I’m pretty sure that I saw Splash when it appeared in theaters in 1984 but I certainly didn’t imagine that it would popularize “Madison” as a name for girls. The Wikipedia entry notes:
According to the Social Security Administration, the name Madison was the 216th most popular name in the United States for girls in 1990, the 29th most popular name for girls in 1995, and the third most popular name for girls in 2000. In 2005, the name cracked the top 50 most popular girls' names in the United Kingdom, and articles in British newspapers credit the film for the popularization.
In the movie “Madison” is the name taken by a mermaid, played by Daryh Hannah, when she emerges on land to attach herself to a forlorn Allen Bauer, played by Tom Hanks.
The first 10, 15, 20 minutes or so of the movie are about how this situation comes about, but let’s just take that as a given. This is a story about how a human male and a female mermaid meet, fall in love, and, why not? I’ll give the ending away. They swim away to, presumably, live happily ever after, under the sea.
I’m interested in the elaborate contraption that’s constructed around them. As far as I can tell that contraption exists to conceal an interpersonal problem that’s been kicking around for a long time, one identified by Sigmund Freud (e.g. ”A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men,” 1910), played out on stage by William Shakespeare [1], and that’s been kicking around in stories and poems since forever: Men have trouble dealing with the fact that women can be both sexual and loving, passionate and beloved. Splash deals with this by presenting us with a creature that’s both human and not human (i.e. a mermaid).
Young Allen Bauer is despondent because his girlfriend’s just moved out without giving any him any inkling that she was going to do that. He just wants a woman he can love and marry and be happy with. That’s all he wants. True Romance.
And then this woman shows up. We know she’s really mermaid, but he doesn’t. He picks her up at the police station – I know, you want to know how that came about, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s just staging – takes her home and she goes to bed with him. Simple as that. No teasing or pleading, nothing resembling courtship, but there may have been a kiss (I don’t really remember). We see them walk calmly into the bedroom and that’s that. Just what happened in there, we get to imagine whatever we wish. They might have made hot passionate love, who knows, but there’s no hint of such things anywhere. I mean, she’s really a mermaid! And she’s only got six more days, until the full moon, and then she’s got to return home. But she doesn’t tell Allen where home is or what she is. But she does take the name “Madison.”
Then things get complicated, and painful (in several senses, I was all but squirming as I watched). Allen isn’t the only man involved. There’s a bizarre scientist, Walter Kornbluth, who gets wind of all this and realizes, “Ah hah! I’ll bet she’s really a mermaid.” He’s seen her before. Don’t ask. He manages to douse her with water, at a dinner for the President of the USA (don’t ask), and she’s taken by Kornbluth’s rival scientist, locked up in a lab, and subjected to tests. When Kornbluth learns that she’s going to be dissected the next day, he decides to spring her and return her to Allen.
By this time Allen knows that he’s slept with and is in love with a mermaid. Now what? Well, she’s got to return to the sea or she’ll die. If he’s willing to leave with her and never return to dry land, that can happen. He decides, no. She dives into the water and starts swimming away. He changes his mind, jumps in after her, and they swim away as the credits role.
And this point you may be thinking: “That’s crazy.” I know, and it’s even crazier. Read the Wikipedia plot summary (linked above), you’ll see. My point is that this elaborate contraption is a way of dealing with that problem that Freud named and analyzed, that men have this split image of women as both mothers and whores (if you will). Splash transforms that duality into humans and mermaids and erects an elaborate fantastical contraption to deal with it.
Given that you accept all that, I’ve got one problem with the movie. Allen should have stayed on the pier and let the mermaid go. That wouldn’t have given the audience the feel-good ending for which a movie like this is concocted, but it would have been a minimal way of acknowledging the preposterous nature of it all.
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[1] I analyze this dynamic in some detail in my essay, At the Edge of the Modern, or Why is Prospero Shakespeare's Greatest Creation? Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 21(3): 259-279, 1998, https://www.academia.edu/235334/At_the_Edge_of_the_Modern_or_Why_is_Prospero_Shakespeares_Greatest_Creation
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