Daryl Hannah in Splash: Not real, unfortunately
The background
Sad news has reached our shores (quite literally): mermaids do not exist. Yes, repeat: mermaids do not exist. America’s National Ocean Service declared that the semi-piscean humanoids that are familiar to us from legend, fable, the minds of diseased sailors, and Walt Disney, are not real.
The statement was in response to Discovery’s broadcast of a film called Mermaid: The Body Found, which is psuedo-scientific documentary that looks into the legends of mermaids. The agency received calls from people inquiring after mermaids, and felt obliged to make clear that there is no evidence for any sort of humanoid aquatic beast. “The film is science fiction, using science as a springboard into imagination,” says a statement on the film’s website. Watch a clip from the film below, in which a boy and his friend find something distinctly fishy on the shoreline.
It also comes after the US Centers for Disease and Prevention had to declare there was no evidence for the existence of zombies – after a series of cannibalistic attacks, including Rudy Eugene, who ate a man’s face off in Miami.
You can read the statement of the National Ocean Service here – pulled together, as they say, from information available to the public, since they do not have a mermaids agency. They say that mermaids have been potent in culture for centures – Homer wrote of them; in the far east they were the wives of dragons; they even first appeared in cave paintings 30,000 years ago. The statement said that why they occupy such a place in our collective unconscious is “best left to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists.”
Is denying mermaids strictly necessary?
“I can’t help but think that our society is in some kind of trouble,” said Amy Rolph on Seattle’s Big Blog, when a government agency has to deny the existence of mermaids. “Were people calling an agency hotline to ask about the best spots for mermaid sightings? Are ‘aquatic humanoids’ a hot topic at oceanic conferences? Were handsome princes inquiring about the likelihood of finding mythical life partners?” Chris Taylor on Mashable added: “Does this kind of statement make a government agency look foolish — or is it necessary education in an era where people seem willing to believe anything?”
The magic’s gone out of our world
Alexander Abad-Santons on The Atlantic Wire said that our “world just got a little less magical today.” The fact is, it’s “a bit silly” that a government agency is spending its time doing this sort of thing – but it is “fun, and breezy.” News outles “eat this sort of thing up,” as well. Let’s not forget that the US government has also recently denied the existence of UFOs. But “not much has been said about vampires and/or werewolves. The truth is out there…”
How bizarre that on the same day Europe discovers Higgs, the US have to deny the existence of mermaids & zombies yhoo.it/LOLdCv
— bruce hood (@profbrucehood) July 4, 2012
Wouldn’t it be more fun if they did exist? The Flight of the Conchords on mermaids: “Are you an optical illusion caused by a woman sitting on a rock holding half a fish? Half a sexy fish…”
