Black Swan, Freud, and the Monomyth

SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS … spoilers, spoilers.

I just returned from seeing Black Swan at the cinema. As a piece of filmmaking, it is absolutely phenomenal. I have loved Darren Aronofsky since his debut, Pi. The only one of his films I have not seen is The Wrestler, mainly because that came out when I was living in China. I admit I don’t quite understand the story of The Fountain, but … ah, what storytelling!

Thus, he did not disappoint me with Black Swan, pushing us uncomfortably close to a mind maintaining but a tenuous hold on reality, gripping it with fingers slick with the sweat of obsession. But the question that my own mind is currently obsessing over is this: Is Black Swan ultimately a realization of or biting critique of Freudian psychology and Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth?

You can’t help but read the film in Freudian terms. I think I’ve seen the word “psychosexual” in nearly every review of it I’ve read. All the classic Freudian players are here: the overbearing, Superego of a mother, the fragile, repressed Ego hero, the free-spirited Id. The movie no less can be read in terms of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, with its Jungian concepts: the Bad Mother, the Hero, the Shadow, the Father. But the complexities that the film is able to twirl around with those concepts is what captivates me.

On the one hand, we have the Freudian reading: Nina, a sexually repressed ballerina lives at the mercy of her overbearing Superego, personified as her mother. Through her dancing and the prodding of her psychoanalyst/ballet director (who speaks in terms of “breakthroughs” and even sits her down on his couch before grilling her about her sexuality), she is able to unleash and ultimately harness her Id, breaking free of the confines of her oppressive Superego and achieving the height of perfection.

Joseph Campbell would describe it slightly differently, though in no less lofty terms: the Hero embarks on a journey of self-actualization by slipping out of her childhood prison (her Mother’s home/womb), aka The First Threshold, besting its Guardian (the Bad Mother), and entering the world of Adult Experience. There, she is confronted by her Shadow (her repressed sexuality) but with the guidance of her Father-figure/Mentor, she is able to overcome and assimilate her Shadow, becoming the Master of Two Worlds (her psyche and the stage) and reaching the height of perfection.

However, the critique of these readings comes in the actual events of the film, the things these overly metaphorical interpretations gloss over or try to nullify. The film’s horrifying plot introduces enough ambiguity that cracks begin to appear, if the above readings are not shattered altogether.

Take, for instance, Thomas Leroy, the ballet instructor. His obsession with Nina’s sexuality practically makes him a stand-in for Freud himself. Psychoanalysis would say he’s trying to help Nina express what has been repressed in her, but he’s doing that by literally sexually molesting her, both physically and psychologically. Furthermore, he has a reputation for this behavior. In what world could this possibly be acceptable? A world in which Freud is le roi.

The ending even complicates a black and white reading of Erica, Nina’s mother. Given a nuanced consideration, Erica can be seen as genuinely trying to keep her daughter alive, albeit in a severely imperfect way. Erica shows signs of mental disorder herself, but her actions are not only oppressive. She is also trying to protect her daughter, who exhibits signs of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (different from OCD), self-destructive mutilation, paranoid psychosis, and, ultimately, suicidal tendencies.

The ending, though, delivers the coup de grâce. Aronofsky achieves it by mixing the metaphorical with the literal when Nina finally battles her doppelgänger for psychic dominance. Campbell and Jung see this confrontation with what they call the Shadow as the ultimate test in human self-actualization and individuation. You must confront, overcome, and assimilate the Shadow, integrating it into your personality without it taking over, actualized in the movie by Nina’s fight with the phantom Lily/Nina/Black Swan in her dressing room, during which Nina confronts L/N/BS, stabs her to death (overcoming), and then delivers a bravura performance as the Black Swan in the ballet (assimilation). But the Shadow is part of your own psyche, so when you battle it (even figuratively) you are battling yourself. Thus, when Nina stabs her doppelgänger, she is literally stabbing herself.

This battle with her Shadow allows Nina to become the master of both her own psyche and the stage, a heroic triumph for Jung and Campbell. But it literally means death. This undercuts the entire Monomythic project and calls into question a society that would empower a perverted ballet director and hold as the ultimate perfection a suicidal (literally suicidal) obsession with achievement. Nina reaches her ultimate glory when she is at the height of her psychosis. Her catharsis, her breathy and elated realization of perfection as she bleeds to death, should give anyone pause the next time they hear Joseph Campbell’s maxim: “Follow your bliss.”

Ultimately, however, the question is am I seeing this in the film because Darren Aronofsky wants me to or because I want me to? I obviously have little love for Freud, Jung, or Campbell and quite a bit of love for Aronofsky. Thus, I recognize in myself a desire to see my own beliefs and values reflected in Aronofsky’s work. I don’t know. I’ll have to meditate on it. Because Black Swan does conform very well to Freudian and Jungian readings. But, honestly, their theories are so elastic, unscientific, and subjective that they consume and eradicate any utterance or text, which, of course, does not mean they are in any way “correct.” Ah, but that ending … it just seems so … perfect.

And a shout-out to the maestro of maestros, Clint Mansell, for another phenomenal soundtrack.

The Royal Road to Something

I had a very vivid, very strange dream last night, involving aspects of Bugs Bunny cartoons, a Charles-Manson-like cult, and one of my literary inspirations, Thomas Pynchon.  It was really weird.

I’ve been keeping a dream journal (very) on and off for the past few months, nudged to do so by a book I have on how to write more descriptively.  Description being very much one of my weaknesses, I figured what the hell; it couldn’t hurt, right?

All in all, I’ve been extremely terrible about it.  Which is why I’ve ostensibly been doing this for “months” but I only have seven dreams recorded, two of which happened in one night.  What happens most often is I’ll have a very intense dream, with very real images or sensations and I’ll delude myself into thinking they were so vivid that there’s no possible way I can forget it … until twenty minutes pass and it’s gone.

Anywho, I’ve decided, in an attempt to get myself more committed about this, to add a new section to the ol’ Brain Dump in which I chronicle my dreams.  After all, my dreams are part of my brain and I gotta dump ’em somewhere.  I do enjoy the exercise of writing them when I manage to actually put them down on paper.  It’s surprisingly difficult, trying to express all of the sensory input you experience during a dream (tastes, smells, emotions, weird details that hint at something from decades ago, setting, particular dialects, nonsense speech, dream logic that makes perfect sense to you (in the dream)). Dreams are jam-packed with data.

Now, let me be clear:  I loathe Sigmund Freud.  And I think psychoanalysis is little better than astrology.  I’m not doing this to try to work through my feelings or come to a deeper understanding of my psychology.  I think it’s fun to try to convey the sense of a dream, with all its complex minutiae, in words, and I think it’ll make me a better writer.

That said, I don’t think dreams are completely gobbledy-gook.  They are largely garbledy-gook, but they can highlight a particular anxiety in a general sense.  For instance, I’m a terrible procrastinator, and I often have dreams (much more common when I was in school) in which I’m attending a school, halfway through a semester, only to realize that I’ve been enrolled in Calculus this whole time and I’ve never once gone to class.  Oh and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s time for the first big exam.  I also have dreams (like my most recent one) in which I’m being chased or have to flee from something.  I mean, we all have these dreams, right?  The falling ones, the flying ones, the ones where we can’t escape, etc.  Is my Calculus dream related to my procrastination? … I won’t say no.  Does it reveal clues that I’m a latent homosexual? … Not so much.

The real question is: will I faithfully recount the first sex dream I have? Luckily the issue has not come up (if you will) in the few months I’ve been doing this, but we’ll kill that dad when we get to him.

Wait … what?