The Shape of Water — A Review

“The Shape of Water,” just won the Academy Award for best film of the year. Having viewed the film last night I found just one more Cultural Marxist attack on the norms and values of the Christendom norms that normed Western civilization in favor of the putative superiority of the alien, the stranger, and the other.

The storyline introduces us to a “wild creature that can’t be anything else.” The film informs us that the wild creature comes from the third world Amazon and was abducted from his previous god-like existence by the evil white man and was brought by force and ill-treatment in order to possibly advance science and to beat the Russians to the moon. Of course, the wild creature while wild is cast as morally superior to his captors, even if he does eat a housecat along the way.

We find in the narrative thus that the white man as the protagonist as embodied in evil white General, the bumbling white scientist, and the evil white project head. The only slightly favorable white straight male character is the Communist Russian scientist spy who works to help save the wild creature. Hence the film reinforces our modern Cultural Marxist narrative of the stupid and evil white man who oppresses everything he lays his hands on.

White women only fare slightly better. Except for the lead, which we will return to later, the three white women who have minuscule roles are cast in traditional female roles and are subtly mocked in the film. The film gives us the white wife of the chief villain who is mocked as the traditional white stay at home Mother of two who is subservient to her husband and whose only ability is the sex she provides for her husband and her ability to be at home with the children. In such a way patriarchy is also mocked in the film. A second bit white female role is of the secretary at work who likewise is portraying a traditional white female role of “our girl Friday.” The third bit white female role lead is that of a bitchy co-worker who is always complaining or casting demeaning insults at the lead mute female. There are the three white women bit-roles we are given in the film. White traditional women like white men take it on the chin in this Cultural Marxist film.

The leading lady of the film is a white female who while not beautiful is comely. She is cast as a white woman who is missing something (her voice) that only the wild creature from an exotic land can finally cure.  The supporting male role is filled by a middle-aged sodomite who aids the female lead in rescuing the wild creature from the grip of the evil white men. The supporting female role is played by a black female who is forever telling us about the deficiencies of her husband. Except for the wild creature, the Communist scientist spy, and the sodomite, males in the film are bumbling, or evil beings. More Cultural Marxist fare; straight non-Communist white men are evil while perverted wild males from other lands or sodomites or Communists are good.

I’m convinced the leading white lady is supposed to represent the every day western white woman who can only find her voice by throwing themselves sexually at the wild thing from an exotic land who heals her of her lost voice while imparting to her immortal life as living in his environment.  White women and poor misunderstood wild males from exotic lands can only save one another as they conspire to overcome the wicked white man by copulating. So, we have the Cultural Marxist film selling the idea that there is something lacking in comely white women that only the wild thing can heal while at the same time wild exotic things from other lands can only be rescued by white women. I would contend that this is an obvious push for White women to copulate with that which is wild and untamed (illegal or legal immigrants from other countries). Only then can white women find that which is lacking and be healed and only then can wild things from exotic lands find salvation.

It is not even subtle. All you European and American women the way to find your voice is by copulating with wild males from exotic countries who are totally other. The inter-species relationship in the film stands as a metaphor for white women who have no voice giving themselves to the wild things from exotic lands and so finding what is lacking in themselves and their whiteness. Only by the White women working in concert with minority women, and homosexual man can evil white men be defeated. In the film, the wild thing from an exotic land is always morally better, restorative and redemptive.  And all this cast as a romantic love story.

A few other ancillary observations regarding the film,

1.) The white male lead, who is cast as a detestable and hateable character makes a sexual advance on the leading white female. Of course, such an advance is crude, and as coming in the context of the white male lead being already married to a wife which the film shows filling her husband’s bedroom needs, what is being communicated is the hypocrisy of the patriarchal family. The film’s clear intent is to communicate to white women that wild things from exotic lands are superior to white men and that white men should be surrendered for wild things from exotic lands.

2.) The film uses the Christian Scriptures accounts of Samson and Ruth. The evil white man in the film casts himself as Samson bringing down the plot of the sodomite, Communist scientist spy, black female co-worker, and the mute white girl to release the wild thing from an exotic land. The film places the apartment of the mute girl over a theatre that is playing the film “Ruth.” Ruth, you will recall is the bible story of the woman who is thought to have left her Moabite people in order to be a foremother of the Messiah.

3.) This film is basically the film version cast as a Romantic love story of Theodore Adorno’s book “The Authoritarian Personality.” The patriarchal family in both the book and the film is cast as twisted and evil and the origin of much of what is wrong with Western civilization. To be trapped in this patriarchal family culture is to be mentally ill and so villainous.

4.) There may be even in the film an attempt to normalize bestiality as a sexual norm though I am convinced that the creature from the black lagoon is a stand-in not for sex with animals but as a stand-in for sex with wild things from exotic lands.

The film is an ideological Cultural Marxist attack on Christianity, White Males, patriarchy, Western Civilization, the whole idea of distinct nations, and normative sexuality cast as a Romance. In other words, typical Hollywood fare.

 

 

 

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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