Two penn’orth: Cuts, Arts and Swans

So, the Tories are currently trying to tell us that the arts no longer matter. More science and business graduates, fewer creatives and artists. Great. Shall I just end it all now? Just as I was considering how best to be a drain on society’s resources two years from now, I saw Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky’s latest masterpiece, at our very own Arts Centre.  And then I saw it again. And again. Amongst many, many other things, Black Swan has shown me that there will always be merit in arts education.

Played exquisitely by Natalie Portman, principal dancer Nina Sayers’ mind is ultimately destroyed by her single-minded drive to embody the perfect Odette/Odile in her ballet company’s revolutionary new production of Swan Lake. Her director, a particularly slimy Vincent Cassel as Thomas, makes it clear that her Odette is perfect; timid, fragile and flawless, Nina was born for the role. But, if she is to make her Odile as believable as her Odette, Nina must become a screeching harlot, a sexually omnipotent bombshell-in-a-tutu, as seductive as the infamous Black Swan. In university terms, Nina, a stunning mathematician, must perform the impossible: learn how to write a first-class dissertation on gender and sexuality in Ancient Greek tragedy, and write it like she means it.

Devaluation of the skill it takes to excel in the arts is a now-common trope in discussion of higher education. In the arts, as Nina struggles to come to terms with, being truly spectacular isn’t about adding up the right numbers and solving an equation someone better than you already solved – it’s about fighting against the limitations of your own mind to see if you can come up with a revelation.

Thomas recognises the quivering-taut coil of repression that has taken the place of Nina’s sense of abandon, and tells her to go home and touch herself (because what else could he ask her to do?). I wonder though, how many of us actually do? How many of us play as hard as we work, tax our bodies and our personalities as much as we do our minds? The answer is most likely ‘not enough’, which Nina takes and turns into ‘too much’.  Destructive as trying to achieve this ideal proves to be to a psyche as obsessive and delicate as Nina’s, being an artist, academic or creative, is all about pushing yourself.

As you watch Nina (likely through your fingers at several points) battle to keep her Odette alive as her Odile threatens to swallow her whole, you gain a new perspective on just how worthy of respect the arts are as Nina smiles and sighs, in the wake of her simultaneous triumph and destruction: ‘I was perfect.’