Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mer-Men) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0861967240 ISBN 13: 9780861967247

Verlag: Indiana University Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Mermaids have been a feature of western cinema since its inception and the number of films, television series, and videos representing them has expanded exponentially since the 1980s. Making a Splash analyses texts produced within a variety of audiovisual genres. Following an overview of mermaids in western culture that draws on a range of disciplines including media studies, psychoanalysis, and post- structuralism, individual chapters provide case studies of particular engagements with the folkloric figure. From Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" to the creation of Ursula, Ariel's tentacled antagonist in Disney's 1989 film, to aspects of mermaid vocality, physicality, agency, and sexuality in films and even representations of mermen, this work provides a definitive overview of the significance of these ancient mythical figures in 110 years of western audio-visual media.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Philip Hayward is editor of the Island Studies journal Shima and holds adjunct professor positions at the University of Technology Sydney and at Southern Cross University (Australia). He has previously published books on topics such as horror cinema and cultural heritage in the Pacific. He is also a member of audio-visual ensemble The Moviolas and was co-curator of an exhibition entitled Making a Splash: Mermaids and Modernity being held at Sydney's Macquarie University Art Gallery in mid-2017 to accompany the launch of this volume.

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Making a Splash

Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media

By Philip Hayward

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2017 John Libbey Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-86196-724-7

Contents

Acknowledgements, 1, 
Note on audiovisual material featured in this volume, 3, 
Introduction Tails, Tresses and Elusive Otherness, 5, 
Chapter 1 Becoming Ariel, Becoming Ursula, 21, 
Chapter 2 Flauntation and Fascination: The Alluring Mermaid and her Charms, 51, 
Chapter 3 Sonic Seduction: Mermaid Vocality and its Expression in Screen Soundtracks (co-authored with Jon Fitzgerald), 75, 
Chapter 4 Making Out: Sexuality and the Transformative Mermaid, 91, 
Chapter 5 Channeling the Anima: Inspirational Folklore in The Mermaid Chair, 111, 
Chapter 6 "Mermaid-like a while": Juvenile Mermaids and Aficionado Culture, 129, 
Chapter 7 At the Margins: Mermen on the Screen, 151, 
Chapter 8 Crypto-Science and Hoax TV: Animal Planet's Mermaid Documentaries, 167, 
Conclusion, 187, 
Bibliography, 193, 
Appendix Chronological catalogue of audiovisual productions featuring mermaids and mermen referenced in the volume, 197, 
Index, 207, 

CHAPTER 1

Becoming Ariel, Becoming Ursula

'Den lille Havfrue' ('The Little Mermaid') is Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen's best-known short story. Since its initial publication in 1837 it has been translated into a variety of languages and has been the subject of numerous stage, film and television adaptations. The first section of this chapter introduces the folkloric context of the story, its original inflections and various psychoanalytic interpretations of its narrative and symbolism. Focus then shifts to the Disney company's sustained engagement with the story before moving on to explore subsequent screen interpretations of the scenarios and characters produced by Disney. The word "becoming" in the chapter's title is used in two senses. The first refers to the duality of the little mermaid's experiences. Not only does she have to negotiate the process of becoming a young adult mermaid, she then has to cope with the implications of her decision to transform into a young adult woman. Entwined with its exploration of these facets, the chapter also characterises the manner in which the nameless principal protagonist of Andersen's original work became 'Ariel' and the nameless sea witch became 'Ursula' within a body of Disney texts and subsequent productions. The chapter thereby moves from folklore through literary adaptation to media-lore, documenting the processes of those transitions.

I. Danish Roots

It is impossible to understand The Little Mermaid as Andersen intended without first understanding the folkloric mermaid. Attempting to do so is the equivalent of reading Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit without ever having heard of any rabbit besides Bugs Bunny. (Grydehøj 2006: 10)

There is a critical consensus that Andersen's short story 'Den lille Havfrue' was his own invention rather than his interpretation of an existing folk tale. While this may be an accurate characterisation it has resulted in limited address to prior representations of aquatic people in the Danish cultural context from which Andersen emerged and their potential linkage to and/or inspiration for aspects of his short story.

The modern nation state of Denmark comprises the Jutland peninsula together with over 400 islands (and many smaller islets), the majority located off the eastern coast of the peninsula. As a result of this geography, and its position at the mouth of the Baltic Sea where it meets the North Atlantic Ocean, the country has had a long association with the sea and with maritime livelihood activities. This orientation has, in turn, been reflected in various aspects of its folklore. Water-dwelling types of men and women, referred to as havmand and havfruer (the plurals of havmanden and havfrue), have been recurrent and well documented motifs in its folklore. As discussed in the Introduction to this volume, while the Danish terms are now routinely translated as 'mermaids' and 'mermen' there is nothing in their linguistic basis that specifies piscine lower bodies and the terms refer to a wide range of water-dwelling folk. This stated, a substantial strand of havmanden and havfrue folklore does concern fish-tailed people. In 1833, for instance, Danish folklorist Andreas Faye provided the following account of aspects of havmand and havfruer:

The males are of a dusky hue, have a long beard, and black hair, and above are like men but below like fishes; the females on the contrary are beautiful, and above are like the fairest women, but shaped like a fish below. Their children are called 'Marmaeler', sea talkers, and fishermen sometimes take them home to get from them a knowledge of the future. It is however a rare occurrence to hear the merwomen talk or sing. Seamen are very sorry to see these creatures because they portend a storm. (translated in Prior I860: 330-331).

A number of representations of fish-tailed havfruer also feature in Danish churches dating from the late medieval period. Some are standard period images in which (as discussed in the Introduction and again in Chapter 5), the mermaid can be understood to symbolise the temptations of lust and/or vanity. Other images are more ambiguous. In the case of the Fanefjord Church wall painting (Figure 2), the havfrue's voluptuous upper-bodily appearance would seem to indicate a figure symbolizing carnal desire, yet what is her purpose in the tableau of aquatic abundance? Who is she meant to be tempting? And what does the position of her arms signify? Is she raising them in alarm, or mimicking Jesus's gestures to the left of the image? Along with these individual examples, one of the most common uses of havfrue and havmanden images in Danish churches is their inclusion in representations of God's creation of living creatures (Mills-Kronborg Index 2004: online). This is somewhat curious on several counts. The most obvious is that the havfrue and havmanden are entirely absent from Christian creation myths and their presence in such images appears to have a more associative purpose. Yet that purpose is far from clear and scholars have not yet provided any convincing account of a singular allegorical function for the inclusion of the creatures in these scenarios. While acknowledging the latter uncertainly, it is still evident that late medieval Danish churches represented the havfrue and havmanden in a variety of symbolic contexts. Havfruer and havmand were, thereby, figures 'in play' in the period in which they were painted and evidence of that play adorned Danish church walls through to Andersen's day, when various ballads derived from regional folklore were also in circulation.

Andersen was born in Odense, on Funen Island, in 1805 and lived there until moving to Copenhagen in 1819. In the early 1800s Denmark had a strong marine orientation. The country relied on a network of small ships to move people and goods between various parts of its archipelago and to exploit its inshore and offshore fisheries. The country was also implicated into a broader pattern of Atlantic marine trade and transport through its colonial possessions, including the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland in the North Atlantic, and the islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix in the Caribbean. During...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Indiana University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0861967240
• ISBN 13: 9780861967247
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 218
• Herausgeber: Hayward Philip
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland