the shape of water in the age of consent: how hollywood hasn't changed.
MONDAY, March 5th 2018
At last Sunday’s Oscars The Shape of Water, a romanticized version of Female Teachers as Sexual Predators was
the big winner… but why? Let’s review and get a few things straight about the film:
1. Women do not masturbate in water… actually most humans don’t ( dolphins might but that’s besides the point
and not relevant to the following argument - it has to do with friction, people).
2. The amphibian man was a prisoner, an abused prisoner. Please note the CHAIN around his neck.
3. The amphibian man was hungry. He liked to eat hard boiled eggs (gross)...and cats.
4. The amphibian man exhibited the intellect of a twelve year old child… if even (granted this could have
been because of the language barrier - WHICH. ISNT. BETTER.).
5. … there was a massive language barrier making communication with our “heroine” shoddy at best.
6. The amphibian man was rescued from his prison by our heroine AKA he was powerless and indebted to her.
Unequal power dynamics: teacher/student, boss/employee, captor/captee.
7. Our heroine proceeded to “wait” AKA hold the amphibian man captive because she was convinced of
All of these blazing arrows point to the fact that, regardless of what the amphibian man could actually
comprehend about the situation, the audience saw a woman construct a fictional romantic narrative and
then force it on amphibian man.
Elisa didn’t think she was doing “anything wrong,” Elisa thought “he wanted it.” When in reality, we have
NO idea what the amphibian man was thinking or feeling. Correction: we knew he was hungry (thus the eggs
and cat) but really his inner monologue could have been, “please, help me! I’ll do anything to get out of
here/my current station in life or get a job or make it in this industry even if it means having sex with you!”
Sound familiar?! If not, let me help you: #metoo, Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK, Al Franken, Dustin Hoffman,
Don Hazen, the list goes on and on. If the roles in this film had been reversed it would have been unacceptable.
One woman’s projected fictional reality does not mean that interspecies coerced sex is acceptable. Sexual
harassment awareness training teaches us that in no way did the amphibian man give verbal or physical consent
to sexual activity with Elisa. That being said, even if one of his actions could be interpreted as consent, the
unequal power dynamics between Elisa and him alone made it inappropriate and and downright creepy.
So, why did The Shape of Water win big? Because Hollywood hasn’t changed. A man still won an oscar for best picture with a film about abuse of power and sexual coercion that had no higher commentary than that of a wet dream of a thirteen year old boy about what women want. Nothing has changed.
