Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Ana Teixeira Pinto

Thesis: Filth & Fantasy: Finned Icons and Gay Representation

July 2025

Abstract

Filth & Fantasy: Finned Icons and Gay Representation, examines the mermaid as a queer figure of resistance through Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1837) and its radical afterlives in horror cinema and AIDS activism. Rejecting sanitised readings of the mermaid as a romantic heroine, I argue that her dissolution into foam represents a subversive refusal of normative bodily and social constraints. By analysing Andersen’s tale alongside films like The Lure (2015) and Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)—where mermaid bodies are sites of grotesque transformation—I demonstrate how the mermaid’s metamorphoses expose the violence underlying assimilationist fantasies. The thesis culminates with ACT UP’s 1992 ash-strike protest and artists’ testimonies such as Derek Jarman and David Wojnarowicz, showing how queer communities have embodied and portrayed the mermaid’s dissolution as political strategy. Drawing on queer theory (Edelman, Muñoz) and horror studies (Creed, Halberstam), I position the mermaid as an emblem of survival through self-annihilation—a creature whose power lies in becoming ungraspable. Ultimately, this project reclaims the mermaid not as a tragic victim, but as a shapeshifter who haunts systems that demand her erasure.

Author: Davide La Montagna