In Regards to “The Other”
*Note to all regular readers who are not tumblr users: Tumblr recently suffered from a major outage due to some database issues, rendering all tumblr blogs inaccessible for nearly 24hrs beginning Sunday, December 5th at 6pm E.S.T. Luckily, none of my previous entries have been loss, but I do apologize to anyone trying to access this blog during the database maintenance.
Having watched Black Swan this past weekend, I began thinking about the idea of a doppelganger, an other to one’s existence.
Why is it such an intriguing concept? The existential question of one’s existence and complement, the ying to one’s yang, has been explored in multiple narratives, perhaps the most famous literary feats being Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In film, we’ve seen this played out before in Fight Club and more recently Youth in Revolt. In modern physics, the theory of multiverse is the idea that multiple realities are occurring at the same time, the differences between reality ranging from minute (e.g. glasses versus contacts) to extreme (e.g. being born into a different family) – the most intriguing part, of course, is that there are multiple others of ourselves existing simultaneously in some other dimension. But back to the main question, which again is why the idea of “the other” is such a great avenue to explore one’s psychological depths?
I presume it all stems from our capacity to express certain characteristics while suppressing others, simply because there is a persona that we want to be perceived as from a social standpoint – what this persona is is something that is extremely to ourselves, the sum of our environmental influences and characteristics of people we greatly admire and aspire towards. So when the shunned characteristics of a person begin to manifest into something feasible – whether it be an actual physical presence or a mental disturbance – it reveals our capacity to also switch from set of personal characteristics to another, characteristics that could easily be 180º different from one another.
Lets look at Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The story’s premise stems from the idea that the ingestion of some chemical can alter someone into somebody else – physically and characteristically. The chemical is the kick, the definitive line between person A and person B, implying that if an external stimuli is just right, it can change us in a instance into something else, good or bad. And while faults of the psychopath Hyde can be attributed to the chemical inducing so, there is still a question as to why Hyde exists to begin with; the only reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that Jekyll (like many members of society) suppresses all vicious intent, and Hyde embodies these suppressions in flesh and blood. Presumably, Jekyll is naturally more belligerent and spends more time suppressing such instincts – otherwise why else would Hyde embody such a persona? (If in the case Hyde was extremely sexual, we could infer that Jekyll suppresses his strong sexual desires).
A less direct and more complex analysis of “the other” is in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where the journey of the narrator Marlow into the heart of Africa’s jungles on a steamship, and the duality of human nature and the inherent darkness of mankind – all personified by the increasing psychological toils as Marlow traverses deeper into the forest, and as he considers the African natives “the other.” There has been reasonable criticism from writers (most famously by Chinua Achebe) claiming that Conrad dehumanized Africans by conceiving them as a collective metaphor and not as distinctly individual; regardless of how you feel or what issues you may or may not have with such criticism, it is undeniable that Heart of Darkness is all about humanity’s great capacity for extremism of pure good and pure evil. The foil of human behavior is universal, amazingly and terribly so.
Now we come to Black Swan, where Nina (Natalie Portman), an aspiring and extremely dedicated ballerina, becomes obsessed with perfecting both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan in Peter Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet Swan Lake. By nature Nina is shy, quiet, and sweet: it is heavily implied that her aspirations are closely tied to that of her mother’s, an ex-ballerina who is now Nina’s primary confidante and coach; and that Nina, while technically skilled and studious, is much too insecure with herself to readily allow for relaxation, and is found constantly pushing herself to some sort of “perfection.” These aspects of Nina cause her to be greatly intimidated when Lily (Mila Kunis) joins the ballet studio, solely because Lily is the complete opposite of Nina – Lily is Nina’s “other.”
I won’t reveal here what happens in the movie (mostly because I was fortunate enough to see it during its limited release) except that the story is one of tragedy, and why the constant pursuit of “perfection” lends itself to personal destruction and for those even less fortunate, a psychological split that reveals personal characteristics otherwise unacknowledged. Many critics have commented that it all becomes too convoluted and difficult to differentiate between dream and reality, fact and fiction. I think this aspect lends itself appropriately to the feel of Black Swan, mostly because it is a movie not about Tchiakovsky’s Swan Lake, or about ballet, or about a suffocating mother – it is all about Nina, and who she is (and becomes) as a result of these different environmental factors filtering into what she dedicates her life towards – becoming a perfect ballerina.
“The other” persona perhaps represents something in ourselves that we may find unattainable or unappealing, or even both. There is no denying it that naturally lends itself to darker implications – why else would we suppress such characteristics in the first place? – but they are intriguing implications nonetheless. Franz Kafka never outrightly explored the concept of “the other,” but if you read many of his works and short stories it becomes apparent that his writing was quite cathartic for the pain he suffered in real life. In his most famous short story, The Metamorphosis, Kafka effectively confessed to all the animosity his own father had for him as a son; and on a subtler fold, the story also reveals the duality of human nature, how one event – in this case a man transforming into a insect – can dispel warmth and kindness in an instant, and no matter how good, kind, or moral we may be we are all susceptible to our darker sides.
To be continued…
Referenced Reading
1. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”− by Chinua Achebe
Recommended Reading/Links
• “Black Swan” Review – Todd McCarthy
• The Moving Camera – Richard Brody
• Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”
• “Black Swan” Review – Roger Ebert
• “Black Swan” Review – Michael Phillips
• “Apocalypse Now,” Great Movies – Roger Ebert
• When Ballerinas Attack – Cinesnark
