Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers

Sunday Feature: Here Be Mermaids

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Here Be Mermaids

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Here Be Mermaids

Why are mermaids an ideal tool for describing things that our society does not understand?

Mermaids continue to seduce us. New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes goes mermaid-hunting along the wild north Cornish coast to ask why their appeal continues in the 21st century.

Mermaids continue to seduce us. Disney’s The Little Mermaid is about to get a live action reboot, Beyoncé dressed up as Oshun in her music video about her husband’s infidelity, and Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch won Costa Book of the Year.

New Generation Thinker Dr Hetta Howes asks what it is about these creatures that continues to beguile and inspire us and what they mean in the 21st century. 

The word mermaid was used in the Renaissance as slang for prostitute, the transgender charity for young people is called Mermaids, and the phrase Hic Sunt Marinae, Here Be Mermaids, has historically been used to chart unknown waters on maps. Why are mermaids an ideal tool for describing things that our society does not understand, or even fears? 
 
Hetta heads to the rough waters of north Cornwall and discovers the impact one mermaid had on the town of Padstow. Shot by a local fisherman, she cursed the town with the Doom Bar, a strip of sand that has wrecked hundreds of ships and continues to prove hazardous to sailors today. Wading out to the Doom Bar, Hetta hears how the Padstow Mermaid was both vulnerable, subject to the whims and desires of a spurned man, and powerful as she has the ability to change the landscape with her revenge. 

Author Monique Roffey explores the inspiration power of mermaids who came to her in her dreams in Tobago, and Sacha Coward takes her on a mermaid hunt to discover startling beauty in the Royal Museums Greenwich.

Producer: Sarah Bowen

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