The Gray Swan
Dec. 19th, 2010 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSo, okay, on the surface, Black Swan is such an archetypal "women who get power go crazy" movie that it's not even funny. So delving a bit into the author's graveyard, here's how it came off to me. Note: I'd have to watch this again to confirm my theory, on Blu-Ray so I can fast-forward whenever anyone's toes are on screen, because OMG.
Okay, so I think the movie is actually satirizing its own theme, simply by assuming the intelligence of the viewer. Take the ballet that the story is metafictionally reimagining, Swan Lake, which ends (in the film) with the heroine committing suicide over her lover cheating on her. Now, most of us would say that killing yourself over a guy is a bad idea.
Similarly, the conflict in Black Swan is theoretically that Nina (Natalie Portman) is able to play the Madonna-y White Swan, but not the whorish Black Swan. The White Swan is described as good and innocent, while the Black Swan is described as angry and lustful. The idea that a woman can be both good and lustful, that Nina can stand up to her mother and not be evil, is conspicuous in its absence.
This brings us to the second part of the film's love triangle, Vincent Cassel's Leroy. Leroy pretty much is the Patriarchy. He holds power over the entire ballet company, determining who advances (usually by means of who's willing to do sexual favors for him), sees women as interchangeable, forcibly retires the company's star dancer for a "younger model" in an odiously aggrandizing manner, and is just generally a dick. He molests and harasses Nina, telling her to masturbate in order to build a better performance for the Black Swan, which she does in a few abortive attempts. It's telling that this Black Swan's sexuality is completely under the control of a man.
But there's another side to Nina… let's call it the Gray Swan, for symmetry. It's represented by Lily, Mila Kunis's character. Judging Black Swan as a companion piece to The Wrestler, as the director has said to do, Lily is clearly the Marisa Tomei character of the film, offering the protagonist the hope of a normal happy life if he/she just turns away from the self-destructive path they're on. Since the film is presented from Nina's very subjective POV, for most of the movie Lily is presented as a threat to Nina. In Nina's world, Lily is gunning for her, she's a slut, she's trying to take Nina's man (Leroy). But in the one scene that we can be absolutely certain is real in the hallucinogenic third act, Nina thinks she's stabbed Lily to death, only to find Lily at the door to her dressing room after a performance. And this is key – Lily isn't jealous of Nina's success or mocking her over an error in her dancing. She's legitimately happy for Nina. So, that's the real Lily… someone who doesn't take ballet as seriously as Nina, but is able to balance her work with having a life, in addition to being very good at what she does (she's able to become Nina's alternate on her own merit, unless you believe Nina's glimpse of Lily and Leroy having a tryst, which dovetails a bit too neatly with Nina's paranoia for me to believe). In short, a pretty well-adjusted human being.
Now what about Lily? She wants to be perfect, and it's implied pretty heavily that this has more to do with her overbearing mother than her own desires. At one point, she's point blank asked why she dances and she doesn’t say because it's fun, or because she's good at it, or to entertain people… she says it's because she wants to be perfect. Of course, who's to say what perfect is? Think about the medium of ballet itself. It's performed for an audience, its success is judged on how well the company follows a set routine. Basically, Lily's entire life isn't based around what she wants, but on what she's told she would want, and what she's told to want is approval from a predominantly male society. Who's to say she wouldn't be happy and talented at being a computer programmer, or a restaurant critic, or the girlfriend of an internet blogger? No one, except on that last one. :(
It's also telling that although Nina's attempts at masturbation are unsuccessful, when she fantasizes/has a sexual encounter with Lily, it goes all the way through to orgasm. Why show that if it's not important? I think we can agree that a cast and crew this artistic wouldn't do so for nothing more than cheap titillation (although, yeah… fic now, plz). For the first time, Nina is having a sexuality outside both the controlling celibacy of her mother and the assault of Leroy, and this is eventually revealed as all taking place in her head. Would it be too on the nose to say the Gray Swan would represent Nina loving herself, as opposed to the White and Black Swan's back-and-forth of self-pity and self-hatred?
Remember when I talked about Nina stabbing Lily? Think about it. In hindsight, she's stabbing herself, or the Black Swan part of her persona. Then she goes out on stage and metamorphosizes into the Black Swan. Why? Because she's killed the Gray Swan, the independent part of herself that yearned for the kind of freedom Lily enjoys. Immediately afterward, Leroy runs to Nina's side and calls her his little princess, explicitly the title he referred to his old star dancer with. She's won the approval of a rapist and a scumbag, and died for it.
ETA: Oh, and at the end, Nina hasn't achieved perfection. Her performance is still marred by the tumble she took in the first act, so the idea of the film having a bittersweet happy ending is kinda... anyway, that irony is what I think Aronofsky was going for. The whole thing is a cautionary tale, not a triumph.
Okay, so I think the movie is actually satirizing its own theme, simply by assuming the intelligence of the viewer. Take the ballet that the story is metafictionally reimagining, Swan Lake, which ends (in the film) with the heroine committing suicide over her lover cheating on her. Now, most of us would say that killing yourself over a guy is a bad idea.
Similarly, the conflict in Black Swan is theoretically that Nina (Natalie Portman) is able to play the Madonna-y White Swan, but not the whorish Black Swan. The White Swan is described as good and innocent, while the Black Swan is described as angry and lustful. The idea that a woman can be both good and lustful, that Nina can stand up to her mother and not be evil, is conspicuous in its absence.
This brings us to the second part of the film's love triangle, Vincent Cassel's Leroy. Leroy pretty much is the Patriarchy. He holds power over the entire ballet company, determining who advances (usually by means of who's willing to do sexual favors for him), sees women as interchangeable, forcibly retires the company's star dancer for a "younger model" in an odiously aggrandizing manner, and is just generally a dick. He molests and harasses Nina, telling her to masturbate in order to build a better performance for the Black Swan, which she does in a few abortive attempts. It's telling that this Black Swan's sexuality is completely under the control of a man.
But there's another side to Nina… let's call it the Gray Swan, for symmetry. It's represented by Lily, Mila Kunis's character. Judging Black Swan as a companion piece to The Wrestler, as the director has said to do, Lily is clearly the Marisa Tomei character of the film, offering the protagonist the hope of a normal happy life if he/she just turns away from the self-destructive path they're on. Since the film is presented from Nina's very subjective POV, for most of the movie Lily is presented as a threat to Nina. In Nina's world, Lily is gunning for her, she's a slut, she's trying to take Nina's man (Leroy). But in the one scene that we can be absolutely certain is real in the hallucinogenic third act, Nina thinks she's stabbed Lily to death, only to find Lily at the door to her dressing room after a performance. And this is key – Lily isn't jealous of Nina's success or mocking her over an error in her dancing. She's legitimately happy for Nina. So, that's the real Lily… someone who doesn't take ballet as seriously as Nina, but is able to balance her work with having a life, in addition to being very good at what she does (she's able to become Nina's alternate on her own merit, unless you believe Nina's glimpse of Lily and Leroy having a tryst, which dovetails a bit too neatly with Nina's paranoia for me to believe). In short, a pretty well-adjusted human being.
Now what about Lily? She wants to be perfect, and it's implied pretty heavily that this has more to do with her overbearing mother than her own desires. At one point, she's point blank asked why she dances and she doesn’t say because it's fun, or because she's good at it, or to entertain people… she says it's because she wants to be perfect. Of course, who's to say what perfect is? Think about the medium of ballet itself. It's performed for an audience, its success is judged on how well the company follows a set routine. Basically, Lily's entire life isn't based around what she wants, but on what she's told she would want, and what she's told to want is approval from a predominantly male society. Who's to say she wouldn't be happy and talented at being a computer programmer, or a restaurant critic, or the girlfriend of an internet blogger? No one, except on that last one. :(
It's also telling that although Nina's attempts at masturbation are unsuccessful, when she fantasizes/has a sexual encounter with Lily, it goes all the way through to orgasm. Why show that if it's not important? I think we can agree that a cast and crew this artistic wouldn't do so for nothing more than cheap titillation (although, yeah… fic now, plz). For the first time, Nina is having a sexuality outside both the controlling celibacy of her mother and the assault of Leroy, and this is eventually revealed as all taking place in her head. Would it be too on the nose to say the Gray Swan would represent Nina loving herself, as opposed to the White and Black Swan's back-and-forth of self-pity and self-hatred?
Remember when I talked about Nina stabbing Lily? Think about it. In hindsight, she's stabbing herself, or the Black Swan part of her persona. Then she goes out on stage and metamorphosizes into the Black Swan. Why? Because she's killed the Gray Swan, the independent part of herself that yearned for the kind of freedom Lily enjoys. Immediately afterward, Leroy runs to Nina's side and calls her his little princess, explicitly the title he referred to his old star dancer with. She's won the approval of a rapist and a scumbag, and died for it.
ETA: Oh, and at the end, Nina hasn't achieved perfection. Her performance is still marred by the tumble she took in the first act, so the idea of the film having a bittersweet happy ending is kinda... anyway, that irony is what I think Aronofsky was going for. The whole thing is a cautionary tale, not a triumph.
