Splash: Mermaids and Monsters

English 1108

July 19, 2018

Splash:  Mermaids and Monsters

            Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” describes seven different views of monsters and how these views reflect society’s culture and fear. Cohen’s theses state that: monsters are symbols of the current culture; can never be killed or caught permanently; are neither human or a known animal; are considered not normal; often are warnings of some pending doom; demonstrate society’s or people’s hidden desires; and force us to look at our assumptions about other cultures. This essay examines the movie Splash (1984) in the context of Cohen’s seven theses.

Splash is a romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks as Allen, a man who cannot find a woman to love him.  And Daryl Hannah, plays Madison the mermaid. Allen runs a family produce business, and Madison comes to New York to be with him.  In the film, Allen does not know Madison is a mermaid from their initial meet. As Allen and Madison start dating; going to dinner, ice skating, and shopping, they fall in love with each other. He decides to marry her to keep her in the country because he thought she had an immigration problem. Throughout the film Madison is hunted by the scientist Dr. Kornbluth, who exposes Madison as a mermaid before she has a chance to tell Allan about her nature. When the existence of mermaids is revealed in the movie, the people react with denial, fear, and shock. She is captured by the government which planned on performing experiments on her to learn more about mermaids.  Allen decides he still loves her, and when Dr. Kornbluth has a change of heart, they rescue her. They both escape to the sea where Allen jumps into the sea and they travel together to her sea-city.

In the 1980s Americans did not understand illegal immigrants and feared the evil Soviet Union empire. In Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s fourth thesis, he cites a writing by Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography of Ireland, used by the English government to generate fear of the Irish as a prelude to England’s invasion of Ireland (74). When Madison was exposed as a mermaid, she became the monster, like the “Irish,” in the eyes of the crowd and the government. Since mermaids were unknown, the government feared their empire might threaten the United States. Nicholas Sousanis in Unflattening suggests to fully understand an issue, like who is the monster in Splash, we must view the movie from different perspectives. Viewing the movie from the characters in the movie Madison is clearly the monster. But if we take a deeper perspective, that from the audience’s perspective, we find different monsters. Because the audience falls in love with Madison, from the audience’s perspective, the scientists and the government are the monsters in the movie. And this is consistent with Cohen’s seven theses which state that monsters reflect current culture.

            The movie revealed attitudes and fears that were present in American culture in the early 1980s. The Cold War between the west, including the United States, and communism, which was represented by the Soviet Union, peaked during the 1980s. The United States publicly called the Soviet Union, the “evil empire”, in reference to the evil empire in the movie Star Wars. Americans feared communism and the Soviet Union would take over the world. According to the U.S State Department Archives, there are 55 significant Cold War events during the 1980s, including the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and the boycott of the Moscow Olympics by 64 nations. Cohen suggests in his in fourth thesis “monsters threaten to destroy not just individual members of a society, but the very cultural apparatus through which individuality is constituted and allowed” (75). Immigration also was a significant issue during the 1980s with an estimated three to five million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. per Faye Hipsman and Doris Meissner in their article Immigration in the United States: New Economic, Social, Political Landscapes with Legislative Reform on the Horizon. Like Cohen’s monsters in his third thesis, illegal immigrants were a different class of people that was shunned and feared by most Americans. Mermaids were clearly not human or any known animal.

 In Splash, people feared mermaids as shown in the scene when Madison changes into a mermaid in front of a crowd. The government captured Madison, out of fear of the unknown (Cohen’s fifth thesis). People’s trust of the government had been declining since the 1960s, according to the Pew Research Center.  Events like the Watergate, the Vietnam War, and a very bad economy, decreased the public’s trust in the government. By the 1980s even politicians like Ronald Reagan said you could not trust the government. Ironically, Reagan added to government mistrust with his Iran-Contra scandal, according to Richard Brookhiser in his essay the “Iran Game.”  So, Splash mirrored 1980s society’s real fear an evil empire (the mermaid empire), illegal immigrants (mermaids), and the distrust of the government.

            Immigration was a significant issue during the 1980s, when Splash was released; although, it was not as politically driven topic as it is today. So, when Allen thought Madison was an immigrant, either illegal or one with a visa problem, he offered to marry her. Marriage is one of the three methods for becoming an American citizen, per Claudia Smith Kelly in her article titled The Influence of a Change in Immigration Law on US Marriage Rates”. But was Allen trying to solve a problem or did he really desire and love her?  Cohen’s sixth thesis discusses links to be forbidden desires when trying to normalize a situation (79). Allen had a lifetime of problems with women, but he was clearly overwhelmed by Madison in many ways. The movie shows they physically desired each other. So, even though Madison represented a huge unknown to him, he offered to normalize his relationship with Madison by marrying her, just like many European countries did to civilize (normalize) exotic parts of the world, according to Cohen’s sixth thesis (80).

            In Why We Believe, Kristen Lewis explains that a mermaid, was created by people to explain the unexplainable. And sometimes, even though science later disproves them, “Something in us wants the world to be full of gods and monsters” said Lewis.  The mermaid has been a symbol of mystic creation for thousands of years. While Madison could hide her monster physical traits, by converting her fins into legs, she was not able to hide her culture. Madison’s first entry into the human culture was as a nude woman, where she was promptly arrested. Cohen says monsters are born during a “certain moment -- of a time, a feeling, and a place” (69). In Madison’s culture nudity was natural. In another scene, Madison eats a lobster, eating both shell and meat. While the people in the restaurant, and Allen, stare at her in shock, she explains to Allen that in her culture, that is how lobsters are eaten. When confronted with an unknown “monster” like Madison, most people would shun her. Allen quickly accepted her explanation showing that to him, even though she was of a different culture, she was not a monster to him.

            Nicholas Sousanis, in “Flattening” says when confronted by the unknown, we should research it from multiple views. If we apply this approach, we can learn the complete story instead of remaining ignorant or with biased information. Splash represents a dilemma in current culture. While the movie is a romantic comedy, Madison does represent a monster of sorts if one looked only at her physical characteristics and her culture. But is she really the monster in the movie? This is where Sousanis helps us gain a greater understanding. There are several views of Madison. First there is Allen’s view of her; he sees her only as a woman he loves, despite a lot of things about her that are unexplained. Like women in Rickie’s Solinger’s Women Who Give Too Much essay, Madison was willing to sacrifice going back home because of her love for Allen. Allen’s brother, Freddie, ignores Madison’s unknowns, and he is the one person who tells Allen that he finally found the woman of his dreams. The rest of the crowd, including Dr. Kornbluth, Dr. Ross, and the government clearly see Madison as a monster.

            The scene where Madison was caught by the government was a good scene to dramatize the different views Sousanis wants us to consider and how Cohen shows that monsters reflect culture, societal fear, and taboos. The prelude to this scene shows the evil Dr. Kornbluth being removed by the Secret Service at a presidential banquet for appearing to be suspicious. At the same time, Madison tells Allen she wants to tell him her “big” secret (that she is a mermaid) so they also went outside. Outside, Kornbluth sprays Madison with water which changes her into a mermaid and that’s when she is photographed. The director uses these photo flashes and slow motion to dramatize Madison’s change into the monster, as well as people’s reaction. Kornbluth shouts “Behold the Mermaid”, which is a comedic reference to more serious monster movies. The camera shows the crowd and the audience sees fear in crowd’s faces. The camera’s close-up focus on Allen’s face tells the audience he is confused and scared. In Cohen’s fourth thesis, he refers to the monster “made flesh, come to dwell among us.” (71). The crowd sees the monster, Madison the mermaid, coming to dwell among them. The audience sees fear in the crowd. So, what did the crowd fear? Cohen argues in his fourth thesis that society fears “cultural difference(s)” (72). Changing from a woman into a mermaid became a “monstrous aberration” (72) to the crowd. In his second thesis, Cohen describes many historical instances when society “captured” what they considered monstrous aberrations with the goal of eliminating them. Therefore, capturing Madison (and Allen since the government thought he was a mermaid too) was society’s natural reaction to restore order. And her capture symbolizes the capture of every monster throughout history.

            Using Cohen’s seven theses and Sousanis’ multi view approach we can identify the monsters in Splash. Cohen’s states in his third thesis that monsters can exist in many forms. “The too-precise laws of nature as set forth by science are gleefully violated in the freakish compilation of the monster’s body” (71). Clearly, Madison’s body, both fish and human, is freakish and different from societal norm. She also has the ability to change from mermaid to woman and give oxygen to someone underwater simply by touching them. In his second thesis, Cohen says that monsters either escape or come back to life -- Madison later escapes from the government and goes back to the sea. The mermaid concept explores the idea of sexual taboos, such as when she walks nude at the Statute of Liberty and has sex with Allen in an elevator, similar to Cohen’s sixth thesis. In his fourth and fifth theses Cohen contends that society is always fearful of the unknown. Mermaids were considered to be part of fiction; thus, seeing one caused fear that there might be more and whether they could threaten human existence. The movie showed us what happens when society is confronted by the unknown: society will “capture” this monster instead of accepting its existence. This is very similar to how illegal immigrants are shown in media today and how the government is reacting to them.

 Who is the monster in Splash? Like many societies described in Cohen’s theses, the people in the movie were fearful of the unknown and different. Madison’s body and culture tell us she is an unknown and that she is different. From the crowd’s view, Madison was the monster. But I believe a deeper view of the movie requires us to look at Dr Ross and the government. Contrary to Sousanis’ desired approach, Dr Ross and the government only have one view, that mermaids are a risk to society, somewhat like the Soviet Union was during the 1980s. So, they captured her to learn about her, so they could eliminate the mermaid risk. But to the audience watching the movie, the real monster was Dr Ross and the government.  If they had taken Sousanis’ multi-view approach to studying Madison, they would have learned she was a sensitive, caring, and giving being.

Works Cited

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Readings for Analytical Writing, Third Edition. Ed. Christine Farris, et al. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 68-86. Print.

Brookhiser, Richard. "The Public Brawl, the Secret War." National Review, vol. 39, no. 1, 30 Jan. 1987, p. 34. EBSCOhost, ihcproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=12562458&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Hipsman, Faye and Doris Meissner. “Immigration in the United States: New Economic, Social, Political Landscapes with Legislative Reform on the Horizon.” 16 April, 2013 in Migration Policy Institute Online Journal.https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/immigration-united-states-new-economic-social-political-landscapes-legislative-reform.

Kelly, Claudia Smith. "The Influence of a Change in Immigration Law on US Marriage Rates." Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 36, no. 4, Fall2010, p. 500. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1057/eej.2009.28.

Lewis, Kristin. "Why We Believe." Scholastic Scope, vol. 63, no. 3, Nov. 2014, p. 9. EBSCOhost, ihcproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=98935670&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

“U.S. Relations with Russia Timeline: The Cold War.” U.S. Department of State Archive, Office of the Historian, Washington, DC. https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/85893.htm.

Hipsman, Faye and Doris Meissner. “Immigration in the United States: New Economic, Social, Political Landscapes with Legislative Reform on the Horizon.” Migration Policy Institute Online Journal. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/immigration-united-states-new-economic-social-political-landscapes-legislative-reform. 16 April, 2013.

 “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2017.” U.S. Politics & Policy, Pew Research Center.  http://www.people-press.org/2017/12/14/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/. 14 Dec. 2017.

                    Sousanis, Nick. Unflattening. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.