Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Siren

2021-09-11 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Siren
Votey panel for Siren
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic riffs on the Greek myth of the Sirens -- the creatures whose irresistible singing lured sailors to crash their ships on the rocks.

In the first panel, a sailor warns the captain: "Captain, we're about to pass the island of the Sirens!" Another voice explains the danger: "Their singing is so beautiful that no man can resist. Don't let any man listen to them." The captain, following the mythological tradition (as Odysseus did), orders: "I order you to tie me to the mast!"

In the second panel comes the subversion. Someone asks: "Sirens? What Sirens?" The response reveals the twist -- "I order you to tie me to the mast" wasn't about resisting the Sirens at all. The captain simply wanted to be tied to the mast. He was using the myth of the Sirens as a convenient excuse to indulge in what is implied to be a bondage kink.

The humor comes from recontextualizing a classic heroic moment from the Odyssey as something far less noble. Odysseus's famous request to be bound to the mast is one of the great scenes of willpower and cunning in Western literature -- and this comic suggests an alternative, much less dignified motivation for that request.

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