Reflections on a Black Swan

I have only seen Black Swan being cloistered in a cinema-free zone for a number of weeks. A weird denial of fantasy and a stubborn rebellion to make my own prosaic life matter more than someone else’s vision of hapless reality – perhaps.Or is it a dream? A paranoid fear that I will confront my own debauched existence in another zone of meaning? But my nightmares when I do succumb to sleep are vivid phantasmagoria I can embrace and discard when I awake, or can I? Dreams of ballerinas, swans, sluts, goddesses, dark fallen angels, and virgin nymphs, that don’t pass the reality test but are more real than the tepid realism I confront when not in sleep. The White Swan is dead, long live the Black Swan, in all her lurid unreality. Renew my subscription to the Resurrection.

The White Swan is dead.

The wraith in the mirror
A thousand and one shards of shattered glass dissolve into a bloody cascade
A cosmic alchemy
The red phoenix rises into a hurricane of abandon

Monochrome

The black swan pirouettes into and out of the spotlight
A crescendo of liberation
She takes no prisoners

Her lips dark labia of debauchery.
She bites and draws blood from the mouth of her dark prince

The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke's strong performance makes the picture, but otherwise I was disappointed. I deeply admire The Fountain, but here Darren Aronofsky has made just another Hollywood picture. The rich and resonant motifs and symbolism are used in the service of a rather banal and clichéd story, which does not cover new ground and shows little maturity. The scenario of the loser bad father who loves the Madonna whore, and has an estranged histrionic daughter is too hackneyed to sustain the crucifixion motif: pearls before swine. The hand-held camera perpetually trying to keep up with Randy may give the film an Indie cinema verite feel, but the cliché overload makes it redundant. The Magdalenesque ending is predictable and cloying. But what really strikes me is the unrelieved ugliness of the appalling wrestling scenes and its contrived yet explicit violence. With respect, I feel not a few commentators on this movie let wrestling and those who promote it and enjoy it, undeservedly off the hook. If there is any deeper symbolism, and here I give Aronofsky the benefit of the doubt, it is that in a market economy, even the human body is simply a commodity, 'meat' ripe for exploitation and abuse - be it wrestler's steroid-enhanced body or the explicit cavorting of a stripper. Randy's alienation needs to be exploded not glorified.