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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.

Introduction: Tails, Tresses and Elusive Otherness

Chapter 1 – Becoming Ariel, Becoming Ursula: Hans Christian Andersen's 'Den lille Havfrue' and its Disneynification

Chapter 2 – Flauntation and Fascination: The Alluring Mermaid and her Charms

Chapter 3 – Sonic Seduction: Mermaid Vocality and its Expression in Screen Soundtracks
(co-authored with Jon Fitzgerald)

Chapter 4 – Making Out: Sexuality and the Transformative Mermaid

Chapter 5 – Channeling the Anima: Inspirational Folklore in The Mermaid Chair

Chapter 6 – "Mermaid-like a while": Juvenile Mermaids and Aficionado Culture

Chapter 7 – At the Margins: Mermen on the Screen

Chapter 8 – Crypto-Science and Hoax TV: Animal Planet's Mermaid Documentaries

Conclusion

Appendix 1 – Chronological catalogue of audiovisual productions featuring mermaids and mermen referenced in the volume

Bibliography

General Index

Sujets

Histoire du cinéma

Film

History of film

Mermaid

List of Disney theatrical feature films

Película fotográfica

Mermaids

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Publié par	John Libbey Publishing
Date de parution	30 janvier 2017
Nombre de lectures	6
EAN13	9780861969258
Langue	English

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MAKING A SPLASH
Dedicated to my mermaids and their mother
Front cover image: Mimi Reaves cosplaying as Ariel (photo by Sourav Reza, 2014)
MAKING A SPLASH
Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media
Philip Hayward
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Making a Splash Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 0 86196 724 7 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0 86196 925 8 (Electronic book)
Published by John Libbey Publishing Ltd, 3 Leicester Road, New Barnet, Herts EN5 5EW, United Kingdom e-mail: john.libbey@orange.fr ; web site: www.johnlibbey.com
Distributed Worldwide by Indiana University Press , Herman B Wells Library-350, 1320 E. 10th St., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. www.iupress.indiana.edu
2017 Copyright John Libbey Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Unauthorised duplication contravenes applicable laws.
Printed and bound in the United States of America..
Contents

Acknowledgements

Note on audiovisual material featured in this volume
Introduction
Tails, Tresses and Elusive Otherness
Chapter 1
Becoming Ariel, Becoming Ursula
Chapter 2
Flauntation and Fascination: The Alluring Mermaid and her Charms
Chapter 3
Sonic Seduction: Mermaid Vocality and its Expression in Screen Soundtracks (co-authored with Jon Fitzgerald)
Chapter 4
Making Out: Sexuality and the Transformative Mermaid
Chapter 5
Channeling the Anima: Inspirational Folklore in The Mermaid Chair
Chapter 6
Mermaid-like a while : Juvenile Mermaids and Aficionado Culture
Chapter 7
At the Margins: Mermen on the Screen
Chapter 8
Crypto-Science and Hoax TV: Animal Planet s Mermaid Documentaries

Conclusion

Bibliography
Appendix
Chronological catalogue of audiovisual productions featuring mermaids and mermen referenced in the volume

Index
Acknowledgements
My interest in mermaids began through my association with Cornwall as a child. I visited the county with my parents, Ruth and Roy, on summer holidays during my school years. The mermaid has been widely present in the county s folklore, religious iconography and commercial signage for many decades and forms part of my earliest memories of the far west of England. It s fitting in this regard that Chapters 2 and 5 of this volume allowed me to excavate particular elements of Cornish folklore taken up by playwrights and novelists and subsequently represented in audiovisual media. Over the years, my parents have supported my interest in various ways, even acting as unpaid research assistants on various occasions. My late wife, Rebecca Coyle, also encouraged and supported my interests and indulged my fascination by allowing me to give our two daughters middle names derived from 20 th Century mermaid media-lore (Miranda and Madison respectively).
My unexpected encounter with Avalon on Catalina Island, a town that had inscribed a block of mermaid associations from 20 th Century media-lore into its vernacular signage, in 2012 prompted me to initiate another project that has proceeded in parallel with the writing of this volume - the curation of an exhibition of contemporary mermaid art at Macquarie University Gallery in Sydney (due to open in late 2017). My thanks to Rhonda Davis, Leonard Janiszewski and John Simons for agreeing to mount the exhibition and for collaborating with me on its preparation and organisation. The visual artworks involved, and my correspondence with the artists who produced them, has enriched my understanding of the nature of mermaid imagery in a range of contexts and has thereby fed into this volume, just as my work on the book has informed my curation and the production of accompanying materials for the exhibition.
A number of other individuals merit acknowledgement.
Special thanks to my frequent collaborator, Jon Fitzgerald, for co-authoring Chapter 3 with me and for giving me advice on the soundtracks of various audiovisual productions discussed elsewhere in the book. Also sincere thanks to those colleagues who acted as readers on drafts of various chapters: Nick Mansfield (Introduction and Chapter 7 ), Adam Grydeh j ( Chapter 1 ), Pru Black ( Chapter 2 ), Clarice Butkus and Alison Rahn ( Chapter 4 ), Ronald M. James ( Chapter 5 ), Marea Mitchell ( Chapters 5 and 6 ) and Nancy Easterlin (Conclusion).
Also thanks to Karl Banse, Ib Bondebjerg, Alan Duncan, Mark Evans, Lauren Evans, Hannah Fraser, Waldo Garrido, Virginia Hankins, Kimmo Laine, Alex Mesker, Andrew Murphie, Rebekah Nazarian, Inga Tritt and Damon Trotta for various research assistances and to Hannah Murphy for her diligent proofing of the manuscript.
The patience and forbearance of my partner, Alison, has been much appreciated - she learnt more about mermaids than she ever wanted to know during my deep immersion in this project and she also contributed to the development of various aspects of the final volume through her diligent and insightful responses to the issues I raised with her. Her love and support was invaluable.
A final thanks to John Libbey for inviting me to write this volume and for his enthusiasm for its production.
Note on audiovisual material featured in this volume
This volume discusses a range of film, television and video material produced in North America, Europe and Australia in the period 1904 1 -2015 that represents mermaids and/or mermen in various ways. Discussion of this audiovisual corpus is clustered around particular themes and the extent of coverage of particular productions is related to the manner in which they relate to those themes.
Given the wide spread of genres and types of material I have included in my analyses and, in particular, my discussion of various non-commercial and/or amateur productions with limited distribution, it is likely that there will be some mermaid/merman-themed texts that have escaped my attention. I am nevertheless confident (with a few caveats) that I have identified and included discussion of all feature films and television programs that have included substantial representations of mermaids or mermen.
The caveats I refer to concern three main areas. The first concerns early films that are now deemed as lost in that copies are no longer available. 2 While I refer to a number of these in passing in Chapter 2 , I have refrained from speculating on the representations they offer. The second concerns animated productions. While I discuss the film and television animation components of Disney s The Little Mermaid franchise at some length in Chapter 1 , and also refer to aspects of Disney animation in Chapter 6 , I have not attempted a systematic review of representations of mermaids in western audiovisual animation media. The third concerns music videos that feature mermaids. While I have discussed the small number of music videos that feature mermen in Chapter 7 I have made no attempt to survey, document and analyse the representation of mermaids in music videos beyond the note on this topic included in Chapter 7 and reference to a single video (TS Madison s Feeling My Fish ) in Chapter 1 . Research on the topic of the representation of mermaids in music videos is underway and will form the basis of a separate essay. 3 Also, for reasons of space and thematic focus, I have not extended discussion to audiovisual productions that reference mermaids as titular and/or thematic motifs without representing them in their narratives, such as La sir ne du Mississippi/Mississippi Mermaid (Francois Truffaut, 1969), Mermaids (Richard Benjamin, 1990) and Rusalka (Anne Melikyan, 2009); or to films in which human females are represented in film titles as mermaids despite appearing in human form, such as Tarzan and the Mermaids (Robert Florey, 1948) or Million Dollar Mermaid (Mervyn Le Roy, 1952).
As I outline in the Introduction, mermaids have also been represented in a variety of animated and live action cinema and television programs produced in Asia. A preliminary examination of productions emerging from this region reveals a highly varied and complex set of representations that draw substantially on local mythology and folklore. I have not attempted the complex contextual analyses such productions merit and a comprehensive study of this field would fill a volume at least as long as this one.
The audiovisual material referred to in this volume is identified in the Filmographic Index at the rear of the volume. While noting the caveats given above, my research indicates that this represents the most comprehensive index of such material assembled to date.
1 The earliest mermaid-themed film that my research uncovered was La Sir ne (Georges M li s, 1904).
2 I have also not been able to access a copy of Charles Guggenheim s 1961 film The Fisherman and his Soul (based on Oscar Wilde s eponymous 1891 short story) and have not included it in analyses offered in the volume.
3 See: http://www.mermedia.com.au/mermaids-in-music-videos.html
Figure 1 - Decoration on the front gable of the Polytheama Cinema building, Manaus, Brazil (author s photo, June 2014)
Introduction
Tails, Tresses and Elusive Otherness
June 14 th 2014 - Manaus, Brazil. Located 1500 kilometres up river from the Amazon s Atlantic estuary, Manaus is an unlikely location for mermaid imagery in that the folkloric figure is closely associated with oceans and their shores. But in a landscape dominated by the Amazon and its tributaries, and in a city established in 1694 by European migrants, its presence makes eminent sense. Its symbolism is inscribed on the front gable of one of the city s first ci