From Black Swan to Spencer, When Will Male Filmmakers Stop Obsessing Over Torturing Women?

by Emily Costello.

Since the beginnings of cinema, even in the early days of the Lumiere brothers, women were undermined and mistreated both on and off the screen. Exploited, manipulated and suffering under the weight of the male gaze, female characters are often boxed into stereotypes in any genre of film. Reduced to either the love interest, mother or old woman they are forced into these archetypes by limited understanding of the female psyche in earlier filmmaking and the significant lack of both female directors and input from the stars themselves. Of course, as we have grown as a society, filmmaking has followed and we now have prominent female directors but it's not enough. The way women are presented in film and treated behind the scenes by male directors is often disgusting and misogynistic.

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) is a twisted tale of the dark side of the beautiful art of ballet. A spin on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (Aronofsky even joked he should be credited as co director) the film reflects the pain of the trope of the ‘tortured artist’ and the intense pressure of the ballet world. The White Swan and Black Swan in Swan Lake are often played by the same dancer, and it’s one of the most difficult roles to portray, the innocence and purity of the former and the darkness and corruption of the latter. Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) fights to be both, to be the lead and in the end, it kills her. Portman put her everything into the role, winning the Academy Award for best actress for her sensational performance. But it didn’t come without challenges.

Whilst Aronofsky was showing the destruction of a woman’s psyche on screen Portman was starving herself and training for up to eight hours a day to achieve the ballerina body. Every time the filming would get pushed back, which it was due to the films low budget, she would suffer, and Aronofsky himself detailed how he would hear Portman screaming at her agent that she would have to live on ‘carrots and almonds for another three weeks.’ I find it interesting that she damaged herself and her body, her weight dropping to 98 pounds to fit the director's idea of a ‘perfect ballerina’ just as Nina does in Black Swan, catering to the demands of a male filmmaker.

Another issue here is that whilst male actors do go through extreme regimes and transformations to achieve roles, they are praised for it, and it is expected of female actresses to often manipulate their weight for roles and obey sadistic directorial commands. I believe this style of method acting itself archaic, though it can be successful it’s traumatic that actors have to endure such conditions all to portray a character.

The idea of a male director being able to control what his female stars do has always been present in Hollywood. A serious offender was Alfred Hitchcock, who became known for exploiting his lead actresses and blacklisting them from further working if they didn’t pander to his demands or accept his sexual advances. An example of this is Tippi Hedren who worked with Hitchcock on The Birds (Hitchock, 1963) but was blocked and ostracised from making films after due to her refusal of Hitchcock's creepy advances. The ending scene where her character is attacked by birds involved Hitchcock himself physically throwing birds at her, which obviously is inappropriate and traumatic. These type of issues are still prevalent today, inspiring the #MeToo movement after Harvey Weinstein assaulted multiple women which was covered up by lots of higher ups in the industry.

Another example of a male filmmaker abusing his directorial power over women is Stanley Kubrick. Whilst filming The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) he tortured Shelley Duvall, forcing her to go through gruelling emotional anguish in an imposted style of method acting. Duvall said she was forced to do at least 35 takes of each scene and would have to think of sad things to make herself cry every day to live up to Kubrick's high expectations. Playing the character of Wendy was draining and exhausting for her not only due to her suffering but also due to the disrespect she went through. This was partly why Duvall withdrew from acting in 2002 to live a quiet life away from public view.

Spencer (Pablo Larrain, 2021) tells the story of the breakdown of Princess Diana and Charles’ marriage over a Christmas weekend. Kristin Stewart gives an electric and moving performance of the beloved figure but I find the exploitation of her mental illness and eating disorder sad, the way the director almost portrays her as insane and unstable creates an uncomfortable depiction of mental health and Diana herself. The style of psychological filmmaking, the cinematography that reflects her tortured mental state is distressing for all those who loved Diana. While I understand how Larrain was attempting to portray Diana’s issues and it’s an excellent style of filmmaking, how she hallucinates Anne Boleyn, and the scenes of Diana eating pearls in the soup feel gratuitous whilst discussing such delicate and stigmatised topics.

It was hard to watch another film, especially one made so recently, show a woman’s mental health in such a negative style, only further stigmatising what Princess Diana went through. I question whether as an industry we can progress to female directors exploring female issues in a new and non exploitative way. So I ask, when will this trend of the tortured woman end?

by Emily Costello, June 2022.