The Movies Column Review: Black Swan

Black Swan is a game changing movie. It’s a new entry in the canon of gay cinema, and expertly borrows from that canon with every turn. I don’t intend to downplay this film’s originality, but several overt references can’t be ignored either. Here is an essay in three chapters with illustrations culled from my Google image search. Please realize that I intend this to be fun and interesting, but not endorsing any one definitive interpretation of Black Swan. Please also note that there are spoilers, if that’s something you care about.

Backstage Bitchery in the Gay Canon: Black Swan, Showgirls, All About Eve, and Valley of the Dolls

Remember when folks were all excited about Burlesque and called it the new Showgirls? Now that feels like a long time ago. I have news for you Black Swan is the true heir to the Showgirls throne. It’s tawdry and brave and at times down right ridiculous, just like Paul Verhoven’s 1995 masterpiece. Showgirls of course is also a film that heavily borrowed from All About Eve and Valley of the Dolls – tales about young female upstarts stabbing the old guard in the back to take over their coveted roles. In life the oldest diva always wins, but darlin’ there’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs behind you.

When we first meet Winona’s Beth, she’s just been ousted as lead dancer. Later she has some choice words for Natalie’s Nina. Watch that defiant glass of champagne. The old guard sure loves their champagne.

More specifically in regards to Showgirls, the similarities are uncanny. Someone’s already made a genius video mash-up of the Black Swan trailer and scenes from Showgirls. Warning – the video has a few boob shots so it’s NSFW.

When Nina gets personal lessons from the director, Thomas, he says “That’s me seducing you, not you seducing me” in a way that directly mimics the super sleazy line “I’m hard, why aren’t you?” from Showgirls.

Before opening night Nina applies her white swan makeup and looks uncannily like Crystal applying cold cream to remove her make-up.

Scattered throughout we get some incredibly choice scenes of the bitchery going on backstage. Everyone hates Nina, because they think she slept her way to the lead, and Nina can’t trust any of her fellow dancers to not sabotage her part. Of course, I couldn’t help think of Julie from Showgirls – “maybe I could be your understudy…”

Finally, for anyone who’s seen Black Swan you will know how important fingernails are to the picture. Finger nails and manicures also play heavily in Showgirls, appearing in several important scenes and even playing a crucial plot point – “I’m tired of that whorey look”

The Fractured Psyche: The portrait of a woman in Black Swan, Repulsion, Images and Persona

But seriously folks, Black Swan is not all glitz and glamour and backstage bitchery for the gays to enjoy; it’s really much deeper. Even in the beginning of the film Nina has a tenuous grasp on sanity, a hair’s breath between barely maintaining and a full-on nervous breakdown. Her subsequent descent into psychotic collapse comes as no surprise to the audience. In contrast All About Eve never intends to hold a mirror up to society and suggest that this is the way all women behave. Black Swan does. In this regard Black Swan emulates the art house classics of the 1960s – Repulsion, Images and Persona (or maybe Cries and Whispers is a better fit.) It’s fitting that all of these films are directed by famous male directors Polanski, Altman and Bergman, directors that Aronofsky obviously adores. (I wonder why no woman director has ever tackled subject matter like this. Maybe they know better – they realize how ridiculous and gyno-phobic it is to reduce all womankind to one psychotic episode.)

What better way to symbolize the fractured female psyche than with lots and lots of broken mirrors.

Or with your face split in two with your alter-ego, emotional rival and psychosexual stalker.

Will this madness lead to murder? Suicide? Both at the same time? Have you ever seen a cake look so gross? Has your mom ever sounded so sinister calling you to dinner?

Of course Black Swan must also be compared to the greatest ballet movie of all time – Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes. There’s certainly a number of stylistic similarities. Just look at the make-up.

There’s even a certain fractured duality (hence the mirrors) that ultimately ends in the dancer’s suicide.

However, the comparison stops there. The spirit that guides all of the action of the Red Shoes is buoyed by the love of art versus the love of life. Victoria (Moira Shearer) chooses art over love – a triumph of aesthetics over the carnal. Nina’s driving motivation is pure psychological compulsion – a battle with her own tortured psyche in her quest to attain perfection. Not only is she bulimic, she’s also klepto and nervously scratches her shoulder and picks at her fingernails until she draws blood.

The Body as Horror: Metamorphosis in Black Swan and Cronenberg’s The Fly and Videodrome

Which leads to my final chapter, Black Swan is also indisputably a horror flick, and the monster is Nina’s own body, either tortured through dance practice or transforming into the swan. The message is that our own bodies are our sources of greatest anxiety. The Fly perfectly encapsulates the nightmare of bodily transformations that you can’t control. Part of Nina’s descent into madness is discovering her own sexuality through furtive attempts at masturbation, for women discovering the parts that are inside. (Again there’s a huge argument for gyno-phobia here.) Is it any coincidence that her ultimate stab wound resembles James Wood’s gaping body cavity in Videodrome? Is it a coincidence that she’s stabbed with a piece of jagged mirror, like the glass used by Karin to cut herself in Cries and Whispers?

I now apologize that this review is really just a sketch of different ideas I had while watching the film. I certainly asked more questions than answered. Are the answers in the movie? Probably not, because as amazing as it is, it’s also a big ridiculous mess too. If you’re inclined to like big ballsy sloppy messes, then you won’t have a problem with it. For a movie about a woman’s obsessive quest to be perfect, this film comes damn near close to it. We’re in a post Black Swan world now, and we’re going to have to wait a long time for the next one to come along.

Ryan Hicks is Sponsorship Manager for Three Dollar Bill Cinema, a film fan and a contributor to Seattle Gay Scene.