How Much Will You Take for That Mermaid?

This week, Wordplay is once again visiting the topic of mermaids. You might recall my review of Imogen Hermes Gowar’s slinky and mysterious The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock (2018) on the Wordplay Facebook page last year. This time, it’s Julia Langbein’s serio-comic American Mermaid, a 2023 novel about mermaids, the creative process, matriarchy and patriarchy, world domination, Hollywood, and the ways in which the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious inform and reflect one another.

The two novels are very different in tone but somehow share an underlying sensibility: both acknowledge the danger of trying to capture the natural forces moving freely through the world and trying to use them for mere profit or selfish ends. Ms. Langbein’s book made me laugh out loud several times while Ms. Gowar’s book was wreathed in watery darkness, but both novels have something to say about the sexual allure of the mermaid and female commodification. While the allure is natural, the failure to understand the power it represents is the real culprit. 

In Gowar’s book, a dead mermaid “specimen” put on display for exhibit-goers is an evil-looking creature with sharp teeth, and a living mermaid turns out to be impervious to attempts to hold it against its will. In Langbein’s book, men who succumb to the sirens’ song quickly find that is they who are being used and that the mermaids are indifferent to their fate (though they will do the men the honor of naming their progeny after them). An attempt to bring the mermaids into a corporate scheme to re-make the world through a planned global disaster backfires due to their ferociously independent nature. But it would be reductionist to say that both novels are simply polemics about the foolhardiness of failing to respect nature, in the same way it would be to say that of Moby-Dick, which in some ways is their spiritual forebear. All three novels paint a complex portrait of nature, including its destructive side: nature is ultimately creative, mysterious, spiritual, conscious, and very much alive.

One of the most interesting aspects of Ms. Langbein’s book, for me, was her depiction of the creative process of her heroine, a high school teacher and writer of fiction named Penelope Schleeman, whose first novel draws the attention of Hollywood filmmakers wishing to turn it into popular entertainment. Penelope’s novel draws heavily on her own life experiences, and because it’s an honest attempt to work through issues important to her, it simultaneously offends her family and catches fire with the world at large. Penelope’s adoption of a mythological creature, a captured mermaid, to stand in as a sort of alter ego, whether simply a fortuitous choice or not, actually invites the eventual intervention of real-life mermaids (yes, they turn out to be real) who subvert attempts to turn Penelope’s novel into a fatuous screenplay.

As with The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, American Mermaid paints what I think is a true portrait of the protean nature of mythology. Mythology is a human construct that reflects our understanding of the world around us but ultimately springs from a deep, indeterminate place where the human and non-human meet and are not so distinct from one another. Penelope’s writing draws from the collective unconscious, and she, in turn, has an effect on it. It’s both painful and hilarious to watch her struggle with the Hollywood handlers who love her book but want to turn it into something trivial. Once she begins to realize that her main character, Sylvia, has a life and power of her own, she becomes less and less bankable and can only watch as her subconscious/alter ego unleashes chaos to save her novel.

Personally, there are a lot of things I like about Los Angeles, but the novel’s description of the film business and Hollywood people rang true based on the little I know about it. I imagine it would be painful to see something you created turned into something completely different than you intended. At the same time, money and flattery are great temptations, and film is a business like any other. People are in it to make money. In American Mermaid, a sort of clash of the titans occurs when the honest businesspeople of Hollywood invite the wrath of the mythological world by attempting to use it in a bland moneymaker that won’t challenge anyone. In the end, this novel says, the mythical world will always win in a battle like this.

Matriarchal and patriarchal values are both given a place in American Mermaid, and if the matriarchy eventually has its way, that isn’t to say she is more benign. She can be cruel and heartless, too, even if in service to the continuation of life, which might give you an idea of the reason the patriarchy tries so hard to keep her down. Better for both to live in harmony with one another if only they could figure out how, but that is one of life’s continuing unresolved stories.

Wordplay’s Official Policy on Zombies

The other day, I was making a joke on Facebook about zombies, and here today I want to make a clarification. I wasn’t talking about zombies in the sense of the reanimated dead of Haitian tradition but rather in the pop culture sense familiar to us all, plus I was being a little sarcastic. But please don’t shoot the messenger: I can’t think of another metaphor that better describes some of the strange things I’ve seen in recent years. It really began in earnest in 2016, a year so full of celebrity deaths that I commented to someone that I wondered if some of those folks were really going undercover to work for the government.

I don’t want to be insensitive here, since of course people do die in large numbers all the time and are mourned by the people they leave behind. I’m not trying to create doubt in anyone’s mind about the fates of their dearly departed friends and family. I’ve mourned deaths of loved ones of my own, and as much as I miss them, I have no doubt that I won’t see them again in this life. I’ve told a few people the story of how I once saw someone who looked exactly like my dad, who had been dead for almost 12 years at that point, and I believe I was misunderstood by some of the people I told. I didn’t conjure up a hallucination of my dad, I saw an actual person who looked exactly like him. I’m sure the illusion would have been dispelled had I walked up to the man and talked to him, but I didn’t. It was just another bizarre incident in a string of many at that time.

The puzzle to me was why it happened and how it happened. I recently read an article about the retirement of the CIA’s master of disguises in which some of the agency’s very impressive methods of subterfuge, pioneered by this official, were described. When I read that the capability exists to create a mask of one person that will make a different individual look exactly like the first, the question of “how” such a thing might occur was no longer a mystery. I’m not suggesting that the CIA sent someone made up to look like my dad to the hospital to scare me; I’m merely pointing out that this technology exists and can be used by anyone with access to it. Prior to that, my idea of altering a person’s appearance extended to heavy makeup à la Hollywood; I never dreamed you could actually recreate the face of another person with such exactitude.

As far as the living dead go, I almost feel I should make a statement (or perhaps there is an appropriate Voudon ritual for keeping them away?) to describe my feelings about all of this. In a nutshell, it’s creepy. It’s become common for me to see people who resemble other people but are definitely not them, and that’s weird enough, but seeing people who are supposed to be dead is another category of experience altogether, and not a welcome one. From former English professors to comedians to fiddling musicians, all of whom have been reported as “deceased” by numerous sources, I’ve seen it all over the last few years. And none of these encounters were with people I had any emotional attachment to; it’s just that the feeling of recognition was so strong that I was almost sure I couldn’t be imagining it.

So Wordplay’s official stance on the living dead flitting hither and yon among us is, “We disapprove.” We’d ask you to go haunt someone else, but that really wouldn’t be kind either. We don’t wish that type of experience on anyone, as the times are disconcerting enough without that. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t those whom the world would probably welcome back with open arms, should it turn out that reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated: no doubt Robin Williams, whom I thought I spotted on the L.A. Red Line in 2017, would be one of these. Prince would probably get a pass, too. But dying is no small matter, to the person doing it or to those left behind, and trifling with death or the appearance thereof seems to me to be bad mojo, unless it is for a very good reason indeed.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice demonstrates how hazardous it is to try to come back to the land of the living from the Underworld. If Eurydice, guided by Orpheus, with a special dispensation, couldn’t do it, it indicates that the borders truly aren’t meant to be permeable. Think of your state of mind if all of sudden anyone—from your long-dead grandmother to your bullying deceased ex-husband—might pay you a call at any time from beyond the River Styx. You might think the prospect of getting to see someone you’ve dearly missed again would be wonderful, but just think: if they can get through, anyone can, including that college roommate you did an ill turn for all those years ago or the teacher who terrified you as a child.

If by some chance Robin Williams really is out there somewhere, let me just say that if I actually did see him in L.A., grinning to himself while dressed as an Asian tourist on the subway, that was about the only time I didn’t get a bad vibe from a “zombie” encounter. I can’t really explain why not, except that this person gave off such an aura of good humor that it never occurred to me to be scared or upset. What it was all about, though, I haven’t the foggiest. I imagine you could see a lot of strange things in Hollywood, but if I’m honest, I have to say I was about 80 percent convinced that it really was Robin Williams on the train that day. I’ll leave 20 percent room for doubt because, after all, it was L.A.

Watching People Multitask at the Oscars

Sunday night I watched the Academy Awards, despite not having seen any of the nominated films. In years past, I found the Oscars occasionally entertaining but mostly annoying (and often embarrassing). I often wondered why the Oscars came off in such a clunky fashion when they’re meant to celebrate the movie industry—shouldn’t the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, of all people, be able to pull off a polished awards show? In the end, though, I guess some people are more comfortable than others in front of live audiences, and some people do better than others at reading jokes they didn’t write. Sometimes, I watched with the sound turned off so I didn’t have to listen to people limp through lame jokes and look ill-at-ease. All I really wanted was to see who was there, what they were wearing, and who would win the big honors.

Now I look back at those days with longing. This year’s awards show was groomed till it barely had a hair out of place—everything seemed to have been calibrated to within a millionth of an inch, but any sense of fun or spontaneity appeared (to me) to be lacking. I longed for someone to fumble their lines and appear to be something other than an automaton or a walking billboard. Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoyed seeing who was there and admiring the gowns, which, if anything, are distinctly more tasteful than they used to be. My problem is that instead of movie stars being movie stars, everyone seems to be busy representing something. I’ve got no problems with people speaking up about issues that are important to them, especially when they affect the movie industry, but I mainly watch the Oscars to be entertained, and I thought everybody else did too (but maybe not).

There are probably just as many fine people in the film industry as there are anywhere else, and I feel that most of them are well-intentioned, but that doesn’t mean their opinions about the state of the world today are any better informed than anyone else’s. I feel that most of the media and entertainment outlets today are the source of misinformation that at its worst is no better than propaganda and that some of the people propagating it may not even be aware of what they’re doing. They are passing along information or putting out ideas that they may or may not have formed in good faith but that in any case go beyond the purpose of entertainment and/or the creation of art.

I had this discussion with someone the other night. Plainly stated, I feel that any artist, no matter what his medium, is only responsible for doing the best artistic work he or she is capable of. I don’t think all entertainment rises to the level of “art,” and that’s perfectly OK. Some people aspire only to entertain but occasionally rise to the level of art because they transcend the limits of the ordinary. Sometimes art has a “message,” but not always. Sometimes, you’re just looking at what happens when someone sets out to create something, and whether it “means” anything or not is an open question.

There’s a poem I first read in graduate school in the form of a note of apology from someone who ate plums someone else had left in the refrigerator. It reads very much like a note you might actually leave for someone in such a circumstance, except for the cadence of the language and the placement of the words in lines. So what does it mean? In my opinion, it doesn’t so much “mean” anything other than to reveal that by looking at ordinary things in a certain way, you can transform them into art—or maybe the art is already there and all you’re doing is cutting away the extraneous material to reveal what’s already present. I’m not an art theoretician, but I can see it working either way.

What I do know is that art is one thing and advertising is something else (not that advertising can’t have great artistic merit, because it can). What’s different is the underlying purpose of art versus advertising. Art exists for its own sake, though it may also delight you, horrify you, or make you think. Advertising is an attempt to sell you something, and propaganda is a particularly sneaky form of it. My wish is that people would just go back to what it is they are good at doing and leave off the propaganda. I think propaganda has long had a place in popular culture, so it’s really nothing new, but its uses have been especially egregious in recent years. How about if we left advertising to ad people, news to news people, entertainment to entertainment people, and art to artists? My feeling is that everyone is so busy multitasking that news, entertainment, literature, and many other things have been muddied so that you no longer know what you’re looking at. Occasionally, an authentic voice breaks through the fog, if it can manage to make itself heard in the din, but we’re living in a very noisy world.

I’m not against movies (or books) with messages. What I’m against is propaganda masquerading as entertainment and news, and people running around saying things when they don’t know what they’re talking about. Rather than asking for “more matter with less art,” like Hamlet’s mother, I think what I’d really like to see, at least from Hollywood, is more art and less matter. Then it might be fun to go to the movies again (if I could afford it). What Sunday night’s Academy Awards really needed, in my opinion, was for Cher to show up in one of her trademark over-the-top outfits and throw everybody on their ear, as in days of old. On the other hand, if more journalists were out there actually doing their jobs, perhaps people in Hollywood wouldn’t feel as if they had to do it for them, which I suspect is what happens on occasion. So maybe it’s really the journalists I have a beef with, and not the movie people (or at least, not all of them).

Don’t mind me. I get cranky when I’m in the bardo for years at a time. But could somebody see about getting Cher back into the loop for next year’s show? Or at least the girl with the swan outfit?