Confused love is better than no love?

A comment to the 2017 Mexican film „The Shape of Water“

The Berlin cinema Babylon is my favourite cinema. They are real enthusiasts. Among other enthusiastic endeavours they regularly organise „weeks“ with a particular programme, like for instance the „Mexican week“ which ran when I wrote this comment.

True to my habit, I first researched the Mexican films offered. Among the 10+ it was hard to find anything not seeming very dark. Most contemporary films are dark (one way or another), but the Mexicans seem to add some spooky leaning on top of it. I guess their culture may be a bit like that: Darkness in a land originally conquered by war and now living in the shadow of a power even stronger than themselves. The spooky leaning could be a dark aspect of their tradition being more than plain protestant-rational.

I went for „The Shape of Water“ – a strange love story between a woman and a male human-like amphibium. By my pre-view assessment I forgot to take the strange title into account, but now, having seen the film, it fits. (I will come back to that.)

The film was made in 2017. At that time postmodernism in the West had already risen to become the dominant culture. Post-modernism is basically nihilistic, but until recently it has promoted certain beliefs which I am sure you have seen. On my part I will sum up the postmodern belief-system in the following four points:

1. Strange is better than domestic.
2. Women are better than men.
3. Deviant is better than normal (not least regarding sexual orientation).
4. Lower is better than middle and upper class.

The four principles you find embedded in the Mexican film. The heroine is a cleaner. She relates to the strange, male amphibium whom some bad men have captured somewhere in The South and now keep in a laboratory for brutal experiments. The heroine and the amphibium develop a relationship, and ultimately the woman herself transforms into an amphibium. Together the two leave the world dominated by bad men and escape into the ocean. The bad men are all white and the leading one is really bad. The only man on the good side is an unsuccessful, homosexual neighbour of the heroine who is pursuaded to help. The second most important woman is black (also a cleaner) and helps the heroine keep up her courage and to organise the escape.

Is the film then 100 % dark post-modernism? No, there are glimpses of life. E. g: quite surrealistically, the loving couple, when they plan to „embrace fully“, not only fills the bath-tub with water, they fill up the whole bathroom. (They will not „have sex in a closet“!) Inevitably, the surroundings also get wet, and even more so when the helpful neighbour accidentally opens the door. I am sure the film-makers had fun making the movie funny! Moreover, the film criticises the supposed sexism of the time in which is plays, which is the early 1960ies. Everywhere, including on TV, we see doll-like, singing women. Although this may not always have been the case in 1960ies real life, it may have been true in the entertainment industry.

By and large, however, the film is a faithful vehicle for the postmodern credo. To-day, nine years later, postmodernism is closer to its final stage. The „goal“ of any nihilistic movement is to level out – to replace distinction with mixture and logos with chaos. In 2026 there is no longer much of a difference between strange and domestic and the recognised difference between men and women has also diminished. And there is no such thing as „normal“. By the way, does water have a shape? Of course not, but who cares? We are now closer to the nihilistic paradise of all-out non-distinction. There are still the bad guys and the good guys (girls), but the good guys are good simply because they fight the bad guys. Is there any love in this? No, because when there is no distinction, there is no one to love and no one to love (no misprint). Love itself (possibly the most basic force in the universe) dissolves into nothingness.

This is what now happens in the mainstream culture, which is the basis for the state with its physical and financial powers. To the postmodern credo (outlined above) you can also add something about time. The future, of course, is better than the past, and in fact, we might as well destroy the past. To obtain that we need not literally forget, it suffices to put the past to death behind glass (a bit like the amphibium in the lab). But when the past dies, the sense of future also gradually dies. What remains is a short-sighted, whimsy, tension-free present tense. Freedom becomes the freedom to redefine your life each day when you wake up in the morning.

Miraculously, however, some little stream of mainstream money has leaked into a basement in Berlin, which I visited just before Babylon. In the basement young, local musicians made a non-mainstream, non-profit, small concert for joy and out of love. The visit protected me against being overrun by „The Shape of Water“.

Only a nuclear war can kill all life.