Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0008-5396-0183

Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Media Studies

Second Department

Politics and International Relations

Reader 1

Professor Owen Brown

Reader 2

Professor Jennifer Friedlander

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

©2024 Ally C Fleming

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Guillermo del Toro has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most beloved filmmakers due to his ability to blend popular genres with arthouse flair. This is especially true when it comes to fairy tales, a common thread woven throughout his films that are consistently imbued with political commentary on authoritarianism. This is most apparent in two of his most critically acclaimed films, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017). Part of why these films are so beloved is how they utilize popular culture not just as tools to foreground the story’s setting, but also to guide the lead protagonists’ journeys from beleaguered outsiders to brave dissenters of the status quo. But this blending of aesthetics and politics in period pieces can come with certain risks. Although the use of fairy tale narratives can attract a global audience, national histories and politics might be diluted in favor of satisfying the general audiences. Moreover, the role of aesthetics also deserves special attention for defining how the nation chooses to remember or obscure bottom-up post-memory in service of a top-down cultural memory. All of these factors are used in the two films to challenge sanitized versions of history that overlook marginalized communities for the sake of a unified front. I believe the intertextuality present in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water functions to broaden a national story to global audiences, allowing them to connect the dots between popular culture and their own politics.

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