Once you start looking for mermaids in pop culture, they’re everywhere, says writer and video artist Megan Dunn.
She’s curated Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery's upcoming exhibition The Mermaid Chronicles, showcasing the rise of the professional mermaid and the mythical figure's history in popular culture.
Photo: Brett Stanley
“I can’t help but think the professional mermaid speaks to so many things about our time saturated by the internet and climate change,” Dunn tells Jesse Mulligan.
“The mermaid is a symbol of transformation and we’re trying to transform.”
Before the pandemic hit, Dunn spent two years interviewing professional mermaids.
“Through just speaking to these various performers...I have uncovered this amazing history.”
Annette Kellerman was known as Venus of the South Seas. Photo: Screenshot / National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
The first person to portray a mermaid on screen was Australian actor and endurance swimmer Annette Kellerman in the 1911 silent film, The Mermaid.
Some consider her the first professional mermaid, Dunne says.
“In her time, she rivaled Houdini...she also pioneered the one-piece bathing suit for women. It seems like a modest thing now but at the time it was getting past stuffy Victorian morality to get women into something that didn’t have ruffles that they could actually swim with ease in.”
Kellerman paved the way for on-screen mermaids like Darryl Hannah’s Maddison in Splash.
Hannah’s bright orange tail is legend among the mermaiding community – the man who made it, Robert Short, is their unlikely Godfather.
Dunne was hooked. “I just remember leaving the cinema with an absolute feeling of buoyancy and delight."
In 1989, Disney released The Little Mermaid, bringing the world of mermaids to younger audiences. Dunne says its live action reboot, due out next year, is sure to attract a new generation to the mythical creature who bridges land and sea.
Daryl Hannah as a mermaid in the 1984 film Splash. Photo: AFP / Touchstone Pictures
Nowadays, she says, the business of professional mermaids is varied; while some work with children, others perform at luxury events, make online content or work as models.
They’ll either work wet or dry events - as it’s known in the business - and have tails made for either land or sea.
“I think the professional mermaid or merman are really interesting figures in the gig economy, where a lot of people find themselves now. It’s a terrifically creative world – I wouldn’t say it’s easy.”
A small group work in adult entertainment, in tanks at bars, Dunn says.
“The association with mermaids and sexuality has been around a long time and it kind of comes from pagan origins of the mermaid.
“Pagan mermaids were in early Christian churches to warn against giving in to your bodily, fleshy impulses so it’s funny how mermaid has this chime in lot of people’s imaginations with adult entertainment.”
