The most stand out part of Sirenomelia is the abrupt shift of visual about half-way through. While it begins on this beautiful scene of ice, although melting at the result of global warming and various human contributed factors, there’s a sudden shift once the siren, who I presumed to be Sirenomelia, appears.

The total juxtaposition of scenery really emphasizes how humanity seems to overtake everything, and the same point that has been discussed ad nauseam in class: humanity craves to be completely separate and disconnected from that around us. The arctic’s peacefulness is truly emphasized because we watch it, completely silent and still, for so long. No dialogue, no human intervention, the entire scenery truly forces humanity to recognize how abundant the environment is. Because of its distance, of its unintentional border from most human life, recognition of the arctic seems to fall out of realm of understanding. It’s known that it’s icy, that it faces extreme disaster with the recent climate crises, but beyond that, many people, especially those who don’t actually seem to care about the climate, cannot truly conceptualize any issues.

It’s almost for this reason that Sirenomelia doesn’t really appear in complete view until the shift has occurred, and feels representative of this human border drawn between the natural and the mortal. The siren, this creature that humans aim to completely separate of our experience despite being half human, cannot even be associated with anything too natural. It’s as if the human part of her will never be allowed to reach this level of absoluteness of nature, nor can she ever be entirely immersed in the capitalistic, terrestrial so she lies in this murky in between that we consider “other”. The dirty water that lies beneath bridges, that comes between random buildings and concrete fixtures far enough from society that we forget about them too.

Truly, Sirenomelia feels like yet another representation of how we desire to absolve ourselves from the idea of nature, how human behavior should be an entirely separate class because we desire wholeness when it comes to us. Time and time again, it is our selfish nature to be this top predator, to be the principle that everything must be compared to for definition, that drives this wedge between what should be apart of us, and what we are absolutely a part of.