Aquarium Mermaids Multiskilled Entrepreneurs in the Creative Economy Tracy C. Davis and Sara Malou Strandvad Perhaps all children who become obsessed with Ariel in The Little Mermaid wish, for a time, that they could become merpeople.1 A few fulfil the dream. Today, self-declared merpeople (usu- ally cis-female mermaids, but signaled here with a gender-inclusive neologism) are on display in several contexts, on dry land as well as in water. The amateur leisure practices of mermaid cos- tuming and swimming are growing; they take place in local pools and at exotic tourist destina- tions and involve various time and financial commitments, as well as degrees of role immersion for the “mermaiding” participants and devotees (Hietzge 2014; Porter and Lück 2018; Stebbins 2001, 2007).2 Merpeople also surface (and descend) in newly popular performance niches as party attractions and entertainers at charitable events. These practices consolidate the figure of the mermaid among other staples — fairy-tale characters, pirates, and adventure heroes — as an identifiable and gendered fantasy type.3 Some practitioners transcend leisure pursuits and secure 1. This research was partially supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 2. English is the lingua franca of the mermaid community and hence the English gerund “mermaiding” is used internationally. 3. For example, Mermaid Melissa, “Mermaid Pool Parties: Specialty VIP Events, Mermaid Events, Live Mermaid Sightings,” http://www.mermaidmelissa.com/mermaid-pool-party/; Aquamermaid, “Mermaid Parties for All Ages,” https://aquamermaid.com/pages/mermaidparty1; Elite Mermaids Entertainment, “Children’s Mermaid Parties,” TDR 64:1 (T245) 2020 https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00899 ©2020 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 119 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00899 by guest on 26 September 2021 paid work. Among the latter, merpeople submerged in large aquarium tanks perform for audi- ences that gather in front of the glass and watch them swim among marine animals. Since 2011, merpeople have regularly appeared at aquariums on every inhabited continent, such as Vinpearl in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Tanks in other facilities, such as the one-million-liter Aquadream at the Morocco Mall in Casablanca, host occasional shows with guest performers. These aquarium performers have forged a new aesthetic as well as a new job category in the creative economy. Although folklore asserts the existence of mer-creatures, and many forms of fantasy play exploit identification with the mer-forms, mermaids and mermen are not so much cryp- tids — disputed or unsubstantiated animals (Regal 2011) — as outright inventions that have per- sisted through the millennia in many traditions. In aquariums, performers have emerged in a new way, challenging the rational consensus. Indeed, creative, material, and biomechanical developments in the current century mean that within these locales mermaid performers super- sede the cryptid designation. Most significantly, technical developments in monofin design, streamlining swimmers’ undu- lations for power and maneuverability, enable more efficient swimming whether the mertail that encases the monofin is spandex, latex, or the heavier and more aesthetic silicone. This enables merpeople to swim the oceans and document their experience alongside gilled creatures.4 This is all very well for merpeople who live near or can travel to warm waters, but the desire for landlocked merpeople to practice, and to exhibit skills, also leads some merpeople to perform in public aquariums. This not only involves unusual optics within otherwise scientifically ori- ented displays, but offers an opportunity to trace the emergence of a new employment niche in the borderland between athletics and the performing arts. Though objects of allure and fascina- tion, instead of luring sailors to their deaths or pining to trade flukes for legs, they post photos on Instagram, advertise on Facebook, and pay taxes on their earnings. Thus, literally, merpeople have ceased to be mythological. We address this phenomenon by asking foundational questions about what performers do in aquariums. What do their performances consist of aesthetically and technically? How do they develop their performative personas, and how does gender factor in the development of charac- ters and marketing? Moreover, which messages do performers convey in their shows, and how do these messages align with the interests of aquariums that feature them in order to attract and excite visitors? This lays the groundwork needed to discuss how performances relate to aquar- iums as scientific institutions; specifically, do audiences decode the intended environmentalist messages or get something else out of the shows? To answer these questions, from 2016 to 2018 we studied aquarium merpeople performances at four sites — in France, Germany, Denmark, and the USA — by means of detailed inter- views, performance observation and analysis, and content analysis of aquariums’ promotional materials.5 With this empirical foundation, attention turns to the practices of persona making, http://www.elitemermaids.com/mermaids-for-kids; and “Hire a Mermaid,” http://www.hireamermaid.co.uk/. All accessed 19 May 2018. 4. For example, Mermaid Hannah, “Hannah Mermaid swims & ocean animals” (Hannah Fraser 2010); and “The Real-life Mermaid who Uses her £10,000 tail to Swim with Sharks and Jellyfish - and Can Hold her Breath for FIVE Minutes” (Arthurs 2013). 5. The following is a list of performances viewed. The Blue Planet, Copenhagen: Mermaid show titled “Facts about the Myth” observed 5 November 2016 (Karin), 16 February 2017 (Karin), and 15 July 2017 ( Julie); freediving show and lecture with Jesper Stechman observed 24 April 2017. L’Aquarium de Paris: show with Claire la Sirène observed 26 May 2018 and 27 May 2018. SeaLife Munich show observed 22 April 2017. Denver’s Downtown Aquarium 10–11 August 2017. Figure 1. (previous page) Alanna Erickson and Kendall Mackey ready for a meet-and-greet session at Denver’s Downtown Aquarium, 11 August 2017. (Photo by Tracy C. Davis) Davis/Strandvad 120 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00899 by guest on 26 September 2021 performance skills, the composition of shows, and how the employment of merpeople is part of the marketing strategies of the “experience economy” in order, ultimately, to return to the ques- tion of interpretability. Mermaiding Practices “Mermaiding” is differentiated from merely reading and viewing stories about mermaids because it allows practitioners to compose and display the experience of living in the aquatic element. Broadly speaking, the popular phenomenon of mermaiding (widely used as a gender- inclusive term) entails enacting a merperson by donning a fin-tail, being photographed, and reporting these activities online. Mermaiding thus constitutes a participatory media practice (Carpentier 2011) and composes a bodily performance that lets practitioners take center stage (Turner 1987). This gives rise to questions about the practice’s citationality. While mermaiding is a recent phenomenon, its iconography draws from ancient mytholo- gies worldwide; a straightforward approach to studying mermaiding juxtaposes contemporary mermaiding with sources based on these mythologies (Hietzge 2014; Porter and Lück 2018; Robertson 2013). However, these juxtapositions are drawn by researchers of mermaiding and not necessarily by people who do mermaiding (Hayward 2018). In fact, the few existing empiri- cal studies of practitioners who swim as mermaids all point in the direction that these practitio- ners do not see their activities as heavily influenced by mermaid mythologies. One German study focused on mermaid swimming in pools as a fitness activity practiced by 25 physical education students (most of them aged 20–23) who then taught mermaiding to a group of eight 10-year-old girls. The study concluded that these girls “had not heard of the old myths and stories like [Hans Christian] Andersen’s Little Mermaid before. Their first ideas on mermaids were moreover rooted in TV and Disney literature. Therefore, they discarded the tragic aspect of the Little Mermaid, changed the story themselves, and reconstructed ‘being- a-mermaid’ as much more lively, adventurous and in contact with marine creatures” (Hietzge 2014:70).6 Similarly, a study of mertourism, based on interviews with 13 customers aged 30–61 at a mermaid school on Boracay Island, the Philippines, found that mythology had a minor role in the fantasy play that the tourists connected with their mermaiding experiences. Instead, par- ticipants highlighted their connection to water; expressed marine conservation-oriented beliefs; and described mermaids as “powerful women” and “beautiful” (Porter and Lück 2018:241). Moreover, both studies discovered that participants found mermaid swimming surprisingly dif- ficult; and participants stressed the importance of aesthetics in terms of color-coordination, styl- ization of the body, and — in the case of mer-tourism — posing in costume at photo shoots. Hence, though a spiritual subculture built around merpeople’s other-than-human identi- ties does figure online where devotees build narratives around their mermaiding aspirations and practices (Robertson 2013), these studies indicate that mermaid participants play with inter- textual references to popular culture and a mutable fantasy character that connects with and embodies environmental