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acrylic on wooden panel

Saturday, December 11, 2010

I AM THE SWAN QUEEN !!!



I woke up the other morning with a beautiful black feather growing out of my bum. It felt terrific. I pranced around my apartment nude for awhile, and then I leapt into the middle of my king size bed and landed in the centre of a group of beautiful men all dressed as white swans. They robustly plucked the feather out of my butt and it turned into a gorgeous dark angel who then flew through my balcony door and straight to heaven. It was the happiest morning of my life to date. And if you believe that then you’ll believe everything that happens in Darren Aronofsky's latest little horror flick The Black Swan.


In The Vampire Lesbian Sex Chronicles, or The Black Swan part two, a 28-year old woman leaves the corps de ballet and finishes her graduate degree in Women’s Studies at Columbia. She has been taking night classes for eight years, ever since she joined the corps. Her dream was, of course, to become a principal dancer, but she always knew that her chances, like her arms, might be very slim, so she takes her feminist lawyer mother’s advice and comes up with a back-up plan. She finishes her PhD when she turns 32 and immediately gets a tenure track position at her alma mater. She seems happy enough to all her friends and leads a fulfilling academic life. But she can’t get the horrific images of some things that happened to her at the ballet out of her mind. She sees a therapist once a week and it helps, but it doesn’t erase the images that wake her up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.


One night she just can’t take it anymore so she gets dressed at 2am and walks to Lincoln Centre and gets the nightshift security guard to let her into the building. They had been friends the whole time she was in the corps de ballet and he was secretly in love with her but twice her age and married with children. She thanks him and kisses him on the cheek when he lets her in and then she walks into the theatre and straight to the stage where she used to dance. The stark minimalist set for Swan Lake graces the huge performing space. She walks to the centre of the stage and takes off all of her clothes and lies down on the edge of the white ramp that the Swan Queen leaps from at the end of the ballet and she starts to masturbate. The night security guard has secretly followed her and he is filming her on his new fancy cell phone with the camera feature that is wife gave him for his birthday. The next morning his son borrows his dad's phone, finds the video and puts it online and it goes viral for a short time before it is taken off. The boy gets in trouble for posting it and the security guards wife doesn’t speak to her husband for a week until one night she asks him to show her the video. They watch it and make mad passionate love as it plays, over and over again, on their giant flat screen high definition television set on the wall at the end of their bed. They continue to do so for many years to come.

The ex-ballerina holds no grudges and keeps in touch with the security guard and his family for the rest of her life. Soon after the video is taken off of youtube it becomes a cult film and is screened at several film festivals internationally. The ex-ballerina gets a worldwide lecture tour and early sabbatical so she can travel to universities to talk about auto-erotic sex and lesbian sensibility in the ballet. Her nightmares about her life in the corps disappear and she becomes so famous that she quits her job at Columbia and moves to Paris, where she visit Nureyev’s grave every Sunday afternoon and dances in a small modern dance company until she is sixty nine. She is banned for life from Lincoln Centre, marries her lesbian therapist, has many lovers of many genders, and on her deathbed at 89 years old, in the south of France, she laughs demonically and angelically as she gaily mutters the final lines from Aronofsky’s film.

See The Black Swan if you want to find out what the final lines are. Don’t see the film if you are squeamish. It reminded me of Carrie without the interesting plot. It’s basically the same movie as Aronofsky's The Wrestler, except Mickey Rourke is played by Natalie Portman. They both make swan dives, they both wear tights, and they both wear make-up.

The Black Swan is so full of simple-minded clichés and stereotypes that it is cheesier than the music box I have had since I was a teenager, the one with the ballerina twirling when the box is opened. Aronofsky slams the box shut and yanks it open several times during the film, and each time he slams it shut another dancer crumbles. Some cine-babble experts would have us believe that this is a fine blend of horror, psychological thriller, melodrama, and naturalism, and they’d be absolutely correct. But it’s also a deeply simplistic, beautifully made visual feast for the eyes, but not for the ears (with the exception of Tchaikovsky's gorgeous apocalyptic music) and not for the faint of heart. The script is predictable, the performances are brilliant, and the design is superb. And my cherished Wynona Ryder gets a meta-narrative that evokes images of her former shoplifting daze. But ultimately it’s the same old story. Queer sexuality is used as a psychotic sub-narrative and femininity is demonized beyond belief. A very bizarre little Christmas flick.

If you prefer your ballet a little less gruesome then just go see The Nutcracker instead, and admire the hard bodies and the committed labour of young men and women who dance for a living and try to lead healthy, fulfilling lives.

2 comments:

s. mcdonald said...

remember two things: i was there with you and I AM THE SWAN QUEEN!!

scribbler said...

Hi.....interesting stuff. How can I reach you to send you an invite and information about a new play?

Carol Libman,

libmancarol@rogers.com or the email address below

I'm not a blogger, so email would be easier for me.
thanks.