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Week 3: Mermaids and Views on Love

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A passage that caught my eye in the introduction of The Penguin Book of Mermaids was “These [mermaid] tales speak to the discrepancy between men’s longing for a woman unfettered by social mores and their attempt to control her by domesticating her” (xvii). This sentence is an illumination on how in folklore, mermaids stories often reflect the patriarchal desire to fold unruly femininity back in the bounds of the control of men.

I find Bacchilega’s word choice rather intriguing as “domesticating” suggests the taming of a wild creature, stripping it away from what makes it free in favor for instilling more desirable traits. Even the attraction to a “woman unfettered” is more about the alluring fantasy that ultimately ends in the mermaids containment. It goes to show the discrepancy that the very freedom that men desire is not one they would allow to persist.

Later in the introduction, the author then goes on to state how “when the wife is instead an ‘animal bride’…the marriage fails because her domestication as a human wife and mother does not succeed in eradicating…her desire to be in her own skin and element” (xix). This passage exemplifies the limits of patriarchal control and how suppression cannot erase identity.

With these two passages, it shows how mermaid tales are a reflection of men’s fear and fascination of women’s autonomy. This reading makes clear that these tales are a mirror of the patriarchal urge to domesticate these “free women”, however yet, they also portray the enduring spirit of these women in not fully erasing their identity

Week 3: Hybrid Uncanney Valley

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It is almost like Cristina Bacchilega and Maria Alohalani Brown read my mind from last week. In their Introduction chapter of The Penguin Book of Mermaids, Bacchilega and Alohalani Brown write, “There is something deeply unsettling about a being whose form merges with the non-human. Whether they dwell in fresh or salt water, aquatic humanoids raise questions about what it is to be human and what lies beyond a human-centered world. Physically, they are both like and unlike us” (xi). This is something I touched on last week in my blog post, focusing on how Scribner observes the human interest in hybridity. Here, in Bacchilega and Alohalani Brown’s introduction, they agree with Scribner’s astute observation on hybridity, putting more of an emphasis on how, not only are we interested in the mermaid’s hybridity, but we are astonished, and, in a deeper sense, somewhat unsettled because of this merging with the familiar and unfamiliar.

Bacchilega and Alohalani Brown go on to say, “We humans do not deal well with betwixt and between—liminality makes us anxious. We prefer our world organized into well-ordered and sharply defined categories, and we prefer to be in charge of it. Nonetheless, we are strangely drawn to the other, who is in part a mirror image of us and appears within reach, even if mentally ungraspable” (xi). While, yes, the hybridity of the mermaid—and other mythological creatures, for that matter—does make us uneasy most of the time, it is the peculiarity and similarity that draw us to the mermaid.

Humans have, and likely always will be, drawn to mermaids. Whether it is their similarity or difference to us, there is something so alluring about their mix with something we know of (separately, a human and a fish). But together, we still get this uncanney-valley-like feeling when we think about mermaids. They are like us from the waist-up, but from the waist-down, they are something completely different. We like to be in control, according to Bacchilega and Alohalani Brown, but also, we are “drawn to the other” (xi). This fascination will never die, as long as we crave something otherworldly and unlike our natural world.

Week 3 Reading Reflection

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My main takeaway is from pg.xiii from The Penguin Book of Mermaids and how René Magritte painted a mermaid with the upper body of a fish and lower body of an exposed human woman’s legs. Forewarning, I do go off on a small tangent about something that my mind couldn’t stop thinking of later on.. So here we go! 

I searched up the image and golly, it doesn’t seem right. But, that’s because we’ve been fed this whole other image that encapsulates beauty. Meanwhile, this art piece seems abnormal and uncomfortable to look at. Naming it “The Collective Invention” is diabolical, because of how surreal this image looks.It feels sarcastic as like the artist is giving a wake up call for the public to question their own acceptance of mermaids as a common concept in society. Maybe, from a physical characteristic standpoint of why mermaids were accepted other than men are perverted and strongly dislike women. Is that all the mermaids I’ve seen so far have a human face.. familiarity feels safe enough to have some guard down and have clouded judgement on what is considered normal. Just as how Christianity adopted some pagan beliefs to attract / convert pagan followers. Hence, having a bigger following is to gain more power over people and the environment. 

Another theory I have as to why mermaids are portrayed as women from their waist upwards other than already having a merman existing,and human nature with the attraction to female anatomy. Why, for the most part, do mermaids have a woman’s torso and long luscious locks? Encapsulating the breast and hair is widely significant because that is a part of the mermaid’s identity according to society. This question puts me back to how the Christian churches went out of their way to disintegrate femininity but didn’t want to ruin the image of Mother Mary. Is it because she brought comfort and is the mother of Jesus Christ? Is she a hidden reason to have mermaids be shaped the way they are? Why were we told sirens have an enchanted voice? Surely, their voice isn’t the only feature that held the attention of humans? Is it because women bring a sense of comfort to men? Of course, I don’t have the answer but this concept just rattles my brain because disregarding the sexual urges from men regarding mermaids/merepeople and male merepeople already existing .. Why else are mermaids shaped the way they are? Someone tell me why!?! 

Anyways, if you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you for your time! <3

A Mermaids Body is the Blame for Male Insecurity

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The part of this week’s reading that interested me the most was a part of the section titled “Their Bodies, Our Anxieties,” which essentially covers how, throughout history, humans have always been “deeply unsettled” by mermaids and the liminality between humans and mermaids, which is what creates that anxiety. The book makes a great point about how humans’ anxieties about mermaids originate from our attraction to them. As I continued to read, we approached the issue of gender within the merefolk community. In early modern British culture, “a woman who oversteps the boundaries…[is] defined as monstrous” (xiii). It is ironic because then we see how in Odysseus’ interactions with the Sirens, he is considered a manly man who is heroic and strong for not falling prey to them. These stories that we will read about the merefolk will definitely bring up our expectations about gender within their community.

What I found to be the most bizarre is the interpretation of a mermaid’s tail when deciphering whether they were “available” or not. If they are “represented as having a single fishtail marking them as having some control of their bodies,” and “having two tails, perhaps suggesting sexual availability,” (xiii). Again, absolutely insane. The idea that something as arbitrary as the number of tails could be a coded message about a woman’s chastity or their sexual “openness” shows how much these myths and stories were shaped by patriarchal anxieties. People projected their fears and desires onto mermaids and ultimately reduced their bodies into a code to be deciphered and enjoyed by male viewers. Mermaids could have been represented as a symbolic or purely fantasical form, and they’re not; it’s very disturbing to realize that creatures as fascinating as they are were not exempt from being sexualized and categorized based on their supposed virtue. In a modern analysis of the situation of one or two tails is almost as demeaning as being asked, “How many bodies do you have?” That is quite literally what was being asked of mermaids..

The reading this week shows how different storytelling has continuously reinforced these cultural norms about gender and sexuality, it was normalizing the surveillance of women’s bodies and their behaviors through the most fantastical imagery; their literal tails. By placing such messages in myths and stories, societies have been hiding misogyny under the guise of such entertainment in storytelling.

Week 3: The human obsession with mermaids, the unknown, and ourselves

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In reading Cristina Bacchilega and Marie Alohalani Brown’s “Introduction: The Stories We Tell about Mermaids and Other Water Spirits” (Penguin, ix-xxii), I found that humans’ never-ending obsession with merfolk and hybrid humanoids comes from our obsession with ourselves. Ancient stories of mermaids and their deadly power may be proof that we feared these aquatic beings because they were mysterious and terrifying monsters, but I think they induced so much fear because we knew humans to have conscious minds. Minds capable of free will to be harmful or evil. A large animal, we can kill with no forethought or deep fear, but a clever mermaid who is just as capable of killing us, that’s what’s scary. Those same human minds and capabilities are also what attract us to merfolk. We can’t help but be curious about what it means to be human to merpeople and to desire connection with them. As much as it entices us, “we humans do not deal well with betwixt or between” (Brown xi). We like our boxes and labels, and having clear lines drawn. We don’t want to mix, or at least we are taught that we don’t want to mix.

Wanting what we cannot have seems to be a timeless and universal trope for us humans. Lacking the ability to live in the ocean and the constant threat of death by drowning make us all the more curious. We crave the knowledge of the seas because we physically can’t experience it. Like the forbidden fruit, we want something even more when we are told we cannot have it. What lies beyond in the unknown, beyond a human-centered world, consistently calls to us.
It is so strange to me how humans are capable of being so fearful yet so enthralled and attracted to something at the same time. Nowadays, we sit at home and watch things like murder mysteries and documentaries in order to feel that fear. We also watch them because we are so intrigued by what we do not know or understand.

Apprehension and Apathy: Entertainment’s Love Story

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“What bears keeping in mind is that the value of stories is not the degree to which they are authentically native, but the ways that they reflect the concerns or values of the group who tells and retells them” (Penguinn xv). This week, all of the historical understandings and ways of consider mermaids legitimacy are just as interesting as last week; although this week’s takes a much more opinionated approach from the get-go. In reading this passage about mermaids, and recognizing how methods of story passage reflects human thought, it really only becomes clearer how fear drives us in thinking of mermaids.

While we convey them as beautiful sea creatures to be fawned over as princesses or to be immortalized in art, we still consider them other. The passage begins outright with admitting how their existence is something humans inherently do not trust; their ability to be half aquatic, half part of a world we understand so little of, and half able to disguise themselves and coexist with us. The introduction truly names this as a result of our view of that which confuses us: “We humans do not deal well with the betwixt and between – liminality makes us anxious” (xi).

As outlandish as it sounds, this phenomenon appears majorly in children’s television, with monsters completely unrelated. The biggest example I can think of was watching Wizards of Waverly Place as a kid, a show about a family of wizards in New York City, and how major the plot point of them keeping their powers a secret is. The threat was if they were to be found out, they’d expose the rest of the Wizarding World to be questioned/dissected by the authorities to discover more about these unnatural beings, effectively dismantling their society (which eventually actually does happen in a two-parter in the later seasons). It’s similar to the characters in Harry Potter, who cannot expose magic because of regular people’s dangerous curiosity that borders on harm. Looking at it as an adult, it’s clearly a result of human anxiety; if we don’t understand something, we need to pick it apart until we do, and we disregard how it impacts whatever we’re researching for the sake of our peace.

The same occurs with even more ridiculous examples, like my favorite adult sitcom, American Dad. The existence of Roger, an alien who puts on human clothes and appears to everyone outside the family as an actual human, plays a joke on the human conspiracy that aliens walk amongst us, but have the ability to blend themselves in with regular people. Because the main character works for the CIA, Roger’s nearly discovered multiple times, but utilizes his personas to throw them off his trail by accusing anyone else, or claiming to have random powers that he could hurt them with so people avoid provoking him. People truly believe him blindly, and puzzle us, the audience, into wondering how an alien with basically zero tangible powers could be both incredibly powerful and so unrealistically feared. It all ties back to this idea that humans won’t tolerate something “other” that exists and can be indistinguishable; it terrifies people enough that they’ll believe anything negative told about it once, because it means they don’t have to accept something that disobeys natural order.

While it all seems entirely unrelated to mermaids when you look at it from a perspective outside of mine, it comes together when we recognize how these beings are treated because of their differences. They’re ousted, and painted to be villains, so nobody really cares what happens to them in the television shows, except the outside audience that understands them on a deeper level. With mermaids, unless we actively seek to study them, and recognize their relevance to our lives, or their relevance in the overall natural environment that’s currently deteriorating, they just seem like monsters to be pushed aside. Humanity doesn’t care about mermaids, in spite of the rich background and cultural understanding they hold about our past, present, and vulnerable future. They act as warnings the way monsters should, as told by the quotes presented in class, and as a major reflection of our vital interaction with the Earth itself; we can only begin to see these if we reject this apathy as a result of artistic anxiety.

A harmless ‘known’ makes a scary ‘unknown’

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What caught my eye was the beginning of “Their Bodies, Our Anxieties,” where it discusses how we prefer our world to be well-ordered and sharply defined in categories, but it highlights the similarities between hybrid monsters and humans. They’re able to eat, sleep, and breathe like us, but seemingly hold enough distinctions for us to shy away from them. This reminded me of some recent trends in horror since at least 2014, where we take what was ‘safe,’ for example, a children’s mascot, and proceed to make it monstrous in a subtle way, for example, having the mascot act irregularly hostile towards children when it shouldn’t be. It adds to the uncanny anxiety we feel towards the subject, but it also fascinates people, myself included, as mermaids, or at least their early versions, don’t seem all that harmful. Then later, they’re made out to be temptresses whose goal is to lead men astray and consume them. When reading about the part where the text talks about the beauty of a mermaid, it got me thinking about how both halves of a mermaid show our odd interest in the known and unknown. The upper half is what we’re used to and can recognize as distinctly normal; this carries on with the lower half too, as our brains can recognize that it’s a fish. But when you put it all together, what is ‘known’ becomes a fearful yet interesting ‘unknown.’ We can recognize its not a natural thing for a woman’s upper half to be conjoined to a fish lower half, however, it still has that ‘harmless’ feel allowing later interceptions to add unsetting traits that would attract both fear AND attention. It’s interesting to know what looks harmless to us might be the most dangerous thing in the room, and it isn’t solely a modern trend but has been going on for centuries.

Explanations of origin

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I remember from class that we discussed that some mermaids that we read in stories may not seem like mermaids at first glance but are such as the story of Odysseus where he was attacked by sirens which flew but held a figuire closer to that of a mermaid.In this case the story of kaliya and the serpent are similar to that in which while the serpent isnt the mermaid itself but what the outcome of the story allows for the creation of mermaid.I had also found it interesting how throughout the story they focused primarly on the use of fire as a description.I also had found it interesting as the use of the word fire which primarly is used as a method of cleasing and rebirth in many other stories.In the story when they talk about the serpent they describe the flailing of the snake when confronted by krsna as “they burst at once into flame smitten by the wind and carried by water burning by that snakes evil fiery poison”. I felt that this quote was important because during that time I believe that there may have been fires in the area and they were being carried across the area by the wind in which they were only put out by the raining season.After the snake was defeated the snakes wife had begged for mercy,but what I had found interesting was the description of the wifes.In the story they described the snakes wifes as “adorned with fetching necklaces,who were beautiful with jangling necklaces” which I felt is a description of a mermaid by their sexuality and how they were described attractive which is usually a main characteristic of a mermaid.It was also interesting as they had adorned the mermaids with man made objects like necklaces and jewlery Which I only know of one thing to use jewelry which is us humans.I believe that the reason why they had to make clear that they were adorned with jewelry is in order for them to be closer to humans and make us the reader have pity not only for the snake but the wives as well.The end of the story was also interesting because the snake spoke and stated that he “was defeated and asked for mercy” which was given due to him not doing anything on purpose and was then cast to the ocean from the river with his ancestors and wives.I found this interesting as well for the reason that when we think of the location of mermaids we think oceans or by the beach which is where they were cast to after being defeated.It then further deepens the story by leaving the story open ended by stating that they were not killed but the snake,wives,and children presumably still alive continuing their lineage within the ocean.

Anxieties or Projections?

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This week’s reading had so many interesting aspects to it, but the one I wanted to focus on was the part where it’s stated that Mermaids can, “shed the nonhuman portion of their bodies and infiltrate the human world. And the shores and banks where we come across them, like the vessels on which we cross their waters, are thresholds between our world and theirs” (xi). I wanted to focus on this part of the reading because, as we have mentioned in class already, humans are scared of the unknown. But what I like about this quote is that it puts that fear into perspective. I want to bring attention to the word “infiltrate” because of the way it makes Mermaids out to be a kind of spy, or someone or something that has sinister intentions…Kind of like humans, no? I think it’s ironic to use the word “infiltrate” when humans have done and continue to do things like this already. I don’t think humans are necessarily scared of Mermaids themselves, but are afraid that they might do to us what we would do to them. I say this because of the idea that Mermaids are part of us; they are part human, meaning they have the capacity to think and act as we do.

I love the idea of saying that humans are projecting onto mermaids, which we have mentioned in class, suggesting that we are scared of them because they are a reflection of ourselves. But it is fascinating to think about the concept that humans are technically just scared of themselves. Especially when it comes to Mermaids, when the text we read this week stated, “like the vessels on which we cross their waters” (xi), I think it’s very hypocritical. I say this because we, as humans, were terrified at the idea of Mermaids coming onto our lands, but we infiltrate their waters every day. Whether it be through boats, submarines, or even just scuba diving, we are in their home all the time. So the idea that Mermaids are scary because of their ability to “look like us” is hypocritical and even hilarious when you think about how many places make silicone/hyper-realistic Mermaid tales. I know that “back in the day” was different, but I still feel that humans projected their hated attributes onto Mermaids to better deal with themselves.

Also, I thought it would be cool to show you all a picture of the Mermaid Mural/Mosaic in my restaurant that I had mentioned on Thursday!

ALSO ALSO, a song I wanted to mention that I hope some people already know that I think is cool and fits our class is Mermaid Song by ConcernedApe. It is from a game called Stardew Valley, and I always love when this song comes on!

The Illusion of Control in Nature & Lore

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Man is not an animal, at least so the stories of man tell us. The hybridity of a human with an animal in stories is often depicted as unnatural and threatening. Outside the interspecies dating element, it challenges the belief instilled in humans of a superiority on Earth compared to the other creatures that inhabit it. Reinforced within mermaid lore, the animal hybridity with humans is to be avoided or at least conquered to support this human superiority. In the introduction section of The Penguin Book of Mermaids, it is often in stories of mermaids that the human society is characterized as the ideal—being far removed the wilds of nature. This concept is a denial of humans’ own position as an animal on Earth and their part in nature, not a ruler of it.

A line from the reading that caught my attention about the distinction of animal from man is, in referencing mer-marriages, “when the wife is instead an ‘animal bride’ transformed fully into a human, the marriage fails because her domestication as a human wife and mother does not succeed in eradicating her ties with her water kin, or her desire to be in her own skin and element” (xix). To be part of the human society described in mermaid myth means to leave the natural world behind, to deny the animalistic parts of our nature that religion and social norms forbid. Any desire to stay connected to this natural world outside of society will only lead to disappointment, so it is best to avoid those who embrace the parts of themselves outside the alleged morality and ideals of man.

Mermaid Engagement Photo, credit: Del Sol Photography

Attraction to this animal nature in others, that is personified in the mermaid, is not a transgression against the society on its own. Only when this desire is not reformed into human societal ways does the human admit their subservience to nature’s power. Part of humans’ development over thousands of years is to block humanity from the power of nature, but with that protection comes obligations of compliance and denial of what some think as animalistic behavior. The chaos humans interpret from their environment frames their idea that the nature of humans is capable of control over all things, that their order will withstand the power of the natural world.