The Monstrous Other and the Biblical Narrative of Ruth

Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) restages the biblical narrative of Ruth in Cold War America, crystallizing the parallel through setting numerous scenes at a local cinema that is playing The Story of Ruth (1960). The book of Ruth tells the tale of how a non-Israelite outsider could be welcomed into the kingdom of God and ultimately into the lineage of Christ. Likewise, del Toro populates his tale with multiple outsiders—multiple ‘Ruths’—including a mute woman, an African American cleaner, a Russian Communist, and an elderly homosexual male. However, these are merely reflections of the ultimate outsider, Del Toro’s ‘Monster’. A new and anthropomorphic species of fish has been caught by the government, and these four outsiders must bind together in order to return him to the sea. During this process, the mute Elisa and the Monster make love, transgressing multiple sexual norms of the age and symbolizing true unity with ‘the other’ (all while being equally as ribald as Ruth at the foot of Boaz’ bed). This ‘otherness’ is contrasted throughout by the main antagonist, Strickland, who quotes bible verses about power in order to justify his own abusive behaviour, suggesting that the central ideological tension in the narrative is between a theology of power and a theology of liberation. The film then ends with the villain dying, while the mute Elisa is resurrected and given the promise of “happily ever after,” paralleling the coming of Christ from the line of Ruth and suggesting that the only way into the kingdom of heaven is through embracing ‘the other’. This parallel is likely intentional, for del Toro similarly ended Pan’s Labyrinth (2007) with the protagonist resurrecting to heaven. Thus, del Toro—himself a Mexican immigrant—has used film and theology to craft a modern version of Ruth that transgresses multiple boundaries in a way similar to the ancient version. Further, in making his modern Ruth into a sea-monster, he not only hints at ethnic, normative and cultural liberation for humans, but the embracing of a trans-human liberation that could include animals and possibly even the future rights of AI.

The Mediating Role of Media Internalization in Body Scrutinization and Body Image Dissatisfaction in Thai Homosexual Male Youth

The debilitating impact of body image dissatisfaction has been well-documented, leading to attempts to propose ways to alleviate the dissatisfaction. These proposals are drawn primarily from findings from studies on female youth. The current study extends this work, and contributes to an emerging initiative to attempt to reduce body image dissatisfaction in homosexual male youth. Past empirical findings have identified these adolescents to be particularly prone to body image dissatisfaction. With the formal operational stage of cognitive development, adolescents are particularly self-conscious and scrutinize their body image more critically, leading to body image dissatisfaction. The aim of the current study was to identify a potential protective factor that might help reduce the impact of body scrutinization in Thai homosexual male adolescents. These participants were selected due to the relative lack of published research on body image in Asian homosexual males. Additionally, despite its orientation toward the collectivistic fulfillment of social roles and obligations, Thai culture is quite accepting of sexual minorities. Homosexual male body image ideals are portrayed in the media with relatively high frequency. For this reason, internalization of media influence was selected as a potential mediator of the relationship between body scrutinization and body image dissatisfaction. Data were collected from 114 Thai homosexual male youths who responded to online questionnaires measuring body scrutinization, media internalization, and body image dissatisfaction. As hypothesized, findings demonstrated that body scrutinization significantly predicted both body image dissatisfaction and media internalization. Media internalization significantly but partially mediated the relationship between body scrutinization and body image dissatisfaction. Implications were discussed in terms of the preventative and therapeutic potentials for reducing media influence on body image dissatisfaction when the scrutinization was engaged.

Severe Human Intestinal Spirochetosis: An Unusual Cause of Diffuse Colonic Ulcerations in a Patient Living with HIV

We describe a case of a homosexual male with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and CD4 count of 246 presenting with acute severe bloody diarrhea. Infectious work up was negative, and colonoscopy revealed severe diffuse colonic ulcerations. Histopathologic analysis and Treponemal pallidum immunostaining confirmed the diagnosis of intestinal spirochetosis. There was no evidence of co-infection with other pathogens. His symptoms completely resolved after a 14-day course of metronidazole. This case is notable as colonic ulceration of any severity in patients living with HIV is rarely identified with intestinal spirochetosis. Hence, it should be considered in the differential diagnosis of colonic ulcerations.

The Homosexual Male Gaze: Normalizing Homosexuality through the Use of Heteronormative Narrative Techniques in Film

An examination of the use of Mulvey’s “male gaze” by a homosexual character in the 2017 adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. Explores the potential of the use of this heteronormative narrative technique in the normalization of homosexuality in film and society.

Southern Gothic and the Queer Male Body

The homosexual male body as a threatening transmitter of social and libidinal disquiet is addressed by Thomas Long in relation to writing of the American South. He argues that argues that in the post-1945 period, and particularly prior to the Stonewall riots of 1969, the gay male body has increasingly replaced the black body in Southern culture as the abject Other, drawing down on it homophobic violence as a consequence. Working with Eve Sedgwick’s premise that, as a genre, the gothic codifies a form of ‘homophobic thematics’, Long considers how the specific religious, geographical and political intensities of Southern culture are grafted onto that base. The tensions between normative moralities and reactive deviancies that characterise the gothic tradition are heightened by the historical fact of slavery in the American South, which creates a tradition of scapegoating the black body as symbolic of social fears. Underlying that, and more evident in the integrationist period of Civil Rights protest, is a deeply confused struggle between homosocial and homosexual relations. In a range of texts that straddle Stonewall, Long detects a quarrel between what he calls a ‘blazoning’ attitude towards self-expression and the repressive demonisation of the queer body through homophobic discourse.