Everything I need to know about women and art I learned from Black Swan

[andygrrrl]

(warning: I'm very rude about this movie, and there are major spoilers throughout).

So Thursday night tea_drinker77 and I went to a special screening of Black Swan at our local art house; it was followed by a discussion with a panel of psychologists and mental health researchers, as well as a female filmmaker and a real live ballerina. It's a regular series, screening a movie combined with discussion from relevant experts. It was probably the best time I've had at one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Like, I don't even know where to start with this film. There's the cheesy camera work with its excessive use of extreme close ups to convey emotion. The cardboard characters (lecherous director! bitchy girls! domineering mother!). The ludicrous piling of psychological horror movie tropes, one on top of the other, with no sense of pacing or you know, that Polanski did this better 40 years ago in Repulsion. The nonsensical plot (it's a bold new radical production! Except that it's exactly like every bog standard Swan Lake production ever! Come on, after the all male Swan Lake you really gotta step it up). The symbolism that's as subtle as a vuvuzela (Nina wears baby pink and white cause she's innocent and uptight. Lily wears black and has tattoos -- on her back!! even though she's a ballerina!! --- because she's sexy and dangerous.) Oh, and the fact that Natalie Portman has exactly three facial expressions: sad!face (with a solitary glycerine tear on her porcelain cheek), tragedy mask face, and girlish smile.

At the end of the day, it's just a really badly made film. Like, it's supposed to be this shocking jumpy horror movie, but both of us, and the entire row we were sitting in, was cracking up with laughter the whole time. But what provoked the excellent discussion afterward was that it's such a blatantly misogynist backlash. I mean, god, I just have to resort to bullet points:

• The whole point of the movie is that Nina must get in touch with her inner Black Swan (sex! uninhibitedness! in case you weren't paying attention) in order to reach her full potential as an artist. But in the process she goes nuts and dies because chicks getting in touch with their sexuality is BAD BAD WRONG DESTRUCTIVE.
• All the women are evil. Not the sexually predatory director, if Nina would just RELAX and LET HERSELF GO and sleep with him she'd be A TRUE ARTIST. Nina's going nuts because her mom's a creep and all the girls at the company are MEAN to her and her dancing hero HATES her cause Nina's younger and prettier.
• Poor Winona Ryder. Her character's a boozy suicidal drama queen who dresses like a drag queen tribute to Joan Collins in Dynasty. CAUSE SHE'S OLD (i.e. in her 30s). And therefore kind of embarrassing and worthless.
• Nina's mom -- the mesmerizing Barbara Hershey, in a role that doesn't deserve her -- has avoided the whole "worthless old hag" problem by dominating and controlling Nina. Cause she doesn't even have a man, so what else is she supposed to do, amirite?
• Lily, Nina's rival, is a sexy badgirl and basically Faith from BTVS. We know she's bad because she DRINKS and DANCES and HAS FUN ON HER OWN TERMS OMG. I kept waiting for her to say "Five by five!" and "Loosen up, B!"
• Of course, the badgirl is the one Nina has sex with. Or fantasizes having sex with, as it turns out. Cause she's going crazy. Cause lesbian sex is a symptom of mental illness. Especially lesbian sex that plays out like a male fantasy, and not like any real lesbian sex.
• But, well, lesbian sex isn't really real, we all know that. Cause it's all in Nina's head! And the movie never refers to it again. At all. So, she's supposed to get in touch with her sexuality, but NOT IF IT'S GAY! GAYSEX MAKES YOU CRAZY, LADIES. DON'T FORGET.
• So, getting in touch with her DARK SEXINESS slowly drives her nuts but also makes her a better artist because she reaches the height of her madness and her artistic power at the same time. Ladybrains really aren't equiped to handle artistic greatness. Being an artist either a) makes you a withered up bitchy booze hound, b) a frustrated psycho!mom, c) a crazy lezzie ho.
• Even though, based on the symptoms the movie haphazardly represents, the psychiatrist at the discussion felt Nina had a good chance of recovery, she still has to die. Because ART AND SEX WILL DESTROY YOUR LADYBRAINS! Nina's death is ludicrously Freudian: she stabs herself in the gut. Manages to dance through the rest of the ballet, in defiance of the laws of biology and physics. Once her womb has been literally penetrated to death --- the blood spreading slowly on her White Swan costume, like symbolic menstruation --- she dies with an ecstatic smile on her face.

The moral of Black Swan is, apparently, that:

• women are incapable of producing great art without descending into self-destruction and insanity
• sex is bad. Very very bad, unless you're giving it up to a guy, then it's fine, until you get too old, then it's gross.
• Having artistic pretensions makes you a psycho!mom. So does parenting without a man.
• Other women are evil bitches out to get you. Don't trust them!
• Once you, as a pretty pretty lady, have fulfilled the male artistic vision, you have to die, cause really, what else are you good for?

I think it's very interesting (and by interesting I mean "gross and unsurprising") that male critics are coming in their pants about this movie, and that's it's gotten so much praise and attention. Especially considering a woman has finally won Best Director at the Oscars.