Shima
ISSN: 1834-6057
Mermaids, Media-lore and Maritime Mythologies Anthology
- Introduction: Mermaids, Mercultures and the Aquapelagic Imaginary 10.21463/shima.12.2.03
- “Are Mermaids Real?” Rhetorical Discourses and the Science of Merfolk
10.21463/shima.12.2.04
Mermaids, fiction, reality, discourse, metaphorThe question ‘are mermaids real’? would appear, on the surface, to be fairly straightforward to answer, at least for those more inclined to base belief on verifiable facts and scientific evidence of phenomena. As such, this question posed by the USA’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration appears to be rhetorical rather than designed to elicit an actual answer. But a deeper rhetorical analysis of the discursive boundaries that presumably exist between popular culture and scientific discourses reveals that the mermaid question is far more complicated. This article addresses and unpacks the discursive spaces of science, prediction, myth, popular culture, and metaphor and argues that the boundaries that are permeated by constructs of merfolk are far more porous then they may seem at first glance.
- The Reay Mermaids: In the Bay and in the Press
10.21463/shima.12.2.05
Britain, Scotland, Caithness, Mermaids, PressC. 1798 and then again in 1809 a mermaid was seen at Reay on the very northern coast of Scotland. These two mermaid sightings were both described in letters in 1809 and afterwards the letters were, without the authors’ permission, printed in an Oxfordshire newspaper. The story created a national sensation in late August 1809 and the Reay mermaids became perhaps the most famous mer-folk to emerge from 19th Century Britain. In this article, I look at how the Reay mermaids were treated by the press and how the case can help us to exploit other mermaid encounters in 19th Century newspapers.
- Melusine As Alchemical Siren In André Breton’s Arcane 17 (1945)
10.21463/shima.12.2.06
Surrealism; André Breton, Melusine, Tarot, Rocher Percé/Percé RockIn 1941 the founder of the Surrealist art movement, André Breton (1896–1966), fled from France to New York. Here he met the artist Elisa Bindhoff (1906–2000) who would become his third wife. In the summer of 1944 they stayed on the Gaspé Peninsula in northeast Canada and during their three months there Breton wrote Arcane 17, an extended prose poem named after the 17th card – The Star – in the tarot’s Major Arcana. The work combined the personal with the mythical and reflected upon themes of love, loss and war, pertinent for Breton, who, like his new wife, had recently experienced profound personal misfortune. The Star symbolised hope and renewal. By associating this card with the medieval figure of the faery-siren Mélusine, Breton found an image through which he could channel his thoughts about everything from alchemy and politics to the future of humanity. In this article I explore why a 14th Century legend re-emerged in the 20th and what it offered to a broken man in the midst of global war.
- Melusine Machine: The Metal Mermaids of Jung, Deleuze and Guattari
10.21463/shima.12.2.07
Jung, Deleuze, Guattari, mermaid, nixie, unconscious, technologyThis article takes the image of the feminine water spirit or mermaid as the focus of its philosophical contemplation, using her image as a map to traverse the thought- realms of Jung, Deleuze and Guattari. The feminine, watery symbol in this elaboration acts as the glue that enjoins the ideas of Jung with Deleuze and Guattari and reveals the imbrication of their ideas. Through their streams of thought, the mermaid is formulated as an emblem of technology, as a metaphor that makes reference to the unconscious and its technological involutions, her humanoid-fish form providing an image of thought or way of talking about the transformation of form, and the flitting, swimming valences at work in the unconscious.
- Ningyo Legends, Enshrined Islands And The Animation Of An Aquapelagic Assemblage Around Biwako
10.21463/shima.12.2.08
Ningyo, ningyo no miira, Biwako, aquapelagic assemblage, sanctuary islandBiwako is the largest lake in Japan. Its waters, islands and shores have a rich mythology due, in substantial part, to their close proximity to the ancient cities of Kyoto and Nara. This article focuses on two interlinked aspects of the region’s aquatic legends. The first concerns the presence of ningyo (folkloric fish-bodied and human headed creatures credited with human-like intelligence) around the eastern part of the lake and their interaction with human communities. In several accounts, the ningyo were caught and killed by local villagers and a number of temples have subsequently claimed to hold the mummified bodies of these creatures. Nihonshoki, an imperial chronicle from the 1720s CE, tells of a ningyo that appeared as an omen of the death of a prince and folklore relates that the same prince enshrined a mummified ningyo in a local temple before his demise. In this manner, the prince, the legendary ningyo, the preserved ningyo, local villagers and the region’s enshrining religious institutions are intertwined within the aquatic system of Biwako. Secondly, the lake is known for centuries-old sanctuary islands on which Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines have been built. These contain sacred statues and talismans and indicate the manner in which the entire domain of individual islands is an object of worship. The (supposedly preserved) ningyo artefacts of shoreline and inland temples and the enshrined islands manifest and animate the overall aquapelagic assembly of the region. I use the word “animate” to express the manner in which local ningyo legends and sacred island spaces are experienced as “real”. The preserved ningyo artefacts and islands are animated in the spatial-conceptual context of the lake as the materiality of its water generates a whole territory of mythical and contemporary landscapes.
- When The Nereid Became Mermaid: Arnold Böcklin’s Paradigm Shift
10.21463/shima.12.2.09
Mermaid, Nereid, Triton, Böcklin, Olympian, RockArnold Böcklin’s untraditional depiction of the Nereid as mermaid merges two strands that classical representations of the sea creature endeavoured to keep separate and that Roman iconography yielded to the Nereid as idealised, anthropomorphic representative of the Olympian order in the treacherous realm that is the monster-breeding sea, and the erotically charged object of male attention. His intention, in his own words, was to fuse figure with setting and atmosphere, such that the Nereid was no longer simply a figure occupying the pictorial space, but embodied in her sensual shape and expression the drawing power of the sea, as well as the vertiginous suggestion of its abysmal depths. Böcklin concludes that the Nereid’s fusion with her environment leads logically to her being conceived as a mermaid, with fishtail. The sea is now no longer, as was the case in ancient iconography, a medium where the Nereid takes gentle rides on the back of always contrasting sea creatures, without ever seeming to merge with, or be affected psychologically by, their disturbing otherness, their difference from her.
- Desiring The Shore: Adolphe Lalyre and the Sirens of Carteret
10.21463/shima.12.2.10
Adolphe Lalyre, Sirens/Sirènes, Normandy, CarteretAdolphe Lalyre was a high-profile French painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who has now largely fallen into obscurity. Seemingly unmoved by the series of movements in Modern Art that came to prominence during his lifetime – including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism – he persisted with a style of painting derived from Symbolism, initially favouring religious themes before moving on to a series of works representing (human-form) sirens during an extended residency at Carteret, on the coast of Normandy. The French term sirène refers to both human-form female water spirits and fish-tailed ones of the type usually referred to in English as mermaids. This article explores the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of Lalyre’s sirène paintings and discusses the pleasures and temptations they offered the viewer at an historical moment when Modernism, and Modernity more generally, was in its ascendancy. Our analysis examines Lalyre’s work within the specifically local context of Carteret and, more broadly, with late 19th and early 20th Century France, focusing on the importance of the artist and visual representations in the process of place-making and especially with regard to shifts in the meaning of sea and shore, along with the rise of the tourism industry.
- Submerging A Fantasy: J.W. Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs
10.21463/shima.12.2.11
Mythology, Victorian Art, Sexuality, Curation, Reception Studies, BritainResponses to and readings of nude paintings are influenced by contemporary debates on sexual power dynamics. The temporary removal of J.W Waterhouse’s ‘Hylas and the Nymphs’ from display in Manchester Gallery in January 2018 was criticised by commentators and visitors, and framed by the curators of the event as an experiment in re- evaluating the Gallery’s collections in light of current discussions on gender and sexual exploitation. This article will examine the significance of selecting ‘Hylas and the Nymphs’ for removal, providing context of the Greek myth the painting depicts and its reception in Victorian Britain, and review the relevance of water nymph iconography and the themes of submergence in water nymph narratives in regard to curation.
- Research Note: Lion-Ships, Sirens And Illuminated Cartography: Deploying heraldic and folkloric figures in critique of Brexit
10.21463/shima.12.2.12
Lion-ship, Siren, Mermaid, Heraldry, Brexit, Cinque PortsThis short research note provides an introduction to the lion-ship symbol of England’s Cinque Ports (comprising the head, forelegs and upper torso of a lion and the middle and rear section of a 13th Century turreted wooden warship) and an artist’s statement concerning my deployment of it alongside the more established figure of the (mermaid- form) siren in a recent artwork entitled ‘Brexit Wrexit’ that reflects my feelings about the United Kingdom’s 2017 vote to leave the European Union. These figures are juxtaposed over a freely rendered map of Western Europe, providing a form of illuminated cartography. Discussion of the overall work, of details from it and their inspiration point to the manner in which long-established heraldic motifs and cultural figures contain embedded meanings that can be activated in fresh contexts to illuminate current socio-political developments.
- Syrenka Tattoos: Personal Interpretations of Warsaw’s Symbol
10.21463/shima.12.2.13
Mermaid, Syrenka, Warsaw, tattoos, semioticsThe Mermaid of Warsaw — known in Polish as the Syrenka — is the principal feature of the city’s coat of arms. In recent years it has also become popular with residents as a tattoo design that has civic, community and individual significance. This article analyses a selection of Syrenka-inspired tattoos inscribed on the bodies of city residents. Although approximately 90% of the images addressed conform to the classic model of the Syrenka, with regards to the position of the figure’s sword and shield, in most other aspects the tattoos differ significantly from the one featured the coat of arms, referencing other images of the Syrenka scattered throughout the city. As such, these tattoos represent more than simple homages to the city’s emblem; they evidence a sentimental bond with the community of Warsaw and express the tattooed individuals’ commitments to and attitudes toward their metropolitan locale.
- Enchanted Selves: Transgender Children’s Persistent use of Mermaid Imagery in Self-Portraiture
10.21463/shima.12.2.14
Mermaids, Gender, Children’s Media, Transgender Children, Childhood, Girl CultureIn recent years, there has been a surge of popular interest in the lives and experiences of transgender and gender diverse people. However, this interest has been disproportionately focused on adults and teens, on biomedical framing and persistent binarism, without paying attention to young transgender and gender diverse children’s engagement with culture, media and meaning. This article presents data from an ongoing arts-based ethnographic study of young transgender and gender-diverse children (ages 3-10) in the United States. In this study, feminine-identified transgender children repeatedly drew themselves as mermaids in self-portraits and highlighted the importance of other mermaid- related play throughout their drawings and narratives. Even very young transgirls insisted that their drawings of mermaids represented the joy of being able to be their true selves, affirmations of femininity and nascent trans pride. This article begins with a brief discussion of mermaids in Western culture and media, followed by a more in-depth focus on the applicability of the mermaid as metaphor for understanding young transgirl experience, representation and feminine credentialing.
- “I’d Like To Be Under The Sea”: Modelling gender in Clara F Guernsey’s The Merman and the Figure-Head
10.21463/shima.12.2.15
Mermaids, mermen, American literature, utopias, Clara F GuernseyThe focus of Clara F Guernsey’s short novel The Merman and the Figure-head: A Christmas Story is a merman who mistakes a ship’s figurehead for a nymph. Alongside this, in sharp and humorous parallel, runs the story of the merchant who commissioned the figurehead, which is based on a local woman whom he admires and then marries. Guernsey specifically refers to a tradition of writings about the mer-world, including Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Den lille Havfrue’ (‘The Little Mermaid’), The Arabian Nights, and Moby Dick. Funny and light-hearted, the story uses the idea of an alternative underwater world to raise questions about human love and values, and challenges 19th Century assumptions about gender and behaviour. When one old mer-professor indignantly challenges the argument that human beings are undeveloped mermen, to staunchly argue that humans are, in fact, undeveloped walruses, Guernsey wittily employs “the world under the water” to satirise its above-water counterpart. Mer-culture enables a critique of human culture.
- “A Phallus Out Of Water”: The construction of mer-masculinity in modern day illustrations
10.21463/shima.12.2.16
Mermen, Mermaids, Masculinity, Male Pin-ups, Male bodies, Gay gaze, Female gaze, Medialore, Folklore, Gender, Gender studies, Queer theory, Cultural studies.The article addresses the representation of the male equivalent of the mermaid – the merman – in contemporary western illustrations found on the Internet. The article relies on a theoretical framework of gender studies, queer theory, masculinity studies and previous studies of the mermaid including those informed by psychoanalysis and folkloric studies. The merman is examined with regard aspects of gender, sexuality, masculinity and the intertextual relation to mermaid mythology, folklore and research. The article concludes that contemporary illustrations of the merman perform a marginalised masculinity due to archetypally feminising components, such as sexual availability, exposing of erotic body parts, exoticisation and excessive beauty. The illustrations are mainly made to please a male homosexual gaze, although this is not always the case. Due to his marginalised position the merman does not oppose hegemonic conceptions of the binary gender system or the beauty ideals for the western man where whiteness, muscularity and youth are prioritised. The article counters earlier phallocentric explanations of the merman’s marginalisation and points to other feminising components, like the sensual round form of the fishtail and the merman’s close relation to nature.
- I’s The Merb’y: Masculinity, Mermen and Contemporary Newfoundland
10.21463/shima.12.2.17
Mermen, merb’ys, mermaids, masculinity, Newfoundland, aquapelagoIn late 2017 initial, low-key publicity for a charity calendar featuring a range of bearded Newfoundlanders posing as mermen resulted in international media coverage that discussed and commended the non-stereotypical images produced for the project. This article situates the calendar’s imagery within the history of regional folklore concerning mermen and mermaids, the socio-cultural character of the island of Newfoundland and, in particular, the milieu of its port capital, St. John’s. Through these perspectives, the article analyses aspects of masculinity present in an island society that has experienced significant transitions in recent decades in relation to the decline of its fishery, the increasing work- related mobility of former fisherpeople, increasing ethnic diversity and immigration, and the breaking down of once strongly held attitudes of Newfoundland as being isolated, homogenous and tradition-based. In terms of Island Studies discourse, this has involved the island’s transition from being a relatively autonomous aquapelagic assemblage to an increasingly post-aquapelagic one firmly incorporated within a nation-state. Long viewed as a quintessential “folk setting”, Newfoundland is in a state of change that includes the gradual modification of regional stereotypes of masculinity. The revised images and roles presented in the calendar can be seen to represent new, more fluid definitions of masculinity appropriate for an increasingly more cosmopolitan — yet proudly unique — island society.
- Mermaiding As A Form Of Marine Devotion: A case study of a mermaid school in Boracay, Philippines
10.21463/shima.12.2.18
Mertourism, human-aquatic relationships, mermaids, coastal and marine tourism, Boracay, PhilippinesMermaiding, the practice of wearing a mermaid tail and/or costume, and often swimming in costume, began in the mid-20th Century and has since grown into a global phenomenon. Despite its increasing popularity, there appears to be no research exploring mermaiding as a tourism activity. Consequently, this is the first study exploring the motivations and experiences of mermaid tourists, employing a case study approach at a mermaid school on the island of Boracay in the Philippines. Semi-structured interviews with one male and eight females, including an instructor/owner, revealed three major themes – fantasy, coastal and marine environment and the marine “other” – with a further overlapping of three core subthemes – power, beauty and hedonism. These subthemes helped explain the motivations to partake in such activities, which included being a waterperson, mythology, novelty and marine conservation. Despite a range of nationalities among the respondents (Brazil, Germany, New Zealand, United States, Philippines and Sweden), it is suggested that more extensive research on mermaiding be undertaken, especially at various locations around the globe.
- Research Note: Thinking With Mermaids Here & Now
10.21463/shima.12.2.19
Mermaid, early modern, epistemology studies, representationThis research note offers a reflection on my 2015 monograph, Mermaids and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern England, and examines how the mermaid allows us to explore aspects of literature and culture in Renaissance England that might feel unfamiliar to a 21st Century audience. It then places the concepts employed in the book alongside the work of 21st Century scholars and artists who engage with the mermaid, and other watery creatures, in a variety of contexts in order to offer afterthoughts on how the mermaid continues to be a useful figure to think with here and now.
- Ningen: The generation of media-lore concerning a giant, sub-Antarctic, aquatic humanoid and its relation to Japanese whaling activity
10.21463/shima.14.1.10
ningen, media-lore, aquapelagic imaginary, Japanese whalingThe ningen, a giant, sub-Antarctic aquatic humanoid, is a mythical creature created by Japanese Internet users in the mid-2000s. Since its inception it has crossed over into international Internet contexts and has been embellished and inflected in various ways. As such it forms an element within modern media-lore, joining a host of pre-constituted mythic/folkloric creatures and more modern inventions. One of the most notable aspects of ningen media-lore is that the creature was conceived as an inhabitant of sub-Antarctic waters, which have not traditionally been perceived to be rich in crypto-zoological entities. Within this location it has been closely associated with Japan’s Southern Ocean whaling fleet and can, in this regard, be understood as a manifestation of a modern aquapelagic imaginary. The article identifies that the original location of the ningen’s story is not merely incidental to its circulation and elaboration but is, rather, a key element of its emergence as a Japanese figure and a continuing aspect of its significance in a broader, international arena.
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Mermaid Iconography and Early Modern Anglo-American Maritime Culture
10.21463/shima.113
Sailors, Anglo-American, maritime culture, mermaid, iconography, tavern, shipThis article builds upon recent research on early modern Anglo-American maritime culture to demonstrate how mariners used shared mermaid iconography (such as spaces, symbolism, objects, superstitions, and songs) to cultivate an ‘imagined community’ that linked their lives at sea to that on land, and vice versa. Ships and taverns were key to such efforts, as these public spheres – themselves branded by mermaid iconography – served as well-recognised nodes of maritime identity-ways. Ultimately, early modern Anglo-American sailors claimed mermaid iconography as critical symbols of maritime culture that transcended space and time, thereby helping diverse constituents of global empires to create connections wherever they travelled.
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“The Waters Were Made for Her”: River Mumma beliefs in 19th and 20th century Jamaican ethnographic accounts
10.21463/shima.141
river mumma, Jamaica, Africa, ethnography, water spiritsDuring her fieldwork in Jamaica in the 1920s, the American anthropologist Martha Warren Beckwith was told by an interviewee that he had seen a river mumma sitting by a pool near St Ann’s Bay, combing her long hair. The river mumma, a form of duppy or spirit, was said to inhabit ponds, lakes and rivers. Not only was she believed to be guardian of such bodies of water, but she was also accredited with the ability to cause and end droughts, bestow the power to heal and to wreak revenge. In this article I examine the folklore and spiritual beliefs surrounding the river mumma in 19th and 20th Century Jamaica and look at where her origins may lie. There is a particular emphasis on material from the late post-emancipation era as this was a time of an awakening interest in Jamaican folk cultures and a number of influential ethnographic accounts, such as Thomas Bainbury’s Jamaica Superstitions (1894) and Martha Warren Beckwith’s Black Roadways (1929), were published.
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Tales from the Congo River: Catching Mami Wata
10.21463/shima.125
Mami Wata, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rumour, Visual culture, digital technologyDigital culture produces new dislocations, proximities and anxieties. Central here is “meme” culture, whose fluid movement morphs in transmission, drawing on older cultural symbols to create a feedback loop. One folkloric aquatic figure from the African continent and its diasporas, known as Mami Wata, exemplifies this memetic force that is carried over into the digital realm. Mami Wata is dualistic: human and water creature, beautiful and terrifying, pre-colonial and modern. She is fluid, not bound by traditionally grounded mobilities, and her origins are mysterious. Further, she thrives through time and place via rumour and her message and meaning are in constant flux. She is also a symbol of temptation, which carries with it anxiety. Mami Wata is said to haunt the banks of the mighty Congo River and its tributaries, waiting for new victims, thus serving as a cautionary tale, warning people of these potential fluvial supernatural encounters. As we will see, in the face of digitalisation and globalisation, contemporary memes and viral videos of Mami Wata give us a screen to view our own anxious projections. And yet she also reveals the possibility of encounter: an other who shows us another way. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) beginning in 2012, what emerges are parallels between Mami Wata and virality, and how they represent both an attitude and an ambiance in Kinshasa. What is more, we find that Mami Wata shows us a structure by which rumours, memes and in-group culture endure through time, not despite, but thanks to their mysterious origins and fluid meanings.
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Crossing Merfolk Narratives of the Sacred: Nalo Hopkinson’s The New Moon’s Arms and Gabrielle Tesfaye’s The Water Will Carry Us Home
10.21463/shima.137
mermaids, water spirits, Mami Wata, Yemaya, Black Atlantic, Middle Passage, Nalo Hopkinson, Gabrielle Tesfaye, African diasporic religions, spirituality, collageThis article defines what I call the ‘crossing merfolk’ narrative, the idea that African people who jumped or were cast overboard during the Middle Passage became water-dwelling beings. While critical attention has been increasing for 1990s’ electronic music duo Drexciya, whose sonic fiction contains the most well-known example of this narrative, this is actually a recurring tradition in Black oral and artistic culture that can be traced to West and Central African religions. I focus particularly on what I call ‘crossing merfolk narratives of the sacred’, M. Jacqui Alexander’s term for African diasporic religious traditions anchored in West and Central African cosmologies. Analysing the role of the sacred in two crossing merfolk narratives, Nalo Hopkinson’s 2007 novel The New Moon’s Arms and Gabrielle Tesfaye’s short film The Water Will Carry Us Home (2018), I argue that these texts expand the Black Atlantic imaginary and transform mermaid lore. I develop the term ‘diasporic collage’ to describe the ways in which Hopkinson and Tesfaye reference and combine water spirits and ritual practices from multiple African diasporic traditions into narratives that intersect mermaids and the Middle Passage.
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From Sailor Traps to Tourist Traps: Mermaid-Themed Tourism Destinations in the United States of America
10.21463/shima.144
mermaid, tourism, 19th Century, 20th Century, natural world, drinking establishments, United States of AmericaBeginning in the mid-19th Century, American boosters, business owners, and city planners fostered various mermaid-themed/named destinations. In doing so, these men and women contributed to the modern American tourism complex, which relied upon Americans’ efforts to commodify the natural world for market purposes and, in turn, distinguish their locales among a burgeoning network of tourist destinations. This article details 19th Century attempts to mermaid brand particular locations and, subsequently, the development of mermaid themed tourist attractions in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
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“A Thing of Dreams and Desires, a Siren, a Whisper, and a Seduction”: Mermaids and the seashore in H. G. Wells’s The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine
10.21463/shima.142
H. G. Wells, mermaids, folklore, sea-bathing, seashore, clothesThe Sea Lady (1901) is one of the more neglected early novels of H. G. Wells, particularly compared to his more famous scientific romances. Both a social satire and a mediation on the limits of human imagination, Wells’s only mermaid story has drawn surprisingly little attention as a mermaid story. The novel is highly intertextual with legends, written tales, and artwork about mermaids in the 19th Century, which, I argue, Wells deploys in pursuit of the narrative’s interests in gender politics, the critique of social conventions, and philosophical reflection on the possibility of reaching for greater knowledge. Traditional associations of mermaid figures with sexual and ontological transgression and with liminal zones of the sea and the seashore are used to invite reflection on late Victorian social practices around sea-bathing and clothing, as the mythological mermaid’s incursion into the real everyday world exposes its profound vulnerability to radical alternative ways of thinking and being.
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Research Note:
“Distinct Characters of Their Own”: Mermaids in late 19th-mid 20th Century Australian children’s fiction
10.21463/shima.133
Australian mermaids, J M Whitfield, G W Lambert, Harriet Stephens, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Pixie O’HarrisWhile mermaids have been found all around the world, their literary and cultural representations are traditionally associated with Europe. Recently attention has been paid to the particular resonance of mer-folk narratives in specifically Australian contexts. Hayward, Floyd, Snell, Organ and Callaway have drawn attention to examples of mer-worlds that directly intersect with and comment on Australian environments. Beginning in the late 19th Century, predominantly women writers relocate mermen and mermaids to explore relationships between land and sea, city and bush that have local resonance for young readers. These stories are often accompanied by rich illustrations designed to appeal to young imaginations. This note comments on three writers whose work relates mer-cultures to Australia: J.M Whitfield, Pixie O’Harris and Harriet Stephens, along with their illustrators, G.W Lambert, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite and O’Harris herself.
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Mermaid Allusions and Star Promotion in the Greek Video-Film Gorgona (1987)
10.21463/shima.143
Gorgona, mermaids, Greek 1980s’ video production, Eleni FiliniThis article examines the first Greek film to give a central role to the concept of the mermaid: Georges Skalenakis’ 1987 direct-to-video feature Gorgona (‘Mermaid’). Although actually concerning an all-human female, Gorgona attaches to her many traits of both the internationally common half-fish/half-woman creature (known in Greek as γοργόνα/gorgona) and the mermaid sister (also known as γοργόνα) in the legend of Alexander the Great. The article identifies the video-film’s allusions to these fishtailed figures and argues that the film produced an updated mermaid image that responded to other national and foreign audiovisual conceptions of the mermaid of the 1980s and enriched the star persona of its female lead, Eleni Filini, with a mythic quality and national symbolism.
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Mermaids and Corporate Branding: Histories, meanings and impacts
10.21463/shima.127
Brands, brand imagery, brand logos, corporate brands, cruises, mermaids, merpeople, StarbucksCompanies invest considerable resources into establishing meaningful and impactful brand identities, through which they build essential relationships with consumers. Several well-known consumer brands use mermaids as part of their brand identity. Perhaps no use of mermaids in branding is more ubiquitous than siren emblazoned on every Starbucks coffee cup. But Starbucks is not alone; other consumer brands, such as Chicken of the Sea, Virgin Voyages Cruise Line, and BonV!v Spiked Seltzer, incorporate mermaids as part of their brand architecture. Using the case method, this study will examine, brand by brand, the history, meaning, and impact of mermaids on particular brand identities and, thus, on the consumer relationships. This study considers the brand strategies of using mermaids and reflects on if and why these strategies have worked for the brands included in this study.
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Research Note: Melusine as Emblem of Truth: Philosophical tentacles, themes and approaches explored in the audiovisual essay The Mystery of Melusine
10.21463/shima.126
Melusine, truth, Heidegger, magicThis article introduces the philosophical underpinnings, themes and approaches explored in the audiovisual essay The Mystery of Melusine (2021). Its footage consists of a dramatic performance in which I am enacting the contents of a philosophical poem authored by myself as the titular character. The narrative of the film essay explores the nature of truth and espouses an ontology of magic through a re-interpretation of the myth of Melusine. In European folklore, Melusine is the reclusive and mysterious wife who agrees to marry upon the condition that she is granted her privacy every Saturday. On Saturdays, she spends her solitude secretly bathing her fish tail until one day her husband peeps through the keyhole of her bathing chamber. She learns he has broken his promise to not impede her privacy, and so she evanesces. In my film essay, Melusine is a metaphor for the secretiveness and elusiveness of truth, and the way life unfurls itself in secretive and clandestine ways. The notion of truth as elusive and secretive derives its inspiration from the philosopher Martin Heidegger, and this film essay can be considered a mythic interpretation of some of his ideas. In addition to a mythic interpretation of truth, the film essay provides a narrative for the way life meets itself through otherness and recounts the journey of personal transformation in which the querent must reconcile to truth; this is elaborated as a process of self-seeing and self-recognition that takes place through the alien other.
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A Mythological Nudist Lost in Swedish Suburbia: A study of the Nix’s masculinity and media-loric function in the manga series Oblivion High
10.21463/shima.134
nix, Norse mythology, folklore, masculinity, the female gazeThis article explores the visual representation and function of the folkloric Scandinavian nix in the manga series Oblivion High (2012–2014) published by the manga studio Ms Mandu. The aim of the research is to investigate how a well-known folkloric image develops and to consider the nix’s portrayal of masculinity. The article is a critical cultural study based on feminist and queer perspectives on visual culture and folklore studies. The article concludes that the nix in Oblivion High must update his desirability through spectacular clothing and change of musical instrument to meet the contemporary Western heteronormative masculinity ideals. His weakness to the metal iron ties into the nix’s association to fairies and the construction of the nix’s underwater realm is connected to Norse mythology with the appearance of Aino from the Finish national epos Kalevala, Nornorna and hints of the Norse god Odin. Furthermore, the androgynous art style of shōjo manga (a sub-genre aimed at female teenage readers) creates a heterosexual female gaze pattern, while the imagery of a bishōnen (beautiful boy) connects the character Nix to the literary trope of the ‘pretty boy,’ leaving hegemonic masculinity unchallenged.
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Mermaids, Mere-Maids and No Maids: Mermaid place names and folklore in Britain
10.21463/shima.129
Britain, fairies, folklore, mermaids, place namesFifty mermaid place names relating to landscape features have been identified in Britain (including the Isle of Man). The names are attested from the 16th to the 21st Century: some are extremely well documented, while others have only passing written references. Taken together these names allow us to distinguish different folklore traditions in different parts of the island. For instance, there is a freshwater ‘mere-maid’ in eastern England; and a more familiar marine mermaid attested in the southwest of England. There are also – just as interestingly – large areas of Britain for which no mermaid place names are recorded. The article concludes with a reflection on the ‘Archetypal Modern Mermaid’ (AMM) that dominated in British culture by the 1800s.
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Mermaid Toponyms in the West Indies: Traditional and non-traditional names
10.21463/shima.135
Caribbean, Folklore, Mermaids, Place names, West IndiesThe study brings together fourteen landscape place names with the element ‘mermaid’ from the West Indies. The locations range from a coastal cave in Bermuda, in the north, to an inland pool in Trinidad, in the south. Some of these names are linked to regional folklore; some are arguably confected names invented, for instance, to encourage tourism. The author asks what markers can help us distinguish between folklore and confected names and ends with a list of other mermaid place names in Africa, the Pacific and America that might have their origins in indigenous or colonial era folklore.
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Above and Below: The distribution of mermaid, siren and sirène place names across Canada and the creation of related tourist attractions
10.21463/shima.114
mermaid, sirène, place names, Canada, destination brandingEuropean colonists applied terms from their language cultures to various geographical features in territories they explored, occupied and/or settled in. In Canada this resulted in a number of locations being named after mermaids, the French equivalent, sirènes, or the related term sirens. This article provides a survey of these Canadian place names, including discussions of those few whose name origins are known. It also profiles two sites where the manufacture and installation of mermaid statues has resulted in mermaid-themed location naming and related tourism promotion. Discussion of the two examples leads to consideration of the promotional value of mermaid names, associations and visual branding.
- Research Note: Few and Far Between: The distribution of mermaid, siren and sirena place names across the United States of America 10.21463/shima.138
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Shipped Ashore: The origins and deployment of mermaid place names in Australia and related visual representations
10.21463/shima.115
Mermaid, place name, AustraliaSince European and, specifically, Anglo-Irish colonisation in the late 1700s, a number of Australian locations have been given the name ‘mermaid.’ This article examines the principal derivations of these place names – including those relating to the voyages of the HMC Mermaid around Australia’s coastline in the early 1800s – and some of the manners in which these names have been represented in signage, place branding, commercial applications and/or public discourse. In providing this critical survey, the article examines the inscription of a traditional European folkloric entity (and modern media representations of it) into Australian public culture and, in some instances, the related impact of these on destination branding.
- Commentary: Mermaid-As-Device: Toponymy, Language and Linguistics 10.21463/shima.145
- Posidaeja and Mami Wata: The online afterlives of two mermaid goddesses
10.21463/shima.175
mermaids, mermaid goddesses, Posideaja, Mami Wata, fanfiction, feminism, ecofeminism, oceanic mythologiesThis article examines two examples of fanfiction on oceanic mythologies: ‘Another day, another offering’ by sweetbydesign (2021), about Posideaja, and ‘Mami Wata’ by lucien_cramp (2021). Through both stories, age-old archetypes of mermaid goddesses are harnessed for the environmental agenda. In their fannish rewritings, the authors inverse many Romantic mermaid tropes to empower the mermaid and to confirm the connection between the mermaid and oceanic awareness. Moreover, in their latest remediations, Posideaja’s and Mami Wata’s bodies go against widespread standards for physical beauty and for fitness (i.e. functionality, such as being fit for labour). As such, these two updated mermaids open up a wide range of possibilities for identification and inspiration for their creators as well as their audiences. With their new representations of Posideaja and Mami Wata, the authors thus address two interconnected problems: the oppression of women (in terms of beauty and fitness norms) and the environmental damage done to the oceans (in terms of the acidification of oceans, increases in ocean temperatures and rising sea-levels).
- Merlerium: Mermaids, mythology, desire and madness in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019)
10.21463/shima.111
The Lighthouse, mermaids, mermaid genitalia, maritime mythologyRobert Eggers’ 2019 film The Lighthouse provides an idiosyncratic representation of the mermaid as a Jungian anima in a film that revolves around the homoerotic tension between two lighthouse keepers on a remote, windswept island. While the mermaid theme is essentially a minor aspect of the film, juxtaposed with other mythological motifs, it is significant for the intensity of passions it catalyses in one of the film’s two male leads. Analysing the film, its script and statements of directorial intent, this article first discusses aspects of the interaction of the masculine characters and their relation to mythic figures, before going on to discuss the role and design of the mermaid, and of the sex scene she appears in. Additional consideration is given to the role of music and sound design in building nuance and thematic intensity within the film.
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Mermaids and Related Figures in Jersey and Channel Islands’ Folklore
10.21463/shima.194
Jersey, Guernsey, mermaids, mermen, sirensDrawing on the author’s sustained research on Jersey over the last forty years, this article surveys Channel Islands' folklore concerning mermaids and related figures. In particular it examines the absence of interactions between Channel Islands’ mermaids and landsmen and the possibility of residual traces of mermaid folklore in local tales and legends. In light of this, the sources of Jersey folktales, legends and superstitions are reviewed, with the likely impact of the nature of these sources on the authenticity of surviving material and any likely loss of folktales before they could be recorded, that might explain this absence. The effects on the Islands’ indigenous languages (Norman-French dialects) of immigration from the United Kingdom and the introduction of English over the course of the 19th century is also considered. A brief review is made of the religious disdain in Jersey towards superstitions, which nevertheless persisted. The rise of vernacular literature from the mid-19th century provided a medium for recording some traditions, that by then were already starting to fade away. The focus here is on Jersey, with reference to examples from Guernsey, in support.
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An Androgynous Alliance: Evelyn De Morgan and ‘The Little Mermaid’
10.21463/shima.188
Mermaid, Evelyn De Morgan, Hans Christian Andersen, androgynyEvelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) was a second wave Pre-Raphaelite artist, best known for her large-scale paintings of female figures. In this article, I conduct a detailed study of her androgynous mermaid triptych based upon Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1837), taking into account the artist’s biographical influences, as well as the cultural significance of the story itself. The three oil paintings, namely ‘The Little Sea Maid’ (1886), ‘The Sea Maidens’ (1888) and ‘Daughters of The Mist’ (1914), depict three different scenes in the tale, from the mermaid’s transition into human form, to her sisters’ plea for her to return to sea, to her eventual death and absorption into a purgatory-like state. I argue that these three paintings act both as a vehicle through which to support the ongoing fight for women’s rights, and as a symbol for De Morgan’s concept of theistic evolution. These two motives have been identified separately in the limited scholarship on these works, but the possibility that both exist simultaneously is as yet unexplored.
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Melusine and the Starbucks’ Siren: Art, Mermaids, and the Tangled Origins of a Coffee Chain Logo
10.21463/shima.190
Melusine, mermaid, siren, heraldryMelusine, the snake- or fish-tailed heroine of a medieval legend, has been labelled in modern sources as the mermaid in the Starbucks’ coffee chain logo and has become a generic name for two-tailed mermaids. However, it is unclear how the traditionally one-tailed Melusine became linked to this image. Tracing the source of the Starbucks’ logo leads to an obscure end, but similar double-tailed mermaids abound in art and heraldry. Melusine entered heraldry as the mythical ancestress of a few families, and in 19th century works on heraldry, the names mermaid, siren, and Melusine are used interchangeably for mermaids with one or two tails. This article seeks to demonstrate that Melusine’s name became specifically tied to the two-tailed mermaid only after Sabine Baring-Gould’s 1866 study of the legend, which used one such picture as an illustration. Subsequent authors began identifying this illustration as Melusine and labelling similar images accordingly. This shows how visual representation affects the transmission and public perception of myths.
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Fear of a Black Mermaid
10.21463/shima.193
The Little Mermaid, racial stereotypes, popular culture, black mermaid, DisneyNoveliss’s track ‘Fear of a Black Mermaid’ was released on his Vagabond EP in November 2022, responding to a social media furore about the casting of Black performer Halle Bailey as the lead in Disney’s live action remake of its 1989 film The Little Mermaid. A self-produced music video for the song was also released in January 2023. The lyrics, music track and music video are reproduced in Shima as significant contributions to debates around racism, racial stereotypes and popular culture triggered by the film.
The following articles published in Coolabah n27 (2019), a themed issue on Folklore, Media-Lore & Modernity also contribute to debates around mermaids, mer-cultures and the aquapelagic imaginary:
- Reworking the postmodern understanding of reality through fantasy in M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water (2006) and Neil Jordan’s Ondine (2009)
10.1344/co20192720-30
Postmodern psyche, Reality, Fantasy, Storytelling, Meaning-making, Metafiction, UnconsciousIn the two feature films Lady in the Water (2006) and Ondine (2009), M. Night Shyamalan and Neil Jordan, respectively, present us with two grounded-in-reality fairy tales whose two male protagonists come in close contact with two mythical water creatures – encounters that positively reshape their perspective on reality through the use of fantasy. Shyamalan relates the story of an emotionally wrecked middle-aged man who rescues a ‘narf’ (a water nymph in an unoriginated ancient bedtime story) from the pool of the dreary building he is superintending, while Jordan follows the ordeal of a struggling Irish fisherman who accidentally fishes a ‘selkie’ (a Celtic seal-like water creature that has the power to assume full human form on land by shedding its seal skin). The two films negotiate the problematic connection between the fantastic and the real, and question the postmodern concept of representations masking an absence of solid reality as proposed by Jean Baudrillard. The paper focuses on tracing the ontological and linguistic role of fantasy in relation to reality and delineates how acts of storytelling and representation can refashion the human psyche’s perception of reality in a postmodern world by analysing the narrative and psychological means by which this relation is constructed in Shyamalan’s and Jordan’s films. The main argument of the paper is to explore how employing metafictional narrative techniques and reworking the psyche’s ties to fantasy can offer the postmodern individual a more enabling understanding of themselves and their reality.
- Sung by an Indigenous Siren: Epic and Epistemology in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria
10.1344/co20192752-71
Alexis Wright, Indigenous Australian literature, generic innovation, mermaids, Indigenous sovereigntyOne of Australia’s most distinguished Indigenous authors, Alexis Wright, stages the fleeting presence of a popular character of Northern European folklore, the mermaid, in an awarded novel of epic proportions. The mermaid is not a haphazard appearance in this Antipodean narrative, but one of the multiple, cross-cultural ways in which Carpentaria, first published in 2006, invites the reader to reflect upon the ongoing tensions between the disenfranchised Indigenous minority and the empowered non-Indigenous mainstream, and their serious lack of communication due to the antagonistic character of their respective universes, one rooted in a capitalist paradigm of ruthless economic exploitation and the other in a holistic, environmentalist one of country. This essay addresses how Carpentaria, by writing across Indigenous and European genres and epistemologies, makes a call for the deconstruction of colonial discourse, for an invigorating Indigenous inscription into country, and for intellectual sovereignty as the condition sine-qua-non for the Indigenous community to move forward.
- Under the Mermaid Flag: Achzivland and the performance of micronationality on ancestral Palestinian land
10.1344/co20192772-89
Achzivland, Micronationality, Palestine, Israel, Mermaids, Peter PanThis article considers the relationship between symbolism, interpretation and grounded reality with regard to “Achzivland,” a small area on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean that was declared an independent micronation in 1972. The article commences by identifying the principal geo-political and military factors that created the terrain for the enactment of fantasy utopianism, namely the forced removal of the area’s Palestinian population in 1948 and the nature of Israeli occupation and management of the region since. Following this, the article shifts to address related symbolic/allusive elements, including the manner in which a flag featuring a mermaid has served as the symbol for a quasi-national territory whose founder — Eli Avivi — has been compared to the fictional character Peter Pan, and his fiefdom to J.M. Barrie’s fictional “Never Never Land”. Consideration of the interconnection of these (forceful and figurative) elements allows the discourse and rhetoric of Achzivland’s micronationality to be contextualised in terms of more concrete political struggles in the region.
- King Neptune, the Mermaids, and the Cruise Tourists: The Line-crossing Ceremony in Modern Passenger Shipping
10.1344/co20192790-105
Cruise industry, line-crossing ceremony, mermaids, passenger shipping, commodificationThe line-crossing ceremony is an ancient maritime tradition that marked the transition from inexperienced sailor to experienced sailor. This ceremony has been co-opted by the cruise industry for the purposes of portrayal and commercialisation of the heritage of passenger shipping for consumption by cruise tourists. This paper discusses this process of adoption and commodification of the traditional crossing the line ceremony by the modern cruise industry. While the cruise ship version bears some similarities to the traditional ceremony, it differs in purpose, the brutality of the original version is lessened, and the gender onboard cruise ships permits a difference in the makeup of participants (including the portrayal of mermaids) and a reduction in the need for transvestite performances. It exists for two reasons: for the amusement and diversion of passengers, and in an attempt to buttress the historical portrayal of cruise ship as part of a naval tradition. Data is drawn from interviews with cruise ship workers and published accounts of the ceremony by cruise tourists.
- Through an Ale Glass, Palely: Mermen, Neptune/Poseidon and Tritons as motifs in beer brands and product labels
10.1344/co201927106-135
Mermen, Neptune, beer, hybridity, folklore, product labellingWhile the merman has been a minor figure in modern popular culture — in marked contrast to his gender counterpart, the mermaid — the figure has begun to enjoy a resurgence in several cultural niches in recent decades. One of the most notable of these has occurred with regard to the branding and marketing of types of beer and, in particularly, with the burgeoning ‘craft beer’ movement that has taken off in North America, Europe and Australasia (in particular) since the early 2000s. After an introduction to the merman in popular culture, this article analyses the use of mermen and related fish-tailed mythological males in brewery names and symbols, on beer bottle labels and in related marketing material. The article considers the product image created by such symbolism and the manner in which it might be modifying the role and perception of the merman and related figures in contemporary popular culture. It furthermore aims to illustrate ways that contemporary abstract, naïve, camp and kitsch depictions of mermen are embraced by breweries to situate themselves as culturally engaged, environmentally oriented, or anti-establishment agitators.
- Aquatic Heterosexual Love and Wondrous Cliché Stereotypes: Amphibian Masculinity, the Beast Bridegroom Motif and ‘the Other’ in The Shape of Water
10.21463/shima.10.2.05
The Shape of Water (film), Masculinity, Media StudiesThis paper addresses the representation of masculinities in the award-winning romantic fantasy film The Shape of Water (2017). The study examines how The Shape of Water communicates with other texts and myths portraying aquatic entities such as Gill Man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and how the movie is tied to the folkloric tradition of monstrous love interest. Further, the text investigates how otherness is portrayed and constructed through the different representations in the movie. The paper concludes that the film’s diverse characters create a superficial appearance of an understanding for marginalised subjects. The Shape of Water is a classic beast bridegroom fairy tale with stagnated representations of feminine and masculine ideals that turn ‘the other’ into an instrument of self-realisation for a white subject. Moreover, the Amphibian Man is differentiated from his aquatic female counterparts through traditional masculine attributes such as a muscular body type, a reptilian appearance and being two-legged instead of having a fishtail.
The following articles published in other journals also contribute to development of the concept of the mercultures and the aquapelagic imaginary:
- The Cyborg Mermaid (or: How Technè Can Help the Misfits Fit In)
10.3390/mti1010004
mermaid, cyborg, more-than-human, practice theory, autism, BDSM, hug machine, peggingIn feminist studies, the figure of the mermaid has long been regarded as flawed, disabled and less-than-human. Her theoretical counterpart in that respect would be the cyborg, an image used to show that with the aid of robotics, humankind could be larger than life. What would happen if we could combine those two images and apply them to create “super love” more-than-human relationships? This article explores the possibilities of technology for “mermaids”, people who normally fall outside the norm, to satisfy human desires in a new way. Two case studies will be presented, first we will look at people who identify as having ASD (Autism Spectre Disorders) and second we explore the use of technology for people who have BDSM-oriented desires (related to Bondage and Discipline (B&D), Dominance and Submission (D&S), and Sadism and Masochism (S&M)). We briefly discuss the added value of practice theory for exploring how people are altered by technè.
- “The Foresight to Become a Mermaid”: Folkloric cyborg women in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s short stories
10.24162/EI2017-7580
Cyborg Feminism, Diffraction, Shape-Shifting, Fairies, Mermaids, Female Sexuality, MaternityÉilís Ní Dhuibhne is both a folklorist and a feminist, who “took an interest in rewriting or re-inventing women's history, a history which had been largely unwritten” (Ní Dhuibhne, “Negotiating” 73). Folklore stories and motifs abound in her writing. Elke D’hoker argues that Ní Dhuibhne reimagines and rewrites folktales to “reflect and interpret the social values and attitudes of a postmodern society” (D’hoker 137). The repurposing of folklore allows Ní Dhuibhne to interrogate some of the complex and controversial ways that Irish society has attempted to represent and control women, entrenching taboos about female behaviours and sexualities. Using Donna Haraway’s cyborg feminism and Karen Barad’s deployment of Haraway’s theory of diffraction, this article focuses on issues of voice and orality, and the female body in “The Mermaid Legend”, “Midwife to the Fairies”, and “Holiday in the Land of Murdered Dreams”, to argue that Ní Dhuibhne’s repurposing of folklore is a radically feminist undertaking. All three short stories, which feature female protagonists, reveal diverse, transgressive, sexual mothers and maidens whose symbolic connections with folklore allow them to challenge the restrictive constructions of women in Irish society, creating spaces to explore alternative, heterogeneous, feminist re-conceptions of identity and belonging.
- Bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to… consume? The construction of postfeminist femininity in Disney’s The Little Mermaid
10.1177/1350506818767709
Disney, heteronormativity, postfeminism, queer, The Little MermaidThis study assesses how Disney’s The Little Mermaid can be read as a ‘postfeminist text’. It uses Gill’s concept of ‘postfeminist sensibility’ and McRobbie’s understanding of postfeminism as a ‘double entanglement’ of feminist and antifeminist discourses in analysing the text. Furthermore it aims at contributing to the understanding of postfeminism as a pop cultural discursive mode by focusing on the ways heteronormativity structures and presupposes it. In this sense, this reading of The Little Mermaid can be understood as a case study on the heteronormativity of postfeminist discourses and representations.
- How Do You Know a Mermaid When You See One? How Do You See a Mermaid When You Know One? A Photo Essay
10.1353/tj.2019.0080
In twenty-first-century Westernized culture, mer-creatures are currently understood to take a specific form: a human (usually female) upper body that becomes scaly from the hips downward, lacking legs or feet and culminating in a double-fluked tail. Prior to the Enlightenment, this was not the case: mer-creatures in illustrations and sculpture could be dual-tailed or, very often, take entirely human form, yet still be understood to represent the water spirits of seas, lakes, rivers, or wells. As the extraordinarily rich graphic collections of the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung (TWS) of the Universität zu Köln demonstrate, the nineteenth-century theatre was crucial in reconciling the varied forms into one, particularly through two operas common in the Germanic repertoire: Albert Lorzing's Undide (1845) and Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold (composed 1853; first produced 1869). Unlike painting, sculpture, and literature, the theatre not only asserts the existence of mers in relation to the human world, but must depict them (through bodies, voices, and movements) via human performers. Whereas Lorzing did this through a non-tailed water spirit, Wagner envisioned tailed mermaids.
- Elaborating the Aquapelagic Imaginary: Catalina Island, Tourism and Mermaid Iconography
10.21463/jmic.2019.08.2.07
Catalina Island, aquapelagic imaginary, tourism, mermaidsThis article revisits and updates a discussion of the cultural function and prominence of the mermaid in 20th and 21st century Catalina Island (California) that originally appeared in the journal Contemporary Legend in 2013. Drawing on recent critical-theoretical work on the concept of the aquapelago and of the aquapelagic imaginary, I examine the manner in which the deployment of mermaid imagery on Catalina island is related to the location’s orientation to coastal and marine tourism. In particular, I examine the interplay between the conscious deployment of iconography and broader patterns of social use, examining the manner in which the local aquapelagic imaginary has been developed as a cultural asset in the island’s destination branding and more general representation of place.
- Mer-Hagography: The Erasure, Return and Resonance of Splash’s Older Mermaid
10.18778/2083-2931.11.10
mermaids, merhags, sea-hags, hag-ography, SplashThe 1984 feature film Splash initially included a scene featuring an embittered, older mermaid (referred to as the “Merhag” or “Sea-Hag” by the production team) that was deleted before the final version premiered. Since that excision, the older mermaid and the scene she appeared in have been recreated by fans and the mer/sea-hag has come to comprise a minor element in contemporary online culture. The term “Merhag,” in particular, has also spread beyond the film, being taken up in fantasy fiction and being used—allusively and often pejoratively—to describe notional and actual female characters. Drawing on Mary Daly’s 1978 exploration of supressed female experiences and perspectives, this essay first examines Splash and associated texts with regard to the general figure of the hag in western culture (and with regard to negative, ageist perceptions of the ageing female), before discussing the use of “Merhag” and “Sea-Hag” as allusive pejoratives and the manner in which their negative connotations have been countered.
- Merlerium: Mermaids, mythology, desire and madness in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019)
10.21463/shima.111
The Lighthouse, mermaids, mermaid genitalia, maritime mythologyRobert Eggers’ 2019 film The Lighthouse provides an idiosyncratic representation of the mermaid as a Jungian anima in a film that revolves around the homoerotic tension between two lighthouse keepers on a remote, windswept island. While the mermaid theme is essentially a minor aspect of the film, juxtaposed with other mythological motifs, it is significant for the intensity of passions it catalyses in one of the film’s two male leads. Analysing the film, its script and statements of directorial intent, this article first discusses aspects of the interaction of the masculine characters and their relation to mythic figures, before going on to discuss the role and design of the mermaid, and of the sex scene she appears in. Additional consideration is given to the role of music and sound design in building nuance and thematic intensity within the film.
- Boat Spirits, Sea Monsters and Seal Women: Fishermen and hidden aquatic dangers in the Faroe Islands
10.21463/shima.162
Aquatic mythology, water dwellers, islands, in-between-ness, the shovellerThis article discusses aquatic mythologies of the Faroes with focus on the narratives about the shoveller (also called ‘the man on board’), a boat spirit nesting in deep-sea fishing ships. The aim of the article is to examine and interrogate cultural representations of the relation between sea and land in the Faroes today by means of critical reflection on and analysis of the meaning of water-related mythology and folklore: what is the role of the stories and legends about the shoveller and other supernatural beings in present-day conversation about the sea, the islands, and the future? The shoveller, the seal woman, and the others on the ‘other side’ are protagonists of the polyvalent narratives shaping the folklore of the Faroes. They continue to reappear in new settings and among new generations. The spirits, water monsters, and seal women help people envisage what lies beneath the surface, the ocean, and the evident aquapelagic landscape. The shoveller is also a metaphor for the risk and danger in life beyond the fishing vessel today — he is a figure fooling, entertaining, frightening and confusing the islander in the age of globalisation, but also a kobold instructing and guiding the precarious islander in everyday struggle at home and away.
- Posidaeja and Mami Wata: The online afterlives of two mermaid goddesses
10.21463/shima.175
mermaids, mermaid goddesses, Posideaja, Mami Wata, fanfiction, feminism, ecofeminism, oceanic mythologiesThis article examines two examples of fanfiction on oceanic mythologies: ‘Another day, another offering’ by sweetbydesign (2021), about Posideaja, and ‘Mami Wata’ by lucien_cramp (2021). Through both stories, age-old archetypes of mermaid goddesses are harnessed for the environmental agenda. In their fannish rewritings, the authors inverse many Romantic mermaid tropes to empower the mermaid and to confirm the connection between the mermaid and oceanic awareness. Moreover, in their latest remediations, Posideaja’s and Mami Wata’s bodies go against widespread standards for physical beauty and for fitness (i.e. functionality, such as being fit for labour). As such, these two updated mermaids open up a wide range of possibilities for identification and inspiration for their creators as well as their audiences. With their new representations of Posideaja and Mami Wata, the authors thus address two interconnected problems: the oppression of women (in terms of beauty and fitness norms) and the environmental damage done to the oceans (in terms of the acidification of oceans, increases in ocean temperatures and rising sea-levels).