This isn't a feminist criticism of media. This is a rant. I'm angry. I'm pissed off at being ignored by men when I'm out with my husband.
Now I know what you're thinking but that is not what I mean. You're thinking, "She wants guys to find her attractive even though she's married." No, that's not it at all.
I'm tired of being treated like I just don't exist because I'm married - and most likely unfuckable. I'm sick of watching my husband meet new people as I sit there and listen to them ask each other questions about their hobbies and interests. And I can't believe how many times it's happened or even how nice these guys usually are. Like they don't even realize they've written me off as a human being. Why? Is it because they won't have a chance to fuck me? What is the point of talking to a woman you can't fuck, right?
I want to scream. I want to ask why. Why don't you even ask my name? Why do you assume my husband is the one with a job??? Why don't people notice, why doesn't my husband notice when I'm being treated with disrespect?
So I might be a little behind but I just saw the new Disney princess movie, Tangled. It is the story of Rapunzel, who is kidnapped by an old woman from her royal parents. Mother Gothel found a flower that contains a drop of the sun, and brings health and youth to whoever sings to it. While pregnant with Rapunzel, the queen becomes ill and the entire kingdom seeks out the flower to cure her. The flower's powers are transferred to the baby Rapunzel and her hair. So Mother Gothel kidnaps the child and keeps her locked away in a tower. We then see Rapunzel just before her eighteenth birthday, longing to leave the tower.
Then comes Flynn Ryder, our animated, G-rated Han Solo as he is called around the internet. We first see him on top of the palace, dreaming that he will have one of his own one day (hint hint). He is a thief who has stolen the lost princess's crown, betrayed his partners, and is on the run from a horse with a nose like blood hound, Maximus. He scales the tower after eluding a troop of guards and the fiercely determined Maximus, only to be brought down by Rapunzel with a pan to the face. She has him restrained with her strong hair and nimble manipulation of it.
Together they strike a bargain: he takes her to the city to see the lanterns that appear always on her birthday, and she will give him the crown. They have adventures, make friends, and sing, all the while developing as characters and falling in love. To be perfectly honest, I really liked this movie. I didn't love it, the way I do some animated movies like The Little Mermaid (because of childhood memories) or Up (because it's simply astounding). It had likeable characters that actually grew as the movie went on, the songs were typically catchy, and the story itself was well done.
As far as princesses go, Rapunzel was just as wide-eyed and innocent as any but she is determined and strong. She grows up and finds out how capable she is out there in the “big scary world.” Flynn, or Eugene as he is revealed later, serves as more of a catalyst than a savior. He helps her on her journey, but she is also a part of his own self discovery.
We can't forget the hair, since this is Rapunzel. It's long, golden blonde, and stunning. It not only has healing powers but she uses it like an extra limb. Hair is a symbol of strong female sexuality here, one that people like her kidnapper and Flynn's old companions are trying to get control of. The blondeness and untouched nature of it screams innocence and virginity, and its begging to be taken. As she matures on her journey, that naivete does not fit her anymore. Flynn dramatically cuts her hair off to prevent her from sacrificing herself for him, and she is instantly a brunette with a bob style cut, looking altogether mature and downright womanly.
Not that she loses her magic. She heals Flynn with a tear and they go back to the palace. Its said that she is as wonderful a ruler as her parents were before her, and as a side note, she eventually marries Flynn. It's nice to see a princess whose main achievement isn't landing a man but being a great leader.
I feed off of movie recommendations from friends. A friend of mine recommended “Black Swan,” and told me there was a hot lesbian sex scene. Well, what else do I have to do on a cold winter day in Korea? So I sat in my bed and played it from my laptop, and I loved it. I noted vague things, like the camera's focus on physicality, the ever present taking off of earrings. I in turn told Mary to watch it, and that's when things got interesting. She came right over to discuss it and that's when I started to form a real opinion of the movie.
Black Swan, sickly and seductively enjoyable, explores the mounting pressures exerted upon the main character, Nina, by the impossible dichotomous gender expectations and the artistic drive for perfection. If you are familiar with the story of Swan Lake, then you can easily trace how Nina's character follows it. She is the white swan, a vision of perfection and virginal, but is pushed by her company director to master the pure emotion, freedom, and seductiveness of the white swan's evil twin. She is corrupted and consumed in this pursuit.
Nina is a childlike character, who has hints of an eating disorder and scratches herself. She has an overbearing and loving mother who was a failed ballerina, and their relationship is almost stereotypically abnormal and unhealthy. Nina is finally getting a chance from the company director, Tomas, to play the leading role in his production of Swan Lake, after he has cast out his old star, Beth. It seems like everything is going well, but she is not performing the black swan's part to Tomas' standard. In comes Lily, a free spirited and sexy ballerina who can dance the black swan and has the sensuality that Nina lacks. They begin a hesitant friendship, one tainted by Nina's paranoia and jealousy. As the pressure builds, we see Nina begin to lose her sanity. The ending is creepy, and I wasn't sure whether to be uplifted by what she felt she achieved or concerned about whether it was ever worth it at all. I wouldn't claim that the movie was feminist or included a feminist message. I will say that its not advocating that any of these ridiculous expectations are good or necessary.
Nina perfectly embodies the white swan. She is innocent, childlike in the way that she takes little responsibility or control over her life, but without the carefree whims or emotions of children, a bit prim, and virginal. Frigid came up in the film, but meek and weak seem most suitable to her character. She is pushed strongly by her mother, Erica, to remain virginal at least partly as a means to help her achieve success as a ballerina, as an unwanted pregnancy was what tossed Erica out of the spotlight. But Tomas states it best in his demands. He praises her as a perfect white swan, but is harshly critical about her inability to embody the black swan. He wants her to be sexy, seductive, fuckable. He asks her dance partner, “Would you fuck this girl?” and pushes her to explore that side of herself. But in reality, is either one of those ideals Nina? She tries to resist the temptation of the black swan (the “whore” woman) but struggles with the enforced purity of her life, the white swan representing the virgin good girl side of the coin. This struggle forces all of her underlying issues, scratching herself and throwing up, up a couple notches and even to the point of extreme paranoia and hallucinations. The movie traces her mental deterioration, showing that the perfect idea of pure, good girl who is always sexually appealing in all ways is impossible to straddle. Nina is torn apart and her mind is ruined. It is like watching a dramatized version of modern day hysteria.
The film engages intimately with ideas about artistic drive as well. Her director is a man who is imposing his views about a perfect ballerina and women onto the women under his control. He is arrogant and has creative aspirations, evidenced by him declaring he will be reinterpreting the classics. Nina is not only struggling with ideas about femininity but she is sacrificing and striving to be the best at her art.
But what comes before her? Beth, Tomas' previous star or “little princess” as he calls them, was dumped because she was getting old. She is bitter and handles it with disgrace, instead of the beautiful serenity expected of ballerinas and women. She is run over by a car, and Thomas blames it on the darkness inside of her, and calls her “perfect at times, but also so damn destructive.” Nina visits her in the hospital and peeks at the damage done to Beth's legs, and is absolutely horrified as she fears the same thing, the destruction that would cause her to abandon her art. There is little evidence of the passion she has for ballet, likely because passion is something that does not suit her bare, cold character, but here is one such moment. She runs from the possibility of that happening to her, and runs back to dedicate herself to her art, the very thing that she saw destroy Beth and will eventually do the same with her once she achieves perfection. The female artist often faces this problem. Overshadowed by the predominately male canon with few healthy and successful female role models, she is left to navigate a dangerous path. And still, the influences of males and expectations of society are going to interact and conflict with the artists own ideas. In Nina's case, she blindly wanted to be the best and didn't ever question Tomas' instructions and ideals about how to express her art. An artist is supposed to reinvent the old in their own eyes, but she considers it an achievement to do it how another wants her to, perfection.
The Black Swan exposes the pressures put on both women in society and in art, and dramatizes how it affects women through Nina's descent into madness. It has a tragic sort of beauty, and I enjoyed it even though it was often painful.
Black Swan is a psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by newbie Andres Heinz. Its central theme is one of duality. The audience is told outright that the black swan, Lily (Mila Kunis) is the opposite of the white swan, Nina (Natalie Portman). Nina encompasses qualities which are mutually exclusive from Lily. Nina represents frigidity, purity, naivete, discipline and control. Lily, on the other hand, embodies experience, passion, sexuality, volatilty. Basically, it's a kind of virgin and slut dichotomy. Nina's mission, given to her by her director Tomas (Vincent Cassel): to become both the white and the black.
Nina's character symbolizes sexual purity. Her pink, lacy room is filled with stuffed animals. Her first words in the film are spoken in a child's voice: "It's so preeeeeetty!" It would also appear that Nina has no friends at all, outside of her overbearing mother. Socially she is a blank slate. It follows that she is also sexually ignorant. When Tomas, her director, asks Nina about her sexual experience, she shrugs it off, saying she has had boyfriends here and there but no one significant. At this Tomas orders her to masterbate, to "lose control". At the first, Nina is unable to "lose control", or masturbate to orgasm, as instructed by Tomas. If she obeys, Tomas has control over Nina's sexuality.
Nice shoes, wanna fuck?
Tomas isn't teaching Nina to dance. He concedes she dances perfectly already. Tomas' role is to instruct Nina on sexuality. Tomas makes no distinction between a dance performance and sexual performance. This attitude sends the message that her real value in her professional skill ultimately depends on her sexuality. Only through sexual fulfillment can Nina understand the nature of the black swan and thus dance marvelously. She must be sexual to be a professional.
Nina attempts to masturbate (and she seems to have a natural talent for pleasuring herself), but she stops at the precipice of orgasm when she realizes her mother is sleeping in the same room.
That was quick.
Erica (Barbara Hershey), Nina's mother, stunts Nina's growth and holds her back from achieving personal pleasure. She attempts to live her dream vicariously through her daughter. There is a subtle clue that Nina did not want to become a ballerina. Erica mutters softly how glad she is to have never let Nina miss a lesson. Nina has learned her own expert control and discipline from her mother; therefore her identity is not fully realized.
I am Natalie Portman and I have no friends.
Nina's mother Erica is cold and emotionally distant. Nina scratches herself in her sleep when she is nervous or stressed. Erica does not suggest alleviating her stress; instead, she decides to hide the symptom with expensive concealers. Additionally she turns a blind eye to her daughter's eating disorder. Nina is shown vomiting in a toilet three or four times, declines dinner invitations and turns down a piece of cake her mother offers who responds by guilting Nina: "It's trash then!" Her daughter's anorexia is a personal affront to Erica, rather than a serious issue in need of a resolution.
It is disturbing that Aronofsky portrays eating disorders as a given for a successful dancer. It is not strange, it is not even disgusting. Actually, it's pretty damn sexy. Nina is sexy. Nina vomits beautifully and cleanly. She is a professional though her teeth remain mysteriously white. No one notices an odor. I kept hoping someone would say, "Girl, you smell like puke." Nope. Obviously, this isn't just commonplace, it's attractive.
Sex is hugely significant to the film and drives many of the symbols. Beth (Winona Ryder), Tomas' star pupil before Nina, was in a sexual relationship with him. In a role that feels to close for comfort, Ryder is the aging ballerina replaced by a younger, fresher face. The irony is that Beth is barely thirty years old.
Beth's emotions take control of her. She throws her body in front of a truck, nearly killing herself in the process. Her legs are ruined. Yet Tomas speaks of the incident with a reverent awe. Beth is ruled by some "dark impulse", and that is what attracted him to her. Don't you love it when women are emotionally unstable? It's a turn-on.
Did you suck his cock, bitch??
Beth implies that Nina exchanged a blowjob for Tomas' favor and a lead role. So we see the age-old theme of power as it is typically cast: the male relegates privileges to women who offer their body in currency. As with the anabulemia, sexual molestation is also normal and attractive. Hell, it's even a teaching technique for Tomas. In one scene Tomas molests Nina during practice, but Tomas is the one who storms away angrily. "It should be the other way around," he says indignantly. Indeed! it should be the other way around. Nina should be angry but she is not. In fact, she becomes ashamed that she didn't do more for Tomas. Seriously, WTF.
Tomas shames Nina sexually more than once. He twice calls her "frigid", a kind of out-dated Freudian term that characterizes women who don't orgasm through male penetration. In Freud's vocabulary, a woman who masturbates to orgasm is mentally and sexually a child. This description suits Nina precisely. The biggest problem with it is that it is intended to be an insult. Nina is shown twice masturbating and loving every moment. The first, clipped short by her mother's presence, and the second in the form of a lesbian sexual fantasy with Lily. We're not to take lesbianism seriously, though. Lesbianism is a self-deception and it is not real. Yikes.
And as Nina's hallucinations become more frequent, as Nina loses touch with reality in exchange for getting in touch with herself (literally), it becomes more difficult for the viewer to follow the story. We are supposed to believe that Nina had sex with a man she met at a bar whom she imagined was Lily. (She should have orgasmed with a male partner and not with a female.) Really, she achieved orgasm by herself, but the viewer isn't supposed to believe that. Yet, if you watch closely you see her bedroom door is still locked from the inside when she wakes. Alone. With her childhood jewelry box, which she angrily knocks to the floor and breaks as if to say, Dammit! I'm still just a child! Masturbation is for pussies!
Trippy....
So, she breaks her childish treasure and, later, splits herself into the dichotomy, as symbolized by shattering a mirror when she fantasizes about killing the dark side of herself, as seen in Lily. She chooses white, wholesome purity and rejects the sexually powerful self, the black swan. Then, she wears her white swan costume and begins her final scene, in which the white swan commits suicide because she can't have the approval of the prince. And yet Nina gains Tomas' approval with a big sloppy kiss just before she begins the closing scene.
The Swan Lake plot mirrors Nina's distorted reality: Tomas chooses Lily over Nina - through approving sexual gazes - and casts her as Nina's alternate. He says to Nina that Lily "isn't faking it", a strange choice of words that implies orgasm. Thus Nina has to kill herself to embody the dual role of the Swan Queen. And Nina's suicide will come in the form of sexual awareness: to take pleasure in violent pain and (more importantly) penetration and loss of identity.
Not another mirror!
This metaphor is depicted through mirrors. Mirrors! Aronofsky wants you to notice them very badly. The mirrors remind you, again and again, that Nina is doing her soul-searching. Who am I? How can I be what he wants me to be?
The mirrors represent her internal struggle. Sometimes the mirrors deceive her, as when her reflection does not respond to her motions. Naturally, this symbolizes a disconnect from her identity. The more she disconnects from herself the closer she comes to her final perfection, her passionate performance.
And ultimately the mirror resolves her conflict via violence with a sexual overtone, when she penetrates her gut with a shattered fragment. She throws herself off the cliff (attaining orgasm) and falls onto bed as her white, virginal dress stains red. She has resolved herself, repaired her Freudian frigidity by orgasm through penetration, methaphorically speaking. And she is happy with it. She declares that she is perfect and "I felt it". Yes, altering herself to fit Swan Lake's plot and woman's dual social niche - designated for her by her wise male instructor - results in her perfection. She has lost identity through marriage and penetration. Thus, she earns approval and success, she is a woman and no longer a child.
So, is this movie sexist? I think it isn't. It flirts with feminism and is aware of itself. Symbols, such as mirrors and colors, were thoughtfully placed. For this reason I figure the themes are intentional. And if the messages are intentional, it's likely Aronofsky wanted them to be seen for our consideration.
