Scary Movie 5 Black Swan
Brayan Jacobsen
A black swan (the bird) is considered to be very rare, since most swans are white. In fact, the story goes that black swans were thought once not to exist, until finally one was discovered. The lesson is that what we think are very rare events may be more common than previously thought.
Classic black swan events include the sinking of the Titanic, World War 1, the Chernobyl disaster, the September 11 attacks and the 2008 housing market crash. These disastrous black-swan events only appear obvious in hindsight.
The global spread of the coronavirus is making America more anxious by the day. And those deepening worries are reflected in the gyrating stock market. Both the long economic expansion and 2020 presidential race seem poised on a knife's edge. Politico reports, "Trump faces 'black swan' threat to the economy and reelection." The New Yorker puts it this way: "As Coronavirus Spreads, Stocks Fall Again and the White House Frets About a Black Swan."
But the coronavirus, although dangerous and scary, isn't some unpredictable, "Gosh, who woulda thunk it?" black swan. And employing that powerful metaphor lets governments evade their responsibility to keep us safe and avoid accountability if they fail.
James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); James PethokoukisSocial Links NavigationJames Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.
When the Nano was announced in 2003, competitors laughed at the idea of a great little car people would love to drive that cost about the same as a scooter. Suzuki, in particular, who had a near monopoly on the low end of the market with a super cheap car called the Maruti, laughed the loudest. And then their black swan moment came and they had no defense against it. They discontinued the Maruti, gave up their enormous, first-mover market share and walked away.
Black Swan is a 2010 American psychological horror film directed by Darren Aronofsky from a screenplay by Mark Heyman, John McLaughlin, and Andres Heinz, based on a story by Heinz. The film stars Natalie Portman in the lead role, with Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder in supporting roles. The plot revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake by the company of New York City Ballet. The production requires a ballerina to play the innocent and fragile White Swan, for which the committed dancer Nina Sayers (Portman) is a perfect fit, as well as the dark and sensual Black Swan, which are qualities better embodied by the new rival Lily (Kunis). Nina is overwhelmed by a feeling of immense pressure when she finds herself competing for the role, causing her to lose her tenuous grip on reality and descend into madness.
Aronofsky conceived the premise by connecting his viewings of a production of Swan Lake with an unrealized screenplay about understudies and the notion of being haunted by a double, similar to the folklore surrounding doppelgngers. Aronofsky cites Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Double as another inspiration for the film. The director also considered Black Swan a companion piece to his film The Wrestler (2008), with both films revolving around demanding performances for different kinds of art. He and Portman first discussed the project in 2000, and after a brief attachment to Universal Pictures, Black Swan was produced in New York City in 2009 by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Portman and Kunis trained in ballet for several months prior to filming.
Nina Sayers, a young dancer with the company of New York City Ballet, lives with her overprotective mother, Erica, herself being a former ballerina. The company is opening the season with Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. After forcing prima ballerina, Elizabeth "Beth" MacIntyre, into retirement, artistic director Thomas Leroy announces he is looking for a new dancer for the dual roles of the innocent and fragile White Swan, Odette, and the sensual and dark Black Swan, Odile. Nina auditions for the roles and gives a flawless dance as Odette, but fails to embody Odile.
The next day, Nina asks Thomas to reconsider but when he forcibly kisses her, she bites him and runs out of his office. Later that day, Nina sees the cast list and learns to her surprise she has received the lead role. At a gala celebrating the new season, an intoxicated Beth accuses Nina of providing sexual favors to Thomas in return for a promotion. The next day, Nina hears Beth had been hit by a car; Thomas believes she was attempting suicide. Nina then visits an unconscious Beth in the hospital and is distraught to see her critically injured legs, meaning that if Beth recovered, she wouldn't be able to be a dancer.
During rehearsals, Thomas tells Nina to observe a newcomer, Lily, who has a physical resemblance to Nina but also an uninhibited quality Nina lacks. Nina has hallucinations and finds scratch marks on her back. One night, despite Erica's objection, Nina accepts Lily's invitation to go out for drinks. Lily offers Nina an ecstasy capsule, saying it would help her relax. Nina turns it down at first but then accepts. She repeats Lily's assurance that the effects will only last for a few hours, and quickly begins to act under the ecstasy's influence. Nina flirts with men at the bar and Lily as well. After the two dance at a nightclub, they go back to Nina's apartment in a taxi, where Lily masturbates Nina. When they arrive at Nina's apartment, Nina yells at Erica to leave her alone before she and Lily have sex. The next morning, she wakes up disoriented and hungover, and realizes that she is late for the dress rehearsal.
Arriving at the Lincoln Center, Nina sees Lily dancing as Odile and confronts her about last night. Confused, Lily denies having sex with Nina, saying she went home with one of the men from the bar. Nina becomes convinced Lily intends to take her place, especially after learning that Thomas has made Lily her alternate. Nina's hallucinations grow stronger and her injuries increase, going as far as hallucinating herself transforming into Odile. On opening night, Nina berates her mother for calling the theatre and telling them she was not well enough to perform, worried that the role might be too much for her. When Nina arrives late, Lily is prepared to replace her, but Nina convinces Thomas to allow her to take back her role.
Towards the end of the ballet's second act, Nina is distracted by another hallucination and loses her stability as Odette. This causes the male dancer playing the prince to drop her on stage, which infuriates Thomas. She returns to her dressing room and finds Lily preparing as Odile. During a confrontation, Lily transforms into Nina. The two fight, breaking a mirror. Nina stabs her doppelgnger with a large shard of glass from the mirror, killing her. The body reverts to Lily. Nina hides the body in the bathroom and takes the stage, dancing flawlessly as Odile and seemingly turns into a black swan, her arms covered in feathers. Amidst a standing ovation from the audience, Nina surprises Thomas with a passionate kiss and returns to her dressing room.
As Nina resumes the Odette tutu and white swan makeup, she hears a knock at her door. She opens it to find Lily, who is alive, apologizing for the misunderstanding and congratulating Nina before taking her leave. She sees the mirror is still broken, and the towel used to mop up the blood is clean with no body in the bathroom. Nina then looks down and pulls a piece of glass from her abdomen, realizing she had stabbed herself instead. She dances the final act of the ballet, which ends with Odette throwing herself off a cliff and her landing on a mattress. Everyone erupts in thunderous applause while Thomas, Lily, and the others gather to congratulate Nina, who remains lying on the mattress. Thomas sees the blood spreading at her waist and shouts for help. He frantically asks Nina what happened to her, to which she calmly replies: "I felt it. It was perfect," as the screen fades to white.
Darren Aronofsky first became interested in ballet when his sister studied dance at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. The basic idea for the film started when he hired screenwriters to rework a screenplay called The Understudy, which portrayed off-Broadway actors and explored the notion of being haunted by a double. Aronofsky said the screenplay had elements of All About Eve (1950), Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976), and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella The Double. The director had also seen numerous productions of Swan Lake, and he connected the duality of the White Swan and the Black Swan to the script.[5] When researching for the production of Black Swan, Aronofsky found ballet to be "a very insular world" whose dancers were "not impressed by movies". Regardless, the director found active and inactive dancers to share their experiences with him. He also stood backstage to see the Bolshoi Ballet perform at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.[6]
Aronofsky first discussed with Portman the possibility of a ballet film in 2000, and he found she was interested in playing a ballet dancer.[6] Portman explained being part of Black Swan, "I'm trying to find roles that demand more adulthood from me because you can get stuck in a very awful cute cycle as a woman in film, especially being such a small person."[9] Portman suggested to Aronofsky that her good friend Mila Kunis would be perfect for the role. Kunis contrasted Lily with Nina, "My character is very loose ... She's not as technically good as Natalie's character, but she has more passion, naturally. That's what [Nina] lacks."[10] The female characters are directed in the Swan Lake production by Thomas Leroy, played by Cassel. He compared his character to George Balanchine, who co-founded New York City Ballet and was "a control freak, a true artist using sexuality to direct his dancers".[11]
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