Like most of my peers, the noises and sounds in the background of this short film caught my attention. While I was watching it surprised me how it felt strangely peaceful instead of the eerie or haunting feeling. It reminded me of whale sounds and how people use these to help them fall asleep. Aside from the noises, I enjoyed the scene right before the last clip of the mermaid swimming in the open ocean—the one where the mermaid creature is swimming in a sort of canal-looking thing. I think the contrast between the two scenes was fascinating, one moment the mermaid is swimming in a confined man-made space with water in between allowing the mermaid to inhabit and live in this area. This interested me because it shows the duality between “nature,” humans, and man-made objects. While it shows this balance between entities, the next clip is a lot more freeing. Comparing these two clips to each other in my perspective allowed me to appreciate both realities. The one in the canal was a reminder of the world and environment we live in today, where nature and creatures have sort of adapted to all our man-made creations. On the other hand, the last scene in the film felt captivating, because the mermaid was in a big open space, and in my eyes, it looked more natural, but also led me back to the discussions we have had in class about what is versus what is not natural.

Another thing worth pointing out, when doing some research on the director of the film, I found the description of Sirenomelia which included, “Sirenomelia links man, nature and machine and posits possible post-human mythologies.” I thought the post-human aspect was interesting since I was watching with the lens of humans and mermaids co-existing in this universe, but it seems as if it was made in the vision of a post-human environment. I related this posthumanism idea with our climate crisis and the notion that with global warming and climate change, our planet independently will survive, humans on the other hand, may not. On top of this, I thought the concept of this film being directed in a post-human reality was really interesting and I definitely would not have thought about this if I hadn’t read the description from the director.