By the Transitive Property of Impersonation

The Old Vic Theatre in London is currently running a production of Sweet Bird of Youth. Though as a live production, it has no true previews, I found this interview because I thought it would be interesting insight into how the actors themselves interpret the play.

Interesting. From the get-go, Kim Cattrall seems to have fused with her character of the Princess Kosmonopolis, or Alexandra Del Lago if you prefer, speaking in first person: "I made the choice to fall in love with him...because I realized he was as broken as I was." Perhaps this issue of identity stems from the fact that as an aging, ex-Hollywood star, Cattrall very well could be the Princess, which she herself acknowledges. That's helpful, though, because by the Transitive Property of Impersonation we also hear the voice of the Princess Kosmonopolis, which I felt sometimes Chance smothered.

I think the Princess is lonely. How often she clings to Chance, even expressly asking him, "don't leave me alone," (although he inevitably does). And as Cattrall notes (still in first person), even if it were a fantasy, she sees that "[Chance and the Princess] could...have a relationship of sorts." The Princess is dying for some kind of connection--which is where her addictions come in, for drugs remove her to some other world where she cannot feel the pangs of loneliness, and sex makes her feel intimately connected, even if only with strangers. 

But is this really actually loneliness? Or is it just that for the first time she notices the disparity between extreme fame and anonymity, as misses that fame as though it were her friend, her family, her lover and her whole world? Her description of her fame near the end of the play proves the latter true: "Out of the passion and torment of my existence I have created a thing that I can unveil, a sculpture, almost heroic, that I can unveil, which is true" (120). Not only is fame near and dear to her heart, but it is her idol; she admires it like Narcissus in the Greek myths as "almost heroic." Despite the Princess' self-appreciation, though, fame still takes a crowd. What she is truly missing is an audience whom she can dazzle into adoring her.

So it makes sense to me that Cattrall imagines those three lapsed hours to be full of posturing foreplay, for it would cater for the Princess' desire for an audience. However, I don't see evidence that Chance is an easily enraptured sycophant, so I'd be curious to know more of Seth Numrich's interpretation of the dynamic between the Princess and Chance.

-Becca Weber

Doppelgangers, Reflections, Alter/Split-Egos in "Black Swan"

At the beginning of the movie, Thomas tells Nina that she doesn’t have it in her to play both the white and black swan. Her fragility and innocence render her the perfect fit for the white swan, but she lacks the passion and sensuality needed to play the black swan. Thomas tells Nina to lose herself, and directs her attention to Lily. “I just want to be perfect,” Nina says, to which Thomas responds, “Perfection isn’t just about control.”

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that Nina heeds Thomas’ advice. Throughout “Black Swan,” we see Nina lose herself to the point of no return. It also becomes pretty evident midway through the movie that Nina does in fact have the divided consciousness that the role of the Swan Queen necessitates.

Nina begins to see her alter ego everywhere: in the subway, in the mirror, in Lily… etc. These visions share much in common with the passive and active roles of the black and white heroines of “Swan Lake.”

As a dancer, Nina spends a large part of her time looking in the mirror. It is in this mirror that she sees both the ideal and flawed versions of herself; striving for perfection requires a sort of self-obsession, one which Nina definitely acquires.

The first thing that came to my mind when Nina saw her first doppelganger in the street was that perhaps the director had wanted us to see Nina as she could have been without dance. A dancer in Nina’s position has to give up everything for dance—dance becomes of you. It was the same with figure skating, and it was why I stopped. There comes a point where you have to make a decision; either you can give every ounce of your being to your art, or you choose to abandon it altogether. For me, because I am such a perfectionist, there was no happy medium. So, I left. Nina is a perfectionist too, so she stays, at a huge cost to herself (her sanity and eventually her life).

The Art of Self-Destruction

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.

Reflections and Mirrors in Black Swan

Among some of Black Swan's excellent motifs, I think my favorite would have to be reflections--either reflections of yourself in a mirror or of yourself in other people, or, even, reflections you see of other people. I'm not really sure if "motif" is actually the right word, seeing as though its physical image is not as consistent as motifs or symbols usually are. Reflections can be physical, but they also provoke something that's more deeply psychologically ingrained.

The first occurrence of a reflection that struck me was around five minutes into the movie, when Nina's mother notices Nina's scratch on her shoulder. Nina looks into the mirror to inspect her back, and when her mother asks her, "What's that?", she simply replies "Nothing," shrugging it off. Her mother leans in to hug her, then glances back up to look at the mirror, and for a split second her expression turns--her eyebrows tighten, lips purse, and eyes glare. Does she see something in the mirror, possibly foreshadowing Nina's transforming shoulders? We don't know, because the scene cuts to Nina's reflection in the dark subway window. (Side note: I love the sound effects in this movie too, and if you listen closely you can hear wings flapping when she turns her head). When she turns, she spots another female who looks oddly similar to her (who is wearing black; Nina is wearing white) and is mirroring her actions. This reflection of herself is not produced through mirrors, but more of a projection of herself onto someone else.

Part of the reason why reflections seem so relevant to Black Swan is obviously the emphasis on aesthetics and visual beauty. But reflections also resonate with the movie's theme of identity. Many times, when Nina thinks she notices herself in another person, she's worried that her identity is being compromised; her uniqueness is on the line, and she hates the possibility that other people could be better than her. Reflections force her to confront herself upfront and mark changes in the way that she perceives herself. Two scenes come to mind: one in which she puts on the black camisole over her grey one in a bathroom, and one where her reflection morphs into her grotesque, evil side.

I think that the smart camera work Natalie Portman's talents really lent themselves to producing an excellently profound movie, which I think made all of us question, at least in some way or another, our own identity.

-Carrie

In reaction to Gender Performance in Butler

In the reading, Judith Butler describes the performance of sexualtiy and gender. She proposes that although gender is a recognizable act - straight and queer masculinity and femininity  - these acts are not natural to anybody. A drag queen is no more of an imitator of femininity than a woman- although obviously these two takes on femininity are performed differently and for different reasons.
I personally appreciated Butler's musings on the song by Arithra Franklin since that song was related to my first experience seeing drag. I was a camper at a log cabin summer camp in northern Washington. In the middle of a dull account of the camps history, the song came on a boom box. The councilor stopped speaking and started stripping, revealing a red dress underneath. Dancing and lipsinking to Arithra, he made we two dozen pubesent boys gasp, blush, and laugh.

Later, when meeting for he firsr time in a year, after their coming out as gender-queer, I felt the same kind of shock.

When gender performance falls out of your expectation of the  norm, it can be shocking. But, like Butler explains. Nobody owns gender exclusively.

Judy B., Natalie, Laura Mulvey, and Performativity

By Jack Flynn

They all rhyme. They also all totally feed off each other and inform each other.

I mean, I think Black Swan itself is a work of art, but I also think its meaning is complicated by Butler's work on the performance of gender and sexuality. Considering the idea that no sexuality is owned by any group in a true sense, I think that Nina's performance of lesbianism can be seen as something subversive. It allows her to opt out of the heterosexual system and find a sexual outlet sans Mr. Creepy-No-Boundaries-Instructor-Man. 

On the other hand, I think Mulvey would pretty squarely disagree that the movie's depiction of lesbianism is purely subversive. After all, the fact that Brokeback Mountain is termed a gay movie and Black Swan isn't probably tells you a great deal about who the movie caters to. It certainly isn't catering to the lesbian eye, considering the only lesbian experiences the movie seeks to emulate are lesbian fantasies. And the cinematography throughout the lesbian sex scene seems to be more interested in the character’s bodies as moving, sweaty pieces than as entire sexual agents. I would say that it’s a scene that invokes that male gaze, but I hate that phrase because it’s pretty damn heteronormative. After all the male gaze of straight men isn’t the same as the male gaze of male gays, right? (BA DUM CHH) Anyway, all I’m trying to say is that I think spectral lesbianism is invoked in Black Swan not as a way to subvert heterosexuality, but as a way to displace Nina’s sexual agency in favor of a straight male fantasy. So, we queer folks win and lose in this movie, but speaking personally, I feel like we mostly lose.

As a side note, for anyone who struggled through Butler and thought, “Damn, she’s kind of a crappy writer”, I think you’ll enjoy these two articles:

1. Martha Nussbaum’s critique of Butler’s writing and politics

http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf

2. Butler’s really crappy defense of her bad writing that attempts to coopt the fight against slavery as a part of her argument about her writing:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE5D61531F933A15750C0A96F958260

To be clear, though, I do love me some Judith Butler and Giving an Account of Myself is one of my favorite books ever. I just think her ideas exceed her writing ability.

Should We Blame Ballet?

Nina is an incredible dancer. She has achieved a level of skill that most 12-year-old girls in ballet class will never have. To do this, she has put her whole self—her energy, personal space, mental and physical health—on the line. In growing as a dancer, she was stunted in so many other ways, as evidenced in her pink bedroom and her mother’s constant babying of her. In short, the correlation between ballet and Nina’s many issues seems extremely strong.

However, after thinking about the movie, I asked myself if it was ballet that made Nina this way or if it was something else. I mean, is it possible to develop schizophrenia due to ballet alone? Are we to believe that Nina would not have had the issues she did had she not been a ballet dancer? I see no reason why her perfectionist anxiety could not have manifested in another field.

Lily serves as an example of a ballet dancer that seems relatively normal and even happy. This only solidifies the claim that it is not necessarily ballet that made Nina who she became. Both Lily and Nina are ballet dancers, so what is the differentiator? Why is Nina an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, while Lily seems, to a great degree, to be a relatively normal 20-something year old?

With all this said, though I don't think we can blame ballet completely for Nina’s issues, I do think that ballet is notorious for the toll it takes on those who perform it, as well as for providing an especially perfect medium to express obsessive-compulsive an perfectionist tendencies.