Oscars 2018: ‘Obtuse’ Piers Morgan slammed after mocking The Shape of Water
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan was shut down on Twitter after mocking The Shape of Water’s Oscar win.
At the 90th Academy Awards, Director Guillermo del Toro’s film The Shape of Water took home the Oscar for Best Picture.
The Shape of Water, a film about a mute woman and her aquatic humanoid beau, beat fan favourites Get Out and Call Me By Your Name.
Set in the 1960s, the fantasy drama shows the story of Elisa and the fish-like creature she saves as well as her relationship with her next-door neighbour Giles, a gay man who also narrates the film.
(Photo: Fox Searchlight / Youtube)
Del Toro’s film was the most nominated film of the night and has received widespread critical acclaim.
However, not everyone was a fan of the Academy’s decision to give it Best Picture.
Piers Morgan, a television presenter known for his on-air rants about transgender and non-binary people, hit out at the award-winning film, somehow dragging the #MeToo movement into it.
(Photo: @PiersMorgan/Twitter)
“So in the year of #MeToo and #TimesUp, Hollywood awards Best Picture to a movie about a woman having sex with a fish,” he wrote in a tweet early Monday morning.
As well as massively simplifying the point of The Shape of Water, many people objected to Morgan’s use of the #MeToo and Times Up movements.
Both of the movements are about ending sexual harassment and providing support for those who have been abused within Hollywood, which has no relation to The Shape of Water.
Related: The 9 worst things Piers Morgan has said about actual people
One fan of the film took Morgan down with a tweet, calling the presenter ‘obtuse.’
(Photo @Nerdygal33 / Twitter)
The fan wrote: “How obtuse can you be? The movie was about finding love and acceptance and standing up for your beliefs.
“It was a perfect end and well deserved and if you don’t understand that then your time’s up.”
Other people on Twitter pointed out the lack of consistency in his argument, with one person ironically calling Morgan ‘a fish out of water’.
(Photo: @KVA_17 /Twitter)
The Shape of Water is one of the few Oscar-nominated films to explicitly include an LGBT character.
Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, is gay and is one of the main characters in The Shape of Water.
Characters who were explicitly LGBT in the source material are frequently ‘made straight’ for films, as recently seen with Black Panther.
Richard Jenkins as Giles (Photo: Fox Searchlight / Youtube)
Even though Call Me By Your Name did not win Best Picture, the gay love drama won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, making James Ivory the oldest Oscar winner in history.
A Fantastic Woman, a film about a trans woman’s struggle after her partner dies, made history by winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.
