“Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Joseph Campbell (1985) argues that myths are an allegory of everyday life and should not be taken just literally. That there are hidden ways in which characters written hundreds of years ago resonate with people in the 21st century. Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water is a “fable for difficult times” (Del Toro, 2018) that demands to be identified and understood by its audience due to its unusualness. It contains mythological representations and archetypes, similar to that of the story of Psyche and Cupid written by Lucius Apuleius. Archetypes are some universal symbols that serve to trigger the collective unconscious, a fundamental set of shared memories that reside in the unconscious of every human being. (Jung, 1959). Although it is unrealistic that gods and monsters exist, the story continues to attract its audience. Jungian psychology states that archetypes are ancient personality patterns that constitute the shared heritage of the human race. This essay illustrates how the film The Shape of Water follows the archetypal presentation of the young woman in the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid, suggesting shared memories or shared heritage that reflects the fundamental human condition. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay The Shape of Water is an Oscar-winning film directed by Guillermo Del Toro in 2017 that is more like a mythological fairy tale. It is set in 1962, against the backdrop of post-World War II and the time America was thriving. It follows the story of mute woman Elisa Esposito, who works as a cleaner at a top secret military research facility. He encounters a half-amphibian, half-man creature who has been trapped by the scientist. Elisa gradually establishes an extraordinarily close relationship with this being and eventually falls in love with him. Aware of the grave fate the creature will face in the scientific facility, he plans to smuggle this river god out of the facility and take him to his home. In the last scene, Elisa was killed by the military officer. She fell into the river but was resurrected by the power of the River God as another river-dwelling being. The other story, Cupid and Psyche, is a Greek myth, first found in Lucius Apuleius' book, The Golden Ass, written in the late 2nd century AD. According to Thomas Bulfinch's version of this myth (1855 ), Psyche is worshiped by her fellow mortals because of her divine beauty. This angers the goddess Venus, who in return asks her son Cupid to wound her with his arrow. Meanwhile, Psyche's parents consult an oracle about their daughter's marital problems. The Oracle states that Psyche is destined to be with a monster. However, Cupid himself falls in love with Psyche and assumes the identity of her monstrous husband. As a result, he forbids Psyche to see him in the light, but she disobeys him. Their happy marriage is cut short when Cupid flees their home, leaving Psyche to find a way to reunite with him. Although The Shape of Water and the myth of Cupid and Psyche were not created around the same time and include completely different characters, settings, and plots, they still share some similarities. If mythologies are the continuation of our human condition, then both stories perhaps reflect some fundamental truths that are still applicable to our society today. The following analysis will shed light on these important aspects of both stories. You may also be interested in Extended Essay Topics on History: How to Choose the Best? The main purpose of the extended essay is to provide students with the opportunity toengage in independent activities research and develop writing skills through… First, Shape and C&P portray the male protagonists as gods. In The Shape of Water, the male protagonist is a human-like amphibian creature that "the natives of the Amazon worshiped as a God". " Although the creature is well built with broad shoulders, similar in mold to an athletic human male. However, he is described by the military sergeant as “ugly as sin” due to his more obvious monster-like appearance. He also possesses healing powers that magically resurrect Elisa after her death, transforming the scars on her neck into gills, gave her a new life to live underwater with him. Similarly, in Cupid and Psyche, the male protagonist is described by the Oracle as “a monster al which neither gods nor men can resist.” Although it is revealed to readers that Psyche's husband is actually Cupid, the “most beautiful and charming of the gods,” the characters continue to speculate that he was a monster and proceed to the her fate “which resembled a funeral more than a wedding pomp”. Psyche then opens a box from the underworld and falls into a "stygian sleep", but Cupid also resurrects her using his divine abilities Immortality and powers male protagonists' supernatural abilities place them in a high rank in terms of authority and value. This gives men an air of dominance and they appear as untouchable; transcendent individuals compared to other characters in the film and in the myth. Secondly, the female protagonists are portrayed as lesser mortals. The protagonists of Shape and C&P are both mortals, not gods. In Shape, Elisa is a mute woman who works night shifts cleaning at a military research facility. She is clearly of humble, working-class origins, far from pious. Being mute, she can only communicate with some people through sign language. This includes his neighbor Giles and colleague Zelda. They often acted as Elisa's interpreters for the public when she signed for others. Zelda tells the military officer “I mostly answer, because he can't talk. Somehow, Elisa and Psyche are both presented as helpless individuals who need the help of others. Psyche also has people around her who decide and do things for her, such as her family who quickly arranged a consultation with an Oracle to secure her marriage. Knowing that she is carefully stigmatized as an unfortunate woman, she tells her parents to “submit” and “lead me to that rock to which my unhappy fate has destined me. " Mutism and blind trust in an oracle paint the female protagonists as myths. They are made to be kind and easy to impose on others, completely subservient to their fate. Both are doomed in one way or another, victims as lesser mortals Third, the male devotee and the mortal female victim form a natural hierarchy. Men are placed in a higher position of power, as demonstrated by the archetypal pairing of gods and mortals. Elisa and Psyche fall helplessly in love with their charms , perhaps because their lovers are gods. They come to depend on the gods for romantic love and eventually to resurrect them. In the mythology of all cultures, mortals have been subject to worshiping divine beings or gods, as they control everything, from time, to agriculture, and even to their own lives. Gods have their own specialties in which they have control. Some are rulers of the sky, the sea, the earth, love, etc. Stories of gods seducing or taking advantage of mortal women are different in each pantheon, but common. For example, Medusa (Greek) and Rindr (Norse) who were violated by Zeus and Odin respectively. The river god and Cupid do not only hold physical power overElisa and Psyche, but also sexual and emotional powers. This reinforces the power imbalance that is the normal structure between men and women, with men being at the top of the social hierarchy. Fourth, in Shape and C&P, both female protagonists are juxtaposed as incomplete or excessive. Being a mute woman, Elisa is not only considered incomplete by society but also by herself. This is conveyed to the audience when Elisa confronts Giles about his plan to break the creature out of the Army research laboratory. She has a heated argument with Giles over his refusal to help her. The audience comes to understand Elisa's feelings for the creature during her passionately signed monologue, which she had Giles repeat verbally. “And what am I? I move my mouth, like him, and I don't make a sound, like him. What does this make me? " She explains that "the way he looks at me. He doesn't know what I'm missing. . . Or how incomplete I am. He simply sees me for who I am. As I am. Del Toro uses this scene as a tool to explain how society sees his disability as a factor that diminishes his value as a human being. She knows that people look at her and think she's broken; not enough and needs others to recognize that this is not the case. Therefore, she considers herself an outcast and wishes to complete her incompleteness through this love story with the river god. On the other hand, Psyche is presented as excessive. Her beauty «was so marvelous that the poverty of the language fails to express due praise. "Men are too intimidated by her beauty to woo her and she is revered as if she were a goddess. Her thoroughness led to her downfall as she was deemed guilty by the goddess Venus. She sends her son Cupid to wreak his vengeance on Psyche. When he too falls in love with her attractiveness, the goddess angers her even more. All that her beauty brought was jealousy and trouble, dooming her to a seemingly unfavorable marriage with a monster. She was “fed up with that beauty which, while bringing abundance of adulation , she had failed to reawaken love.” (Bulfinch, 1855). Both Elisa and Psyche are shamed, by themselves or by others, for something that is in their nature and cannot be changed Psyche's excessive thoroughness are ironically treated as guilty. They reflect an uncompromising reality so extreme that it suggests society's rigid expectations of women. It shows that women are expected to fit into a box that society puts them into and women themselves reinforce it to perpetuate a sense of incompleteness or a desire for acceptance from the outside. Fifth, both the film and the myth have the woman sacrificing herself after being accepted by the divine male. It may seem like it is the result of the love they felt towards their lover, but similar to the archetypes of mythology, it is also a recognition of the union of mortals and immortals. In Shape, Elisa progressively develops a sort of kinship with the creature since, like her, he is unable to communicate verbally. For her, her imprisonment is the “loneliest thing”. Then, he hatches a complicated, high-risk plan to break the creature out of a military research laboratory. She asks her friends to be complicit and lie to the authorities, giving her enough time to carry out her plan. By carrying out this illegal act, Elisa is willing to risk both her life and her freedom, as well as those of her friends. Because of her sense of incompleteness, she has felt completeness through acceptance by a god and is ready to fight for it. As for Psyche, she lives a happy married life with Cupid, even though they can only be together in the dark. However, for.