By JILLIAN KRISTINA
Precision, poise, taking every direction. Disciplined, subdued, vying for perfection. Contorting to fit within a prison, not of our own creation – a caged bird, bursting at the seams for some semblance of authentic expression.
How much can be asked, expected, demanded? How much can one person bruise and bleed and split and scratch before the inevitable break?
“I want to be perfect.”
In Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN, the terror lies within the pressure. Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a dancer at the prestigious New York City Ballet. Subject to rigorous training, Nina also exists within rigid paradigms at home with her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina herself. The tension that dances between Nina and Erica is palpable – a character unto itself – as Nina’s age is contrasted with the pink frills and stuffed animals populating her bedroom. A stunted adult living under an overbearing mother’s watchful eye, Nina escapes to the only place she feels the opportunity exists to prove her worth and receive the validation she desperately desires – the dance studio.
When she learns that the company will be opening the season with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a tragic story that requires the lead dancer to embody both the innocence and frailty of the White Swan as well as the wildness and seductive nature of the Black Swan, Nina becomes fixated on securing the part. Even though she botches the audition, she visits the artistic director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), to ask him for the part. When he presses her to know what she’s willing to do to convince him, he aggressively kisses her. Nina bites back, a reaction that neither of them expects. This is where Leroy catches a glimpse of a quality of the Black Swan that he chastised Nina for lacking, and at this moment, he changes his mind.
“He picked me, Mommy.”
The transgressions we allow in the name of achievement, elevation, success and acceptance can be overtly or insidiously violating, gouging wounds that are initially imperceivable but develop over time. These invisible slashes will manifest, whether we’re aware of what’s happening (or not). Sometimes unconscious habits surface such as nervously scratching to the point of visible irritation. Sometimes, the fissures that begin to form distort a sense of reality already so fragile that the slightest nick in the already cracked mirror of perception may be enough to cause a fatal fracture.
Fractures create duality, forcing a skewed vision of both the world around us and of how we see and perceive ourselves. This brings to mind the shadow aspects of The Lovers card in the major arcana of the tarot and the very intense Lovers’ moment Nina finds herself in. On the surface, The Lovers can represent the love between two people reflected in one another. It can signify a union or even a journey into commitment and all that entails. It can also reflect the imbalances – the abuses – within connections and commitments that eclipse us from ourselves. Theybury us, obscure us while we’re trying to climb ladders that lead to nowhere or worse yet, lead to our undoing.
“Ready to be thrown to the wolves?”
At its core, The Lovers card is about our relationships with ourselves. This card is a mirror held up to us, by us – by those parts of ourselves we’ve lost or rejected over time, the ones that may be asking for re-entry or re-assimilation. Those deep parts, the darkest, most dangerous parts of ourselves are as inherent to our well-being as our heartbeats. The buried parts. The parts we once considered monsters, but upon a second glance, we find are the keys to our resurrection.
“Perfection is not just about control. It’s also about letting go.”
Letting go can be scary – terrifying, even – especially if our entire identities are enmeshed with the perfections we’re killing ourselves to achieve. What happens when nailing every move, every count, every landing is nothing when it lacks the very essence of what creates a truly breathtaking experience? Passion. Soul. Fire. These things can’t be faked, unlike the perfect pirouette or arabesque.
“Everything Beth does comes from within, from some dark impulse. I guess that’s what makes her so thrilling to watch. So dangerous. Even perfect at times. But also so damned destructive.”
Destructive. There’s a fine line between destruction and radiance. The two must be seen for what they are: two halves of the same whole. Sometimes, we need to destroy ourselves – die to ourselves, to versions of ourselves – to be reborn in our next, most radiant form. We have to become Death to compost what’s ready to be released before we balance the chalices of the next card in the major arcana – Temperance. Here, extremes find a flow, and that flow requires a surrender of ourselves to ourselves. Yet, when this card appears reversed, the surrender becomes a tectonic shift – a cataclysmic break that sees us grasping for the grounding reality of the shore this angel has one foot firmly rooted on, only for the pull of the waters to be too much, overcoming us, drowning us as we watch the wisps of what was slowly dissipate into black.
When we can’t relinquish our ironclad grips on control, life will find a way to smash our white-knuckled fists to shards.
“You could be brilliant, but you’re a coward.”
Nina strives to be what she thinks everyone wants because she’s never had a chance to be who she is. Injuries and violations plague her life so much that they’re commonplace. She doesn’t know what it is to live outside of the confines of the apartment she shares with her mother, let alone the constricted knot of her mind. She can never find a moment, a time within the undulating torture, for herself. Even her moments alone are haunted by faces that are both hers and not hers. Just as her mind is both hers and not. When the scratches begin to appear, and the blood begins to flow, we see both a break and a beginning. The chaos within begins to manifest without. Her flesh slowly gives way to the shadow that has lain dormant beneath. The side she’s tried to push down, conceal. It’s only a matter of time before the subterranean forces push through, ready and exhilarated to have their day.
“The only person standing in your way is you. It’s time to let Her go. Lose yourself.”
Lose herself, she does. She even begins to see herself in the face of another dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), the woman she wants to be, the woman she needs to be to fully embody the role of the Black Swan. The unabashed freedom, the unabashed sex. Wildness personified. Effortless passion and vitality and sensuality. Lily seduces while Nina cowers. Lily flaunts while Nina retracts. But the thing is, Lily wants what Nina has. She wants the role of the Swan Queen. And Lily isn’t above playing dirty, like drugging Nina’s drink during a night out – the night that changes everything, forever.
This night was Nina’s Tower moment. These are sudden events, flashes of illumination, irrevocable strikes of lightning that destroy all that once was, leaving us stunned and also leaving us free. Nina meets this lightning strike head-on, the final flashpoint that cracks the fragile facade and allows what was simmering beneath to emerge… finally. And just in time.
“It’s my turn now.”
Nina dances the dance of death, of becoming, of reckoning. Of rising. Flames color her eyes as she careens across the stage, spinning and evolving into the antithesis of everything she was taught perfection should be. She becomes precise, yet unhinged. Disciplined, yet wild, contorting to morph into her final form: A bird freed, spreading her black wings, fully succumbing to the gorgeous rage and abandon and luscious oblivion she had so been craving all along. She becomes The World, lying in impenetrable satisfaction as the curtains closed and the blood began to flow, marking the end of one journey, and the beginning of another.
“I felt it.”
“What?”
“Perfect. It was perfect.”
May this month’s New Moon in Gemini remind us all of who we are now, who we are striving to be and most importantly, the truth of ourselves, scratching and clawing its way to the surface. May we honor our shadow selves lest they consume us, and may we become whole when we realize the darkness within ourselves is our greatest strength, waiting to take center stage. Waiting for it to be their turn.
This marks the final installment of PIERCING THE VEIL for RUE MORGUE. I can’t express how incredible it’s been to have this platform and connect with so many of you during the last two years. This column has morphed and contorted and blossomed into a conglomeration of horror and tarot and astrology in ways I never foresaw, and I’m so grateful to have been along for the ride. Thank you to everyone who made this possible, and especially everyone who read my words and reached out to me with the kind of love so specific and unique and amazing that it could only come from the horror community. This isn’t the last you’ve seen of me, but it is the last you’ve seen of me in this form, here. So follow me up on socials. I’ve got a few surprises lined up and even more in the works. Until then, stay curious, question everything and never stop PIERCING THE VEIL.
