Before sirens became screeching beacons on police cruisers and ambulances, they were winged women who lured sailors to their island with seductive songs. Not even Odysseus, the great Greek hero, braving his way home to his beautiful wife and son after the Trojan War, was immune to their song, thrashing against bindings of both rope and duty to reach them. Centuries later, their legacy lives on, not in the pages of mythology but in the way society still views women who wield power, allure, independence, or simply dare to step outside their house.
Netflix’s new limited series Sirens, created by Molly Smith Metzler (based on her 2011 play Elemeno Pea), revisits this age-old archetype through three modern women who, depending on whom you ask, are either victims or villains, or perhaps both. Advertisement The women of Sirens seem to embody the mythical creatures they are named after. Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), a wealthy socialite, is rumoured to have murdered her husband’s first wife.
Simone DeWitt (Milly Alcock), her sweet yet sharp secretary, is accused of manipulating her way into the lives of powerful men, including her boss. And Devon DeWitt (Meghann Fahy), Simone’s older sister, is hinted to be a nymphomaniac, seducing everyone from her boss to the ferry captain. The men in their orbit are helpless — or so they claim.
Ethan Corbin III (Glenn Howerton), a wealthy playboy, calls Simone a “monster” after she rejects his marriage proposal and blames her when he drunkenly topples off a cliff. Peter Kell (Kevin Bacon), Kiki’s husband, blames her for his estrangement from his children before discarding her for a younger woman, Simone, who was his best friend’s girlfriend until yesterday. Even Devon’s boss, who nearly drowns in a reckless midnight swim, tells her, “You have this crazy pull over me.” The sisters’ own father blames their late mother for the abuse and neglect he heaped on his daughters — as if her suicide, not his actions, doomed their family.
Are the men on to something, then? Are these women, who allegedly ensnared them with their beauty and “honeyed” siren song, to be blamed for their misguided actions? Or are they simply being cast in the same role as the sirens of old — beautiful, dangerous, and always at fault?
Advertisement Also Read | Why 'Adolescence' should be mandatory viewing The series opens with Kiki walking through the fog with a peregrine falcon, whispering to it before it takes flight. Later, we learn she runs a sanctuary for raptors, nursing wounded birds of prey. The symbolism is heavy-handed but effective: These women, like the falcons, are predators by nature, but they are also victims of circumstance.
The falcon, once freed, returns in the night, too afraid to leave the safety of the sanctuary. It crashes through the glass of Kiki’s home, destroying what little stability she had — a foreshadowing of her own fate. Kiki fires Simone after discovering that her husband has set his sights on her.
However, Simone — a predator herself, and a wounded one at that — refuses to go back into the wild once she has seen what her life could be. Simone, like Kiki before her, is a survivor, clawing her way up from foster care into the gilded cages of the elite. Devon, trapped in cycles of self-destruction, seeks validation in the arms of men who see her as both temptation and scapegoat.
It is clear that a wounded predator is still a predator, but the question to ask is: Who hurt them in the first place? The women are in no way innocent. They are flawed, sometimes cruel, often selfish, but so are the men.
The difference is that the men’s actions are ignored and excused, while the women are vilified, seen as monsters rather than just human. For centuries, men have refused to take accountability for their decisions, accusing women of bewitching them, robbing them of their free will. It is an argument which continues to crop up even today.
Men blame women dressing or behaving provocatively, for having the audacity to step out at night or rub shoulders with them at work, while their own behaviour is put down to an inability to control themselves. Cast off on an island in the middle of nowhere, the sirens are trying to survive like everyone else in this world. But their greatest sin, it seems, is crossing the path of sailors.
One might wonder whether at least some of the responsibility lies with sailors who stray from their course. “The Sirens bewitch everyone who approaches them. There is no homecoming for the man who draws near them unawares and hears the Sirens’ voices: No welcome from his wife, no little children brightening at their father’s return,” Circe warns Odysseus in The Odyssey.
Of course, she had “coerced” Odysseus into a relationship and sired a son with him before that. What else is to be expected from a witch? aishwarya.khosla@indianexpress.in
