Black Swan: Complex Themes at a Thrilling Pace

The tendency to strive for perfection in art is not uncommon. While most of us accept that the goal to mold creative endeavors into something flawless is unrealistic, we remain enveloped in a world of self-scrutiny that rejects failure at any level. Natalie Portman’s brilliant performance as ballerina extraordinaire Nina in 2010’s Black Swan demonstrates this taste for impeccable performance while stressing the disproportionate pressures on and politicized positions of women at the same time. Darren Aronofsky’s intense portrait of a young woman lost in the heat of competition and confusion delicately unravels a complex tale of illusion, imperfection and insanity.

Black Swan introduces us to Nina as an athlete with emotional baggage. She is well-disciplined in ballet but lacks confidence and independence. Her mother disrobes her at night and tucks her into bed, reminding us that Nina seems trapped in a perpetual state of innocence and supervision. Her inaudible voice and nervous expressions reveal the extent to which Nina is incapable of articulating what her appetites in life call for.

Nina’s fragile conditions are challenged when she is asked to play the Swan Queen at her ballet studio – a time-consuming and backbreaking role that includes portraying both the Black Swan and White Swan, who respectively represent ideas of evil or good, seduction or submission. This stark dichotomy puts a great deal of pressure on Nina – one that could be conflated with gender binaries routinely followed in several Western societies: a female is both sexually empowered and therefore wicked, or remains virginal and morally commendable.

Breaking out of her comfort zone and into the antithetical part of the Black Swan proves to be more difficult than expected, especially after a new recruit at the ballet studio (Mila Kunis) displays her noticeable (and competitive) talent immediately.  Nina’s journey is subsequently dictated by several unsuccessful attempts to leverage this pressure. She seeks sexual fulfillment, forgiveness from the woman whom she'll replace on the stage, detachment from her mother's commands. These intertwined experiences only intensify and result in an emotionally gripping finale that captures the climax of her self-demanding lifestyle as immaculately as Nina wants her ballet to appear.

The most fascinating aspect of this entire movie is, again, its ability to implement complicated notions based on feminist discourse remarkably well. Nina’s experiences tend to parallel what critics of patriarchal constructs have been documenting and dissecting for decades: self-mutilation as seen through Nina’s habitual scratching at night; the denial of female pleasure in the form of masturbation and satiable sexual appetites; the politicized role of motherhood in relation to childbirth and careers; the fight for power in a world of male-domination that pins girl against girl.

Nina’s inability to cope with such circumstances while being simultaneously expected to depict the contrast of purity and impurity on stage leads to tragic aftermath. She is victimized by the world around her and although it could be argued that this renders her weak, Nina’s life is the consequence of systematic disempowerment. She isn’t just crazy, as the previews might want us to believe. Sobering and enthralling, Black Swan illustrates the convoluted anxieties within women that stem from impossible standards of an oppressive nature. Nina isn’t the only female character to exhibit these attributes. In fact, the only person who seems self-assured and painfully unaware of what is going on throughout the film is Nina’s male ballet instructor who wields his influence through sexual and emotional exploitation of the women around him.

Black Swan may not need to be interpreted as a recognizable product of gender theory and feminist critique, but I would label it as such without question. Its immersive environment and explicit connections between female characters shows us something deeper than some “insane ballerina piece” or “psychosexual thriller;” it unearths an incredibly complex and important perspective of systemic issues involving the lives of women that the globalized community has yet to fully address. 

The Language of Truth

Whether you’ve tuned in to NPR on your drive home from work or surfed through the wave of corporate media on TV, you’ve probably heard about this whole “Ground Zero Mosque” scandal.

The conflict has polarized Americans in the mist of an already heated midterm election year, galvanizing Tea Party candidates, and even some incumbent Democrats, to denounce the construction of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan. The building, called Park 51, is funded by the Cordoba Initative, a group that aims to bridge relations between the Muslim and Western worlds in an attempt to foster peace, understanding and acceptance.

Ironically, the group’s mission to eradicate stereotypes and promote intercultural growth has generated a wave of unspeakably cruel anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments across the country. U.S. citizens have demanded the center be moved somewhere else to respect those who were killed on 9/11 “in the name of Islam,” a decidedly false claim. The architects of 9/11 planned their attack as an unequivocal response to foreign policy and American hubris. This goes without question given the overwhelming evidence:

Osama bin Laden threatened Americans for years before the 9/11 attacks, criticizing our military presence in the Middle East and perhaps most notably, our unconditional relationship with the state of Israel – a diplomatic stance that many Arabs believe has compromised our ability to facilitate any legitimate peace processes between Israel and Palestine.  Of course, none of this very accessible, very well documented history is imprinted in our historical memory, with U.S. citizens still using “al-Qaeda” and “Taliban” interchangeably.

As a result, a huge slice of our country still believes Islam inspired the attacks, rebranding the religion that dates back thousands of years as a modern product of Middle East barbarism – one that threatens the lives of Americans and hates us “for our freedoms,” to quote former Imperialist-in-Chief George W. Bush.

But what angers me the most about this entire debacle is the language used to guide our thinking: Ground Zero Mosque.

The phrase remains unquestioned by most media outlets and pundits, whether they openly support or disavow the center. But nothing about this besmirched structure relates to the name it’s been given.

The building is not a mosque; it’s an Islamic community center. And while areas for worship are certainly included in the blueprints, the building is meant to house and support individuals interested in learning about the Islamic community and how they, as non-Muslim Westerners or otherwise, can find common ground.

Calling it a “mosque” engenders a mass misconception of what is really being fought for, especially considering the presupposed pigeonholing Americans already engage in against Islam.  The word mosque is understood as an exclusively Muslim construction – one that is an adjunct to Islam. We don’t see this as a community center whose goals include solidarity for a free and loving nation. 

More specifically, the geographic relevance of this building is equally trivialized and manipulated through emotional connotation. By prefixing the already incorrect “mosque” with “ground zero,” we encourage ourselves to displace the building from its actual location (two blocks away from the original WTC); suddenly this so-called "ground zero mosque" is at the same place where 9/11 rescue workers once stood and Americans perished (including many Muslim- and Arab-Americans).

Referencing the site as a construction “on”,” “in,” or “right by” ground zero, none of which are true, compels us to judge the proponents of the center as insensitive attention-grabbers. Why build it at ground zero? There are many other locations, aren't there, we ask? "Come on," was the thoughtful argument of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA). 

However, this building is being built a few blocks from ground zero, not on it. And the geography is irrelevant, anyhow. Mosques are being built in rural Tennessee and the west coast, and they have received as much scrutiny and resulted in as much impassioned bigotry as their NYC counterpart. Clearly, there are stronger roots to dig out here, and they aren’t connected to a specific location.

In the end, you’re allowed to decide whether or not this Islamic community center is an acceptable risk. I believe those who are fighting for the building know they have to put themselves in such a dangerous position with sound preparation. The discrimination against Muslims takes place invariably all across the country, and is not inextricably linked to New York.

Therefore, Muslim- and Arab-Americans may realize they require the support of those who understand their right to exercise the first amendment. This challenging goal may have been inconceivable had they kept their “mosque”-building efforts in the Mid-West, where hatred was abundant but extensive support was scarce. I have to give the Cordoba Initiative credit for trying to gain as much help as possible, albeit in order to do so they had to pursue a controversial undertaking that has exacerbated and amplified the irrational hatred and ignorance of many Americans.

Again, you make the call on what you think this construction means or whether it’s fitting. But calling it the “ground zero mosque” is a misappropriation of language. This phrase yields nothing but extremely unsophisticated and uneducated notions of what the group behind it hopes to achieve, and what’s actually being built in the first place. This is not a “ground zero mosque” proposed to disrespect those who were lost in the name of insidiously crafted foreign policy. This is a significant opportunity for Americans to admit their prejudices and collaborate with Muslim- and Arab-Americans on the ways in which they can cultivate a stronger community within the U.S. and around the world.

On Strangers & Stereotypes

The other day, one of my favorite aunts (an unapologetically sarcastic woman who once told me to “shake my titties” while dancing to Shakira at my sister’s wedding) took me on a pleasant drive to Denver, where she dropped me off at the light rail station before I headed off to my internship.

During our 20-minute-long journey, we managed to cover an array of subjects not uncommon for a dialogue between two members of the Zivalich clan: Grandma Z. and her grumpy yet charming demeanor, the weather of Colorado and its predictable inability to follow any kind of meteorological patterns, and more.

Perhaps the most intriguing topic on which we elaborated, however, was my aunt’s younger nephew who is developmentally disabled and lives on his own in subsidized housing, working for a “go-green” recycling company that pursues sustainable waste initiatives.

My aunt discussed extensively the kind of struggles her nephew went through, including his parents who abandoned most of the challenging responsibilities that came with raising a child with mental disabilities. By the time our short conversation ended, my aunt concluded with deep sympathy for her nephew and his current living situation.

“It’s not his fault,” she admitted. “He didn’t have enough support.” While her nephew is doing well now, my aunt knew that the obstacles he had to face would have been alleviated or eradicated completely in some cases if he had a stronger network of helping hands.

I nodded in agreement and we both acknowledged that at least with the support her nephew has now, he has a future brighter than many other developmentally disabled individuals in this country. My aunt even expressed her discontent with the fact that many people with mental challenges end up homeless in incessant poverty, which interestingly enough signaled the end of our poignant discussion.

Less than ten minutes later, as she prepared to drop me off at the RTD station, we both noticed a homeless man with a sign by the intersection, asking for money to buy food. The sign noted that he was “recently homeless.”

“Yeah right, buddy,” my aunt sneered, “from the looks of it, you’ve been homeless a looong time.”

Although my aunt did not explicitly reference any displeasure with this particular man, her tone came off as condescending and disdainful; she seemed to express an opinion, albeit perhaps subtle, that ignored this man’s unknown personal history. She laughed off his sign as if it were so obviously outrageous.  

True, she did not engage in a tireless rant about “personal responsibility” or anything of the sort, but she seemed to disregard the homeless person as a human with legitimate concerns and in need of assistance. This happened despite the fact that we had recently wrapped up a conversation on her nephew and how many individuals with needs akin to his end up poor and often homeless when they are left without a fortified support system.

This incident made me question the way we treat others with respect to outside perspectives. In our personal world of tight relationships and collections of memories, it is easy to disown the stereotypes, disassemble the glaring judgment society may cast down upon the people in our lives, because we know the people with whom we interact well enough to reject such trivializations. When someone touches our lives, they remain with us forever (as cheesy as that sounds), and so, as in the case with my aunt’s nephew, she was able reconcile her previous understandings of how people may end up in poverty-stricken cycles. She knew people like her nephew were out there, and how difficult it was for him to make it to where he was–with the unwavering support of my aunt and uncle.

Yet all of her gradually completed steps to personal enlightenment seemed to fly out the window when it came to this homeless man on a street – a man about whom we knew nothing. Again, she mocked his sign, his physical appearance. He was nothing but another bum.

But how could my aunt criticize this homeless man? She immediately discredited his sign, yet did she ever ask him if he ever had support? Why did he end up on the streets of Denver, recently or ten years ago? How did someone whose life, in some ways, may have been comparable to the harsh reality her nephew survived, become an external afterthought – a person who we could jokingly critique as if we had the authority to evaluate them however we pleased?

My conclusion is a complex one: I wonder why we sacrifice our sympathy, respect and understanding of friends and loved ones when it comes to strangers and unfamiliar community members. As people who collaboratively sew the fabric of this nation’s culture, I think we need to be able to accept that the personal is not only political, but applicable, too. When we break traditionally cemented conceptualizations of what a person’s life might be like because of a trait or circumstance – be it socioeconomic status, race, sexuality, whatever – we never apply that experience to the unfamiliar. 

We know that we can never fully understand the life of another person, but how can we render their experiences worthless or irrelevant, when we haven’t met them, haven’t asked them questions? They could be coming from the same page as someone you know, relatively speaking. And whether or not they are, if you didn’t know them personally, does that mean their life is not worth the challenge? Could you muster up the the reconciliation you may have achieved in order to accept a relationship or friendship that confronted preconceived notions or culturally-embedded labels for a complete "stranger?"

You tell me.  

GOP: Gender Orientation in the Primaries

The corporate-sponsored game of political campaigning for mainstream party candidates has always been a rough-and-tumble process. Ad hominem one-liners and manipulated information are coupled with black-and-white imagery to paint an opponent unfavorably while conveniently eclipsing any real critique or understanding of their policies and experiences.

When Colorado Republicans select a candidate for their party’s senatorial ticket on the August 10th primaries, however, the question isn’t your usual “how ugly is the campaigning,” but rather, “how man enough is Ken Buck?”

According to his conservative competitor Jane Norton, the most questionable characteristic worth our scrutiny has nothing to do with politics, leadership or policy: Masculinity is the trait in doubt.

 

Norton’s now locally infamous campaign admonishes Ken Buck for allowing a “shady” interest group to do his bidding against Norton in campaign advertisements. “You’d think Ken Buck would be man enough to do it himself,” she scoffs.

The claim is a disturbing reinforcement of the cultural notion that men and women must behave in certain ways, and that men more specifically require an ambiguous level of “enough” manly behavior to qualify as “real” or “authentic.”

Not only does this gender association in political campaigns strengthen the division between "acceptable" politics for male or female candidates; it also distracts us from what’s really going on, anyhow.

Like racial bias and culture wars, normalizing particular attributes as “manly” ones aids the effort to blind politically disengaged U.S. citizens from the transparent connection between people like Buck and Norton, whose commitments to capitalist orthodoxy and limited social safety nets more accurately describe their political efforts and how they will be translated in Washington – certainly more than “man enough” endeavors. Let’s be honest, there are important issues in the upcoming election – issues that take precedence over this kind of childish quarreling. 

We should, in fact, condemn Norton’s accurate statement that she reduced spending while working for the Health Department – including cuts to Planned Parenthood, effectively curbing the necessary funds for free or inexpensive breast cancer examinations.

Additionally, Coloradoans should ask all politicians in Washington why hardly anybody is advocating for cuts to military spending – the massively over-funded recipient of our government’s discretionary income that comes with a $693 billion dollar price tag to fund and exacerbate three unjustified, inhumane wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, instead of examining these very real, very important issues, Coloradoans are afforded nothing but petty bullying in the name of “being a man.”

It is this need to polarize and define behaviors and objectives by gender, and then unabashedly hold individuals accountable if their own conduct does not match predetermined molds of gender, that upsets me the most.  

Norton does not criticize Buck for certain policies because they are products of corporate control, explicit inattention to social impact, or other reasons to render a decision bad.

Buck has failed in Norton’s eyes because he wasn’t “man enough.”

As a result, the Norton-Buck debate conveys the message that our gender can be inadequate. Men might not meet the standards of masculinity and when that inability shifts to the political realm, we are subjected to yet another form of cultural coercion – one that entices us to judge men on a spectrum of masculinity, rewarding those who make it to the top.

Never mind that this entire debacle on who fulfilled what gender fate disillusions us from the impending conflicts and current devastations in our disastrous economic and political systems. Or that it doesn’t even include women in the equation and consequently assumes male power is the only potent and useful kind in the world of Congressional character.

Please, bring democracy back to the forefront of political debate and inform your fellow citizens that in order to find candidates representative of our ideas, values, ideologies, opinions and political sentiments, we should be focusing our energy on something else – something that isn’t indicative of Ken Buck’s “manhood,” as if the elusive concept is something we can calculate or discredit after watching a few minutes of mudslinging.