Nomi vs. Nina:
Hypocritical shepherds and the sheep who follow

I recently took a friend out for a night on the town in an attempt to cheer her up. We had a nice dinner and I told her to pick the movie. She said she wanted to see Black Swan. We arrived early, got our snacks and sat back to enjoy this critically acclaimed film that everyone has been raving about.

It didn’t take long before I started getting the feeling that something about this movie seemed very familiar. By the midway point it became obvious that I was watching a remake of Showgirls, said to be one of the worst movies of all time, yet nobody else seemed to notice.

How could this be?

Both stories begin with a fresh-faced young dancer, with dreams of being a star.

They both get their chance when they replace the long-time top girl.

They both have a rival dancer that could knock them out of the top spot.

Both lead characters eventually identify with the former top girl that they replaced, and visit her in the hospital.

Both have steamy girl-on-girl sex scenes.

Both have not-so-happy endings involving helicopter gun battles.

What makes one a theatrical masterpiece and the other a waste of film? The role of the showgirl was replaced with that of a more socially acceptable ninja. How very artistic. They took out the nudity in Black Swan and there is only one car chase. But a movie about Las Vegas showgirls with no nudity or car chases wouldn’t be very realistic. In Black Swan there ARE several scenes with its lead role masturbating because she was told to do “homework to get in touch with her dark side.” I’m not a ninja, but I’d be willing to bet that isn’t common practice in the kung fu world. You tell me, which is more gratuitous, the nudity in a film about showgirls or masturbation in a film about ninjas?

Now here is where it gets really fucked up. The names of both lead roles have four letters, begin with the letter “N,” and end in a vowel. Think about it man, this is our world we are talking about here. This is our future.

So I ask again, why is one hailed as a brilliant dancing ninja film, while my all time favorite 90′s Saved By The Bell movie is cast off in shame?

Eric Crowthers

(Shhhh. He was on such a roll, we didn’t want to tell Eric it was the ACTING)

© 2010 Death By Party
This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 10:57 am and is filed under Random 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: black swan, Elizabeth Berkley, gun battles, natalie portman, ninja, saved by the bell, show girls