Everyone's going ballistic over the body of a mermaid being found. Even the NOAA got involved, issuing a formal statement in an effort to curb the hysteria. News organizations are up in arms wondering why, stating that the show that aired on Sunday on the Discovery Channel titled Mermaids: The Body Found was clearly science fiction.
Okay, media-heads, you want to know WHY people believe this stuff?
No, it's not because we're dumb. Get over yourselves.
No, it's because magic and fantasy and mythology are things that continue to fascinate us, that make us sit up straight and pay attention, even today in a world almost completely explained and dissected by science. We're fascinated because mystery itself draws us. We're fascinated because a part of us will always be that child trying to stay awake on Christmas Eve and witness Santa's arrival. We're fascinated because wouldn't life itself prove to be the miracle we know in our hearts it is if creatures like unicorns and mermaids turned out to be real? By finding a mermaid's body, we may all open the door again to the possibilities that swirled around us daily back before the age of science. Anything could be true, even magic.
It's funny that the media is comparing this show and the reaction to it to The Blair Witch Project, because they are extremely similar and the forces at work that made that poorly-filmed amateurish movie a runaway success were the same as what drives this news story. You say "based on real events" and we hear one word: real. You say "witch", we say "really"??? You say "mermaid", we say "where" and "how soon can we book a cruise to go see them"????
It's the reason behind the huge upswing in the fantasy genre in fiction, this
