It is a strange world out there. We have previously posted about Sharknado, which recently caused quite a stir on Twitter and other social networking sites. A sequel is planned, apparently, this time set in New York. I am not so sure about that one. Sharks raining from the sky in Brooklyn. Fuggedaboutit. In the mean time, it appears that Sharknado is inching its way toward cult film status, with midnight showings on big screens around the country. Some are predicting that Sharknado will prove to be this generation’s Rocky Horror.  I am skeptical, but time will tell.

For the last several years, vampires have been the cool kids on the block. They have been all over television from reruns of Dark Shadows to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to True Blood, as well as countless movies.  Vampires established a strong niche in Young Adult books even before Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga re-energized the living dead as a teen-aged love interest.

Now it seems, there is rogue wave of predictions that mermaids are replacing vampires as the hot cultural cult icon.  This is not entirely new.  Back in 2011, US Today announced “Mermaids surface as the next big thing,” and last January, Huffign Post predicted, The New Wave for Women and Girls: IN Mermaids, OUT Vampires.

Within the last few days there has been a perfect storm of articles about mermaids. Vulture offered: For Your Consideration: Mermaids Are the New Vampires, while The Atlantic proclaimed: Mermaids Are Officially Cooler Than Vampires, and That’s Great for Women.   PolicyMic offered 5 Reasons Mermaids Are the New Vampires, while ABC News beat them by four with 9 Examples of Why Mermaids Are the New Vampires.    Jezebel asked, Will Mermaid Replace Vampire as #1 Ambiguously-Sexual Mystical Beast?

There was at least one naysayer, of course. Wickman writing in Slate responded with No, Mermaids Will Never Be the New Vampires.  Cutting through the seaweed, his argument boils down to:   I can give you one simple reason that mermaids aren’t the new vampires, and never will be: genitals. If you want people to fantasize about you, or about being you, genitals are pretty much a requirement.  

Nevertheless, the lack of, or at least confusion about, genitalia may be may be the whole point.  As Carolyn Turgeon writes in New Inquiry in Neither Fish Nor Flesh:

Conflicted, frustrated sexualities are integral to both the vampire and the mermaid. But compared with vampires (or zombies too, for that matter), the mermaid makes for a much livelier figure: She’s not dead, for one, plus she has a bright, pretty tail and exists in full sunlight. And she’s female. (Mermen are so rare as to be culturally negligible.) She’s primal and wild, from the deep ocean — she is death and birth and the subconscious and the great mother. And typically she is represented as super hot — think of Daryl Hannah in Splash or pretty much any other mermaid you’ve ever seen — yet she might kill you if you get too close, as with the killer mermaids in Pirates of the Caribbean. Even Disney’s friendly flame-haired Ariel swims around shipwrecks and skeletons at the bottom of the sea. 

But the appeal of the mermaid may depend primarily on her flexibility. Mermaids offer an image of female sexuality that is both potent and nonthreatening to men. As Stephin Merritt recently commented of mermaids, “I think straight men like the idea of women with all the knockers and none of the complicated parts.” Mermaids allow women to tap into something essential and powerful without becoming “unlikable” or unattractive. For women, mermaids offer the freedom of different interpretive options depending on her vicarious needs: Mermaids can be read as sexed or unsexed, vulnerable or terrifying, accessible or forever remote.

Will fins replace fangs? We shall see.

Thanks to Phil Leon for contributing to this post.