MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Guillermo del Toro is famed for supporting the underdog in his work, lauded for creating feminist films. Consider this review in The New York Times as evidence:

“In Mr. del Toro’s world, though, reality is the domain of rules and responsibilities, and realism is a crabbed, literal-minded view of things that can be opposed only by the forces of imagination. This will never be a fair or symmetrical fight, and the most important reason to make movies like this one – or, for that matter, to watch them – is to even the odds.”

-NYTimes Review of The Shape of Water

However, when critically observing del Toro’s films through a feminist lens supported by Carol Clover’s Final Girl Theory, del Toro’s films become more pervasive. Clover’s theories reveal del Toro’s films as a perpetuation of the patriarchy and a reinforcement of hegemonic masculinity under the guise of a feminist text. This presentation will critique two of del Toro’s films, The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth, in an effort to expose del Toro’s habits of reinforcing the patriarchal structure. I will lean on the theories of Clover and Kenneth Burke’s idea of equipment for living in my analysis of del Toro’s films. I will be exposing the films as a perpetuation of the patriarchal structure in film and therefore contradictory to what del Toro himself asserts about his own work. The audience can expect to observe a deconstruction of del Toro’s films, while also leaving with an example to follow to produce similar work through Clover and Burke’s theories.