cutemeat : Myth and Original

Myth and Original

One of the piercing questions of art in the contemporary world is: “at what price do we value originality?” For the moment, I’m going to put aside the obvious objection to the question (that originality is an impossible myth of modernity) and engage it at face value. Popular culture attempts to award originality, it’s safe to say, on account of the belief in the lie of creativity: that the great artist, like Zeus, should be valued because a fully-formed Athena may burst from his head at any time. If that Athena bears any resemblance to Elizabeth Berkely, it is, therefore, an insufficiently original Athena and can be subsequently dismissed.

The Worst Athena Ever

I am here referring to the recent criticism of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan: that it is, as New York Magazine put it, the “Art House Showgirls.” I should be fair and stress that NYM does indicate that this relationship to Paul Verhoeven’s film is “a good thing,” although it does not really explain why or how it is good. The article I linked to above should be taken hand-in-hand with the successful (28,847 views) YouTube video, “Showgirls - Black Swan Trailer MASH UP,” where users such as amitbarfs can proclaim, “lol,_ glad i’m [sic] not the only SG fan who thought B.S. is pretty much the same movie. except [sic] far less enjoyable!” Okay, you’re right, making a point by making fun of someone’s ability to correctly punctuate is a low blow and hardly constructive, so let’s instead focus on user SnerdWilliams, who, although entirely capable of spelling and punctuating, is no more an effective film critic for it. S/he writes:

“This is great._ They are indeed the same movie.”

SnerdWilliams is Seeing Double.

Let us ignore, for the moment, that the YouTube video in question does not even make sense, and in order for scenes from Showgirls to match up with Black Swan dialogue both must be mercilessly cut and distorted. Let us also ignore that SnerdWilliams does not him/herself present the criteria by which the two films should be judged as equals. Instead, let’s look back at the NYM article for some context, as they have at the very least enumerated the reasons they think it’s fair to compare the two films. In total, they list the similarities as:

“Playful and Dangerous Brunette Rival
Older, Shady Mentor
Girl-on-Girl Action
Constant Sexual Harassment
Understudy Drama
Stunted Heroines
Climactic Hospital Scene
Dancing, of Course”

It is tempting for me to go through each point, one-by-one, and to demonstrate how different Black Swan is from Showgirls; it would be very pleasurable to defend a movie I really enjoyed from charges that it is derivative of one of the biggest messes of a film I’ve ever seen. However, that would be counterproductive. Rather, I want to focus on how overwhelmingly general the similarities are: a climactic scene in a hospital? An older, shady mentor? I would have to think 33% of movies have at least one of those. In fact, most good films are derivative in their narrative content because, as I’ve stressed elsewhere, narrative doesn’t matter. In order to prove my point, let’s look at the movie no one accused of derivation, Inception, and compare it to one of the oldest stories we have, the Orpheus myth:

Talented but Troubled Heroes
Dead Wives Communicating from Beyond the Grave
Obsession with Dreams
Journeys Beneath the Surface of Reality
Convoluted Rules to their Fantasy World
A Deal with the Devil
Inconclusive Conclusions
Music, of Course

If anything, the comparative analysis I just did makes me dislike Inception slightly less, because it proves that, contrary to what people say about it to make themselves feel good, it is rooted somewhere. In fact, it would be impossible to come up with a coherent narrative (and Inception’s is just barely coherent, and only so because it completely ignores everything we know about human psychology) without being derivative of something in the past. This is why, in my Inception review, I stressed so heavily that narrative doesn’t amount to a fraction of the importance of stylization, writing, “The secret of film (and all art) is that narrative doesn’t matter. Stylization isn’t accidental, it is the central substance.” Although calling it the secret of film and all art might be extreme, I really believe style to be what lies beyond the curtain of the critical moment. We, as critics, should recognize that all narrative is derivative, and that stylization is the only formal element that gives art its force.

I guess making everything the same shade of brown is a kind of stylization.

With this in mind, the critical distinction is no longer whether or not to compare a film, but to determine what to compare it to. The fact that Black Swan could just as easily be compared to films like All About Eve, Suspiria or Mulholland Drive makes it all the more disappointing that publications like NYM chose Showgirls to make their point. If anything, the comparison between the two films only goes to demonstrate how impressively Aronofsky directed the same material Verhoeven treated with the reverence usually reserved for hotel pay-per-view softcore porn.

The fact that it is so easy to reproduce Showgirls is not a credit to Verhoeven, either. I want to return to what I alluded to in the beginning of this essay, that originality may be a myth of modernity. This is actually only half-true: originality is a myth in the way that modernity conceived of it, with narrative content as its central focus. If you move the focus to stylistic originality, the insight of Chateubriand is stunning, where he explained, “An original is not someone who imitates no one, but someone whom no one can imitate.” This is the criterion by which we should judge the directors of our generation. And the more Nolan-style dark-and-moody-superhero movies get produced, the more I’ll feel vindicated.