Whether it be the ballet, movie, or Barbie version, Swan Lake is a timeless classic that has a lot to say about what it means to be a woman.
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I always viewed the ballerina girls as the cool, pretty ones. I adore any kind of footsie dance for that matter, from the pointe of ballet to the swish of ice skating– there’s just an infectious flair attached to it that makes the art look so magical and ethereal. And maybe that impression was drawn from the perfected smiles, pink leotards, and feathery tutus that clad ballerinas– I thought it akin to a princess transformation montage.
As my age doubles, hearing the melody of any classic Tchaikovsky’s piece in the background of a random swipe on TikTok or in the shuffle of my reading playlist on Spotify, I’m immediately brought back to the girl who binged watched only one Barbie movie ever in her life, Swan Lake.
Okay, maybe not one EVER because that’s just impossible. But there are two Barbie movies that I’ve clinged onto for comfort, and the other one was Barbie Fairytopia’s Mermaidia. But we’re not talking about mermaids today –albeit also a staple fragment of childhood– instead, we deep dive on what the classic tale of Swan Lake represents as a microcosm of femininity and its connection with pop culture after its array of constant resurgence.
From its muted glittery pink and blue barbie movie, in its classic scene of ballet, to its appearance in thought daughter movie lists, it’s safe to say that at this point in time, you can already deduce what kind of girl someone is when you ask: What is Swan Lake for you?
BARBIE WHIMS
Let’s start with a bit of a hot take: Barbie movies are the cupcake version of classic literature. With cupcakes, I mean that it was merely reduced in size, but never in taste and substance. For many girls, these movies were and still are their introduction to girlhood. With Mattel releasing a Barbie line dedicated to the beloved characters from their fairy tail adaptations, like the Anneliese or Erika barbie dolls of Princess and the Pauper or the Clara barbie doll from Barbie in the Nutcracker, the presence of the animated Barbie movies in childhood was nothing short of boring, it is even revered in a way.
This idea was even more perpetuated after the pink bombshell that is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in July of 2023, where we’ve seen an iconic cultural shift of everyone flocking to their nearest cinema clad in their best pink outfits to bring that glittery childhood out of the old plastic box and onto the mainstream.
But in the case of the Barbie’s Swan Lake of 2003 in particular, the raw and original material of the ballet was undoubtedly dark. While it is true that the other classics also had their own set of eerie themes, the crux of Swan Lake’s story pertains to an identity crisis, one with loss of autonomy because of uncontrolled malevolence. So to explore the concepts of grief and death in what is considered to be the simplified, PG version of the tale, Barbie of Swan Lake was up for a challenge.
But they didn’t really fight much for it honestly, for they completely stripped off the tragic themes, and instead, left the love story department unscathed. Barbie Odette and Prince Siegfried lived happily ever after with the idea of curses and betrayal being showcased in subtle, sometimes even comedic ways to dilute the heaviness, and rightfully so.
BEAUTY PERFECTED
So, what exactly is the plot of Swan Lake? Isn’t this a story about a girl who turned into a swan and was saved by her prince? Well, as a quick refresh of the original storyline to mute the confusions: during a night of leisure hunting, Prince Siegfried, who recently just became legal of age and was bound to find his match in marriage, finds a glowing swan in a moonlit lake, who he finds was actually Princess Odette.
Together with a bevy of other girls turned into swans, the prince vowed to marry Odette and find who was the evildoer that cursed them. In the next acts, we find that his mentor, Rothbart, was the crow that cursed Odette, and he did this so that his daughter, Odile, or the black swan, will be the one to woe and dance with Prince Seigfried on the day he’ll choose his bride to be. Betrayed because the prince was tricked, he went to see Odette so that they’ll be together, but in order to escape the wrath of Rothbart, they both jumped into the lake and drowned together as a profession of their devotion for one another.
Now just like any other star-crossed romances, death is always a part of it. We’ve seen this in Romeo and Juliet and even in the original The Little Mermaid story, but there’s one more celebrated depiction of the tale where the ominous themes were dead center; the psychological horror movie Black Swan.
Directed by Darren Arronofsky and released in 2010, this story follows Nina Sayers, a meek perfectionist ballerina at the New York Ballet Company dreaming to take the lead role of the swan princess. In doing so, the character was tasked with catalyzing the polar energies of the white swan and the black swan of the tale as its defining climax.
Nowadays, this movie is dubbed as a staple watch for girls who find themselves trapped in the need for ambitious perfection, and the bloody entanglements that come with it like jealousy and rebellion. In contrast to the soft, tamed version that Barbie’s Swan Lake draws its success from, this one took the bloody themes up to a notch, and made the idea of the white swan or the black swan two differing female archetypes.
As mentioned in the plot, Odile or the black swan, was the imposter Odette. In the ballet, only one ballerina, most often than not the prima ballerina of the company, is the one to play this two characters, and is expected to embody both the sensual, strong, and cheshire grin persona of Odile the black swan, while at the same time, exude the shy, melancholic sweetness of Odette the white swan. This was the pressure that Nina was expected to master, and there came the insanity horror she befell in.
In real life, I’ve found that women struggle a lot with the image they pose to be– there’s the Salcedo girls with their orchid clips, the baddie with the cheetah print tube tops, or the coquette girls with the pink laced ribbons. But at the very heart of it, all of these are mere aesthetics to be tagged on, and the question on whether a girl is nice or not still prevails. In the same sense, the archetype of the black swan and the white swan was looking at the kind of girl someone is.
Are you the black swan who’s more domineering or the demure white swan? Are you more yin or yang? Can you be both? And so all of its muted greys and cotton pinks scarves, the film Black Swan furthered this curiosity we have over whether girls, and people in general, can embody both evil and goodness in the most literal, mundane sense and deepened our understanding of the century-old classic.
BALLERINA DREAM
The recent IMAX film of the Paris Opera Ballet’s Swan Lake released last November 8th of this year was a celebration of art like no other. Truth be told, there has been quite the gatekeeping when it comes to the regal forms of art representations like theatre, orchestra, and hence ballet. I, for one, have never gone to a play and have never known it to be a simple “Oh there’s a play at this opera at whatever time” in my circle. So to see it show worldwide and grant it available for everyone was almost like a free invitation to have a glimpse of the sophistication associated with ballet.
Despite the countless cult classics there is to over-analyze and adapt into movies, why Swan Lake as a ballet is a testament of femininity was because it is first and foremost, an important representation for women in a women-dominated society that is continuously growing over the years.
It showed the girls, both in the quintessential fairy tale version of good girl and bad girl, and has graced us more and more with pieces of the same vein like The Substance or Neon Demon, where the aim for primal beauty is carnal. So seeing Swan Lake at its finest original form performed by Saeun Park, I realized that the the face of the prima ballerina was its focus all along– with every fear, maniacal laughter, or loving stare enough to evoke emotions and sympathy for what it means to be a girl entrapped.
And of course with watching it was the utter awe of the intricate wardrobe designs and the iconic petticoats that poofed as the ballet dancers did their grand pirouettes. A moment to reminisce of my silly attempt at six years old to do a ballerina twirl flashed on my head at the cinemas, and it was honestly, quite the emotional experience. To see Swan Lake, at its original form, without the pink sparkles of Barbie or the horror-esque female madness in Black Swan, made me realize why it has become what it is today; a timeless beauty that many people still celebrate and identify with, no matter where it first appeared in their lives.
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