Black Swan

Ok, so I realize it is Christmas, and it would therefore be more appropos to write a Christmas-themed post. However, I have a lot to say about this movie. I went to a morning showing yesterday (that's right. On Christmas Eve.), and I loved it. It was absolutely terrifying, erotic, and gruesome. The eroticism was mostly disturbing, and the the gore was even worse. The gore was the sort of thing that anybody with a nervous habit, such as biting or clipping nails obsessively, would shiver at. The movie took these habits and displayed their bloody, extreme results. It was the sort of movie somebody with my mind generally should not see. I was thinking about it hours later, and I woke up thinking about it.

The film illustrates an idea found repeatedly in literature and art. In many novels, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, the protagonist somehow achieves perfection, whether in beauty, success, or some other goal or desire. In order to gain that perfection, the protagonist must sacrifice something important. Typically, he or she sacrifices his or her soul. Black Swan displays this sacrifice as a process in which the innocent and virginal protagonist, Nina Sayers, loses her mind in her effort to dance both the White Swan and the Black Swan flawlessly, something it is not in her nature to do. Eventually, the impossibility and unnaturalness of the task leads to both her perfection and her destruction.

It is strange that in a culture which places a high focus on both attaining perfection and denying human nature, Culture such as Black Swan and The Picture of Dorian Gray has been created, asserting that in order to meet the expectations of our culture we must sell our souls to the devil, or whatever dualistic opposite of god in which one believes. Given that I believe literature and art function in American culture like Fairy Tales once did in others, simultaneously reflecting cultural values and imparting them to members of society in order that they might structure their lives around these values, the constant resurfacing of this theme in Culture is significant. Is it evidentiary of the conflict we experience as Americans? Is American thought in fact built upon conflict between dualistic poles? Maybe some day, I'll be able to propose answers to these questions.