The Black Swan

I just have to write about this movie because it has been haunting me ever since I saw it.  I can't get it out of my thoughts and how much it disturbed me.  It was such a well done film and so beautifully hypnotic that I just couldn't take my eyes away from it.  It was so captivating, but truly horrifying and infinitely sad.

I think of how many girls out there have felt like they needed to be perfect.  That's all Nina wanted, to be perfect.  She kept saying it throughout the movie.  And when she said it, it was usually in this thin, weak, nearly inaudible voice.  The voice of a child.  The voice of someone in pain and ashamed.  Ashamed that they think they could possibly be perfect when they are so flawed.

I just read that paragraph and realized that I wrote, "That's all Nina wanted, to be perfect."  Yes, that's all.  As if being perfect is an everyday occurrence in people.  That most people walking around out there are perfect and she was the one left out in the cold, in the land of the imperfect, misfit people.  See, it's so easy to just assume that perfection is ideal and the norm.  It's not.

Nobody is perfect.  Nobody.  But a lot  of people try to be and a lot of people kill themselves trying, like Nina.

She didn't find satisfaction with any of the many accomplishments she had achieved.  Just being a dancer for a living and being a part of a prestigious ballet company would be amazing.  At least that's what I say, but I know that I would have been like Nina too.  Once I got  in, I would have thought, "Well, anyone could do this.  I need to do better, be better and achieve more!"

She couldn't be perfect if she was distracted by  her own life, so she lived with her mom.  She didn't have friends, she didn't do anything fun.  She  had no joy.  I kept wanting to shake her and say, "But Nina, you're not perfect if you are so one-sided!  You're driving yourself mad!  You're driving yourself sad!  Stop!"

She eventually doesn't know what is real and what isn't and we, as the audience, don't really either.  She is so confused by her pain.  Her emotional pain.  She scratched herself to the point of having a rash or chronic scabs because she wanted to feel something.  She was numbed by her sadness and jealousy and feelings of inadequacy.  She just wanted to feel something real, so she scratched herself and imagined hurting herself to much higher degrees. 

And in her desperate quest to find the darkness, the imperfection and stinging bite of the Black Swan within herself, she had to pretend to kill someone to get there. But she killed herself.  In her cloud of emotional confusion she kills herself, but she still doesn't get it.  As she lays dying on the mattress at the end she says to the lecherous, sick director, "I was perfect."

I took that to mean that it was worth it to her.  To have that one brief flicker of real perfection, killing herself was a small trade-off.  I can't imagine anything so sad or joyless.
I hardly know where to go from there.  I know we all have moments when we look at ourselves in the mirror and think, if only I was perfect.  Actually, I find myself saying it more often when I am comparing myself to someone else.  "If only I was as perfect as her..."

Well, "she's" not perfect.  No one is.  Who knows what kind of problems or hell "she's" been through to get that perfect thing you want.  Maybe "she" got that beautiful hair from a mother that abandoned her.  Maybe "she" is so thin because she can't stop exercising and tortures herself if she doesn't hit the gym 3 times a day.  Think of those things the next time you find yourself wanting to be "perfect" like that other person.
Nina would be someone I would look at on the street and envy.  Beautiful, graceful, thin.  But I don't want to be like Nina.  Her life was a completely joyless existence.  There isn't any time in that movie that you feel an emotion remotely close to happiness or joy.  Even when she finds out she got "the part" and she's calling her mom from the bathroom stall, it's painful to watch.  So, desperate, so childlike, so suppressed.  It just made me weep.

And now, being a mother myself, I think of watching this happen from the mother's perspective.  Her mother's character, who obviously has some problems herself, clearly has pushed Nina in some way, but it is never really made clear.  She has used Nina somehow to fulfill something she never acheived, which is something I find so transparent and despicable.  Like those mothers on those toddler beauty pageant shows.  They are so sick and so obviously trying to feel beautiful through their daughters, because, let's face it, none of the moms on those shows are beautiful. 

Why do these mothers seem so oblivious to the fact that they are damaging their child?  That is what is scary to me, that maybe that behavior just happens if you aren't happy with yourself and your life.  Does one just start making their child do things that make themselves feel happy and fulfilled and they aren't conscious of what they're doing?  Is it some sort of coping behavior?

Nina's mother wasn't conscious of what she had done until the very end and she saw Nina on stage for the last scene of the ballet.  I'll never forget the look on the mother character's face.  It was a mix of "Oh, my God, what have I done?" and "Someone, STOP, help my child!  Don't you see she needs help?"

I think of my Abigail spinning away on that stage so in pain and I just ache.  Just thinking about it.  Why didn't that mother climb up on stage and tackle her and have her taken away?  Or at least tackle her backstage.  She knew her daughter wasn't right and she knew she, her mother, had a hand in it. 

I like to think that I will never do anything so selfish as living through my child, but after watching this movie and even seeing those horrible pageant shows, I don't know if I can be so self-righteous as to say, "I'd never do something like that."  After all, none of us is perfect or above any flaw.

That mother's face haunts me every day and I hope it does when the moment comes when I say, "Abby, you have to keep taking piano or figure skating or gymnastics.  It's good for you, you're good at it.  You have to keep doing it."  May that mother's face pop into my mind and make me bite my tongue and remember what I promised Abby in the womb. 

I told her that my wish for her was to always be happy with herself.  That's all.  I just want her to be happy, whatever she chooses to do, to be, to be with, just to be happy and to be my Abigail.  She is just pure joyfulness and this movie has made me aware that I must protect that joyfulness that she exudes. 

We all must protect our own joy as well.  It is so easy to let it snuff out.  I'm so sensitive that I can let one negative statement from someone ruin my whole day.  I'll admit that.  I'll admit that my mental state isn't a far cry from Nina's some days. That's why I have had such a visceral reaction to this movie and feel I must tell you all to not let yourselves fall under the spell of perfection.  There is no such thing.  It's like searching for the Holy Grail, you'll never find it, never acheive it no matter how hard you work.  And that's not a bad thing. 

Do things well, do things with integrity, do things with kindness, but don't let the pursuit of perfection creep in.  Remember Nina and remember her mother.  Neither one of them could let it go and it destroyed them both.  Such a sweet siren call it can be at first, that feeling that you do something so well and could do it even better and be more admired!  Such a high, such a drug, but such a killer.