Black Swan: the Expectations of Female Perfection - Essay Example

Black Swan: A Discussion on the Expectations of Female Perfection Introduction The ballet is a place of mystery, where great feats of strength are covered with delicacy and the appearance of effortless movement. A ballerina dances on her toe, her entire body balanced on the tips of her feet where she appears weightless and fragile. The ballet is the essence of femininity, not to downplay the efforts of male dancers, but more often the male is the frame, the female the picture in a dance that challenges the body to move against gravity and become the appearance of something supernatural. In many ways, the ballet is the epitome of the misogynist fantasy, women who are represented as virginal and without sexuality, but with every movement of every muscle highlighted and visible. The great choreographer, George Ballanchine, wanted his ballerina’s to have no weight, to eat nothing, and to appear to be children rather than grown adults. Within the framework of the ballet, the dream of female fragility is played out through extremes of physical contortion and athleticism, which is presented to seem as if it is not. The film, Black Swan (2010), provides context for the nature of the life that women lead. Woman have always been constrained to live through the expectations put on them by society, trying to meet impossible standards without true recognition for how impossible the expectations that have been put on them are to meet. The expectation of perfection, the need to be all things, creates a pressure that often turns inward into self-mutilation and destructive behaviors. In the case of the lead character in Black Swan (2010), the critique on the culture of women explores the nature of striving for perfection and the dangers that lurk within the struggle to meet the expectations that are impossible to achieve. The Ballerina as a Metaphor for Societal Expectations on Women Exploring the ballerina creates a metaphor for the life of women, the insane struggle to be all things in a world that frames the female experience with strict expectations of physical form, domestic perfection, and organized, efficient career achievements. Where men may be allowed to look less than trim, to depend on their secretaries for organizations, and do little within the home towards maintaining the daily chores, women are not allowed that luxury to let go of any sphere without facing failure. The ballerina, is first, an athlete. She performs on her toes, each movement of each muscle under her control so that she can turn, fly, twist, and land without appearing to be putting in any effort. She must be in peek condition, but her body must be starved of any body fat and lean without the bulge of muscle. Her representation is frail and fragile upon the stage, despite the strength and prowess that is required to create the dance. Her life is a contrast of needs, her impossible task set to see her fail. Few can achieve the balance, and all those who cannot, step away feeling like failures. The most notorious relationship in the recent history of the ballet is that between the choreographer George Balanchine and the ballerina Gelsey Kirkland. Kirkland wrote a book that described her experiences with Balanchine as he pushed his dancers to perform. He would tell his dancers “must see the bones”, “eat less”, and “eat nothing” (Freidler and Glazer 15). He led his dancers in what Kirkland is quoted as calling a “concentration camp aesthetic” (Gordon 124). Kirkland suffered from bulimia and anorexia nervosa, as well as drug addiction from taking pills to balance her lack of nutrition and energy. Her experience was painful, stressful, and full of the turmoil that women face as they strive to balance on their toes and be all things in the process. The metaphor of the ballet provides a rich textual dialogue about the difficulty of being a woman in today’s society. Unfortunately, as much as it is a metaphor it is also an explicit truth that the expectations in the ballet are ridiculously high. In 2003, ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, at the age of 27, was fired from the Bolshoi Ballet. The official cause was that she was 5’7” tall and weighed 110 ten pounds, making her too heavy and large to be lifted by the male dancers. A headline in a Russian newspaper had the headline “Not even bears could hold her..” (Oliver 38). In June 1997, Heidi Guenther died from an eating disorder at the age of 22. She was a ballerina with the Boston Ballet and was 5’4”, weighing 93 pounds. In 1995 she was asked to lose weight, but eventually she was asked separately by five other members of the ballet to stop losing weight, but no on bothered to send her to a doctor or to see that her disorder was attended (Oliver). The nature of the imposition of low body weight as a foundational element to beauty causes great harm upon women. This is not a ‘natural’ aesthetic that defines beauty, but a social construction that has been created. According to feminist writer Susan Bordo as paraphrased by Oliver, “Our ideal of beauty did not descend upon the world from above, but was created by a melange of individuals, groups, and institutions who had a stake in its definition” (39). Oliver goes on to describe the experience for the ballerina by saying “The training of the ballerina is not only physical, but also encompasses the teaching and learning of feminine ideals as practiced in the subculture of ballet” (39). The nature of the expectation within the ballet, as in society, are a construction of those who have the power and commercialized need to impose concepts that are near impossible to live up to, and physically impossible to maintain over the course of life. The microcosm of the ballet is a more densely constructed world that emulates the larger social construction of idealized beauty and the expectations of perfection imposed on the female gender. Alderson quotes David Michel Levin as saying that ballet is “the poetizing of bodily experience (301). It is a complete objectification and representation of the textual elements of story. There is a screaming duality that can be seen in the nature of the use of the body in regard to the ballerina. If seen within the context of the experiences that Kirkland had under Ballanchine, the choreographer imposes his will upon the female form, his intent reflective of the male position of dominance that exists within the relationships between the genders. At the same time, the perfection of control is expected to be extended into the female control over her own body. Without her own ability to reflect the perfection that she is expected to emulate, she becomes a failure. Ballet is a great metaphor for the relationship of male dominance and the societal expectations imposed upon women. Alderson suggests that ballet can be seen as an ideology. She uses the ballet, Giselle, as it expresses a patriarchal society as it uses its persuasive argument that it is “the etherealization of the female body” and the “image of woman as at once private and powerful, sacred and spectral, a figure of desire that by inversion of physical presence both accommodates and imaginatively controls feminine sexual power” (301). The ideological connection is to that of beauty, that in expressing these things about female ideals, beauty has a philosophy that is related to these expressions. Alderson goes on to discuss how art is a social form, a reflection of the ideals of a society. In discussing the high expectation of female beauty, the ballet reflects the social expectations that exists in regard to women. Black Swan (2010) The film Black Swan (2010) takes all of these aspects of the female experience and expresses them through the lead character, Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, as she works to be perfect, to be the sexual being that she has never been, and to perform both sides of her personality personified in the white swan and the black swan. To her credit, she naturally plays the white swan, but the black swan, the sexual, dynamic and aggressive black swan, is out of her comfort zone and provides context for her struggles to be ‘all’ things. In the film, one sees her toes bleeding from the pressure that is put on them, a common consequence of dancing en pointe. She executes her moves with perfection, but this is not enough as the choreography pushes her to express more passion and emotion. As perfect as she is, not even perfection is enough. The relationship between Nina and her choreography is disjointed, his sexual advances uncomfortable and foreign to her as she epitomizes the virginal repressed ‘white swan’ in her life. She is disconnected from the world, her focus on perfection placing a shield between herself and the rest of society. There is no real love for the ballet expressed by Beth. She doesn’t seem to find joy in what she is doing, but she only has the need to be perfect and to have others recognize her perfection. As her choreography grows more and more impatient with her inability to express the imperfections of passion, she begins to see that even in being perfect, she is not reaching perfection. One of the aspects of the character of Beth speaks to the reactions that can take place when faced with impossible expectations. Beth has a history of scratching herself, her habit expressing the anxiety that she has over her drive for perfection. While her habit had apparently begun in adolescence and had been resolved, she was experiencing it again, although unconsciously. This anxiety driven habit can be associated to other habits that develop in order to relieve stress. Anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and other self-mutilating and destructive disorders exist as ways for women to express their feelings of the lack of control. Self-mutilating habits often manifest in disassociation, the pain of the event not getting through as the body is numb. This is done to assert control, to release emotions that have no outlet, or sometimes self punish when perfection is not being reached (Hyman). The use of her nails to scratch herself, even though she has no conscious memory of doing so, suggests that in her expectations to reach perfection, she expresses her frustration in pain upon her own body. According to Valian, men are generally evaluated on the positive side where women are critically evaluated on the negative side because of the inequity of expectations that are placed upon women in comparison to men. As a result, men often do not recognize unearned successes, where women often do not recognize unearned failures, and to extend that do not recognize success as success. Valian states that “Men have little to lose, psychologically and objectively, by trying hard; they simply get closer to their goal” (185). There are higher costs for women, however. When women try harder, they are often seen as initially incapable and dismissed for their efforts. Additionally, women will generally have to work harder for less of a return on their efforts, which will often include criticism with the small amount of reward, thus a woman may feel powerless rather than instrumental to the overall effort. This dynamic is interestingly played out between Nina and Lily, each one portraying the extremes of the gender. While Lily is a female, she takes on the gender assignments of a male, her femininity clouded by the ease at which her efforts are rewarded. Nina struggles for the smallest advancement towards reaching her goal, but although she is chosen as the principle lead, she is shadowed by the sexuality that comes effortlessly by Lily. Lily’s black swan is the epitome of the characterization that the choreographer is looking for and Nina struggles to find that nature within herself. Lily smokes and drinks heavily, her life not dedicated to the craft the way in which Nina’s is, but she has almost attained the same level of skill and success that Nina has fought to achieve. This dynamic is manifested in a sexual encounter between Nina and Lily where Lily’s role is more the masculine side of the relationship, even though the event takes place in Nina’s mind and not in reality. Nina is forced deeper and deeper into a box that has been created to make her over into the epitome of femininity. The ease with which Lily comes towards providing that space creates a masculine counterbalance to the social struggles that Nina represents. Wynona Ryder plays the role of Beth Macintyre, a representation of a ballerina who has aged out of her career, now replaced by the younger woman who has the attributes that are no longer possible for Beth to maintain. This addition in the movie creates an additional pressure, a social commentary on the nature of beauty and how that beauty fades, according to the way in which it has been calculated by those who have influenced the social discourse on beauty. Wolf reminds her readers that “beauty is a currency system”, providing an exchange value that the owner has to someone who covets that beauty for whatever reason (12). As Beth loses some of her currency, her value decreases and she is replaced. This continues the dialogue about the nature of the female gender within society, her value based upon her objectification over almost every other aspect of her life. Ironically, the role of Nina would have been beautifully played by Ryder when she was in her youth, but at the age of forty she no longer qualifies. In life, as in the movie, she has lost some of her currency as an actress. The character of Thomas Leroy, played by Vincent Cassel, is almost the only real male figure in the movie. His role, amplified by his towering height over Portman and his ‘otherness’ which is introduced by his exotic French accent, gives the audience the sense of the oppressive male as he puts into submission his dancers, which represent the feminine. He plays a choreographer that is reminiscent of Ballanchine, his cruel and manipulative nature in running the company heightening the stress and making him the sexual center of the male female dynamic. His presence in Nina’s life leaves her feeling confused and overwhelmed, unable to control how she reacts to his advances and disconnected from him as she has no relatable experiences with men. She is not connected to him emotionally, but struggles to find a way towards the sensuality and raw sexuality that he is trying to draw out of her. Because his position as a male is foreign to the emotional state of the female, it may be that Lily takes that place in order to provide that dynamic as Leroy is unable to fill that side of the female experience. Misogyny in Film One of the principle themes in the film revolves around the misogynistic point of view through which is presented the nature and self-loathing of women. It is somewhat unclear if the director, Darren Aronofsky, believes in his point of view or if he is satirizing the concept of the perpetually tormented female figure trying to be prefect, but the presentation seems to both support that point of view and vilify it. As one watches the way that Nina crumbles as the pressure builds her life, one wonders if she is being pushed too hard, or if she is being presented as a woman who just cannot handle the pressures of the life she has chosen. As she is sucked deeper and deeper into her own delusional world, she begins to decompensate, and as an audience, the message is conflicted as to whether the director intends to suggest that she is too weak, or if he is suggesting the society is insensitive to reality of the limitations of the human spirit. The fact that the audience is led to question Nina for her weakness is an example of how society accepts that a woman should be able to be all things. As the center of the film, her role as heroine becomes a disintegrating world where she cannot hold onto her sanity and achieve the goals she has set for herself. Only in her death, in the dying embers of her life as the delusions take over and she deals the final self-mutilating blow, does she achieve perfection, suggesting that in life perfection is impossible. The socially framed nature of the female figure makes it difficult to see Nina as the victim, but to blame her for her imperfection. From a reasonable evaluation, it is obvious that she could never embody all things to everyone that holds expectations over her head. However, because of the instilled values that society has imposed, it is difficult to not blame her and hope that she would just get a grip on herself. This is the power of the social discourse on the female gender. Horror films are often designed with the misogynistic point of view. There is an eroticism in death that is used to explore the ultimate release of death, and most often this is imposed upon a woman. In film, filmmakers use this metaphor to objectify the female figure, her death not relevant to her character as much as it is her sexuality. According to Humm, “women characters are either presented as rabid sexual parasites or breeders of mutants, or they have their reproductive capacities eliminated” (62). Primal fears are exaggerated with women being stereotyped by their sexual nature. The female character is presented for what she represents and her demise is part of the resolution of the fear that men have about her nature. The fears that men have of women become manifested in characters that are defined by their sexuality and meet their end according to the ‘sin’ of their nature. This is particularly striking in the film Black Swan (2010). The sexually open character of Lily, played by Mila Kunis, appears to not feel any of the affects of the pressure that Nina undergoes. Lily can handle the expectations, her perfect black swan to the perfection of Nina’s white winning in her ability to handle so much more than Nina is able to process. However, in ‘winning’ by continuing to live, Lily loses out on the beauty of playing both the white and the black with perfection. The social message is that in order to be the perfectly balanced woman, loss is the only avenue that can be traveled. Only in death can a woman fully be all that she should be in life. It is a hateful way to look at the female gender, stripped of the ability to ever achieve the expectations that are imposed upon her. Reality, Dance, and Black Swan (2010) The film is a contrasts of extremes, stereotypes used to create a scenario of horror and insanity. The reality of dance is that it is a demanding profession that does not allow for dancers to relax in their pursuit of their goals. Being in a dance company, while not as horrifying as portrayed, is still a place of high expectations and pressures. Judith Mackrell of the British newspaper The Guardian gave an early screening to the film and included five professional ballet artists to join her. Some of the complaints include the use of stereotypes about the ballet. However, the bloody toes and the efforts to score and break in new shoes were very accurate. The main complaint about the film is that Natalie Portman is not a real ballet dancer, thus her work as a ballerina was not up to their standards. Not only did the ballet artists in the Mackrell screening make this complaint, but there have been other criticisms of Natalie Portman in attempting to play a ballerina who had dedicated her life to dance. Perron even poses the question “Do people really believe that it takes only one year to make a ballerina?”. While the opinion piece written by Wendy Perron and the interviews done by Judith Mackrell miss the point, another social aspect can be seen through their commentaries. The point that is missed is that Natalie Portman is an actress who spent a year training to portray a ballerina, not to be a ballerina. Much of the ballet was done by a body double, and there are complaints that the two artists that were used did not get enough credit. There are complaints that Portman should not have tried to play the part because she is not a ballerina (Mackrell). This is an example of improperly placed expectations. Portman spent a year of her life training, and her part was not merely a part of a ballerina, but a part that required her to display the psychological effects of a woman who was falling apart mentally. If her role had been primarily about dance, then perhaps she should have been replaced with an actual dancer as one of the dancers interviewed by Mackrell suggested. However, her role was much more than that and provided context for the discussion of the female position in society, thus her face imposed on that of a real ballerina was just to add the setting and staging of her performance as an actor, not to suggest that she has become a ballerina. However, this discussion in the public forum about her audacity to present herself as a ballerina in a film provides further conversation about the high expectations that are imposed on artists. This is reflective of the same kind of unreasonable expectations that are put on women in real life. Conclusion The life of the ballerina is a more tightly wound example of the life of a woman, the expectations that society holds for her high and unreasonable. The film Black Swan (2011) provides a textual commentary on the social expectations that put pressures on women and the balance of the male figure as it puts into submission the female gender. The film creates many stereotypes that continue the historical nature of film as it presents the female gender through a hatred and fear of them, the misogyny rife with the complex nature of the relationships between the genders and the nature of the female to her own expectations of self. In regard to film, men hate women and women hate women and this conversation has created a great deal of self hatred by women in life. Women generally have higher and more complicated expectations on the way in which they manage life. The movie Black Swan (2010) critically examines the nature of being female and explores the consequences of the expectations that society imposes. Works Cited Alderson, Evan. “Ballet as Ideology: “Giselle”, Act II”. Dance Chronicle. 10.3 (1987): 290-304. Print. Friedler, Sharon and Susan Glazer. Dancing Females: Lives and Issues of Women in Contemporary Dance. Amsterdam: Harward Academic Publishers, 1997. Print. Gordon, Richard A, Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print. Humm, Maggie. Feminism and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997. Print. Hyman, Jane W. Women Living with Self-Injury. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. Print Mackrell, Judith, “What Britain’s Ballet Stars Made of Black Swan”. The Guardian. 5 January 2011. Web. 3 May 2011. Oliver, Wendy. “Reading the Ballerina’s Body: Susan Bordo Sheds Light on Anastaisa Volochkova and Heidi Guenther”. Dance Research Journal. 37.2 (Winter 2005): 38-54. Print. Perron, Wendy. “Is there a Blackout on Black Swan’s Dancing”. Dance Magazine. 3 March 2011. Web. 3 May 2011. Valian, Virginia. Why so Slow?: The Advancement of Women. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Print. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. New York: Perennial, 2002. Print. Read More