Black Swan: Alchemy in a Tutu


For any mother who has taken her daughter to ballet classes at the local studio, the irony is evident. We hand our daughters wands and tiaras, while in the waiting room the mothers talk of all that goes on in our adult lives: husbands who have returned from war with deep psychic wounds, struggles with jobs and the efforts to keep a house (either clean or from going to the bank). Meanwhile, through the large plate-glass window, our daughters leap and twirl, engaging dreams of princess-ness. The dichotomy of girlhood and womanhood is clearly pronounced.

The film Black Swan draws on an ancient motif. The whole goal of the alchemical process is transformation through a slow drawing forth of the "active feminine," or "mercurial," principle from within matter. It is the "dark nature" that dwells within things, including the alchemist, and once the "soul" of matter is released, the soul of the alchemist can work with it and make new things come about. Nina, the obedient, girl-like woman alchemizes herself in this film. In the process, she must encounter and grapple with her dark-side, her own dark feminine nature and bring it to light.

It is, as Aronofsky's film shows, not an easy process. It is about much more than technique, which only serves the surface. It is a dance with oneself: dangerous, terrifying, in some cases deadly. The opus contra natura, this "work against nature (nature being the surface appearance of things which hold us captive)" is the theme of the original metamorphosis stories of Ovid, a theme that reaches into all cultures, all mysteries. Most familiar to us, it is a theme prevalent in fairy tales. The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty all encounter their dark feminine sides, be it in the form of a sea witch, a closed cell or a vine-encrusted sleep in a castle. The darkness consumes, draws the girl into an unconscious state where she must do battle. True love's kiss not withstanding, it is the girl who must go through the darkness. Ovid shows that the metamorphosis is sometimes successful, but most times not. Daphne turns into a tree and remains a tree. The Sybil becomes immortal but forgets to ask for eternal youth. Many things can go wrong on the path to transformation.

In the language of the alchemist, a failed opus is called an "abortion." If at the moment of death, the spark of life does not carry through to a resurrection, the matter in the crucible, the "child," remains dead. Success requires a "diuturnity of intense imagination" and also a disciplined balance within the mind of the alchemist wherein he or she is at once consumed in the process and separate enough from it that the boundary serves as what Robert Frost terms a "stronghold."

Nina's star-turn as both the black and white swan reaches perfection. It is a dance of life and death, the loss of self sacrificed to becoming new. There is a great power in the swan metaphor. A bird both graceful and violent, an embodiment of all we are and hide from.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC: A POEM MADE OF 90 ABBA SONG TITLES

Image
THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC A POEM WITH 90 TITLES OF ABBA SONGS It's because now my life's as good as an ABBA song. --Muriel’s Wedding Because Love is all there is in this SUMMER NIGHT CITY , Because no one is CASSANDRA on THE DAY BEFORE YOU CAME , Because If it wasn't for the nights, we think that we could take it, Because we expect HAPPY HAWAII and get a MUSICIAN with FUNKY FEET ,  Because THAT’S ME , in the car where the ABBA CD blares strobe light satisfaction, rearview mirror turns mirror ball.  Because I enter a WINNER-TAKES-IT-ALL as the low bass line of ABBA subverts my bottom line, Because  my history falls from the shelf because it's WATERLOO , I couldn't escape if I wanted to, Because we DANCE WHILE THE MUSIC GOES ON in the heart's dopamine disco, Because CHIQUITITA , I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Because I turn that music on and I forget  everything. Because I am 8 again, arms out spinning Disco innocence in
Read more

Emailing Mother Theresa: On Losing the Art of Gazing

Image
I sent my first email in 1996. My boyfriend at the time had a computer, and the computer had internet. He sent emails all the time. When I was working on a project with PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) to develop a salivary ferning microscope that was cost-efficient enough to be distributed to impoverished women in India and Africa, I was asked for my email address. My boyfriend said I could use his.  One afternoon, my colleague at PATH forwarded an email from Mother Theresa. She was giving PATH her approval of the device. Once you get an email from Mother Theresa, there isn't much else to anticipate (Note to the 20000 senders of emails I've received since: you understand). The project got tanked along the way, despite my patchwork re-design that involved a cardboard kaleidescope from a child's birthday party and a 50x magnifying glass. I waited another two years to get my own email address, and another two passed before I started to actually &qu
Read more

Teaching Creative Nonfiction in Pandemic

Three weeks into my own, two week's into my daughter's isolation, I am teaching a class on Creative Nonfiction. We are nine weeks into the semester. Over Spring Break, everything in the world changed. The students "returned" tonight. I have been teaching in class in Zoom basically since I was told about Zoom. For me, it was the perfect solution to what then were my life's problems. I hated traffic. Zoom. I am deaf and require hearing aids, and listening in rooms of people is impossible. Zoom. I like to teach without interruptions. Zoom. Also, because I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina, often some students can't make it to class. They would Zoom. Some nights, none of us could come to class. We Zoomed. All of us. And that was the end of teaching in a classroom. I still carried the slight stigma of being an "online professor." It held a similar stink that "online dating" used to before everybody did it. It wasn't a "
Read more