Those medieval temptresses are unmistakably the roots of modern sirens, with their dangerously attractive songs. The association between sirens, mermaids, and temptation only grew tighter in the 19th century, when painters returned again and again to creamy-skinned, bare-breasted sirens with lavish hair. There is no better example than John William Waterhouse’s turn-of-the-century painting The Siren, where a lovely young woman gazes down at a stricken, shipwrecked young sailor who looks both terrified and enthralled.
The sirens of modern-day popular culture
Millennia later, the sirens continue to resonate. They’re even inspiration for a fashion aesthetic: sirencore, a beachy and romantic look with just a little hint of menace.
Modern creatives, meanwhile, are still turning to the sirens as a source of inspiration and a rich symbol for exploring power, gender, and knowledge. Netflix’s new release Sirens, which adapts Molly Smith Metzler’s 2011 play Elemeno Pea and stars Julianne Moore, explicitly grapples with the mythological figure. Director Nicole Kassell told The Hollywood Reporter, “I love the idea of analyzing the idea of what a siren is, and who says what a siren is—the sailor. It’s very fun to get to go back and consider it from a female lens.” Black sirens navigate the challenges of modern-day sexism and racism in Bethany C. Morrow’s 2020 A Song Below Water; a Puerto Rican immigrant falls in love with a merman on turn-of-the-century Coney Island in Venessa Vida Kelley’s 2025 When The Tides Held The Moon.
For many writers, sirens are an opportunity to turn old tales and stereotypes on their head, using characters who’ve long been reviled and distrusted for their controversial power. The Sirens by Emilia Hart is one such modern-day retelling, which weaves between the modern day, and the 19th century transportation of Irish women convicts to Australia.
“I thought this mythological creature was the perfect way to give my female characters some power back into this historical narrative,” she explains. “I wanted to make this general comment on how we think about women and how we have this idea of women as being temptresses, and we demonize them and we overly sexualize them, as a way of trying to explain or perhaps diminish their power,” she says.
