Sirens in popular culture: Difference between revisions

The following are a selection of prominent popular culture references to the mythological Sirens.

• In The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan, Annabeth gets lured by Sirens in the Sea of Monsters and almost dies with Percy as he tries to get her away to safety.

• In Terry Brooks' Shannara series there is a species of carnivorous plant called 'Sirens' that grows on the Battlemounds in the Eastlands. The plants have poison thorns which they are capable of launching at prey. They lure their prey within reach with an illusion of a beautiful woman singing.

• There is a Marvel Comics superhero named Siryn, whose mutant power is an ability to use a 'sonic scream,' much like Banshee, her father. Both characters' names come from mythological characters best known for their vocal abilities.

• The DC Comics-character and Titans-foe Siren is a mermaid and uses her singing as her main weapon.

• Sirena is a young-adult novel by Donna Jo Napoli told from the perspective of one young Siren, her lover, and the affairs of the Gods of ancient Greece.

• The "veela" (wila (pronounced VEE-lah) are Slavic fairies, equivalent to nymphs in Greek mythology) in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are beautiful, humanoid creatures that entrance men with their singing in a manner similar to that of the sirens. In one incident Ron Weasley almost jumps off the edge of a balcony when he sees them and hears their song.

• In the final season of Sailor Moon, one of the Sailor Animamates (Sailor Galaxia's cronies) mentioned is Sailor Aluminum Siren. In the anime, she doesn't sing, but just as her name suggests, she lures victims to their doom, by disguising herself in human form and when she has the opportunity tries to extract their star seeds but fails, turning them into phages.

• An episode of the BBC comedy Red Dwarf titled Psirens featured repulsive creatures who could create the illusion they were beautiful women. They did this hoping to lure unwary travellers to them so they could suck out their brains with a straw.

• In the 2003 Pax Network made-for-cable movie Mermaids, the mermaid character Venus played by actress Nikita Ager had a siren ability that allowed her to enchant and hypnotize male characters.

• Melinda Clarke plays a siren on an episode of Charmed titled "Siren Song".

• From April 21, 2006 on, the NBC soap opera Passions featured the character of Siren, a mermaid in love with Miguel Lopez-Fitzgerald.

• In the Batman TV series, a villain named Lorelei Circe (a.k.a. The Siren), played by Joan Collins, appears in episode 97, titled "The Wail of The Siren". The episode aired on September 28, 1967.

• In the Disney Channel's own show So Weird the character Carey Bell was entranced by a siren he met in a performing bar who wanted to run away with him.

• The character Angel (Experiment 624) is a siren-like genetic experiment whose song can turn good people evil.

• In Japanese anime and manga series Saint Seiya. Siren is one of the Mariner Generals of the 7 Seas named Siren Sorrento.

• Elle MacPherson, Portia de Rossi and Kate Fischer starred as sirens alongside Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald and Sam Neill in John Duigan's Sirens (1994) a mildly erotic comedy. The basic (fictional) plotline being that a young English clergyman and his wife are drawn into an enticing world of lascivious art while attempting to persuade the genuine Australian artist Norman Lindsay (played in the film by Sam Neill) to withdraw a controversial work of art from an upcoming exhibition. Once on the artist's estate, however, the couple find themselves increasingly drawn into a more sexually liberated world by Lindsay's family and his three beautiful models.

• Three "Sirens" were featured in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

• Jerome Kern wrote "The Siren's Song" to words by P.G. Wodehouse (1917).

• Enrique Iglesias recorded a song called "Sirena" in which he explains his obsession over a mermaid.

• It Dies Today recorded an album in 2006 called Sirens with imagery relating to the seductive powers of Sirens.

• Tim Buckley wrote and performed a song called "Song to the Siren" which has been covered by many artists including, perhaps most famously, This Mortal Coil.

• The Chemical Brothers released a separate song also called "Song to the Siren" on their 1995 debut album Exit Planet Dust.

• The British synthpop band Erasure has a song titled Siren Song on their 1991 album Chorus

• The song "Siren" by Tori Amos is featured on the Great Expectations soundtrack.

• The Finnish heavy metal band Nightwish also has a song called "The Siren", which describes a man tying himself to the wheel of his ship to resist the beautiful siren of the sea.

• The British Pagan rock band Inkubus Sukkubus have a song titled "Come to Me (Song of the Water Nymph)", which a song about a lonely siren (the water nymph) singing about her longing for a man to call her own. They also have a song titled "Song of the Siren", in which a siren is describing the power she has over men, and the desire to kill them and consume their blood.

• Heavy Metal band Savatage has a song called "Sirens" on their debut album of the same name, Sirens, released in 1983.

• The Progressive Rock band Radiohead wrote song entitled "There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.)" including the lyrics "There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck," directly referencing The Odyssey.

• Scottish folk/rock singer Eddi Reader recorded a song called 'Siren', in which the narrator laments her disappointing love life and asks the Sirens for comfort. It was written by Eddi Reader, Teddy Borowiecki and Boo Hewerdine and released on Reader's eponymous 1994 album.

• Boston, Massachusetts based Indie-Experimental rock band named themselves "The Receiving End Of Sirens."

• The British New Wave band New Order released their album Waiting for the Sirens Call

• Metal Band Iron Maiden references sirens in their 2002 song "The Ghost of the Navigator" with the line, "The Sirens of the rocks, they beckon me."

• The Siren was a Broadway musical in the style of an operetta, which played at the Knickerbocker Theatre on Broadway in 1911.

• In George Bernard Shaw's Augustus Does His Bit the character of the lady is compared to a siren.

• A Siren can be summoned by characters in many games of the Final Fantasy series; she can usually inflict silence upon the player's opponents by the use of an ability called "Siren's Song". She is often the fourth summon made available to the player, following the fire-, cold-, and lightning-based summons.

• In the video game series Star Control, one alien species is a race of beautiful blue women named "Syreens". Also, their ships can use mind-control to beckon crew from enemy ships to work on theirs.

• The characters Elle, Flameshe and Monique in the console role-playing game Legend of Mana are sirens. Flameshe is a mermaid, while Elle and Monique are bird-like from the waist down and have wings (though Monique's are decidedly more plant-like than bird-like). Elle (the only playable siren) suffered grief when she realised that her singing had caused the ship to crash and vowed to never sing again, until her friends convinced her that she should not be ashamed of the fact she is a siren. Monique is known for singing to unseen fairies to have them magically light the lamps she crafts.

• In God of War, the protagonist Kratos has to find and defeat three sirens and their minotaur minions in the desert. Sirens continue to plague him in the sequel.

• In the Playstation 2 game Rygar, the final Diskarmor the player obtains can be used to summon Siren to aid in battle. She attacks using water and ice-based attacks.

• Sirens also feature (although only rarely) in the video game Castlevania. On the occasions that they do appear, their physical appearance is never the same. As a character, the Siren is merely a stronger version of a harpy, a "spellcastress", and takes its original mythological form.

• "Siren" is a class in the video game Tactics Ogre: Knights of Lodis. Instead of being an enchantress (a position taken by the "witch"), the Siren is a magical powerhouse, capable of using the strongest of offensive spells with devastating results.

• In the video game Sudeki there a boss monster that is a siren.

• The Naga Siren is a controllable unit in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

• In the PC game Black and White 2, Siren is an epic miracle where a beautiful woman appears over the landscape causing enemy units to be drawn to her and, if weak enough, convert to your side.

• There is a stealth-based survival horror game called Siren. The siren in question is the call of a being known as Datatsushi, telling the people of Hanuda, a rural mountain Japanese village, to immerse themselves in red water to become creatures known as shibito, and prepare a nest for when he arrives.

• In the online multi-user dungeon, Achaea, Siren is a playable race. All members are female and, upon reaching a certain level, gain the ability to seduce members of the opposite sex

• In the Van Helsing video game, sirens are common enemies. They appear as beautiful women, but with an unnatural pale-blue color. In their first cutscene, they reveal a gaping hole through their torso.

• The Starbucks logo features an image of a Siren (according to Starbucks' Carol Pucik and a press release on the history of the logo[1]) in the center.