There have been several things occurring in my life recently that have pointed my mind in the direction of the artist and his art. Just closing a show, watching Black Swan, just generally being a theatre major and studying this subject practically every day, and then the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman have kept my mind on very little else.
The death of Hoffman earlier today hit me pretty hard. I've enjoyed his performances in every movie of his I've seen, and the best piece of theatre I've ever seen in my life was him opposite Andrew Garfield in Death of a Salesman on Broadway. Having seen him in this performance, the loss seemed more profound than many of the other stars that had gone out during my lifetime. There is an intimacy that the screen lacks for me, and that is the ability to see an actor in the flesh on a stage. That proves that there really is a real person there, and it makes Hoffman's life (and death) all that much more real to me.
There's somewhat of a societal idea that bounces around our collective consciousness sometimes that for an artist to be truly great, she must suffer. The depressing thing is that this is often affirmed by our greatest artists. Even just in this class we see Eugene O'Neil, Tennessee Williams, and Ernest Hemingway all had lives racked consistently with unhappiness, and I'm sure there are even more examples in our reading list that I'm not familiar with. It's a rather bleak concept for myself to believe in, and it leaves little room for hope for myself and those who aspire to share my profession.
I find the subject of premature celebrity deaths, like Hoffman's, chillingly relevant to what we're talking about in this class. What is it that drives many of our most successful artists into drugs, crime and mental imbalance?
Nina's mental issues in Black Swan were very intrinsically bound to her craft, whereas deaths like Hoffman's (overdose) may be less directly related. But it's still worth considering. Of course there are many factors that go into such downfalls that are all worth considering on an even footing. Nina's mother was clearly a major impact on her mental health, with her insane impulse to control everything her daughter does. And forgetting Nina's drive to succeed no matter what the cost, the very nature of the ballet world with the expectations put on these young women are conducive to emotional imbalance as well.
But what is it that links the drive to success and suffering so tightly? It boils down to a question of the chicken or the egg. Does unhappiness cause a drive to find fame or does the drive to fame cause unhappiness? Perhaps it works on a case-by-case basis. Nina definitely had a lot on her personal life and hints about her upbringing that could have narrowed her scope of her future, making her obsessed with becoming a successful ballerina as the only means by which to obtain happiness. But the obsession with fame only reaps on more unhappiness as she shuts out all possibilities for real relationships and opportunities outside of her work, creating a vicious cycle that only spirals into self-destruction.
The especially sad thing about Nina is that her career had really only just started to take off when she presumably died. She'll hardly be remembered as more than a ten-second commodity, and has sacrificed everything to be a passing thought in the minds of ballet fans. At least some of the others I have mentioned achieved name recognition and artistic immortality before they died. But Nina did not. She failed to fail in any romantic or meaningful sense.
Luckily there are plenty of artists we don't hear about who haven't (at least publicly) led tormented lives. Perhaps there is hope for those of us going down that frightening road. At least, I choose to believe there is. We'll see if I'm right.
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