Slight-to-moderate spoilers of Netflix's series Sirens to follow.
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The quiet brilliance of Molly Smith Metzler's Sirens is that it offers two possible interpretations for virtually everything its characters do. If you read a given action or a given statement only one way, rest assured: there's another way of seeing it that you happen to be missing.
That starts with the ambiguous meaning of Sirens itself, which revolves around a woman and her sister, that sister's rich employer, and that boss's even-richer husband. Who are the sirens in the series' title? Are they the women who men seem irresistibly drawn to, women who understand the power they wield and how to wield it? Or is that just the story that men tell themselves about these women, to justify the actions that they "can't help but take?"
Characters in Sirens don't make their manipulations obvious—if they're being manipulative at all. There are accusations of manipulative behavior, of schemes and lies and even murder... but are these accusations manipulative in and of themselves? It's hard to be sure of even that. Most everyone always seems to be sincere. But is that proof of their sincerity, or is it just proof that some liars are unusually persuasive when they lie? We, the viewers, are as unmoored as the people we're watching; there's rarely hard evidence that we should buy into one story over another, or whether those stories are accurate-and-sincere, mistaken-but-earnest, outright lies, or—most cannily of all—true stories told with intent to warp the truth.
There is a moment, partway through the series, where a man briefly touches a woman, in a way that is not remotely sexual or disrespectful or invasive. What an upstanding guy, I thought to myself. A moment later, I thought: But this is how a man would touch a woman if he was specifically trying to show her how respectful of her he is. As I thought it, the man in question kissed her, unexpectedly and (clearly) unwelcomely; a moment later, he seemed shocked and embarrassed by his own behavior, and profusely apologetic. Was he a well-meaning man who'd acted on a problematic impulse? Was he a seasoned predator who knew exactly how to groom his prey? It seemed impossible to tell—and the more we saw of him, the less clear it became. Certainly he acted exactly how a decent man ought to act in situations like those, without so much as a flicker of a facial expression to suggest otherwise. But is that proof of who this man is, or is it proof that he knows how to convince a woman that he's someone to be trusted? That he's found a way to let her know that he desires her while, in the same breath, convincing her that he is a deeply respectful and honorable person who would never do her wrong?
Even my framing, there, suggests a narrative: You should doubt this man. But by and large, Sirens thwarts any attempts you might make to convince yourself that you understand these characters' intentions. The few times that it presents somebody in an unambiguously sympathetic light, it reveals other perspectives on its story, suggesting that those sympathetic behaviors might have been more callous and less feeling than you might have otherwise concluded.
At the center of all these veils is Michaela, played with phenomenal ambiguity by Julianne Moore. Michaela—or Kiki, as her best friend (and employee) Simone gets to call her—can't help but be so enormously wealthy that her every whim gets interpreted as tyrannical law. She transforms a modest birdwatching group into a juggernaut of a charity, the sort that gets photo spreads in Vanity Fair. Her smoothie preferences matter so much that a single wrong ingredient will get a chef screamed at: never by her, mind you, but by Simone, who so viciously enforces Michaela's every desire that every other staff member at Michaela's private mansion has a group text devoted to shit-talking her. Is Michaela a harsh, intolerant boss who fosters a cult of personality while laundering her brutal expectations through Simone? Or is Simone just so determined to be worth Michaela's while, and to ride this gravy train for all it's worth, that she's being brutally harsh all on her own, in ways that Michaela herself would disapprove of?
It's hard to tell, just as it's hard to tell whether Michaela truly sees Simone as a dear friend or is love-bombing her into being a perfect Stepford Employee. At one point, when Simone is thrust into an unexpected crisis, Michaela offers her some heartfelt advice, and it feels like she's bearing her soul, dropping her mask, and revealing the woman she truly is. But is she being truthful? Or has she found a way of retaining her favorite employee? Or do the two just conveniently happen to be one and the same?
Into this mix storms Simone's sister Devon, trailing a string of men behind her like casualties. Devon has no interest in conforming herself to Michaela's ultra-preppy Martha's Vineyard universe; she is sniffed at by Michaela, cautioned by the mansion staff—all of whom enjoy her but are thoroughly bemused by the messes she leaves for them to clean up—and thoroughly abhorred by Simone, who wants absolutely no traces of her old life following her into this immaculate new world. Devon and Simone tell two very different tales about where Simone came from. Rather, they tell two very similar tales, but with drastically different inflections. Each sister is a hurtful, ungrateful monster in the eyes of the other. And the root of their conflict is seemingly insurmountable: Simone was offered a chance at a charmed life, or a chance to escape a hellish one, and she took it. And all it cost her was everyone she'd ever known.
(Or is that the real reason why they're so at odds? Again, another possibility presents itself. And which story feels truer comes down to which of these sisters gets to tell their own tale—because there's seemingly no way to tell this story in a way that's equally kind to both of them.)
Arriving late to his own story is Peter, Michaela's husband, whose only enigma is that he seemingly has no enigma. Peter, despite his wealth, seems human and approachable in ways that his wife never does—he's the only person who Devon herself gets along with, despite his being the source of a universe that she utterly despises. At times, he feels like a reluctant side character in his own story, slipping away from Michaela's manicured photoshoots and reception galas to smoke a joint and go quahogging for clams. But it's hard to ignore another version of Peter's story, too. Is it possible that he feels so down-to-earth, so relatable and receptive to his employees, because he's the only person here whose future isn't at stake? Simone is despised by the house staff in ways that Michaela isn't, because Simone is tasked with making Michaela's dreams come true, while Michaela is tasked only with dreaming; similarly, Michaela has to speak a language of wealth and status that Peter doesn't, because Peter has wealth and status, while Michaela just has Peter.
Money is the not-so-silent partner in all the stories that these people tell. Devon resents Simone for leaving her stuck taking care of her dementia-addled father; she resents that she's stuck fucking her service-industry manager behind his wife's back, while Simone gets to sleep with Michaela's playboy fuckboy neighbor, praying all the while that he means it when he says he loves her too. Simone seems to genuinely adore Michaela, who she's close enough with that the two sometimes share a bed; then again, her paycheck relies on her feeling that adoration. Similarly, an awful lot of men seem to profess love to women because love's what you have to profess when you want to put your dick in them—and some of them seem to realize that "I love you" only sounds convincing if you get yourself to believe it. (Though some people seem to find your love a lot more plausible when you're the one signing their checks.)
Which is more insidious: the person who tells a story about you that feels malicious and wrong, or the person who tells a story that both of you are invested in believing? Which stories do you believe because they are true, and which do you believe because you need them to be true? And what happens when, on some level, you know it's the other person who's telling the story, and that they'll tell it only as long as you consent to their telling it—and that, the moment they feel they've lost your consent, that story will change into something much less flattering?
Perhaps it's flattering, for instance, when a man finds a woman attractive. Perhaps she has every reason to agree with him that his desire for her is flattering, either because she's attracted to him back or because she's desperately lonely or because she's seeking love or because she wants to live a lifestyle that only he can offer. Who can tell why she agrees with him? One narrative says that she and she alone knows the real story—and that, if her actions don't line up with her words, that means she's been lying to him all along. Another narrative says that she herself isn't sure exactly which the answer is. Or that, perhaps, she knew what his story of her would be if she rejected his advances. Maybe, on some level, she says it in order to get what she wants, and on another level she says it because she's afraid of what will happen if she doesn't say it, and on yet another level she genuinely does mean it, or she believes she means it, in a way that means she's no longer sure of which is which. But that's a complicated story, and complications sometimes sound a lot like excuses. And simpler stories, good or ill, are easier to believe, particularly when a lot of people—men and women alike—have good reason to believe the stories people tell about you.
What did happen to Peter's first wife, in other words? And is there reason to believe, as so many do, that Michaela murdered her, dashing her body upon the cliffs as sirens did in Odysseus's day? It's the one thing Peter doesn't seem to want to talk about—and maybe there's a story about why people don't feel like telling stories, and maybe there's just no story there at all.
Sirens takes place in New England, where prep culture abounds. Prep culture, if you're unfamiliar, revolves around a fascinating paradox: it's a culture of rich people putting on a performance of modesty, sensibility, humility, and taste. It's studiously down-to-earth, except of course where it isn't: it stresses durably-made clothes, folksy family get-togethers, humble behaviors that blur the lines between working-class and hyperwealthy and merely-ordinarily-wealthy. The pretense of modesty, in other words, is what signals your wealth: if you can talk to your gardener and your maid as if you and they are more-or-less the same, you're demonstrating just how comfortable you are with your own fortune.
Simone, who comes from a world of poverty and abuse, is despised by her fellow workers; she conspicuously flaunts her borrowed wealth. Michaela puts on a show of wearing unflashy clothes now and again, though her wardrobe is flashy in its unflashiness (and sometimes it's just flashy). Peter doesn't hesitate to put on unflattering boots while wading into water to gather clams, but in a society like his, this conveys exactly the opposite of what it seems to. The tricky bit is that that's true whether or not Peter is also genuinely down-to-earth. If it's a performance, it's a good one, because Peter was trained from youth to put on an authentic-seeming show. And if it is sincerely just who Peter is, that doesn't change the fact that Peter knows the story he's telling—even if he doesn't have to fake anything in order to tell it.
And if Devon is the one person we trust to be crass and plainspoken and honest, a part of why we trust her is that she so obviously gets it: she knows why Simone would abandon her own family for a shot at pretending like she belongs, just like she doesn't hide the fact that a part of her would clearly like to do the same. Where she and Simone differ, perhaps, is that Simone knows how easily she can convince herself that she feels and believes all the things she has to feel and believe, and also knows that she might genuinely wind up believing and feeling it. And while Devon might be fine with feigning those feelings and those beliefs, she seems disturbed by the possibility that, past a certain point, she might not know whether she's faking anything at all.
Which is worse: to pretend that you believe something, or to believe that you mean something, or to genuinely mean it? Which is worse: that they lied to your face, or that they thought they were telling the truth, or that it really was the truth to them, at least for a little while? Would you prefer their justifications for how they treat you to be genuinely earned—would you rather genuinely deserve your fate—or would you rather they be bald-faced lies? And which would you rather: that they know exactly how truthful or deceitful they're being, or that they themselves aren't sure of any of it at all?
One thing's for certain: if you don't tell your story, then someone else will. And if you do tell your story, then a part of their story will be about the story you told, and about the way you told it, and about who you must have been to tell that particular story in that particular way. One way or another, you will become someone else's mythology, or else you will become your myth: sailor or siren, spurned lover or sealogged corpse. When you're caught in a riptide, you can't stop yourself from being dragged out to sea. Some lures are irresistible—so they say, but who's to say for sure, when they were the only ones who claimed to find themselves adrift? One way or another, there's a legend; one way or another, there's a song. And if some songs are more compelling than others, well, it has a lot to do with the one who's listening. As much as, if not more than, it has to do with the one that person claims was singing—even as, with that claim, the listener pulls their would-be singer into a part of their own song.
______________
The quiet brilliance of Molly Smith Metzler's Sirens is that it offers two possible interpretations for virtually everything its characters do. If you read a given action or a given statement only one way, rest assured: there's another way of seeing it that you happen to be missing.
That starts with the ambiguous meaning of Sirens itself, which revolves around a woman and her sister, that sister's rich employer, and that boss's even-richer husband. Who are the sirens in the series' title? Are they the women who men seem irresistibly drawn to, women who understand the power they wield and how to wield it? Or is that just the story that men tell themselves about these women, to justify the actions that they "can't help but take?"
Characters in Sirens don't make their manipulations obvious—if they're being manipulative at all. There are accusations of manipulative behavior, of schemes and lies and even murder... but are these accusations manipulative in and of themselves? It's hard to be sure of even that. Most everyone always seems to be sincere. But is that proof of their sincerity, or is it just proof that some liars are unusually persuasive when they lie? We, the viewers, are as unmoored as the people we're watching; there's rarely hard evidence that we should buy into one story over another, or whether those stories are accurate-and-sincere, mistaken-but-earnest, outright lies, or—most cannily of all—true stories told with intent to warp the truth.
There is a moment, partway through the series, where a man briefly touches a woman, in a way that is not remotely sexual or disrespectful or invasive. What an upstanding guy, I thought to myself. A moment later, I thought: But this is how a man would touch a woman if he was specifically trying to show her how respectful of her he is. As I thought it, the man in question kissed her, unexpectedly and (clearly) unwelcomely; a moment later, he seemed shocked and embarrassed by his own behavior, and profusely apologetic. Was he a well-meaning man who'd acted on a problematic impulse? Was he a seasoned predator who knew exactly how to groom his prey? It seemed impossible to tell—and the more we saw of him, the less clear it became. Certainly he acted exactly how a decent man ought to act in situations like those, without so much as a flicker of a facial expression to suggest otherwise. But is that proof of who this man is, or is it proof that he knows how to convince a woman that he's someone to be trusted? That he's found a way to let her know that he desires her while, in the same breath, convincing her that he is a deeply respectful and honorable person who would never do her wrong?
Even my framing, there, suggests a narrative: You should doubt this man. But by and large, Sirens thwarts any attempts you might make to convince yourself that you understand these characters' intentions. The few times that it presents somebody in an unambiguously sympathetic light, it reveals other perspectives on its story, suggesting that those sympathetic behaviors might have been more callous and less feeling than you might have otherwise concluded.
At the center of all these veils is Michaela, played with phenomenal ambiguity by Julianne Moore. Michaela—or Kiki, as her best friend (and employee) Simone gets to call her—can't help but be so enormously wealthy that her every whim gets interpreted as tyrannical law. She transforms a modest birdwatching group into a juggernaut of a charity, the sort that gets photo spreads in Vanity Fair. Her smoothie preferences matter so much that a single wrong ingredient will get a chef screamed at: never by her, mind you, but by Simone, who so viciously enforces Michaela's every desire that every other staff member at Michaela's private mansion has a group text devoted to shit-talking her. Is Michaela a harsh, intolerant boss who fosters a cult of personality while laundering her brutal expectations through Simone? Or is Simone just so determined to be worth Michaela's while, and to ride this gravy train for all it's worth, that she's being brutally harsh all on her own, in ways that Michaela herself would disapprove of?
It's hard to tell, just as it's hard to tell whether Michaela truly sees Simone as a dear friend or is love-bombing her into being a perfect Stepford Employee. At one point, when Simone is thrust into an unexpected crisis, Michaela offers her some heartfelt advice, and it feels like she's bearing her soul, dropping her mask, and revealing the woman she truly is. But is she being truthful? Or has she found a way of retaining her favorite employee? Or do the two just conveniently happen to be one and the same?
Into this mix storms Simone's sister Devon, trailing a string of men behind her like casualties. Devon has no interest in conforming herself to Michaela's ultra-preppy Martha's Vineyard universe; she is sniffed at by Michaela, cautioned by the mansion staff—all of whom enjoy her but are thoroughly bemused by the messes she leaves for them to clean up—and thoroughly abhorred by Simone, who wants absolutely no traces of her old life following her into this immaculate new world. Devon and Simone tell two very different tales about where Simone came from. Rather, they tell two very similar tales, but with drastically different inflections. Each sister is a hurtful, ungrateful monster in the eyes of the other. And the root of their conflict is seemingly insurmountable: Simone was offered a chance at a charmed life, or a chance to escape a hellish one, and she took it. And all it cost her was everyone she'd ever known.
(Or is that the real reason why they're so at odds? Again, another possibility presents itself. And which story feels truer comes down to which of these sisters gets to tell their own tale—because there's seemingly no way to tell this story in a way that's equally kind to both of them.)
Arriving late to his own story is Peter, Michaela's husband, whose only enigma is that he seemingly has no enigma. Peter, despite his wealth, seems human and approachable in ways that his wife never does—he's the only person who Devon herself gets along with, despite his being the source of a universe that she utterly despises. At times, he feels like a reluctant side character in his own story, slipping away from Michaela's manicured photoshoots and reception galas to smoke a joint and go quahogging for clams. But it's hard to ignore another version of Peter's story, too. Is it possible that he feels so down-to-earth, so relatable and receptive to his employees, because he's the only person here whose future isn't at stake? Simone is despised by the house staff in ways that Michaela isn't, because Simone is tasked with making Michaela's dreams come true, while Michaela is tasked only with dreaming; similarly, Michaela has to speak a language of wealth and status that Peter doesn't, because Peter has wealth and status, while Michaela just has Peter.
Money is the not-so-silent partner in all the stories that these people tell. Devon resents Simone for leaving her stuck taking care of her dementia-addled father; she resents that she's stuck fucking her service-industry manager behind his wife's back, while Simone gets to sleep with Michaela's playboy fuckboy neighbor, praying all the while that he means it when he says he loves her too. Simone seems to genuinely adore Michaela, who she's close enough with that the two sometimes share a bed; then again, her paycheck relies on her feeling that adoration. Similarly, an awful lot of men seem to profess love to women because love's what you have to profess when you want to put your dick in them—and some of them seem to realize that "I love you" only sounds convincing if you get yourself to believe it. (Though some people seem to find your love a lot more plausible when you're the one signing their checks.)
Which is more insidious: the person who tells a story about you that feels malicious and wrong, or the person who tells a story that both of you are invested in believing? Which stories do you believe because they are true, and which do you believe because you need them to be true? And what happens when, on some level, you know it's the other person who's telling the story, and that they'll tell it only as long as you consent to their telling it—and that, the moment they feel they've lost your consent, that story will change into something much less flattering?
Perhaps it's flattering, for instance, when a man finds a woman attractive. Perhaps she has every reason to agree with him that his desire for her is flattering, either because she's attracted to him back or because she's desperately lonely or because she's seeking love or because she wants to live a lifestyle that only he can offer. Who can tell why she agrees with him? One narrative says that she and she alone knows the real story—and that, if her actions don't line up with her words, that means she's been lying to him all along. Another narrative says that she herself isn't sure exactly which the answer is. Or that, perhaps, she knew what his story of her would be if she rejected his advances. Maybe, on some level, she says it in order to get what she wants, and on another level she says it because she's afraid of what will happen if she doesn't say it, and on yet another level she genuinely does mean it, or she believes she means it, in a way that means she's no longer sure of which is which. But that's a complicated story, and complications sometimes sound a lot like excuses. And simpler stories, good or ill, are easier to believe, particularly when a lot of people—men and women alike—have good reason to believe the stories people tell about you.
What did happen to Peter's first wife, in other words? And is there reason to believe, as so many do, that Michaela murdered her, dashing her body upon the cliffs as sirens did in Odysseus's day? It's the one thing Peter doesn't seem to want to talk about—and maybe there's a story about why people don't feel like telling stories, and maybe there's just no story there at all.
Sirens takes place in New England, where prep culture abounds. Prep culture, if you're unfamiliar, revolves around a fascinating paradox: it's a culture of rich people putting on a performance of modesty, sensibility, humility, and taste. It's studiously down-to-earth, except of course where it isn't: it stresses durably-made clothes, folksy family get-togethers, humble behaviors that blur the lines between working-class and hyperwealthy and merely-ordinarily-wealthy. The pretense of modesty, in other words, is what signals your wealth: if you can talk to your gardener and your maid as if you and they are more-or-less the same, you're demonstrating just how comfortable you are with your own fortune.
Simone, who comes from a world of poverty and abuse, is despised by her fellow workers; she conspicuously flaunts her borrowed wealth. Michaela puts on a show of wearing unflashy clothes now and again, though her wardrobe is flashy in its unflashiness (and sometimes it's just flashy). Peter doesn't hesitate to put on unflattering boots while wading into water to gather clams, but in a society like his, this conveys exactly the opposite of what it seems to. The tricky bit is that that's true whether or not Peter is also genuinely down-to-earth. If it's a performance, it's a good one, because Peter was trained from youth to put on an authentic-seeming show. And if it is sincerely just who Peter is, that doesn't change the fact that Peter knows the story he's telling—even if he doesn't have to fake anything in order to tell it.
And if Devon is the one person we trust to be crass and plainspoken and honest, a part of why we trust her is that she so obviously gets it: she knows why Simone would abandon her own family for a shot at pretending like she belongs, just like she doesn't hide the fact that a part of her would clearly like to do the same. Where she and Simone differ, perhaps, is that Simone knows how easily she can convince herself that she feels and believes all the things she has to feel and believe, and also knows that she might genuinely wind up believing and feeling it. And while Devon might be fine with feigning those feelings and those beliefs, she seems disturbed by the possibility that, past a certain point, she might not know whether she's faking anything at all.
Which is worse: to pretend that you believe something, or to believe that you mean something, or to genuinely mean it? Which is worse: that they lied to your face, or that they thought they were telling the truth, or that it really was the truth to them, at least for a little while? Would you prefer their justifications for how they treat you to be genuinely earned—would you rather genuinely deserve your fate—or would you rather they be bald-faced lies? And which would you rather: that they know exactly how truthful or deceitful they're being, or that they themselves aren't sure of any of it at all?
One thing's for certain: if you don't tell your story, then someone else will. And if you do tell your story, then a part of their story will be about the story you told, and about the way you told it, and about who you must have been to tell that particular story in that particular way. One way or another, you will become someone else's mythology, or else you will become your myth: sailor or siren, spurned lover or sealogged corpse. When you're caught in a riptide, you can't stop yourself from being dragged out to sea. Some lures are irresistible—so they say, but who's to say for sure, when they were the only ones who claimed to find themselves adrift? One way or another, there's a legend; one way or another, there's a song. And if some songs are more compelling than others, well, it has a lot to do with the one who's listening. As much as, if not more than, it has to do with the one that person claims was singing—even as, with that claim, the listener pulls their would-be singer into a part of their own song.