摘 要

《她比烟花寂寞》和《黑天鹅》分别是1999年和2010年获奥斯卡奖的女性电影，也各为导演安南德·图克尔和达伦·阿伦诺夫斯基所执导并赢得世界声誉。女主角同时都从事于艺术事业，分别是大提琴家杰奎琳和芭蕾舞者妮娜。本文选取了这两位典型的女艺术家，展现艺术领域杰出女性成长过程中两个极端一面。通过电影中具有鲜明特色，又内在统一的两位女性形象的对比，结合对男权社会中女性形象的深入思考，可以将鲜活的实例考察女性主义批评所具有的文化价值和时代意义。

本文从女性主义视角来分析两部电影中的女性形象，首先对两部电影及其中女主人公进行基本的角色介绍，接着将女性主义理念与两部电影中的女性角色进行交叉性的解读。并从女性主义的视角来对比分析妮娜和希拉里两个女性角色之间的异同点，加之以细节实例。最后希望借助女性主义理论这一视角的分析，能够让广大女性重塑对自身的认识，帮助其自我身份的认知和觉醒。

关键词：女性主义；电影 ；《黑天鹅》 ；《她比烟花寂寞》

Abstract

Hilary and Jackie and Black Swan have won Oscar awards for 1999 and for 2010 respectively. This thesis analyses two typical heroines in the two films. The comparison of the similarities and the differences in these two films reveals the awakening of female consciousness and the formidable set-up female authority. This thesis discusses the female characters in several aspects and takes examples to illuminate the cultural value and age significance of feminist criticism. That’s why the thesis chooses these two typical characters .The comparison of the similarities and the differences in these two novels reveal the awakening of female consciousness and the formidable set-up female authority. This thesis discusses the female characters in several aspects and takes examples to illuminate the cultural value and era significance of feminist criticism.

This thesis analyses the two feminist characters from the feminist perspective. Firstly, the thesis has made an introduction about the two films and the heroines. Then the basic theory of feminism has been introduced and two heroines have been discussed in a more profound way from the perspective of the feminism. The similarities and the differences of the two heroines have been analyzed from the feminist perspective, which are exemplified in detail. Finally, the thesis aims to reconstruct their self-consciousness and the awakening the self-identity of themselves with the help of the feminist theory.

Key Words: feminism; films; Hilary and Jackie ; Black Swan

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The film Hilary and Jackie and The cellist Jacqueline 1

1.2 The film Black Swan and The dancer Nina 2

1.3 Literature review 2

2 Interpretation of the feminism of the heroines 3

2.1 Introduction of the feminist theory 4

2.2 Feminism with Jackie in Hilary and Jackie 5

2.3 Feminism with Nina in Black Swan 7

3 Comparison between the two heroines from the feminist perspective 10

3.1 The analysis of similarities between Nina and Jackie 10

3.2 The analysis of differences between Nina and Jackie 13

4 Enlightenments for women from the comparison between the heroines in feminist way 20

4.1 The necessity for the awakening of the female self-consciousness 20

4.2 The significance of the construction of true self for the female group 21

5 Conclusion 22

References 23

Acknowledgements 25

Analysis of the Similarities and the Differences between the Heroines in Films Hilary and Jackie and Black Swan from the Feminist Perspective

Introduction

The film Hilary and Jackie and The cellist Jacqueline

Hilary and Jackie is a 1998 British biographical film directed by Anand Tucker. The screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce is often claimed to have been based on the memoir A Genius in the Family (later republished under the title Hilary and Jackie) by Piers and Hilary du Pré, which chronicles the life and career of their sister, cellist Jacqueline du Pré.

The movie Hilary and Jackie is divided into two parts. The first telling event from Hilary’s opinion and the second telling event from Jackie’s. The film starts with Hilary and Jackie learning to dance and play musical instruments. Hilary plays the flute and Jackie plays the cello. Firstly, Jackie doesn’t take practicing the cellist seriously, while as soon as she does, she becomes a virtuoso. Then marriage to pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim follows.

On the other hand, Hilary plays in a community orchestra and gets married with Kiffer. The film, though centered primarily on Jacqueline, ultimately is about the relationship between the two sisters and their dedication to one another. Hilary agrees Jacqueline to have an affair with her husband in the interest of therapy to help Jacqueline through a nervous breakdown.

The last fifteen years of Jacquline’s is chronicled in detail in the last quarter of the movie: she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and soon becomes paralyzed, goes deaf and mute gradually and dies in the end. At the end of the film, Jacquline’s spirit stands on the beach where she often frolicked in the sand as a little girl.

The film Black Swan and The dancer Nina

The plot revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet by a prestigious New York City ballet company. The production requires a ballerina to play the innocent and fragile White Swan, for which the committed dancer Nina is a perfect fit, as well as the dark and sensual black swan, which are qualities better embodied by the new arrival Lily. Nina is overwhelmed by a feeling of immense pressure when she finds herself competing for the part, causing her to lose her tenuous grip on reality and descend into a living nightmare.

Often described as a psychological horror film, Black Swan can be also interpreted as a metaphor for achieving artistic perfection, with all the psychological and physical challenges one might encounter, i.e. the film can be perceived as a poetic metaphor for the birth of an artist, that is, as a visual representation of Nina’s psychic odyssey toward achieving artistic perfection and of the price to be paid for it (wikipedia).

The film is not simply the tale of a mentally deranged dancer trying to reconcile her personal and professional life. The film suggests that much of the craziness of Nina’s life, from late-night bar scene to self-mutilation, is part of the creative process and that for Nina to achieve the power and presence she needs onstage she must travel this mapped-out road of depravity, even if only in her mind. That some of the scenes are shown as real, some as imagined and some as a twisted combination of real and imagined gives Black Swan its power.

Literature review

The Second Sex written by Simone de Beauvoir has reviewed such a truth, “Women have always been in the unprivileged condition. i.e. women belongs to the second sex while men has belonged to the first sex. Meanwhile, families, marriage, which are all the tools used for binding the women ”(Beauvoir, 2010).

When appreciating the two films Hilary and Jackie and Black Swan, the scholars all over the world explore them from many perspectives. The overseas researches about the film Black Swan are very few. Petrakis (2010: 43) suggests that the film is not simply the tale of a mentally deranged dancer trying to reconcile her personal and professional life. The film suggests that much of the craziness of Nina’s life, from late-night bar scenes to self-mutilation, is part of the creative process. Besides, there is a study abroad discussing the means of artistic expression of Black Swan (Douthat, 2010). The literature materials about the film Hilary and Jackie are more concerned with extension of the content of films. i.e. the true story on which the film based on. It provides more details that the film itself doesn’t provide (Piers and Hilary, 2007). Luckily, domestic scholars’ studies on the two films flourish, some from the perspective of the art of music (Yao, 2014), some from the perspective of the self-construction of the feminist characters or the hardships in the growth of Nina in the film Black Swan (Li, 2014). For Hilary and Jackie, some domestic researchers study it from the perspective of the character tragedy of Hilary (Yang, 2017) or the music legend in the Hilary and Jackie (Chao, 2013).

Nevertheless, the analysis of the female role is just limited either in the films Black Swan or Hilary and Jackie respectively. Both films have been interpreted from the perspective of the feminism respectively while the analysis of the comparison of the two heroines has never been made. Based on all the information or standpoints reflected in these previous studies summarized above, the thesis would like firstly concentrate on the comparison of the similarities and the differences between the two heroines from the perspective of the feminism. Both the two heroines are similar to the emotional experience and the elites of the artistic career. The comparison of them could have the spark of the thoughts. The goodness and the weakness can be dug out from their success or the tragedy. And through the comparison, the enlightenment of earning the happiness could be achieved, especially for the female group.

2 Interpretation of the feminism of the heroines

 The basic tendency for feminist is to fight against the system of patriarchy which dominates the world for thousands of years. However, women respond differently in different times. Firstly, it’s the liberal feminists’ thought of women; Secondly, it’s the radical feminists’ of women; Thirdly, it’s the post-modern feminist thoughts about women (Li, 2014).

2.1 Introduction of the feminist theory

2.1.1 Liberal feminist thoughts about women

Based on the theories of gender equality, liberal feminists think that equality is supposed to chase for the rights as men have received; women have no choice but to enter the fields belonging to men on the purpose of getting the social rights politically; women could work as well as men from the perspective of the real liberation. Thus, the women attempts to behave radically and try to narrow the gap to realize the equality in gender, creating a new imbalance as they neglect the differences in a physiological way between the two genders and the female’s uniqueness.

2.1.2 Radical feminist thoughts about women

Faced with the new problem created by those liberal feminists, radical feminists begin to take a look at the gender difference, by which the women’s value and the emotion can be confirmed. As far as they’re concerned, when women learn to create their own images and develop their own culture, based on the maturity of women, they could get away from the male’s domination and oppression. Nevertheless, too much emphasis of difference of gender could bring another contradiction that women would see men from the point of female, thus could also cause the hostility and the discontent from the outer world and the male group.

2.1.3 Post-modern feminist thoughts about women

Post-modern feminism doesn’t result from the post-modern academic thoughts simply. It’s the female discourse system that subverts the sequence of patriarchy through discrepancies and the pluralism. In the very beginning, it pays much attention to the ambivalence, subversion and anti-centralism with the help of the theory of universalism, fundamentalism which could marginalize women in reverse. In the second place, those women don’t agree with the idea that dualism could divide the world into two parts, one is the male world, a symbol of intellects, subjectivity and mind; the other is a female world composed of moods, objectivity, nature and the carnal desire. Thus women of the post-modern feminists are aware of the discrepancy between men and women and they also admit that, helping lead them a life with harmony and peace (Li, 1997).

2.2 Feminism with Jackie in Hilary and Jackie

2.2.1 Jackie loses her true self in the male-dominated society

In the work The second sex written by Simone de Beauvoir (2004: 12), she has once proposed an important opinion, “a woman is born to be woman rather than formed to be woman. There is nothing physiological or economical which can be used to define the status of women in the society. In the human cultural entirety, the femininity exists between the masculinity and the asexuality. In other words, the identity of women is formed afterwards in a cultural way. It is hard for women to discover their true selves once they become the reference or the accessory of the male society.”

The heroine Jackie in this film can be a pertinent example. Jackie becomes famous when she is young and she earns the living status which makes her totally independent of the male society. However, Jackie still could not get the absolute right of speech in virtue of her talents. She is so immersed in the art that she didn’t know how to earn the standpoint of the female and the gender consciousness.