Of course, as she takes this leap, Portman's character is drawn deeper and deeper into a hallucinatory psychosis, unable to distinguish between reality and delusion.
In the film, Portman must become the Black Swan to play it, there is no middle ground where she can inhabit the character, but not the character's life - which causes her to lose all the self-control and discipline she has gained on stage as well as off.
Which would seem to work the same way as conservatism, at least with regard to social policy - as right wingers fear in their fevered and misfiring synapses that we'll all become black swans just like they would (and often still do), without authoritarian rigidity dictating every aspect of our personal lives.
In other words, much like in the film, in the conservative worldview there can also be no middle ground.
Either we all become Pat Robertson - you know, before the newfound love of the pot plant - or you know where things are headed. To quote the great Dr. Venkman from Ghostbusters, "human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria!"
This same dance has played out with policies relating to birth control, divorce, religion in schools and a variety of other issues.
But most recently, it reared its Rovian head to spit venom on legislation that would make gay Americans equal to the rest of us under law and started a brawl among conservatives that is worthy of Camille and Kelsey Grammar.
The first of their two most recent Swan Lake moment happened during the vote in the recent lame-duck Congress to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
The Family Research Council, recently rewarded for all their hard work at being bigots with the designation of "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, pulled some statistics out of a part of their body they're afraid to acknowledge to claim that "homosexual assault" would skyrocket if we let openly gay service members into our armed forces.
These happy - or gay if you will - protectors of our purity worried aloud about the "sleeping" and/or "intoxicated" victims of what would seem to be gay sexual Terminators not simply satisfied with converting foxholes into Liberace revivals, but forcing themselves on anyone and everyone within stone's throw of their tiaras.
The Family Research Council is an organisation, mind you, whose founder was outed not too long ago for having shopped for a European travelling companion at Rentboy.com.
He had a bad rotator cuff, you see, and naturally a gay escort site was the safe choice for a place to seek assistance for the strenuous task of porting his Sampsonites through the Old World.
Yes, you really can't make this stuff up.
