In the short film “The Water will carry us home” 2018 the stop motion is a retelling of stolen Africans who are thrown off a slave ship while going through the Middle passage. This is a story of how humans’ relationship with nature heals, a story of rebirth in the face of tragedy. The stop-motion animation starts with what sounds to be tribal singing, and shots of relics, historical cultural items placed about. These material items tell a history, one that is tangible. A feminine figure is introduced, she appears to be doing a spiritual ritual, and this is when we are first shown a recurring theme, the third eye (1:01). The third eye can be seen throughout the stop motion, a symbol of seeing beyond what is hidden. There is a shift from live action film to water color 2D art, despite it being two dimensional the story holds much depth. With the historical context of this stop-motion, the tragedies of the middle passage are well-hidden in our written histories. This third eye is symbolic, allowing us to see what has been often overlooked from the enslaved Africans’ point of view. At 1:35 there are multiple doors, these doors we can assume open to different experiences and stories that are often untold. The story of the discarded slaves is just one out of the many. 

The image of the boat shows us the many enslaved people in crowded conditions, mixing media with a newspaper excerpt saying how the ship is holding “250 fine healthy negroes 3:05.” The description of these African people frames them as commodities, cargo that only values them for their labor. This newspaper excerpt is used to also show the different sides and narratives that were being released. The women who were deemed unhealthy and unfit, usually pregnant women were thrown overboard. At 4:00 and 4:23, there is one mother in particular that is lying in fetal form, surrounded by the ocean, she seems like a fetus in the womb. This detail further humanizes the victims and is a reminder that mothers are the children of others, and they deserve the same love and empathy too. The mothers turn into majestical mermaid, with a third eye, they are reborn again in the ocean. The third eye represents a spiritual rebirth as they become intertwined with the sea (4:33). 

We then transition back to live action film, a woman pays her respects and mourns the lives lost out at sea. The sea holds their stories and histories and tells it in a way that transcends the human language.

The Law Concerning Mermaids — Kei Miller

There was once a law concerning mermaids. My friend thinks it a wondrous thing — that the British Empire was so thorough it had invented a law for everything. And in this law it was decreed: were any to be found in their usual spots, showing off like dolphins, sunbathing on rocks — they would no longer belong to themselves. And maybe this is the problem with empires: how they have forced us to live in a world lacking in mermaids — mermaids who understood that they simply were, and did not need permission to exist or to be beautiful. The law concerning mermaids only caused mermaids to pass a law concerning man: that they would never again cross our boundaries of sand; never again lift their torsos up from the surf; never again wave at sailors, salt dripping from their curls; would never again enter our dry and stifling world.

Miller crosses many threads in this short prose poem. Imperialism favors uniformity. In the first half of this poem, he sets up Mermaids as a symbol of the other among us; the human/nature which western colonial empires have sought to distance, separate, draw boundaries between, and ultimately, control, exploit. In the second half of the poem, he theorizes a form of resistance; if the surface of the sea has been drawn as a boundary between the man and the nonhuman world– mermaids can relinquish their terrestrial halves and escape the imperialist machine. The implications of this twenty first century poem about a (possibly fictional) centuries-old law are critical; now that human colonization and extraction has moved below the sea surface, instead of merely occurring on top of it, is there any place on earth where the “mermaid”– the other among us– can retreat to?

The 1842 article “The Mermaid” included in the Penguin Book of mermaids, responds to the sensation of P.T Barnum’s Feejee mermaid, along with accounts throughout history that have proven mermaids to be real through sightings and observations of mermaids. The descriptions of these sightings varied greatly, from 1187 to the present publication in 1842, specifically on descriptions of race and beauty. The article detailing the human treatment of mermaids, as well as perceptions of beauty inform how this era of imperialist expansion, colonization, and enslavement of Africans in the U.S viewed female and ethnic bodies, and justified their subjugation.

Two of the mermaids described are living freakshows, unlike Barnum’s Feejee mermaid mummy. In 1758 a black mermaid was “exhibited at the fair of ST. Germain” and is described as such: “It was female, with ugly negro features. The skin was harsh, the ears very large, and the back parts and the tail were covered with scales(p.243).” Besides this physical description, the mermaid was kept and fed in a tank where it swam with “seeming delight(p.243)” despite its being caged

The second live exhibition described took place in London 1775: “It was therefore an Asiastic mermaid. The description is as follows: –Its face is like that of a young female– its eyes a fine light blue– its nose small and handsome– its mouth small– its lips thin, and the edges of them round like that of the codfish–its teeth are small, regular and white–its chin well shaped, and its neck full (p.243)

The Mermaid editorial, points to a cultural shift in the mermaid’s symbolism in popular culture. This cultural shift occurs in the West as the United States becomes an imperialistic force in the global south, and conversations of slavery and the subjugation of Black people in the southern states come into focus in the years prior to the Civil War. 

The sheer difference in these two descriptions makes a stark comparison between the races of these two creatures. The attempt to comment on this growing fascination with the link between animals and humans, “also comments on the prevalence of racial pseudoscience, such as phrenology, being used to perpetuate racism as a norm in the scientific community. The 19th-century mermaid becomes a vehicle to explore and support the supposed logic in scientific racism and the growing eugenicist movement that will define the century to come. 

The machine is a transgression against nature in that humans have actively taken from nature to fulfill their self-interests. They have built houses, cities, sculptures, and modes of transportation that make use of what is available, but by doing so they have razed down trees and moved rocks around to make way for their creations. They chip away at rocks and minerals to replace the parts that are worn down. However, these transgressions are also what helps them study the environment (e.g. sea levels arising from climate change): Scientists use machines to study and predict events in the natural world; oceanographers use machines to study the ocean and its inhabitants; civilians use machines as a medium of communication; and yet all of the machines we use are worn down by nature over time, and maintenance requires taking from nature again to increase our machines’ lifespans.

But in a post-human world, without humans to maintain their creations, they will fall into disrepair, and nature will eventually reclaim these transgressions for herself. In her 6-minute short film Sirenomelia, Emilija Škarnulytė uses the post-human environment in and around a decommissioned NATO base to explore this paradox of maintenance. Humans are ultimately responsible for maintaining their creations—these transgressions against nature—that they use to study nature.

The Radio Dish

At the beginning of the film (0:15-1:00), the viewer is presented with a view of a snowy landscape through the perspective of a rotating radio dish with no humans in sight, accompanied with sounds of machinery. Despite the lack of humans, this machine remains functional, and it continues to rotate and gather data from its surroundings even when there is no one around to maintain it. Compared to the other manmade creations around the NATO base, this is the most intact piece of science equipment in the film, and it demonstrates the machines longevity in the absence of humans. And yet, it is designed to only perform the one task it was designed to perform: to gather data which is to be analyzed by the now-absent humans.

Although the radio dish is relatively maintained (it is still operational in case scientists wish to analyze the data it gathered), it is still subject to the forces of nature, and it probably will not be around for the next hundreds of years.

The Interior

At 2:15, Škarnulytė offers a glimpse into the interior of the long-abandoned base. The scene is in black and white, set underground in what looks like an unlit submarine pathway; a tunnel dug into the underside of a mountain, perhaps. As the main shot explores the deeper part of the tunnel, there is another scene overlayed on the top-left corner. This other shot is set in what is presumably an indoor pool, with a ceiling light shining through the watery surface and some stone walls to the left and right. Before the scene switches (2:47), a mermaid–the posthuman being–splashes into the water, distorting the room above beyond recognition.

The distortion of the room caused by the mermaid splashing can be seen as nature reclaiming abandoned creations by force, deteriorating their structural integrity to the point of unrecognizability. Voices can be heard, but they are not discernible; what once was a foundation used to house submarines and torpedo ships is now an echo of the past.

The Exterior

At 3:28-3:48, Škarnulytė presents a view of the base’s exterior. Set outside, it is much brighter than the view of the interior, but it is viewed from under the water’s surface, distorting it much like the overlayed shot inside the tunnel.

In this underwater shot, Škarnulytė juxtaposes the manmade with the natural. The manmade (the tunnel) takes up more of the screen than the natural (the mountain and trees), symbolizing how industrialization has taken precedence over the environment, building more while destroying more. The wall on the right is discolored, likely due to erosion from rainfall, and it is a display of nature chipping away at the exterior before moving onto the interior. To keep their creations standing, humans will have to maintain not just the interior, but the exteriors as well.

In the end, Sirenomelia is a film about maintenance, and how humans are responsible for maintaining the creations that were made from the resources they took from nature. Without the people to look after their creations, nature will be allowed to reclaim these transgressions for herself.

In The Ocean Reader: Theory, Culture, Politics, Eric Paul Roorda presents the ocean not as something that can be limited or fully understood by human sight, but as an independent and living entity. He criticizes how humans have always viewed the ocean through a human-centered and land-centered perspective, treating it only as a background for human life. Roorda points out that this bias comes from the fact that humans see themselves as the center of existence. By calling humanity a “terrestrial species,” he challenges that view and repositions both human beings and the ocean. As he writes, “This book aims to avoid that natural bias predominating among our terrestrial species and replace it with a steady focus on the Ocean and on events that take place offshore” (Roorda, p.1). Through this statement, he reminds readers that humans are not the entirety of the Earth but creatures who depend on a limited space called land.

This change in perspective also appears in Roorda’s language. He explains, “To capitalize Ocean is to challenge the conventional wisdom that the seas can be taken for granted” (Roorda, pp.3–4). The act of capitalizing the letter “O” becomes a symbolic gesture of resistance. The word “challenge” shows that this is not a simple stylistic choice but a conscious effort to question and overturn traditional thinking. By writing “Ocean” instead of “ocean,” Roorda transforms the sea from a natural object into a proper noun, a subject with its own identity and agency. The ocean, in his view, is not a romantic or divine figure but a historical and ecological force that shapes life on Earth. As he writes, it “has a history” (Roorda, p.1) and possesses its own ecosystem that moves and changes beyond human control.

Roorda also draws attention to how human language has limited the ocean’s meaning. He observes, “It has always been difficult for humans to think of the Ocean as a place” (Roorda, p.1). Here, the phrase “think of” reveals the human tendency to define the ocean only as an idea or a location within human knowledge. Humans have tried to map it, name it, and divide it into “the Seven Seas” (Roorda, p.1), reducing a vast and dynamic being into measurable space. Roorda sees this as a kind of linguistic violence. By confining the ocean to human concepts, people forget that it moves, circulates, and exists beyond human understanding. Therefore, capitalizing the word “Ocean” is not only a visual change but also an attempt to transform human perception. It is a linguistic strategy that aims to rebuild the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Through this shift, Roorda encourages readers to see the ocean not as a tool for human industry or tourism but as an independent being that creates its own history. He shows that the history of the Ocean and the history of humanity are deeply connected and interdependent. The Ocean has influenced migration, climate, and trade long before humans began to write their own history. Thus, the Ocean and humanity exist as equals, not as master and servant. The capitalized “Ocean” reminds us that the sea is not owned or defined by humans but coexists with them.

In this sense, Roorda’s decision to call humans a “terrestrial species” becomes even more meaningful. The phrase exposes the limited position of humankind. It suggests that humans are not the rulers of nature but one of many beings sharing this planet. Recognizing ourselves as terrestrial species forces us to step away from the illusion of superiority and toward a relationship based on coexistence. Humans must see themselves as part of nature, not above it.

In the end, Roorda’s “Ocean” becomes a symbol of linguistic and intellectual transformation. By changing one letter, he invites readers to rethink the way language shapes our view of the world. The capitalized Ocean is more than a geographic concept; it is an act of reimagining. It reminds us that naming is a form of power and that words can either limit or liberate how we understand the world around us. Roorda’s essay is not simply about the sea. It is about how humans can learn to see nature as an equal companion rather than a background or a resource. His “Ocean” is not only a body of water but a doorway to a new way of seeing, one that allows us to recognize the world as alive, interconnected, and beyond human control.