Black Swan : Masturbation is for Pussies

u

Official Theatrical Trailer

    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.

-Mary Hickman