this super secret super important asset that is going to be housed at this facility yes and whatever it is it's alive and it's in a large tank of water and And it's a sexy fish guy. And then it turns out to be a very sexy fish guy. Yeah. Eliza is very curious about what this might be.

Eliza is very curious about what this might be. And she kind of like makes a tiny little bit of contact with it. We like see its hand. But then it's kind of like whisked away. And the crowd goes wild i saw this in theaters several times and you know like you could tell who was there for certain reasons and i guess that's all i have to say about that oh yeah yeah yeah so we also meet dr hofstetler who's played by michael stahlbarg and i don't know if we have covered a

movie with michael stahlbarg in it i don't know i mean i know that cat a friend of the cast catherine leon yes um of of the spy kids episode of course yeah she had like a michael stahlbarg newsletter for a while is that correct yeah the daily barg in which she would just send out a photo of michael stolberg to any subscribers of this newsletter just to say hey here's another photo is it still active i don't think so oh yeah sad there's i mean the the this movie is michael game is very strong because we're about to get yeah michael shannon playing his in his iconic role patriarchy the one guy which is a role he plays often and well yes yes indeed so So Michael Stahlberg is Dr. Hofstetler, who is the kind of lead scientist overseeing this asset. And Michael Shannon plays Strickland, who is a very sinister man overseeing the security of this asset.

Yeah. Then we cut to the next day and Eliza and Giles go out for some pie. It's mostly so that Giles can try to flirt with the cute guy who works at the pie place. Then. I love how the pie is disgusting. Like no matter like the pie is objectively bad. And the only reason that he's getting business is because there's a crush involved. There's a crush. I mean, how much money have we

all spent because of a crush i don't want to talk about it oh my god i went to wrestlemania what anyways okay another story for another time because just chew on that but the pie is is green. The green motif is starting. Green chemical goo. Yes. So we see Eliza at another day at work. Something happens in the lab. And Strickland rushes out with some of his fingers missing.

And Eliza and Zelda are called in to clean up the bloody mess. And in this lab, there's a large pool of water that the asset is maybe living in, swimming in. And then Eliza meets this quote unquote asset, which turns out to be a sexy fish man played by Doug Jones. And the crowd goes wild. Yes, him he's so handsome oh what a reveal oh it is a great reveal that is such an iconic scene i feel like even if you don't like the movie or you think the movie is like a little bit forgettable whatever some of the the common criticisms of this movie that it's just like not his best uh the little peak that the fish guy does when he's looking at the egg and they're logging eyes and you're like this rocks right that happens in a in a couple scenes from now oh okay sorry sorry i was getting ahead

of myself because it's my favorite scene in the whole movie when they i love a meat cute and this is a real this is a stressful beat cute but it's good yeah michael shannon is a leo that i guess that makes sense is he now okay it's his birthday by the time you're hearing this he'll be it'll be his birthday yeah it's and it's leo season i was gonna make a hilarious joke that it's not a meat cute it's a fish cute because in this case meat is like m-e-a-t it's a pesca cute pesca cute wow michael shannon leo something to think about something to think about so in this first little encounter here eliza and the fish man have kind of a little moment, but they are interrupted when someone comes in and he disappears into his tank of water. So the next day, Eliza goes back into the lab and comes face to face with the fish man. This is the scene you're talking about.

Yeah. And at first he's like, rawr. But then she offers him one of her hard boiled eggs. And then he's like, rawr. He's like, what now? And he grabs it and then he dives off into the pool. Yeah. Then Strickland has a talk with Eliza and Zelda.

He points out the scars on Eliza's neck and we learn that they are from an injury she sustained when she was a baby and it's why she is not able to speak right then eliza continues to visit the fish man under the guise of like cleaning the lab but basically there's a montage where she brings him a bunch of eggs she plays music for him she teaches him some sign language they're falling in love and it gets pretty flirty they're falling in love she dances and he's like whoa good dance ah it's getting it's getting pretty spicy in the lab. And who sees this but Dr. Hofstetler. And then it's revealed that he is a Russian spy who gives information about the fish man to his Soviet comrades. But his whole thing is like, yeah, a spy but also i love science and i think this

fish man should be protected and like studied and you know he's not like other spies he's not like the other spies and we'll i don't know if i like figured out a way exactly to work this into the recap but the whole reason that they have captured this fish man is that he is able to kind of switch his breathing mechanisms from like breathing with gills underwater to breathing presumably with lungs above water like the air yes and they're studying this because again both the u.s and the soviet union are in this space race and they're trying to figure out oh can we like use the anatomy of this fish man and kind of replicate that so that we can like kind of use like how do astronauts breathe in space kind of thing so

they're like studying that right any way i didn't really recognize that that was what they were studying and i've seen this movie 10 times it's hard when the movie makes you horny there's a lot of things that just kind of right over your head and that's okay i don't go gonna come to this movie for science all right so one day eliza sees strickland torturing the fish man and then some military personnel come in and oh this is when we find out that like they're studying him to give the americans an edge against the soviets in the space race so strickland wants to basically kill the fish man and dissect it dr hofsetler is like no and eliza overhears all of this so she starts to hatch a plan to rescue the fish man because

she feels this very intense connection with him yeah not only have they been like flirting romantically, but she feels that they are very similar in that they can't speak with like verbal language, but they can still communicate with each other. And she feels that he sees her for what and who she truly is in a way that she doesn't feel other people see her exactly right so she begs for giles to help her with this rescue mission which he refuses at first but then he changes his mind and agrees to help so they start to plan out this like heist slash rescue and then it's time to execute it uh dr hofstetter realizes what eliza is doing and decides to help her gets the fish man out of his tank yeah but strickland starts to figure out that something's going on as does zelda who was like eliza what are you doing but then she helps eliza yeah strickland does the opposite meanwhile michael shannon's fingers are rotting off of his body and you're like it's a metaphor but it's still nasty to look at yucky yucky yucky and

then you're just like wow who's the real i mean it's like this movie you very much like know where it's going and what it's trying to tell you. But I kind of enjoy a lot of parts of it. When you see the fingers start to fall off, you're like, he's the bad guy. Wait a second. Is this it? Hang on. He's the monster. So this is a subversion?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So Eliza and Giles successfully get the fish man into this van that giles is driving and they escape but uh michael shannon is like who what is what's happening bang bang and he's like firing after them but he doesn't know who has committed this robbery of the fish man it reminds me very much did you ever know you you wouldn't have watched hey arnold's right um i i know of i know i know it but i didn't yeah i didn't really watch it

the scene where they're um getting the fish man out of the lab reminds me very much and i doubt that this was an inspiration of del toro's. It's just similar. But one of my favorite episodes of Hey Arnold, shout out Hey Arnold heads, is when Arnold's grandma, who's like kind of this renegade, they go to the aquarium and they see a big sea turtle and like there's graffiti all over his shell. He's not being well taken care of. He's really sad. And then they help the sea turtle escape into the sea. And it's a similar heist.

And it's also a similar like he was bred to be captive. How is he going to survive in the wild? That TV show is capturing heavy themes for children. Seriously. Yeah. There's a whole section on Wikipedia scholarly journal Wikipedia where it's like various people accusing del Toro of plagiarism because apparently there are several existing movies or plays or things like that that have very similar stories. To what degree? To like people having sex with a fish?

Because that might just be parallel thinking. Right. And I mean, every, everything was like concluded as it was just parallel thinking and that like he didn't plagiarize anything, but like one of them, for example,

is I think it was a movie about a cleaning lady who helps a dolphin escape from a facility. Oh, I forget what the other ones were. Helping any captive animal escape a zoo aquarium type situation. That's a pretty common theme. It's just that you're not usually like dating them. I think that's kind of the x factor yeah i'm i'm pretty sure no one had sex with willie in the movie free willie whoa and but that's what that movie but i haven't seen that willie escape but we don't know i forgot about

i forgot about free willie who's in free willie i just feel like there's like you know what i will it's probably like Devin Sawa or something. I actually never saw Free Willy either. I feel like I have. I'm sure people are screaming. I've probably been in the room when Free Willy was on, but Free Willy was like not really my jam. And I'm like, I don't even know what I'm saying when I say that.

I don't know where I got. It stars Jason James Richter. Who? Who's that? Lori Petty is in it. even know what i'm saying when i say that i don't know where i got it stars jason james richter who who's that laurie petty is in it um yeah i don't know where i got devin sawa i feel like anyway it was probably just like and with all due respect to jason james richter um you know i a young man with banks i feel like that's Devon Sawa coded. I understand where you were going. It was the 90s after all. That infinity bang.

That cowlick. Where did that go? How did everyone suppress their cowlick? I still have mine. I still have mine too. It's a problem that uh I also wanted to say really quick on the topic of um fish sex stories yeah there was another piece of popular media that came out around this same time about a woman falling in love with a fish I believe a fish man the the Pisces, which is a book by Melissa Broder. I haven't read it, but it was like a pretty popular novel that came out a couple of years ago. So

for, for whatever reason, this is on the minds and hearts of the collective. Beautiful. Yeah. That's a beautiful story. Thank you didn't write um when are they oh no i was gonna say something but it's gonna derail the episode wait say it really quick though okay and then we just have to move on when is the biopic coming out about me watching the animated movie legend of titanic and falling in love with tentacles, the giant octopus. Not tentacles. You can't just bring up tentacles. You're so right. That does derail everything.

Tentacles. Okay, really, really, really, really, really quick. Again, listeners of the Matreon will already know. Tentacles is kind of battle cast canon. So there's an animated movie about Titanic. It was made in like five different countries. It's very kind of dissonant uh in terms of it it is like a mix of uh an american tale because there it's

there's mice on the titanic then there's also the plot of the movie titanic sort of happening yes as well and then what's the third movie there's like a third it's like sort of vaguely little mermaid ish but like not really but you do see a lot of like that's the tentacles part yeah yes there's a lot of underwater characters like major characters like sharks and the sharks are bullies look they weren't thinking too hard like okay yes so it's like the little mermaid story the american tales story and then just regular titanic and it's all taking place on the Titanic. It is sensory overload. The bullied...

In this movie, the Titanic doesn't go the way you're expecting. Because we've been gassed up with this, for most of the movie seemingly unrelated story of a gigantic octopus who kind of fluctuates in size throughout the movie sometimes he's just the size of a regular octopus sometimes he's the size of the empire state building or let's say the titanic or titanic so anyways he's getting bullied but then he he learns to believe in himself. His name is Tentacles. And then he's Titanic-sized when it suits him. And he ends up holding the Titanic together with all of his might. His tentacles are so muscly. All his tentacle might.

And he's also like fleshy colored. He's pink yeah he's and so in this version of the titanic narrative there are no casualties everyone on titanic survives because he holds the ship together after it hits the iceberg and then breaks in half but he's like no no no not on my watch i'm tentacles and then he saves everyone so anyway that's legend of titanic it's on youtube if you want to watch it which you should yeah back to shape of water i would watch that movie of that you described though thank you me falling in love with tentacles which i have done so where's the biopic all right so tentacles eliza brings the fish man back to i think they're in giles's apartment and they put him in the bathtub so he's like kind of chilling there and eliza's plan is to release him into the ocean

on the 10th of the month when the water in the canal will be high enough from the rains to spill into the ocean so they're going to release him when that happens so back at the facility eliza and zelda have to just like play it cool they have to pretend like they don't know what's going on which works out pretty well because the people who work at the facility think that a like highly trained special forces like so Soviet group of people pulled off this heist. Although Strickland is like suspicious and he's like, something doesn't add up here. And he's also fixated on, for nasty exploitative reasons, he's fixated on Eliza. yes so back at giles's the fish man ventures out of the tub and he does eat one of giles's cats which giles does not really have much of a reaction to i will say he really takes it in stride

in a way that it's like i don't think it would have been inappropriate or even mean to have a bigger reaction than that i think he's he's great about it but you're like wow did you even like was did he just kill your least favorite cat because he does have like five cats or something like that brutal which brutal that's very like um victorian era approach to having children vibe where you're like well i still have enough laborers for the farm you're like geez seems a little callous yeah so he eats one of giles's cats and then he scratches giles's arm and then runs away so eliza rushes home and finds the fish man in the nearby movie theater. She brings him back, puts him in the bathtub, and then they have this sexy little moment. And then Eliza gets naked and gets into the bathtub with him.

Cut to her on the bus with a big smile on her face. And then at work, she uses sign language to explain to zelda that the fish man has a fish dick that comes out of a little opening in his thigh gap top tier reaction from octavia spencer um you got that it's she's yeah she's i wish that her role was um it's i mean it's like pretty big at this movie but i wish i wish it was even bigger um but that that reaction alone i mean yeah what can you say it's perfect no notes so then eliza goes home again and this is when we get the famous scene where sally hawkins fills the entire bathroom with water and fucks the fish man on screen which causes all of this leaking and giles is like what the fuck and he opens the door and all the water gushes out very similar to a scene in paddington when paddington's in a bathroom full of water hijinks ensue and then the door opens and

all the water comes gushing out only this time which i'm like in this movie is that a metaphor for like them orgasming not sure oh just uh wow makes you think yeah could be could be and then so giles is like what and then eliza is like hugging the fish man and then she just kind of like smiles and shrugs she's like it is what it is also it turns out that the fish man has healing powers and i always forget that he has healing powers yeah because it's introduced kind of late into the movie yeah and i'm sure we'll mention this in in the discussion but at one point we learned that some entity was like digging for oil in

the amazon rainforest they found this fish man and brought it back to this facility but they describe that this fish man was like revered as a god by the indigenous people living in the amazon and it could be that he was like revered as a god because he has these healing powers this is all kind of like very glossed over and if like you get up to go to the bathroom during that scene, like you will entirely miss this part. But basically he has these healing powers. He heals Giles's scratch on his arm. He also grows some hair on Giles's bald head, which we know that he's very self-conscious about. Right.

And then. I always forget about that as well. Yeah. And then something I always forget about, there's this like kind of fantasy scene where eliza speaks and then she starts singing and then there's like this whole like black and white fantasy song and dance scene between her and the fish man and they're dancing and it's like very like classic hollywood there's some issues with that kind of thing that's the kind of thing. That's another thing where I was just like, there was better ways to. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyways, we'll, we'll get to that too. Yeah. I kind of, that was like heavily featured in the marketing for this movie, but I kind of forget about it because it's such a,

I think a cuttable moment. A throwaway moment. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, Oh, this is a very expensive cutaway. Right.

Meanwhile, at the lab, everyone everyone is like where's the fish we gotta find the fish and the soviets are like hey michael stolberg where's the fish we want its dead body so everyone's looking for the fishag where's the fish is trending on 1962 Twitter. Yeah. Then we realized that the fish man's health is failing and he needs to be released into the ocean ASAP. There's a scene where Hofstetler's Soviet comrades shoot him. But then Strickland shows up and he kills the comrades. And he's like, what the fuck, Hofstetler you're a spy you were speaking russian and then as hofstetler is dying he lets it slip that it was the cleaning crew who stole the fish man and strickland realizes oh it must have been

eliza and zelda yeah i curious wanted i wanted a vibe check on this. I was sort of like feeling betrayed by Hofstetter at the end because like he's dying. Why sell them out at that point? Like for what reason? I had the same thought. I feel like that was a little bit of narrative convenience of like we need to get Michael Shannon this info. But I felt like that was like undercutting

who we had grown to find that character to be like a complicated like he wouldn't give away the agendas of people who's like who he felt were good and acting toward the greater good. And that was like his whole journey because Octavia Spencer, because this movie is like really let you know how it feels about things. Octavia Spencer literally says to his face, you are a good man. he does that it was dissonant I agree it just felt like a plot device almost yeah um anyway it's not the biggest deal but I was I always like I that's another moment that I forget about where you're just like couldn't he have just like found some evidence instead of like undercutting that whole because i thought that was like a really good job by michael stolberg too i wonder what the daily bar had to say about it i don't remember unfortunately i'm gonna guess positive but yeah no i had the same thought but this allows strickland to like kind of figure out

that it was eliza and zelda who had something to do with the fish man being stolen so first he goes to Zelda's house to question her and her husband tells Strickland that it was Eliza who was responsible for this you know the stealing of the fish man right so then Strickland goes to Eliza's but she and Giles have already left to go release the fish man into the water but Strickland figures out where they're headed because they're going to the docks and he goes after them cut to the docks Eliza and the fish men are saying goodbye Strickland shows up he shoots the fish man he shoots Eliza but then the fish man uses his healing powers to heal himself. He slashes Strickland's throat.

And then he takes Eliza's. And then great Michael Shannon line that you're like, he's really delivering this line that you're like, what? He's like, you are a god. You are a god. I can't wait for someone to say that to me. Do you remember how Michael Shannon was literally an eight mile? Sometimes I just forget how deep his filmography is. No, I don't wait for someone to say that to me Do you remember how Michael Shannon was literally an 8 mile Sometimes I just forget how deep his filmography is No I don't remember that

He's in Kangaroo Jack and 8 mile What a career What can't he do His early filmography is really funny Because he was just in like All over the place Cecil B. Demented, Pearl Harbor, Vanilla Sky 8 mile, Kangaroo Jack, Bad Boys 2.

He was in a movie. Whoa. He was in a movie called Zamboni Man. What? What a legend. Wow. It's a short film. But he played Walt the Zamboni Man.

Whoa. I wonder if that's about a man who gets bitten by a radioactive Zamboni. That would be really. Wait. Wait. Hold on. We have to collaborate on this because it could turn into like an ice situation well yeah oh my gosh wow zamboni man sorry abilities i was just looking at his filmography to just confirm that it was in fact him and that i remember

seeing an eight mile 20 years ago yeah i guess you're right it was um okay so strickland is murdered by the fish man and then the fish man takes eliza's limp body and jumps into the water with her she seems to be dying but he turns the scars on her neck into gills and then she seems to come back to life and she's healed although so one interpretation is that she's alive and they live happily ever after underwater together another interpretation is that that's kind of like a fantasy and she actually dies kind of like how pan's labyrinth ends yeah where the main character in that movie dies but then she's kind of like reborn as this princess in Labyrinth world. Anyway, so different interpretations of the end, but that is how the movie ends.

So let's take another break and we will come back to discuss. So y'all, this is Questlove and I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I've been working on with the Story Pirates and John Glickman called Historical Records. It's a family-friendly podcast. Yeah, you heard that right. A podcast for all ages. One you can listen to and enjoy with your kids starting on September 27th. I'm going to toss it over to the host of Historical Records, Nimany, to tell you all about it. Make sure you check it out. Hey y'all, Nimany here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Flash, slam, another one gone.

Bash, bam, another one gone. The crack of the bat and another one gone. The tip of the cap is another one gone. Each episode is about a different inspiring figure from history, like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it.

And it began with me. Did you know, did you know? I wouldn't give up my seat. Nine months before Rosa, it was Claudette Colvin. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records. Because in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered.

There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting

out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do. Like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.

What is it? Like you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. And we're back. I just had a, during the break, I, you know, dipped in my little pool, my little tank of water, and I had a little bath. The tank of water. The tank of water. Okay had a little bath the tank of water the tank of water okay where shall we begin I I would uh if it's okay I would like to start with uh talking about I think the the main criticism surrounding this movie that is extremely valid I I'm trying to like put myself in

2017 brain I remember this being discussed when the movie came out, but it was not central discussion at all. Sure. And so I want to talk a little bit about how disability is portrayed in this movie. As always, we're interested if we have listeners with disabilities that would like to share their perspective I've seen kind of a wide variety of takes on it but I mean the first the first issue is one that we've discussed on the show before which is you know Eliza is does not speak she

has a disability and she's not played by a disabled actor. Right. So this is something that happens all the time. I feel like it's very often presented as like, obviously there are many, many, many talented disabled actors that would have been more appropriate for this role. But I feel like instead there's I read a lot to this effect and we've discussed it on the show before. There's sometimes disabled parts are taken by able-bodied actors as a challenge. And it's been sort of framed as an Oscar-baity thing to do. Definitely. And I think that in the case of Sally Hawkins that's um exactly how it played out right and I think a lot of people have commented on her good performance I don't know like I don't know

if that's the right word but I mean I do think that she does a good job in the movie but although a lot of people have also pointed out that it's pretty obvious that she is not fluent or even very good at sign language um i was also having trouble confirming if she uses american sign language i saw um some people saying that the sign that she uses in the movie is not entirely asl but like some of it is, but then other people have confirmed that she is using ASL. I don't know enough about it to know firsthand. So I couldn't confirm if that is the type of sign she's using. I was also, yeah, I was seeing criticism around it, but I couldn't find specificity. So if there's, if there's anyone listening that could answer that i mean i'm very curious i just wasn't yeah yeah i wasn't able to find it yes so that's the first problem of

and again we've talked about this a lot on the show of a non-disabled actor being cast to play a character who is disabled and i think that is one of the problems because basically everyone who worked on this movie is an able-bodied person and as far as like consultants being brought in that didn't really happen so I was like I wasn't I was looking for any uh indication that that had happened and it had which is I mean I think for 2017 in particular I was pretty surprised at that seems like a really glaring mistake you would have thought right so I'm pulling this from a HuffPost piece entitled how the shape of Water Makes People with Disabilities Feel Less Human by Elise Wanshell. It basically says that HuffPost reached out to Fox Searchlight to ask whether there were any disabled consultants involved with the film. And a representative of the film said that,

like basically in response to that question, said that two ASL coaches were involved during the production. But that appears to be the only consultants. case of um there should that like you you would need to have consultants involved from the very very beginning not just as it pertains to working with actors which is definitely important and it sounds like maybe sally hawkins didn't have enough time to even get to where she needed to be on that front which i wasn't aware of, because I don't, I don't know ASL. And so I, that seems really frustrating for someone who, who does speak ASL to see it presented in this kind of like sloppy way, which I'm not saying that's the fault of the consultants, who knows, but it's like, you know, if Del Toro wants to have a disabled protagonist great but then you need to bring in a consultant

or even better a co-writer who can shape that story from the jump and not just you know the script shouldn't be locked without consulting like yes and because that did not appear to happen there are some issues with the way disability is represented in the movie um yeah there seemed to be a lot of conflicting feelings from a lot of members of the disabled community because on one hand there's like oh you know we're seeing um a disabled woman with sexuality on screen. That never happens. But then there's a whole lot of other criticism that we will get into. I would recommend everyone read a piece by Elsa Johnson Henry. I'm not sure if I pronounced that correctly.

I really love that piece. Yes. So she's a speculative fiction author and editor who is legally blind and deaf. She wrote a piece about this movie entitled I Belong Where the People Are, Disability and the Shape of Water on Tor.com. T-O-R.com. Tor is the publisher of the hot dog book, famously. Oh my gosh. No way. Wow, congrats.

So she wrote this great piece, and I want to pull some quotes from it. I feel like I basically copy pasted the essay into my notes because it's really, really thoughtful and comprehensive. It's great. For sure. Let's exchange quotes, shall we? Let's do it. thoughtful and comprehensive it's great for sure let's exchange quotes shall we so the first one i wanted to share is this elsa says quote the first time in years that i have seen a disabled woman sexually desired and indeed sexually active and loved in a film is by a monster monsterhood and disability are an extra and oh no this word i never can say it

inextricably inextricably inextricably yeah it's it's you you gotta really enter it with confidence inextricably killed it wow okay so inextricably linked in our genre characters like Snoke are barely human Snoke from Star Wars Andy Serkis are barely human their faces marred by scars which signal that they are evil disability and disfigurement are tied together as one Elsa's scars on her neck have been read as gills by some a hint that her disability is in fact monsterhood all on its own unquote so that's and this is something that we've talked about a fair share on the podcast especially when it comes to horror movies because horror is a genre yeah that it's very very guilty of this yeah but it's not limited to horror movies like, you know, that genre at all. This is something that spans across genre where disability or disfigurement will be linked to villainous behavior. So that's kind of like where the movie and it depends on how you interpret things but like this is definitely one sure

kind of reading of the film yeah i want to share a quote from that essay as well because i i do think that it's like the core issue because i and i do want to like yeah acknowledge that a lot of what i was reading around this movie and i think we should talk about this more in detail when we get to talking about sex anyways. Yeah. But you know, having like, I think that it's Elsa Strenson, Strenson Henry,

who wrote that like she had never seen a mainstream movie where a woman with a disability was centered as being sexually desirable as like initiating sex and like which i think is kind of a cool element of their relationship is it is very motivated by eliza kristen lopez wrote a piece in the hollywood reporter in which this is like a big um talking point of her piece of like the sexuality of disabled characters and how it's very rare to see. So yeah, but yeah, we can, we'll cover that more when we talk about sex, baby. Sexy sex. Let's talk about fish sex, baby. But I did want to share that, yeah, like the the use of Eliza's disability seems to be strictly not strictly but a lot of it

is used as a metaphorical purpose versus just representing a disabled character in the world which is patronizing as many writers have um mentioned you know i I'm not saying that I think that del Toro intended it that way, but it's definitely, you know, he presents this movie as a fairy tale and fairy tales very often do this kind of stuff. So I wanted to share a little more of Elsa Shenson Henry's essay that, you know, sort of lands on like, it's ultimately, you know, Eliza isn't loved by a member of her own species. And the only way that she's able to find acceptance is through possibly dying and definitely being with someone who is not of her own species. So she writes, quote, society says that disability makes us lesser, makes us uneven humans. The worst of humanity looks at me with my one clouded eye and my one hearing ear.

It looks at me and says I am half of what I could be. This isn't a projection. I don't feel less than whole. I've had people tell me that I am lesser than them, that they couldn't imagine what it would be to inhabit my body, that they would rather die than experience what it is like to live in a disabled body unquote and it does feel to me and this came up in a couple of essays that i read that eliza says that directly in that speech that she gives to giles of why yeah she loves the fish man so much is like she says he doesn't i'm paraphrasing but it's something like he doesn't know what i lack so she is explicitly saying that she views her own disability as her lacking something versus that being this is the messaging that society has right projected at her

her whole life but it's like the way that it's written makes it canonically she views her own disability as being deficient a lack she also i think in in the movie eliza says that she is incomplete yes which again if you had consultants disabled consultants on the movie, a line of dialogue like that, I don't think would be in the movie. It would be, yeah, Eliza's feelings about her disability, I think would be framed very differently. If it were coming from the perspective of actual disabled people who would have just a more informed perspective on how disabled people view and feel about their disabilities. So there's a quote from a writer named Amy Lowe in CBC, shout out Canada, that I thought sort of like tied that together pretty well.

She said, quote, I found that really unfortunate because it sort of reproduces the stereotype that nonverbal people can't express themselves in a way that's actually comfortable or natural for them. And then it also reproduces the stereotype that disability is like a cage, unquote. So I think that the, I mean, Eliza's whole storyline kind of lends itself to viewing her disability as a metaphorical storytelling tool rather than an element of who she is as a person. And the other moment that seems to draw the most criticism we've already talked about briefly, which is the like old Hollywood flashback thing, which I would hazard a guess was like del Toro. I feel like, you know, like,

Oh, tour is often like romanticized past Hollywood stuff by a lot. And it's probably just like, Oh, wouldn't this be cool? But the text of that scene is that Eliza is sitting across from the fish man overcome with how much she loves him. And then for one scene, she quote unquote sheds her disability and is able to use her voice to sing and they dance and like it's this like

fantasy sequence but the the core of the fantasy is like romanticizing her shedding her disability instead of right i feel like you can still have that same unmemorable sequence of them dancing in a way that doesn't right exactly like it without it romanticizing like oh she would be it i feel like it implies that she would be so much happier right if she could speak but yeah and and that was I mean, that's not something that occurred to me the first time I saw the movie. But it's like absolutely true. And again, like you're saying, like if there had there been consultants or co-writers and during the writing process, I think actors right who have the disabilities that you're portraying on screen because then i mean that's not to say that like because oftentimes when actors try to advocate for themselves they're labeled as difficult and then they might get

fired right but at least you would have yet another perspective saying, well, that doesn't really jive with how people actually feel about things. And I want to believe that like Del Toro is an empathetic enough filmmaker to be able to receive that. Maybe I'm just romanticizing him in my mind, but I'm like, I feel like he would be receptive to it. I just am like, but it is so wild that I feel like this is, you know, it's the auteur thing again, you know, where it's just like some people, no matter how iconic, incredible, need to be given notes and people don't give them to them because they're special directors. Too many yes men out there yeah um i would argue that the way the movie ends is also yes just kind of very telling of the representation of disability in this story because as i often tell my screenwriting students the way a movie ends does a lot to say how this movie feels about like the story it was telling or like, you know, the kind of the theme of the movie is usually very clearly communicated in the final images and final moments of the movie. So like what you're trying to say with your narrative usually is like very clear at the

very end so what happens at the end is eliza is well maybe dies but also maybe is turned into a fish person and then lives happily ever with her fish boyfriend under the sea so yeah um let's say let's go with that interpretation yeah which going back to elsa's piece in tor.com she kind of comments on how the end suggests that like disabled people should go and be with their own kind and says quote quote, I wish that I could just say, well, that's fantasy and move on. But I can't. Not when I've literally never seen a movie in which a disabled woman is desired by a non-disabled partner. Not when I know that my body is seen as less than desirable. Not when I know that subconsciously this film, it means she deserves a freak like her, not a human like her, unquote. And then just to share one more quote from this piece,

Elsa says, quote, the conflict for me is here, that on one hand, I have always known in my soul that able bodied people see me as half of of them that they see me as less than whole which is why I hate that in media such as this we can only be desired by those who don't know any better unquote so the way the movie ends the whole romance between Eliza and the fish man these are the implications yeah it's the ending and also this is kind of a movie that like i don't always remember how it ends and like after not seeing it for a couple years i was like oh yeah oh no they die like it's it kind of reminds me i feel like that is a patronizing ending for a disabled character and it also is giving me a little like another like classic tragic fairy tale element where

like the little mermaid turns to foam at the end of the story where it's just it also feels like there's maybe a whiff of misogyny mixed in there as well which is again like a confusing thing to happen in a movie that seems to be really wanting to present itself and the way it was marketed and the way it was like award seasoned was as a progressive reimagining of a fairy tale so if that is the tack you are taking in promoting your movie um a glaring kind of turning turning away when it comes to disability is uh i think you know kind of irresponsible and worthy of further discussion because it is i mean and we've been guilty of this in the early Bechtelcast days. Disability is so often left out of film criticism and discussion. And for a movie that's marketing itself as like, you know, because this movie does try to, and I think successfully in many cases, address a lot of society's prejudices.

And I think it does think it's saying something about disability but it rings patronizing because it's like oh look she got accepted by somebody and like by a big old fish and you're like well fuck you kind of and but like this movie does i guess i'm kind of transitioning into a different bucket of discussion yeah this movie does at least touch on racism because this is happening in 1962 around the civil rights era that we see an example of just in general i mean like people of color in this movie are treated as lesser than and then most explicitly in that scene in the uh pie shop that just all of a sudden like what i mean i'm not i don't even mean this as a criticism but like it turns out like pie man is evil um like really abruptly

like he because we've just seen him as like hey welcome to the pie shop i'm that hot guy who sells pies and then it was like i'm homophobic and then he's like and i'm racist and then the scene is over and it's i mean 1962 and now there are certainly people like that i was just like whoa whoa and then the scene is over and it doesn't come back um i have so here here are my thoughts on the matter sure so a lot of people point out when discussing this movie that like yeah it's it's an inclusive movie where you know you have uh the protagonist is a disabled woman um her best friend is a black woman her other best friend is a queer man and i think the movie is suggesting that like these are people who were on the fringes of society in the 60s like these

are marginalized people sure who became friends because of kind of this common ground they share of being marginalized by you know like white able-bodied hetero michael shannon patriarchy mr michael shannon in the case of this movie, specifically Michael Shannon. Yes. Yeah. So that you have this like, quote unquote, diverse cast of main characters. However, I felt that the way some of these characters were portrayed and characterized in the movie felt like it was leaning into some stereotypes where if you look at Zelda played by Octavia Spencer I mean she's yes doing an incredible job and she's you know

doing as much as she can with what she's given but I like this very much falls into the like black friend supporting a white protagonist and also I would argue like the sassy black friend stereotype yeah i think that this movie like attempts to give her a little bit more characterization with a subplot with her husband which i feel like doesn't really cut cut the mustard in that case like if the only background you're going to be given is that she appears to be in an emotionally volatile relationship with her husband um right like that's all you're going to give us for a background for a character that as you're saying like does not as aggressively as many movies but does fall back on some tropes this movie feels very like

because i mean because it was released early into the trump years and it you can like i i can't quite like put my finger on like how but you can you can feel that yeah right in a way that like i don't even mean to be like disparaging towards the filmmakers but it's just like they're trying to be inclusive they want to like make a statement but it's like not really quite there. But they really think they're doing something. It just that feels like a lot of early into the Trump years media. Right. Especially because this is trying to say everything at once and kind of saying not much.

And not executing it very well or very like intersectionally. No. Right. Because like this movie came out in 2017, but it would have been shot, you know, over the course of many months, if not like a full year before that, it would have been written and developed

probably a couple of years even before that. So like... But by the time the movie comes out, Del Toro is like speaking with specificity about this where um i think he he presented also because um as like a story with parallels to the immigration experience he said in an interview for this which i think was like a lot of what he was touching on and was had to do with his personal connection to the story as well as you know the really clear parallels between old monster movies creature from the black lagoon specifically

obviously but so he says quote i feel it as an immigrant that has been received by this country but i feel there is a sort of the demonization of the other very present. I needed to talk about the beauty of the other. So the way that he talks about this movie, I think he leans more on Doug Jones' Fishman versus Eliza and Zelda and Giles, which I think is perhaps part of the reason that they are kind of softly stereotyped in some ways where it's like yeah the focus is we want the audience to empathize with the fish man because he represents the monster the other

that has been used throughout cinematic history to look at me saying cinematic oh my goodness happy birthday yeah mensa it's kind of nuts uh but and and i get and i and i like it seems like it was at the core of his mission to take this monstrous quote-unquote character that has been used as coding for a lot of marginalized groups over the years and to flip that and use this group of marginalized characters who see that in the monster empathize with him and encourage audiences to do the same so he's encouraging people to look at media uh from the past a little more critically even if you love it always supportive of that like i i feel like i understand what his core mission is i think it's like a good righteous mission to have right that fits into his body of work really well

because you could even you could argue that for a fucking hell boy right like this is like a through line in his work that i think is really cool but it's like we're saying it's in the execution of like that message is going to ring a little hollow if you're falling back on tropes for the marginalized characters that are like surrounding the fish guy right yeah because like again going back to zelda you have like i feel like she's pretty one-dimensional and then the kind of one attempt to give her a little bit more dimensionality is with this like subplot with her husband which also just ends up playing into stereotypes of kind of like a deadbeat husband yeah it gives her this moment of empowerment over him because like because she stands up to him at the end but like she has a girl boss moment but

that's also the scene where that happens is the first time we are like really meeting that character yeah for sure ultimately it's hard to like i'm rooting for zelda to have more of a character to work with but it's like the movie makes it hard for you to be like woohoo in that moment because we've never seen this guy before we just heard about him in passing and then the other black characters in the movie are either you only get tiny glimpses of them you really learn nothing about them and it feels like a lot of times they're just used to show that another character is racist yes or there's that there's a weird scene where eliza is watching a newscast about civil rights protests

and like violence enacted against protesters and g Giles is like, turn that off. And it's like, why is that? Why is? I was kind of curious what the message was behind that. Because I'm just like. Right. I, you know, I would hear the writers out, but I'm just like, why include that?

Like, it just is really, I think that that was just like, again, a really lazy like way to remind you, like the era that this is taking place in but it makes giles seem very dismissive right towards the struggles of black americans which is doesn't appear to be canonical to his character at all because later he is like fuck you to the homophobic racist pie shop guy man right yeah it just feels like a way for the movie to acknowledge that that was what was happening at the time this movie takes place because a lot of movies right period pictures from that time or movies that made in that time didn't acknowledge it right so it's like this movie is like we're acknowledging that this was

taking place but it doesn't want to like engage with it really it is it does feel maybe this is like closer to the the trump era movie thing where it's like this movie i think has good intentions but it's like biting off more than it can chew and it's trying to like not like solve obviously but it's like trying to address every societal ill and like, especially really something that can be done in a two hour movie. Especially in the Michael Shannon character. Oh my God. Literally patriarchy the guy. Yeah.

He's racist. He's a misogynist. He wants his wife to be silent during a sex scene that is for some reason in the movie. He also sexually harasses Eliza. He's like one of those like America number one guys. He like very clearly has a very fragile male ego. He's very classist to the point where I think there's like interesting commentary here that like no one even considers. He's amazing at playing this role.

Like Michael Shannon as patriarchy the guy. He's very good at it. that like no one even considers he's amazing at playing this role like michael shannon as patriarchy the guy he's very good at it but it's like like we've been talking about on the show for years now beginning with our girl the dragon tattoo episode question mark like that's just kind of and i and it's like you know i can like hear defenders of this movie which i have a lot of love for for the record i chose it for my damn birthday movie I can like hear defenders of this movie, which I have a lot of love for, for the record. I chose it for my damn birthday movie. I can hear defenders of this movie being like, well, it's a fair, it's a fairy tale. So the characters tend to be a little broad.

Sure. True. But like, I feel like, you know, kind of cherry picking like what we're subverting and what we're not. Patriarchy the guy is just not an effective storytelling tool. I feel like at this point that should be obvious maybe i mean and but also i think that there was an element of cathartic energy behind patriarchy the guy as a character early in the trump administration only because i in my opinion um this movie came out i think it came out post me too but was certainly produced uh pre but you know because there were not a ton of public discussions about misogyny that were

treated as culturally serious seeing patriarchy the guy taken down a peg and killed and blah blah blah like there was some sort of, I feel like there was a cathartic element to it for sure at that time. Yeah. But now that things have moved on, it's just like, even if it is a cathartic storytelling tool for some people, I'm kind of over it. Honestly, like, I just don't think it's a very effective way to make any commentary because like we've talked about a million times, it's far more likely to experience you know discrimination of many kinds from a guy that is just kind of a guy and that is the problem and that's like why prejudice is so pernicious because it's just cooked into people that you know it's

not like i mean there are you know big you know, bigoted supervillains out there, unfortunately. And it seems like there's more all the fucking time. But it just doesn't feel like the most powerful storytelling tool to wrap up every single prejudice in one guy and then kill that guy and be like, we did it. Problem solved. Yeah. Yeah. solved um yeah yeah i was i was starting to say that i think the most the way that his character is or maybe not even his you can't even attribute this to his character specifically but the most effective use of commentary when it comes to people's prejudices in this movie is that no one even suspects Eliza as being the fish man heister,

like, stealer because of her, like, class and position. And no one even considers that it could be, you know, like a cleaning person could pull this off sort of thing. Right. But other than that, yeah, I didn't. I thought that was, like, that was one of the more effective yeah that's what i'm saying yeah um but yeah everything else was like yeah this just feels too cartoonish yeah like it's it's very broad i think also i just wanted to single out because michael shannon represents so much in this world i just wanted to like single out a few things that i found particularly evil about him

he is openly racist to zelda's character like treats her as if she is like uneducated to the point where she is not able to understand what is going on around her or that she couldn't possibly understand what the people of a higher class who are mostly white like could be doing it's like incredibly patronizing he fetishizes eliza for her disability and patronizes her for it and you know attempts to like he he assaults multiple people throughout the movie um i would say that that sex scene with his wife i mean it's very fucking gross but i think it also like really tiptoes up to the fucking line of fucking marital rape because you're he's like bleeding on her face and she's like can you not bleed on my face and he's like shut up shut up um be silent didn't need that scene but i guess we

just need this to be the most evil guy in the entire world he represents america whatever america's rotting corpse i don't disagree but like i don't need to see him you know harass you know like sexually mistreat his own wife and also also she did this thing that did you catch this she like smelled his hand before she would have sex with him which i think it means to imply that he is a serial cheater and comes home smelling like vagina oh i didn't make that connection but i i can see it it's just that marriage uh i i feel for his his wife i feel for that character we don't get to know her very well um but yeah like i just wanted to single out especially

like his fetishizing eliza's disability i just think it's like really gross certainly something that uh i know happens in the world but it just seems like again another like big issue to like take a bite out of and then essentially make no meaningful statement about outside of like this is wrong which is more than a lot of movies do but it's just i don't know yeah movies that try to attack every single um problem in the world there it's just there's not the bandwidth i guess not in the shape of water uh going on that continuing on that line of thinking i wanted to touch on uh queerness in the movie uh specifically when it comes to giles's character richard jenkins icon love him love all of his cats his characters cats r.i.p the one oh r.i.p i forget what the cat's name was, but he just like so nonchalantly. Yeah.

He literally was like, that's okay. He's just scared. Does it pass the Bechdel test? Richard Jenkins is like, the fish man ate my cat and the cat has a name. Does that pass the Bechdel test? The new dog ate my homework.

The fish man ate my cat. I can't come to work today. Oh, what was the cat's name? It was like it wasn't Sophocles, but it was like something like that. Anyway, it was Yeah, something like that. So Giles is a queer character. And we see him be rejected. We see he's he's a lonely person. He constantly talks about how lonely he is all the time. And that's not coming from nowhere you know like feelings of isolation and loneliness are certainly something that a lot of queer people have experienced throughout history it's also implied that he is a recovering alcoholic covering alcoholic and that he maybe was fired from his job, possibly for his alcoholism,

but also possibly for being gay. That's, yeah. And that's never made explicitly. Like his side quest, you get more with Giles than with any other secondary character, but it still like doesn't land in a very satisfying way.

Because you're like, was he fired? Like why even include addiction issues if like it just was confusing again too much too much biting off more than it can chew yes so for me like to have your one queer character in the movie where like the movie goes out of its way to like show him be rejected by his crush and that only happens to motivate his choice to help out the straight protagonist and although like can we even call her straight when her sexuality includes being attracted to fish people my point is i felt like his queerness was just kind of used in the way

that like racism and like the acknowledgement of the civil rights movement is just sort of like used to be like well yeah we're touching on these things yeah we're being inclusive but like not meaningfully or not in a way that felt like and only like tragically like it's yeah yeah no one gets a satisfying romantic like all the relationships in this movie like don't end very well because like eliza and the fish man have it best and they die uh and like giles gets rejected zelda gets like one up on her emotionally volatile husband who doesn't respect her but presumably they are she's still stuck in that marriage hard to say we know really nothing it's not like she's gonna leave him it

doesn't seem like no idea i guess maybe the part the only person who wins is michael shannon's wife because he dies because he dies and now she is free from him. But she seems to really be into him in a confusing way. It seems like she, well, confusing, yeah. It just seems like relationship-wise, it's all really bad at the end. Very bleak. Bleak. But yeah, that's kind of all I had.

Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss? I just wanted to quickly, I mean, we sort of talked about it really quick, but the fish man, I love him. I do think that the criticism of, like, do we understand why these two characters

fall in love with each other outside of metaphorical purposes? Not really. I would have liked to have seen more. I also think it's kind of very fantastical and turning one culture into a monolith to be like, oh, he's a South American god. And you're like, what? Again, yet another, it's

clear that Americans are mining this area for oil. It's like the movie are mining this area for oil. It's like the movie trying to comment on another societal ill, but not really doing much with it. Glossing over it, yeah. I do think that the way that the fish man is characterized is generally pretty cool. that he is supposed to be canonically a movie monster but i don't view him that way because we are like encouraged to empathize with him so much um we know that he's been through a lot we see you know how brutally mistreated he is and that being treated with compassion uh i i really love him i get the issues surrounding the character um but i thought it was like he and eliza you know they they they fuck and we celebrate that and that is that whole uh sexual relationship felt to me like you know she initiated which is cool you don't see that in a movie a lot and um you know iconic that there's an oscar-winning fish sex movie that is really

i can't take that from us something you simply can't forget i do i love that female masturbation is represented on screen because it rarely is yes as a normal part of a morning routine i love how horny that character is and just to um and it's normalized and it's normalized and again shout out to kristen lopez's piece in the hollywood reporter we'll link to it as well but kristen writes about how disabled characters in media are often presented as lacking sexuality or not having any sexual desires. And that media about characters with disabilities tends to focus on straight white men. So Shape of Water presents kind of an interesting subversion to these tropes because it focuses on a disabled woman and allows her to be a very sexual being so right you know

i i appreciate that i appreciate a horny woman on screen i also liked that the movie didn't get like into her past sex life because i feel like that is like i don't know i just this movie is so chaotically trying to address everything that it's like we don't know i just this movie is so chaotically trying to address everything that it's like we don't really know what her sexual past is but we know that like she let when she's like interested she's gonna let you know and it seemed like consent was above the board again you're like it's a fish man so we don't know but it felt it felt like there was some thought and care put into that um Yeah. This movie is, I don't know if it's,

if it quite goes into my guilty pleasure category, but you know, on the right, on the right day and the right mood shape of water, you know, it's, it's a movie that I'll turn on. Sure.

Because the, the cast is so good. The score also, that's like kind of out of our purview, but I think the score is so beautiful. Yeah. And I love the scene with the fish and the egg. Yes. It's, I mean, that's like kind of out of our purview, but I think the score is so beautiful. Yeah. Set design. And I love the scene with the fish and the egg.

Yes. I mean, it's a del Toro movie. It's like beautiful. Right. And the fish man. Hot. Loves eggs and sex. And has a thigh gap.

And a really tight little butt. Yeah. True. So ultimately, I would say that it does pass the bechdel test yes in a way that we often don't come across on the butt alone it passes the bechdel test in a way that we don't often come across because we are used to seeing like verbal spoken communication between characters of marginalized genders when it comes to movie passing but for example many scenes well actually a lot of the conversations between eliza and zelda

are either about the fish man zelda's unappreciative husband or michael shannon's character um so they talk about men a lot. I think there are like isolated conversations where they are, you know, where they are not talking about a man, but communicating in a way that again, like we don't often see on screen because we don't often see sign language being used as a way of communication.

So just pointing that out, that it's nice to see representation of the Bechdel test being passed via sign language. Yes, yeah, I think that that is a rare pass. I also wanted to shout out that there is, there are two writers credited on this movie, obviously Guillermo del del toro but also vanessa taylor she's written a ton she wrote the divergent movie she wrote uh on the new aladdin

movie which that's not her fault um she wrote shape of water she wrote on uh game of thrones like she's you know cool oh and she also oh this is they don't leave but that she wrote on Game of Thrones. Like she's, you know, cool. Oh, and she also, oh, this is, they don't leave with this. She wrote Hillbilly Elegy. Yikes. Well, look, she's, what I'm saying is, I think that it is net positive that, you know, that del Toro had a woman as a co-writer.

So there you go. There is, you know, it's not just totally men men men men men men men men across the board and that was a what is the name of that story two and a half men i almost said two broke men two and a half men yeah that's the name of that show men men men men men that's like the theme song is it i've never watched an episode bravely oh well i had uh yeah my my grandfather would have that show on in the background sometimes and yeah the theme song is just saying men like 20 times very cool very cool um anyways two broke men let's write it um yeah uh yeah so let's let go to the, let's hit the nipple scale, shall we?

Let's do it. Zero to five nipples based on looking at the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. For me, as we've discussed, the del Toro's intentions are clear. He wants to, he wants to subvert the traditional monster movie, especially because there's been so much kind of like racist and other prejudice coding of monsters in monster movies throughout history there is so i don't know if you can hear this very european sounding siren because i'm in amsterdam barack cool um so cool sorry that sounded mean awesome i can't even hear it so awesome yeah sorry for for whatever's happening but um yeah the the the intentions are clear and it's clear that guillermo del toro wanted to make a

progressive story that subverts a lot of harmful tropes and he wanted to be inclusive in his narrative. Unfortunately, the execution of a lot of these things just doesn't quite land or hit the mark. You have various ableist implications you have kind of a lot of tropes as it relates to race and and queerness in characters uh just a lot of things that again not executed very well which makes rating this tricky um because the intentions are good but the execution isn't great i guess i would give this like two and a half nipples to me it's one of those like split down the middles i agree with you yeah i i i'm gonna do two and a half as well because for because of the reasons you are describing where it's like i do think that there was a lot of good intentions behind this movie uh i think even five years later the uh the kind of gaps in

consulting and the gaps thigh gaps the the fish thigh gap first of all an attack uh fight or flight trigger uh activated but yeah like i just a movie that had good intentions that bit off way more than I could chew and didn't do the consulting necessary to attempt to chew question mark. Right. But it's a sweet movie with a, with a good intention. Yeah. And so I feel like split down the middle makes sense. Who are you giving your nipples to?

I will give one to giles's cats one to mrs brown in the movie paddington and i will give my half nipple oh no i want to give a nipple to octavia spencer because she's incredible and she's often cast in roles that her full potential is yeah like we don't we don't see her range we don't see what she's capable of as an actor because many of the roles that she's cast in are just kind of fish food if you will um but she's great so i'll give her one of my nipples and then I'll give my half nipple to Mrs. Brown in Paddington okay um yeah I'm gonna give all my nipples to uh myself because it's my birthday oh my gosh happy birthday Jamie sorry about it do you have anything that you would like to plug I would like to plug uh my birthday i i would like to plug um yeah you know listen to

ghost church listen a little like listen listen to my other stuff and kathy lolita mensa all the all the friends are here i would say pre-order the hot dog book but it's not possible yet but oh believe will i be harassing you about that i would say mainly for a birthday present for me in advance just remember to be kind and patient to me when i inevitably don't shut the fuck up about the pinocchio wars in november there's two pinocchios coming out this year i think that it's I can already feel a real fixation coming on yeah and uh it's just going to be something that's going to be a lot on my mind in the coming months so please bear with me as I really get into there's so many Pinocchio adaptations and I can feel myself getting ready to watch maybe all of them wow I want to go into the pinocchio wars with eyes wide open um i mean yes i want to be a true

witness welcome to the illegal i'm a legal observer for the pinocchio wars it's i'm on the sidelines and i'm keeping score wow tom hanks geppetto versus who's the other geppetto oh wait no i don't remember geppetto wait it's not ewan mcgregor right because he's he's it is even no no he's jiminy cricket god damn it i don't remember wait it's not ewan mcgregor right because he's he's it is even no no he's jiminy cricket god damn it i don't remember you're right oh god i'm gonna have a meltdown what i think it's like maybe a character actor that we don't see very much um probably doug jones honestly that would be iconic i would not forget uh it's it it's, it's a British guy. Oh, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio versus Robert Zemeckis. Let's David Bradley.

David Bradley is, is Geppetto. He's Filch in Harry Potter. Okay. All right. Well, we got to go. Yes.

Can't wait for you to enter the Pinocchio verse, Jamie. Happy birthday. Love you so much. Thank you. Love you. And us uh on the instagrams and stuff matreon you're gonna want to listen to that just off the wall matreon episode in which we attempted to talk about shape of water and we never got around to it five dollars a month

gets you two bonus episodes merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. And with that. It's my birthday, so we have to go to Medieval Times. Yeah. Yeah. Bye. Bye.

Hey, y'all. Niminy here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, the Story Pirates, and John Glickman,

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