Black Swan: Yeah, that’s right. I have an opinion about it, too!

Like most red-blooded American families, we use movies as emotional packing peanuts around the holidays to cushion our interactions, fill hours of time that could be spent unearthing personal agendas, and provide benign dialogue that will not be taken the wrong way.

And, so, I sat betwix my mother and father for every hangnail rip, face stab, and genital grope in Black Swan. (And boy howdy was there a lot of that last one!) I heard one reviewer label the film, “a brilliantly made stupid movie.” Perhaps that would be the most succinct way to phrase it, but that fails to caputre just how much vaginal groping happens in the film.

Apparently, polishin’ the ol’ camel toe is the cornerstone of the dance world. Natalie Portman’s crotch has more hands in and on it than a bowl of Chex mix, but her character seems pretty fine with it. Always sporting a look of, “Lady’s gotta do, what a lady’s gotta do!” Even during a rather juicy round of Mila-Kuntalingus, Portman’s Lily buckles up for the ride on that swan paddle boat! And if you’ve ever seen real swans go at it, then you will not be disappointed by the fact that this is much more exciting and less confusing.

On a serious note, there were dancers on NPR today reviewing the film. I was SHOCKED to hear them being catty about it. (I know! Dancers! Cant you believe it?! Has the world gone mad?!) With every breath of complaining about the quality of dialogue in the film, the dancers were proving themselves wrong. The true genius of Black Swan is that Portman has surprisingly few lines to anchor the two-hour nightmare. The film is rooted in physical action, crafting tension out of space and time, not words. (You know, like BALLET.)  Of course the lines in the movie were insipid, they were coming out of the mouths of dancers!

It proved once again how dancers aren’t meant to speak; they should stick to groping crotches.