Of all the nightmare-inducing creatures that have come from Guillermo del Toro’s head, Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth is easily the one you’d least want to come across. The flabby creature with eye-hands has an appetite for children. And according to GdT, we’re currently living in “Pale Man times.”
In a tweet, he explained that the monster “represents all institutional evil feeding on the helpless. It’s not accidental that he is a) Pale b) a Man. He’s thriving now.”
Through GdT doesn’t call out President Donald Trump by name (this time), he’s made it abundantly clear in the past few weeks that he’s concerned with what’s currently taking shape in US politics. His timeline is currently flooded with almost entirely political tweets, mainly criticizing the Trump Administration. Yet, there will still some who believed his jab came at the expense of all white men. So GdT once again tweeted to offer some clarification:
It’s not the first time del Toro’s spoken about Pale Man’s origins. In 2006, he told Screen Anarchy that “The Pale man represents the Church for me, y’know? [He] represents fascism and the Church eating the children when they have a perversely abundant banquet in front of them. There is almost a hunger to eat innocence. A hunger to eat purity.” Yep, sounds familiar.