Black Swan - Suffering Innocence
Thoughts On: Black Swan (2010)
A ballerina is given the role of a life time, yet it is tearing her psyche apart.
Black Swan, like many stories before it, is about the pretence of innocence, about naivety's negative impact on developed being. In such, this details the emergence of the Jungian shadow from what you might want to call a Freudian woman-child under the thumb of an Oedipal mother. Nina, a ballerina, is an embodiment of innocence and naivety, and she plays out this role as the white swan of Swan Lake. As we are told many times over in the film, Swan Lake follows a princess who is turned into a white swan who may only be transformed back into a human if she falls in love. She finds a prince, but he falls in love with her twin sister, the black swan. The white swan, anguished, kills herself. (The original Swan Lake is rather different, but we will not dwell on this).
The given Swan Lake seemingly formulates a folkloric allegory about a coming of age. Black Swan highlights this probability by re-writing the already twisted source story, having white and black swan one and the same. This emphasises the seeming fact that the swan is a symbol of femininity - regal, delicate, royalty in the world of birds - and is embodied by one archetypal woman. This feminine symbol has its dark and light side; in Jungian terms, its shadow and pure persona. The persona is a crutch and shackles, it is the anaesthesia that puts you to sleep and sees you wake up in a bathtub full of ice, clinging to life, missing an untold number of vital organs. The persona is an idea that one is innocent, pure and harmless - apparently perfect as a result. The shadow opposes this conception. The shadow is all that you fear and suppress, it is willing to be imperfect, to do away with innocence, to be sullied and to hurt others. Neither extreme should take possession of anyone, nor should these archetypes being projected onto others, but Black Swan revels in just this.
Alas, it the given source material of Black Swan that formulates a story about the death of innocence, and the rise of the shadow that gives way to the self. In the story we are told, the swans are satellites circulating true being; they are not the real princess. The real princess is the self. The white swan is the innocent persona, a lie told to oneself. And the black swan is the shadow, an externalised means of deceiving oneself, of becoming what one fears. It is by destroying the white swan that the black swan finds the true self - is turned back into a human. Remembering that Black Swan makes these figures one and the same, it becomes clear that this deception and death of innocence is good, that, in rebelling against oneself, one finds their true state of being.
This ideal narrative arc is held over Black Swan's actual narrative, over the head of its main character. It is in attempting to imitate this character who overcomes innocence and the shadow to find her true self that Nina is forced to see within herself many lies. She is no longer a child, yet she lives like one with her mother. She is not a virginal white pebble who cares only about art, but has emotion and desire herself. In welcoming upon herself the role of an individuating self, she invites environmental pressure from her peers and family to move in radical directions, to become either extreme; her mother wants her to be pure and good, her director to be engulfed by her shadow. This, at least, is how she perceives the world and how we come to see it around her. Forces of dark and light are glaring or terrifying as seen through Nina, they are always conflicting, and we do not know if they will tear her apart.
The final task of this narrative is then deciding whether or not Nina succeeds in finding truth, if she is consumed by her shadow, or torn apart by attempting to find her true self - which may be non-existent. We know that she is damaged by her attempts, but is her pain and suffering equal to the positive death of purity that gives rise to a true self, or is her pain and suffering inescapable, is she left a dead swan, or does a human rise from the tattered feathers?
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The President's Dilemma - Rising Tide
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Pulgasari - Tyranny In The System
A ballerina is given the role of a life time, yet it is tearing her psyche apart.
Black Swan, like many stories before it, is about the pretence of innocence, about naivety's negative impact on developed being. In such, this details the emergence of the Jungian shadow from what you might want to call a Freudian woman-child under the thumb of an Oedipal mother. Nina, a ballerina, is an embodiment of innocence and naivety, and she plays out this role as the white swan of Swan Lake. As we are told many times over in the film, Swan Lake follows a princess who is turned into a white swan who may only be transformed back into a human if she falls in love. She finds a prince, but he falls in love with her twin sister, the black swan. The white swan, anguished, kills herself. (The original Swan Lake is rather different, but we will not dwell on this).
The given Swan Lake seemingly formulates a folkloric allegory about a coming of age. Black Swan highlights this probability by re-writing the already twisted source story, having white and black swan one and the same. This emphasises the seeming fact that the swan is a symbol of femininity - regal, delicate, royalty in the world of birds - and is embodied by one archetypal woman. This feminine symbol has its dark and light side; in Jungian terms, its shadow and pure persona. The persona is a crutch and shackles, it is the anaesthesia that puts you to sleep and sees you wake up in a bathtub full of ice, clinging to life, missing an untold number of vital organs. The persona is an idea that one is innocent, pure and harmless - apparently perfect as a result. The shadow opposes this conception. The shadow is all that you fear and suppress, it is willing to be imperfect, to do away with innocence, to be sullied and to hurt others. Neither extreme should take possession of anyone, nor should these archetypes being projected onto others, but Black Swan revels in just this.
Alas, it the given source material of Black Swan that formulates a story about the death of innocence, and the rise of the shadow that gives way to the self. In the story we are told, the swans are satellites circulating true being; they are not the real princess. The real princess is the self. The white swan is the innocent persona, a lie told to oneself. And the black swan is the shadow, an externalised means of deceiving oneself, of becoming what one fears. It is by destroying the white swan that the black swan finds the true self - is turned back into a human. Remembering that Black Swan makes these figures one and the same, it becomes clear that this deception and death of innocence is good, that, in rebelling against oneself, one finds their true state of being.
This ideal narrative arc is held over Black Swan's actual narrative, over the head of its main character. It is in attempting to imitate this character who overcomes innocence and the shadow to find her true self that Nina is forced to see within herself many lies. She is no longer a child, yet she lives like one with her mother. She is not a virginal white pebble who cares only about art, but has emotion and desire herself. In welcoming upon herself the role of an individuating self, she invites environmental pressure from her peers and family to move in radical directions, to become either extreme; her mother wants her to be pure and good, her director to be engulfed by her shadow. This, at least, is how she perceives the world and how we come to see it around her. Forces of dark and light are glaring or terrifying as seen through Nina, they are always conflicting, and we do not know if they will tear her apart.
The final task of this narrative is then deciding whether or not Nina succeeds in finding truth, if she is consumed by her shadow, or torn apart by attempting to find her true self - which may be non-existent. We know that she is damaged by her attempts, but is her pain and suffering equal to the positive death of purity that gives rise to a true self, or is her pain and suffering inescapable, is she left a dead swan, or does a human rise from the tattered feathers?
Previous post:
The President's Dilemma - Rising Tide
Next post:
Pulgasari - Tyranny In The System
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