Upsetting Day: Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaid Show (Patreon)

There are two types of people in this world. Those who can enjoy the grace and beauty of a mermaid show, and those who can only clutch our pocket hammer and prepare to save a life. Watching women glamorously suffocate is not for those of us with anxiety, so I’ve personally never been able to enjoy a live mermaid show, which is why I was so psyched when GnomePickles submitted the Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaid Show to the tipline.

We can reasonably presume that Weeki Wachee Springs would not release a promotional video of their mermaid show where one of the mermaids drowns. So we can all relax and enjoy this deeply problematic, bootleg Disney mermaid show.

The show opens with a group of women dressed as underwater Las Vegas showgirls jumping through hoops like dolphins. It’s shockingly majestic, but it also makes me feel like I’m experiencing a human zoo. If they opened an exhibit where people could watch hot women mill about in their natural environment, maybe occasionally performing a trick, it would perform very well. Sorry, I think I just invented Instagram.

The Vegas showgirl mermaids sing an opening number about how Weeki Wachee Springs is a place of mystery and fantasy, and not a place where women regularly drown while performing in the human dolphin show, they promise. They exit, not by floating up as I expected, but by descending into a dark void below the stage in their fish tank. From that same void our narrator emerges. He’s a “princely frog” who tells lame jokes like, “My clock stopped. I guess it’s a Weeki Wachee.” He carries a cane, which has no use underwater, so we can only assume it’s a weapon.

The Frog tells us he is the oldest frog in the springs, so he knows all of its stories. I looked up how long frogs live in the wild, and if this guy were a regular frog, he would be at most ten years old. However, he’s a freaky Ninja Turtle frog, which makes me worry about what they’re dumping into Weeki Wachee Springs, so he could be older than that. He then tells the story of three sirens minding their own business, eating river sailors who accidentally awakened an evil sea witch in a luchador mask with Power Rangers villain body posture. I love a woman who dresses cool and appreciates a nap, so I’m immediately on the sea witch’s side. She imprisons the three sirens and then disappears for a thousand years of beauty rest.

Then we meet The Little Mermaid, whose name is, say it with me, Felicity. Sorry I said The Little Mermaid, but this is actually A Little Mermaid because Disney can’t copyright being petite and a mermaid, even though I’m sure they’ve tried. Felicity sings the entire plot of The Little Mermaid, which ends with her having legs on land and tail when she’s in water, just so we’re aware of where she’s at in her story. The story of a little Mermaid who, like Ariel, had her voice stolen by a sea witch and then married her human love because, I guess, that’s a thing that happens to petite mermaids all the time.

This is where the show starts to get deeply upsetting if you know anything about history because we’re introduced to our second protagonist, Pocahontas, the historical figure, again, not the Disney version. Pocahontas sings a deeply culturally insensitive song about how radical it was that she's convinced her Native American tribe to allow white people into their land. Sounds super nice if you never look into what happened after that.

The song gets grimmer and grimmer, as Pocahontas sings about how she saved Captain John Smith’s life and she’s sure he’ll return the favor. Captain John Smith eventually arrives and joins in the song as well. They sing about how he’s under Pocahontas’s protection as long as he’s in her land, and Pocahontas is sure that’s a great decision for her and the future of her people because Captain Smith seems like such a chill dude. There’s no audience noise in the video, but I’d imagine everyone is screaming, “Don’t go in the basement, Pocahontas! Run!”

Pocahontas and John Smith can both breathe and sing underwater because Weeki Wachee Springs is magical, thanks to the mermaids who live there, but Pocahontas has never seen a mermaid and wishes out loud that she could. Guess what, her wish is instantly granted! And I instantly wish that it wasn’t, because Felicity The Little Mermaid asks Pocahontas to “teach her to be Indian,” and Pocahontas agrees. Even though Pocahontas is capable of singing full sentences when it comes to speaking, she’s suddenly forgotten how to use articles. “My name Pocahontas, Indian Princess,” is how she introduces herself to Ariel. The show treats being Native American and being a mermaid as equally magical and mythical.

“Practice hard, have lots of fun, that’s what it takes to be an Indian,” white Pocahontas sings. “If you’re an Indian you have to try to make it rain from a clear blue sky, so put yourself in an Indian trance, and your moccasins will make a little Indian dance.” This was a different time. It was 1995. We were too focused on Diesel Jeans to consider how fucked up this was.

At least the advice Pocahontas gives to Not Ariel is doable. Not Ariel’s tips for becoming a mermaid are “Trade your legs for a fishy tail, move it up and down just like a whale, arms to steer and most certainly, you’ll be swimming like a mermaid in the deep blue sea.” Grow a tail is not helpful advice. Especially when Pocahontas just said you can have a good attitude and do a little dance to join her people. Ariel comes back with "change your entire anatomy." Pocahontas and two of her friends who appeared to serve as backup dancers form a lady ball of joy at her advice.

After this unsuccessful summit of cultures, Not Ariel decides to blow a torso-sized magical conch shell to let all of the other mermaids know that she met Pocahontas. Unfortunately, blowing the shell reawakens the sea witch, and she is once again pissed off to be conscious. She sends some dragons to attack Pocahontas and Not Ariel. Pocahontas is, like, you know who can take care of this probably? My good friend, John Smith. What the hell is John Smith going to do against a sea dragon? He punches it in the head.

Watching history's John Smith punch a sea dragon in the head is pretty fun. It makes me want to write fan fiction where King Henry the Eighth wrestles Bigfoot. I think he could take him! John Smith is not so lucky with the dragon, though. There's a dramatic fight scene where John and the dragons thrash around a little before Not Ariel realizes the dragons are actually the sirens from the beginning of the show. Wow, I wasn’t expecting a full circle moment, but they managed to pull one off. For a show that’s eighty percent people introducing themselves and twenty percent racist Native American stereotypes, that’s pretty impressive.

Not Ariel somehow determines that because the sirens are creatures of song like her, they can break the spell if everyone in the audience sings and claps! Clap for John Smith everyone! It worked; the sirens are free to eat men again! It’s a win for women everywhere!

I spoke too soon. The dead-eyed frog returns to finish out the story by saying the sirens are so happy to be free they decided to quit their boat sinking business. I’m really sad someone looked at this script and said, “Technically, we don’t want to end on the spring being full of mythical boat-sinking monsters.” We’re also told that history’s Pocahontas and The Petite Fish Woman were friends forever, and neither of the actresses who portrayed them died in a horrible mermaid show accident, but then they end on something that feels very much like an en memoriam slide show.

John Smith floating up toward a heavenly light is the only way this show could have possibly ended. The Weeki Wachee Springs still does a mermaid show in a submerged 400-seat auditorium, but it’s just Hans Christian Anderson’s version of The Little Mermaid now. Pocahontas got cut. She trusted them to continue employing her, and they ultimately betrayed her. Who could have seen that coming!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: LeopardQueen, who negotiated a thousand-year nap into her sea witch contract and is furious every time someone blows that fucking conch.

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