#with the bog when he's literally chilling in greystones aka a very affluent suburb just outside of dublin making music

[opalsiren]

could you elaborate on the h2o season 3 plot being an oirish colonial trope? (im not doubting you i just wanna hear your perspective) (also i had to google what oirish meant lol)

sure!

i’ll try to keep this as brief as possible since delving into ireland’s entire colonial past would take far too long, but the important bit is as follows: colonial powers seek to other and dehumanize colonized peoples in order to justify colonialism. one way to achieve this is by fixating on the magical and mythological elements of the colonized culture. after all, why should respect be afforded to a primitive and infantile culture? surely cultural imperialism should be enforced in order to civilise the savage barbarians mocked for their preoccupation with ‘leprechauns, rainbows and shillelaghs?’

the way that h2o approaches irish identity and culture is no different. whenever bella discusses the time she spent in ireland as a child, the audience is treated to a twee irish flute motif which evokes pretty much every misrepresentation of irish culture from ‘the quiet man’ to ‘wild mountain thyme.’ the place in which bella transforms is not temporally specific, as ‘the sea caves of ireland’ are about as much of a thing as ‘the tall buildings of ireland.’ we see a younger bella, uninhibited, playing in the green fields and down by the rocky cliffs, lost in a natural, primitive setting and embracing the magic of the noble savages (read with heavy sarcasm)

later, when the girls are trying to solve the mystery of the comet, bella references irish mythology surrounding the first appearance of the comet. the audience is subjected once more to the tired flute music, and we learn of the story of aoibhe eva, a mermaid who saved the irish people using the tower of light and disappeared without a trace

what’s the harm in an innocuous story about an irish mermaid, i hear you ask? against the backdrop of every single representation of irishness as superstitious, traditional, primitive, and backward, the comet plot is a cultural hangover of colonialism. consider the ways in which the h2o writers have approached the mythos of former mermaids prior to the comet: louise, julia, and gracie are alive within the current merms’s lifetimes, and their stories are not temporally nor culturally specific in the same way

the way that the h2o writers chose to represent colonised cultures is entirely bound up in colonialism. if bella had transformed in the english countryside, or if eva had been a mermaid from florida, would the effect have been the same? let us all be wary of representations of irishness—especially those which fixate on magic and folklore—even if such representations may seem ‘positive’ on the surface!

tl;dr: ireland is a real country with real people and big industrialized cities. at the time bella transformed ireland was at the height of an economic boom and is a prosperous, developed nation, not just rural towns where everyone tries to avoid fairy rings and tells tales about mermaids and selkies while playing dodgy irish flute music. jonathan shiff if we ever meet it’s on sight

also while we’re here we should probably talk about the orientalism in h2o and mako mermaids but that might be a conversation for another day