black swan
I have Thoughts about Black Swan. Yesterday I got angry over a review of the film calling it campy and hysterical, in both senses of hysterical: the review held that the movie was both laughable and overwrought. And I felt that while the reviewer never used the word hysterical, that word-- and the sexism it represents-- permeated his review. Not least because the other films that he evoked as campy comparisons to Black Swan were about women. No mention of Dead Ringers, an obvious antecedent: no, the review kept comparing Black Swan to Showgirls.
To dismiss Black Swan as campy and overwrought is to spectacularly miss the point. To me, the central idea of the film is that a woman has to make herself crazy to thrive in a sexist world. It's a psychological thriller, not Center Stage. It runs at a fever pitch because it's about a woman's sickness, a sickness she ultimately embraces to cope with a sick society.
What really pissed me off most was a dismissive mention of a scene in which a man on the subway makes lewd gestures at Natalie Portman's Nina. To dismiss that scene as campy cinematic overstatement is to ignore the fact that it represents the lived reality of way too many actual women.
The scene also underscores that the same society that demands Nina embrace her sexuality (for the entertainment of an audience, of course, not for herself) will punish her sexually whether or not she fulfills that demand. That's not hysteria, it's not camp. It's a reality women live with every day.
More Thoughts, with spoilers.
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Which isn't to say that Black Swan entirely succeeds in confronting sexism. In the course of the story, the film almost inevitably indulges in some of the same bullshit it depicts.
Natalie Portman's beauty and sexuality are exploited time and again, and a lesbian sexual encounter between Nina and her rival/doppelganger Lily turns out to be a masturbation fantasy, a conceit with homophobic implications.
Nina is cast as the lead of Swan Lake for her technical skill and her artful interpretation of the White Swan, but the role also calls on her to play the evil twin, the Black Swan, a role she can't seem to dance to the director's satisfaction. Lily, a new dancer acting as Nina's understudy, can dance the Black Swan, and the threat looms that Lily could be tapped to replace Nina.
The ugly limitations of the White Swan/Black Swan virgin/whore dichotomy are revealed, but also reified to some degree. Our heroine is timid and repressed, and other female characters with expressed sexuality antagonize her. Beth, the older ballerina she displaces, confronts Nina and accuses her of sleeping her way into the role. Lily, Nina's rival, takes Nina out and encourages her to flirt with men-- and causes her to miss an important rehearsal. And Nina's own mother, whose own ballet career ended when she became pregnant, sabotages Nina emotionally and literally.
Virgin good, whores bad: for the most part, sexuality is portrayed as dangerous and negative. I'm not sure how this pitfall could have been avoided in the course of telling this story, but there it is.
I think the effort is made to show that the danger and negativity associated with sex in the film comes from the way the world both demands and limits female sexuality: Nina is only encouraged to explore her sexuality in order to perform it for an audience. No one cares about her pleasure or happiness, not even herself. And the other more overtly sexual female characters explicitly mirror Nina-- it's clear that what Nina is learning, they've already internalized.
And I think Black Swan comments on many of its own premises, and on its own reinforcement of some of the same constrictions it's revealing. I believe the casting of Winona Ryder as Beth is, in itself, a strong sign of meta-critique on the part of the filmmakers. If there's any modern actress who's been chewed up and spit out and self-destructed in the face of insoluble pressures...
It's especially apropos because Ryder is now being cast as an older woman, despite the fact that she in no way looks old enough to be, eg, Spock's mom. She's someone we're being told is becoming too old to engage the audience's sympathy as a lead character, despite all visual evidence to the contrary.
Ultimately, I think the film is misogynist because it's showing an environment, a point of view, that's awash in misogyny. We're given Nina to sympathize with, and at every point we're shown that Nina is hurt and diminished by the misogyny around her. When she stabs her female rival, she realizes she has wounded herself: the symbolism there couldn't be more clear.
Still more Thoughts, with massive Black Swan spoilers; probably only makes sense if you've seen it.
-
The sex scene between Lily and Nina can be seen as conflating homosexuality and masturbation in an unfortunate way. But it's also the only instance of sexuality in the film that is at all beneficial.
It's filmed very very firmly from Nina's point of view, rather than pulling back to thrill the audience with shots of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis kissing. If you compare it with a similar scene in Jennifer's Body, the difference is marked. The Black Swan scene makes an effort to serve the story rather than only to titillate, and Nina's experience is prioritized.
Nina gets in touch with her sensuality and experiences desire and pleasure through her fantasy encounter with Lily. While she gets distressed by that because of her own damage, I think Nina's attraction to Lily is portrayed as authentic.
By comparison, she has an equally sexualized but negative relationship with her director, who manipulatively kisses her, gropes her, and harangues her to be more seductive as the Black Swan.
In the final act, Nina comes offstage after her successful performance of the Black Swan and kisses the director-- in my opinion, a literal kiss-off, a 'fuck you' to his manipulations.
As the film ends, her connection with the director is revealed as hollow, made explicit when he calls her 'my little princess', the nickname he used with Beth, treating Nina as an interchangeable doll. Meanwhile Nina shows no sign of giving a shit about his approval. She's absorbed in the roar of the crowd.
The film ends with Nina dying after her amazing opening night performance while the audience wildly applauds. But personally I didn't take the ending as literal. Earlier we saw Nina rip up her skin and then it was revealed she didn't really harm herself.
Throughout the movie we're shown impossible things from Nina's point of view, and by the end of the film, we're entirely in Nina's head and Nina has entirely embraced dysfunction.
I loved that the filmmakers didn't pull back to reveal Nina getting up to receive her accolades, but chose to show the emotional truth rather than a literal truth.
The character of the Swan dies at the end of the ballet; Nina feels she is dying as she ends her perfect performance.
Still I don't believe we're supposed to think she literally killed herself. I thought the ending meant that Nina came to understand that her world would only see perfection in her total self-abnegation.
After all, she says "It was perfect." But earlier in the film, she conceptualized perfection as the result of effort and superior technique-- and her opening night performance wasn't technically perfect, since she took a fall.
What's perfect is that she fulfilled the emotional self-destruction her world demands. Her achievement is real-- losing herself in the role(s) is a towering feat for her as an artist-- but since the roles themselves are poisonous for what they demand of women, the achievement brings her as much ruin as joy.
I thought Black Swan was about as truthful a film as could be made with these themes under the circumstances of its making. IMO, no film could comment on these issues without also buying into them to some degree and still get made in Hollywood. As the film itself has it, literal perfection is impossible, but emotionally, for me at least, I thought the film came about as close as it could come.
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To dismiss Black Swan as campy and overwrought is to spectacularly miss the point. To me, the central idea of the film is that a woman has to make herself crazy to thrive in a sexist world. It's a psychological thriller, not Center Stage. It runs at a fever pitch because it's about a woman's sickness, a sickness she ultimately embraces to cope with a sick society.
What really pissed me off most was a dismissive mention of a scene in which a man on the subway makes lewd gestures at Natalie Portman's Nina. To dismiss that scene as campy cinematic overstatement is to ignore the fact that it represents the lived reality of way too many actual women.
The scene also underscores that the same society that demands Nina embrace her sexuality (for the entertainment of an audience, of course, not for herself) will punish her sexually whether or not she fulfills that demand. That's not hysteria, it's not camp. It's a reality women live with every day.
More Thoughts, with spoilers.
-
Which isn't to say that Black Swan entirely succeeds in confronting sexism. In the course of the story, the film almost inevitably indulges in some of the same bullshit it depicts.
Natalie Portman's beauty and sexuality are exploited time and again, and a lesbian sexual encounter between Nina and her rival/doppelganger Lily turns out to be a masturbation fantasy, a conceit with homophobic implications.
Nina is cast as the lead of Swan Lake for her technical skill and her artful interpretation of the White Swan, but the role also calls on her to play the evil twin, the Black Swan, a role she can't seem to dance to the director's satisfaction. Lily, a new dancer acting as Nina's understudy, can dance the Black Swan, and the threat looms that Lily could be tapped to replace Nina.
The ugly limitations of the White Swan/Black Swan virgin/whore dichotomy are revealed, but also reified to some degree. Our heroine is timid and repressed, and other female characters with expressed sexuality antagonize her. Beth, the older ballerina she displaces, confronts Nina and accuses her of sleeping her way into the role. Lily, Nina's rival, takes Nina out and encourages her to flirt with men-- and causes her to miss an important rehearsal. And Nina's own mother, whose own ballet career ended when she became pregnant, sabotages Nina emotionally and literally.
Virgin good, whores bad: for the most part, sexuality is portrayed as dangerous and negative. I'm not sure how this pitfall could have been avoided in the course of telling this story, but there it is.
I think the effort is made to show that the danger and negativity associated with sex in the film comes from the way the world both demands and limits female sexuality: Nina is only encouraged to explore her sexuality in order to perform it for an audience. No one cares about her pleasure or happiness, not even herself. And the other more overtly sexual female characters explicitly mirror Nina-- it's clear that what Nina is learning, they've already internalized.
And I think Black Swan comments on many of its own premises, and on its own reinforcement of some of the same constrictions it's revealing. I believe the casting of Winona Ryder as Beth is, in itself, a strong sign of meta-critique on the part of the filmmakers. If there's any modern actress who's been chewed up and spit out and self-destructed in the face of insoluble pressures...
It's especially apropos because Ryder is now being cast as an older woman, despite the fact that she in no way looks old enough to be, eg, Spock's mom. She's someone we're being told is becoming too old to engage the audience's sympathy as a lead character, despite all visual evidence to the contrary.
Ultimately, I think the film is misogynist because it's showing an environment, a point of view, that's awash in misogyny. We're given Nina to sympathize with, and at every point we're shown that Nina is hurt and diminished by the misogyny around her. When she stabs her female rival, she realizes she has wounded herself: the symbolism there couldn't be more clear.
Still more Thoughts, with massive Black Swan spoilers; probably only makes sense if you've seen it.
-
The sex scene between Lily and Nina can be seen as conflating homosexuality and masturbation in an unfortunate way. But it's also the only instance of sexuality in the film that is at all beneficial.
It's filmed very very firmly from Nina's point of view, rather than pulling back to thrill the audience with shots of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis kissing. If you compare it with a similar scene in Jennifer's Body, the difference is marked. The Black Swan scene makes an effort to serve the story rather than only to titillate, and Nina's experience is prioritized.
Nina gets in touch with her sensuality and experiences desire and pleasure through her fantasy encounter with Lily. While she gets distressed by that because of her own damage, I think Nina's attraction to Lily is portrayed as authentic.
By comparison, she has an equally sexualized but negative relationship with her director, who manipulatively kisses her, gropes her, and harangues her to be more seductive as the Black Swan.
In the final act, Nina comes offstage after her successful performance of the Black Swan and kisses the director-- in my opinion, a literal kiss-off, a 'fuck you' to his manipulations.
As the film ends, her connection with the director is revealed as hollow, made explicit when he calls her 'my little princess', the nickname he used with Beth, treating Nina as an interchangeable doll. Meanwhile Nina shows no sign of giving a shit about his approval. She's absorbed in the roar of the crowd.
The film ends with Nina dying after her amazing opening night performance while the audience wildly applauds. But personally I didn't take the ending as literal. Earlier we saw Nina rip up her skin and then it was revealed she didn't really harm herself.
Throughout the movie we're shown impossible things from Nina's point of view, and by the end of the film, we're entirely in Nina's head and Nina has entirely embraced dysfunction.
I loved that the filmmakers didn't pull back to reveal Nina getting up to receive her accolades, but chose to show the emotional truth rather than a literal truth.
The character of the Swan dies at the end of the ballet; Nina feels she is dying as she ends her perfect performance.
Still I don't believe we're supposed to think she literally killed herself. I thought the ending meant that Nina came to understand that her world would only see perfection in her total self-abnegation.
After all, she says "It was perfect." But earlier in the film, she conceptualized perfection as the result of effort and superior technique-- and her opening night performance wasn't technically perfect, since she took a fall.
What's perfect is that she fulfilled the emotional self-destruction her world demands. Her achievement is real-- losing herself in the role(s) is a towering feat for her as an artist-- but since the roles themselves are poisonous for what they demand of women, the achievement brings her as much ruin as joy.
I thought Black Swan was about as truthful a film as could be made with these themes under the circumstances of its making. IMO, no film could comment on these issues without also buying into them to some degree and still get made in Hollywood. As the film itself has it, literal perfection is impossible, but emotionally, for me at least, I thought the film came about as close as it could come.
http://cesare.dreamwidth.org/96968.html |
comments | Comment at Dreamwidth