In Agnieska Smoczynska’s The Lure, the mermaid Silver’s human male love interest Mietek’s refusal to touch her mermaid tail depicts a theme in mermaid lore of men’s desire for women being dependent on the control patriarchy exerts over women, rejecting power and strength in feminine bodies. His sexual rejection forces Silver to choose between keeping her power or his love, making her conform to a human dynamic of patriarchy where he will have power over her, leaving her to be entirely dependent on his affection for survival.
The Lure is a modern mermaid story, taking place in 1980s Poland but filmed in the mid 2010s. It operates in a similar vison of the myths and rules of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. One exception being that mermaids can change back and forth between their mermaid form into a terrestrial form, which includes legs but not genitalia. This changes the position of the mermaids in The Lure as mermaids have more freedom and strength on land. Elements of Anderson’s tale that remain are gaining human legs and genitalia makes a mermaid lose their voice. Additionally, if the human they love falls in love with someone else the mermaid will turn to sea foam. While some of these elements are considered a superstition by some characters, it does demonstrate that on land there are threats to mermaids’ power.
The scene of Mietek’s rejection begins with Silver transforming from her sexually restricted terrestrial form to her mermaid form in the bathtub while Mietek watches. Silver makes her sexual desires for him known with a direct statement. As he observes her, his expression changes from tantalization to uneasiness. While she does this in preparation for a sexual encounter, Mietek is confronted with truth of her form that reveals her strength and power, which makes him scared and sexually uninterested.
This is stated in his response to Silver’s sexual advances as he says to her “don’t to be angry, but to me you’ll always be a fish, an animal. I can’t do this, as much as I’d like to,” (33:59). While his declaration of her inadequacy for him is the devastating emotional statement, he begins his rejection with admitting to his fear of her physical power. He tells her to not be angry because he understands her anger could be an actual physical threat to him. Her mermaid otherness is a threat to the terrestrial experience he has been part of where human women are smaller and typically are not as physically strong as Silver.
It is important to note that this includes Silver in her terrestrial form, she is shorter and more petite than Mietek. It contradicts the experiences he has had with her on land to see her in her mermaid form, revealing how powerful she always is but conceals to participate in terrestrial activities.
Silver understands their contrasting power dynamic bothers him, that his sexual desire is dependent on him not feeling weaker. To soothe his mindset, she offers him a piece of her power in the form of one of her scales. It is a painful action even for her strong body, she shows the pain in her expression and in the blood that is left behind. She promises him power and talent in his music playing with this scale, which he is eager to accept but before he takes it she asks from him a kiss in trade. With the scale almost in his grasp he carefully maneuvers around touching her tail to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek, before accepting this gift. Like the pain she showed in removing the scale, her disappointment in this offer of power to him is expressed.
He avoids her tail in this scene, not out of physical respect but in an act of supporting his comment that she is not human enough for sexual interest to him. In Silver’s terrestrial form he also avoids any touching below the waist before her surgery, even in physically intimate moments. This causes sexual and emotional frustration for Silver because he participates in a physical relationship with her but reminds her of the inadequacies he sees in her.
In contrast to this relationship’s dynamic there is an additional sexual scene between Silver’s sister Golden with a woman. Unlike Mietek’s avoidance of Silver’s tail, Golden and her female lover invite the presence of Golden’s tail in their sexual experience with each other. With the sexual anatomy of mermaids only being accessible when they are in their mermaid form, Golden does not have the same frustrations as Silver and is not motivated to cobble her power or identity.
The behavior from Mietek of keeping Silver at a distance and lacking in value to him, he resets the power dynamic between them. She is now in the weaker position within their relationship because he does not consider her to be an equal to him. This mirrors the relationship of the Little Mermaid and the prince in The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid was a semi-immortal member of royalty, and the prince made her sleep on a pillow outside his door (Penguin, 124). In the situation Mietek frames for her, in ordered to be loved by this human, she must be a human which means up giving not only her power but her identity.
Silver begins planning to have her fin replaced with a lower half of a human, which she is warned will make her lose her voice and make the terrestrial world her permanent home. The influence of the terrestrial patriarchal system inclines her to be compliant to the will of her love interest. Her experience on land has made her doubt her own power as she has been met with exploitation and violence, but not directly from Mietek. He has been supportive and has enjoyed the profits of her power in song and in his music. Even so, he only appreciates her power when it benefits him. After her surgery with her voice and powers muted, he loses interest in her when she cannot provide these benefits for him and is now repulsed by her in this powerless form.
With his rejection Silver’s life is now entirely in the power of Mietek. She relinquished her power, voice, and strength to contort and conform to his desires. But his desire was never for her, it was always for the power she had that he did not which he pursued. Now he can dispose of her in a way that he never could when she was a mermaid. He has truly achieved the power he always wanted, to not be scared of a feminine body that wanted and loved him.
Works Cited
Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid”. The Penguin Book of Mermaids, Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. The Penguin Book of Mermaids. Penguin Books, 2019.
The Lure. Directed by Agnieska Smoczynska, Janus Films, 2015.