Palliative Care and Euthanasia
Hollywood film has dominated the world’s cinema over the past decades. Films such as these follow a structured storyline and provide little to no interpretation to the audience, removing a previous connection from the director to the audience. Before Hollywood’s reign, film was consistently used to present the artist’s thoughts and opinions to the big screen. This sector of the film was thus labeled as foreign film. Elements in foreign film then traveled to Hollywood as directors began to experiment with different styles and areas of film. Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010) effectively reflects modern interpretations of surrealism through the use of reflection, lighting and storytelling.
There are many different types of foreign film, such as Film Noire, German expressionism, Italian Neorealism, Arthouse and Surrealism, which has brought contrast to the film industries. Film Noir is a style or genre which is marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism and menace. The term was originally applied to American thriller or detective films produced in 1944-1954 and the most popular directors of the style were Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. German Expressionism was an early twentieth-century German movement that emphasized the artist’s inner feelings or ideas over replicating reality, and was characterized by simplified shapes, bright colors and gestural marks or brushstrokes. Italian Neorealism, which was also known as the Golden Age, is a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. This style was mostly filmed on location and frequently used non-professional actors. Arthouse is an art film, typically being a serious, independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass-market audience. Lastly, Surrealism emerged approximately in 1917 amongst the dada movement. Dada or Dadaism was ‘a form of artistic anarchy born out of disgust for the social, political and cultural values of the time’ (Artyfactory, 2018). This form of art was typically not viewed as a style of art but instead a protest movement with an anti-establishment manifesto. The dada movement began in Zurich, Switzerland as a reaction to World War I. Artists involved were known to create a form of art, painting, sculpture, literature, photography and film to spite social, political and cultural which many hypothesized was the cause of war. The aesthetic of Dadaism is recognised by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, providing a powerful influence on artists in many European cities. Thus, the dada movement was the building block of surrealism.
Surrealism was emerging as early as 1917, inspired by Giorgo de Chirico’s capture of street locations with hallucinatory quality in his paintings. The term ‘surrealism’ was first coined in 1917 when Guillaume Apollinaire when he used it in program notes for the ballet Parade, written by Pablo Picasso, Leonide Massine, Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. However, the movement officially began in 1924 with Dadaist writer André Breton’s Surrealistic manifesto: ‘Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality. There remains madness, “the madness that one locks up,” as it has been described. That madness or another… We all know, in fact, that the insane owe their incarceration to a tiny number of legally reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their freeform (or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened’ (Breton, 1924). This set the foundation of surrealism as it inspired artists to tap into their subconscious and unknown thoughts and desires through any form of art such as sculptures, paintings, theatre, and film. Immediately after Breton’s publication, a group began publishing La Révolution Surréaliste, focussing mainly on literature but also including part reproductions by many artists such as Giorgo de Chirico and Max Ernst. De Chirico influenced many artists, including Max Ernst, a past serviceman of World War I who later became a German artist. Ernst eventually moved to Paris in 1922 towards the dying of the Dada movement. This allowed surrealism to travel across Europe in many different genres of art.
The main genre of surrealism are Surrealist Paintings. There were two styles or methods that distinguished Surrealistic painting. Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, and René Magritte were artists who painted in a hyper-realistic style in which objects were depicted in crisp detail, three-dimensional and strong emphasis on dream-like quality through saturated or monochromatic colour. Automatism or automatic writing was another style that distinguished a Surrealist painting. Artists such as Joan Miró and Max Ernst used various techniques to create unlikely and typically bizarre imagery including collage, doodling, frottage, decalcomania and Grattage. While the two styles are usually used alone, they are not mutually exclusive as even Joan Miró was known to combine the two.
Surrealist Sculpture was an enhancement of Surrealism’s radical provocations as it forced people to encounter physical objects that represented taboo or unpopular social, political and cultural values. As viewers had to now interact with the piece of art instead of viewing a two-dimensional painting, artists could expose buried madness or embarrassing fantasies by making the unreal real. The two defining characteristics of surrealist sculptures were biomorph and objet trouvé. Biomorph included the artist giving ‘two-sided insight into the way the imagination works when attempting to materialize the pure unconscious’ (Theartstory, 2010) This is done by the use of abstract shapes and/or forms created through raw emotional association. The latter includes the ensemble of random images or items displaced with no planning or predetermination.
Surrealist photography allowed photographers to produce strange imagery, a recurring theme in Surrealism. Techniques such as double exposure, combination printing, montage and solarization were used to create uncanny yet fascinating pieces, typically created by artists Man Ray and Maurice Tabard. Other Surrealists used rotation or distortion to create weird and wacky photos. Artists would enjoy themselves to remove context from such images and view it in a Surrealistic sensibility. An example of this are police photographs, movie stills and documentary photographs which were all included in the La Révolution Surréaliste and another paper, Minotaure with no context behind it.
Surrealist film was the first movement to experiment with cinema as Surrealism offered more opportunity to create the weird and wacky. The first film to be deemed as a part of Surrealism was Rene Clair’s Entr'acte, a twenty-two-minute silent film released in 1924. While it was the first film, the most renown surrealist cinematographer was Luis Buñuel. Surrealist films were far different from mainstream films as they dispensed linear narratives and plots, releasing film from the dependence on traditional story-telling films but instead challenge audiences by replicating stories through illogical, irrational disruptions and disturbing imagery. Films in the movement also push traditional institutions in society such as religion and political views, revolutionising film as it changed the traditional process to mass entertainment. An example of this is Luis Buñuel’s film which attacked the Catholic Church’s depiction of married couple with a deformed child. Other intents of surrealist films are to express feelings of longing, love and sexual desire. This ties into André Breton’s manifesto as he explains it as ‘insane love,’ or ‘amour fou’. Unlike the other genres of art in Surrealism, film was a form in which the artist could truly show the marvellous or uncanny as it had the potential to view a literal objects in motion instead of a still image or painting.
As Surrealism rapidly travelled across Europe, this led to later developments in which different cultures began to interpret the Surrealist movement differently. While men dominated Surrealism, leading to mass sexism, feminist art became largely popular which not only emphasised the high number of female Surrealists but also gave females empowerment and a place to influence others. The most well-known female Surrealists were Claude Cahun, Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning which were all known to cross-dress and depict themselves as animals or mythical creatures. The British were also heavily influenced by Surrealism in France leading to artists joining the movement. Their interpretation of Surrealist ideology was an ongoing exploration of human relations with their surrounding natural environment, particularly with the sea. Americans were also influenced by Surrealism. Surrealism entered America approximately in the 1930s where Hollywood was known to ‘dump them [Surrealism] into American movies with no explanation or framing devices.’ (Nyback, 2019). Later on, Salvador Dalí was involved in a film with director, Alfred Hitchcock, in 1945. However, he was certain to avoid the traditional Hollywood sequence as he explains in a 1962 interview, ‘Rather than the traditional, blurred Hollywood dream sequence, Hitchcock “wanted to convey the dream with great visual sharpness and clarity, sharper than the film itself.”’ During this time, Hitchcock’s film, Spellbound (1945) was one of the first major Hollywood productions which relied on mental illness as the driving force of plot. It’s contrast to linear Hollywood films struck with viewers as it became widely popular in America. The influence of Surrealism in Hollywood continues to the 21st Century. Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010) has effectively implemented elements of Surrealism through its use of Imagery, Juxtaposition and Irrationality.
The use of imagery in Black Swan (2010) has flawlessly depicted the psycho-thriller as it contains elements of Surrealism. Particularly, the consistent use of reflections and lighting adds to the plot and subtly adds more meaning to the story. Throughout the film, Aronofsky has used reflections as the location of Nina, the main character’s, hallucinations. The hallucinations themselves are perfect metaphors for the storyline and add tension to the plot. In one scene, Nina is picking at her nails during the announcement dinner where she pulls on a loose piece of skin. This results in blood dripping down her fingers, causing her to wince in pain and quickly rinse it. However, when she looks down, there is no bleeding or sign of loose skin. Another example is when Nina has a second fitting, towards the end of the film. She stands in front and behind a mirror when her reflection turns around and faces her. This causes her to jolt and turn around to see that the mirror seems normal. While these subtle uses of a mirror are places for her hallucinations, it also plays a metaphor of which Surrealism’s foundation began on. Similarly, the reflections of Nina towards her final performance, has red eyes, which strongly symbolises the black swan and her true inner self. The use of reflections in Black Swan (2010) effectively displays to the audience Nina’s inner-self which is a fundamental element of Surrealism. Just as Breton describes in his manifesto, ‘there remains madness, “the madness that one locks up,” as it has been described, (Breton, 1924)’ what Nina sees in her reflection is the ‘madness that one locks up.’ Another intelligent use of imagery in Black Swan (2010) is graphic visuals. Aronofsky has repeatedly used graphic visuals to not only make the audience cringe but also test them. One example is after Nina realises that she has not stabbed Lilly, a fellow dancer, but herself. The use of having a handheld long shot of Nina pulling the glass out of her abdomen not only makes the audience uncomfortable but tests them. This is an element of Surrealism which was always used in surrealist films. The beginning of the Surrealism movement was to push traditional ideology and to challenge viewers. This in association with dim and uneven lighting has created a nightmarish and non-realistic setting which is a key element in Surrealist films. As it is obviously unrealistic for Nina to pull glass out and to continue dancing as well as growing wings when she dances as the Black Swan, it adds an un-traditional element, challenging the viewer’s perception and understanding of films, making them uncomfortable.
Juxtaposition is an important element in Surrealism of which Aronofsky has implemented in Black Swan (2010). The strong use of Juxtaposition in Nina adds depth to her character but a strong relationship between herself, her role as the new swan queen and her relationship with Lilly. In the beginning of the film, Aronofsky portrays Nina as a shy, timid and innocent girl, perfect for the role of the white swan. As the film progresses, the director of the show convinces her to lose herself and indulge herself into the black swan’s character. This jumpstarts her hallucinations and paranoia, leading her fate of which she kills herself, exactly alike to the story of Swan Lake. Her role as swan queen is a journey where Nina begins to avoid perfect technique to become more like her role. Her body language and the Juxtaposition from the beginning of the film to the end displays a strong contrast to her character and role. Following on, Nina’s relationship with Lilly is the strongest representation of the use of Juxtaposition in Black Swan (2010). Lilly is portrayed as a complete opposite to Nina as she’s free going, light-hearted and rehearses less. While they were strangers to each other in the beginning and become friends, n the end of the film when Lilly is appointed as Nina’s understudy, this shakes Nina and she becomes jealous and envious. Juxtaposition was used in Surrealism to allow their audience to make new connections and to view things in a different light. Nina’s relationship with herself, her role and Lily allows the audience to view dancers in a different light and to make new connections of the life of a professional dancer.
The use of irrationality in Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010) helps emphasise the unreal elements, and presentation of challenging views, commonly used in Surrealist films. Aronofsky’s decision to have a lack of distinction between reality and Nina’s hallucinations creates confusion to the audience but also effectively closes the gap between reality and fantasy. A key characteristic of Surrealism is artists’ ability to use their unconsciousness to bend reality which is then reflected in their art. Aronofsky has flawlessly done this as brings irrationality and fantasy to the screen through CGI and abstract ideology. A great example of this is displayed in Nina’s performance of the black swan where her arms turn into the wings of a black swan while spinning. A similar scene which also demonstrates this, is when Nina walks into her mother’s room to find that the photos of her are moving and screaming at her. Aronofsky’s decision to add this displays that Black Swan (2010) has elements of Surrealism. Furthermore, Black Swan (2010) also discusses taboo topics such as sexual desire, sexuality, and mental disorders. Nina’s character development clearly displays her gradual sexual desire and even sexuality. In the beginning of the film, Nina is portrayed as very timid and shy, particularly with sexuality. This was indicated to the audience when her artistic director made out with her after hours and when Nina became embarrassed after her hallucination of herself and Lilly having sex. Exhibiting these taboo topics was extremely common in Surrealism as Surrealist loved to challenge traditional norms in society and expose taboos such as sexuality, political and religious beliefs. Another taboo topic exposed in Black Swan (2010) is mental health. Quite obviously, Nina is suffering from a mental disorder which is the cause of her hallucinations and eventually, her death.
All in all, Black Swan (2010) is a flawless modern interpretation of Surrealism as it has elements of imagery, juxtaposition, and rationality which are one of the core foundations of the Surrealism movement. As foreign film continues influence Hollywood, it is certain that Surrealism will continue to influence future films. The continuous development of CGI easily aids directors to exhibit the unreal more realistically. As the Pope of Surrealism, André Breton, states in his manifesto, ‘Surrealism is the 'invisible ray' which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. 'You are no longer trembling, carcass.' This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.’
