In Darren Aronofsky's latest tour-de-force Black Swan - a film which resides somewhere between The Red Shoes and All About Eve - a heralded but aging Swan Queen is haunted by and ultimately replaced by a new Virgin Swan. The New Swan struggles to inhabit both roles of the White Swan - delicate, fragile, precise - and the Black Swan - manipulative, seductive, loose and free - and is therefore haunted by her own understudy, who is the effortless, living manifestation of the Black Swan.
There is a necessary struggle between first and second place, not only in the film, but in life. In first place, it is necessary to feel someone nipping at your heels from behind, so as not to rest on your laurels and become complacent at the top. Likewise, who would be satisfied to stay in second place without striving to overthrow the first? What point is there in being the alternate for a role you never get to perform? The understudy's greatest dream is that the principal will call in sick, get struck by a car, or mysteriously go missing.
The key to successfully shedding your second place status is to always assume it is a temporary state. As much as you're nipping at the heels of first place, someone else is nipping at your heels from third.
As a child, I had lots of practice being the underdog. I was born second, 15 months behind a sensitive, obedient first daughter, and I was a natural Black Swan. I terrorized my family with temper tantrums (later discovered to be a result of my increasing blindness and a sophisticated thought process that far surpassed my verbal skills). I was indignant, independent, precocious and defiant. I was quick-witted and sharp-tongued, and saw no reason to reserve question or comment. My light-haired sister would look at me, her raven-haired and red-faced evil twin, and wince, pleading, "Can't you just be quiet?"
I was punished constantly throughout my childhood, making it clear that my sister was the favorite. But I was set on eclipsing her wherever I could. When we were transferred from Catholic school to public school, I passed placement exams with such flying colors that my new school wanted me to skip a grade, inserting me right alongside my sister in fifth grade. My parents refused, fearing the repercussions it would have on our existing sibling rivalry and our already difficult social interactions. So instead of living up to my full academic potential, I stayed in fourth grade, whizzing past all my classmates. By the time I was midway through fifth grade, I'd already completed all of the English, spelling, and math work necessary for the entirety of junior high. Holding me back by not letting me start to learn a language with the seventh graders, the school made me stay put and act as a tutor for my fellow classmates.
I was merely striving for praise - at home or in school, wherever I could get it - but instead, my advancement to the top was thwarted, halted, and reprimanded. I was the best, yet somehow I was still in second place. And so, bored, I carved my name into my wooden desk seat and wrote on lockers. I talked in class too much. I passed notes. I refused to behave.
Eventually, high school provided me with enough advanced placement and college-level studies to let my black wings soar, but I was still understimulated. I skipped class. I made snide comments. I think my teachers forgave me because I was so smart.
I might have been number one in my studies, but I was still in last place at home. Looking for more areas in which I could succeed outside of home, I spent a year as chorus girl in the school musicals. As a sophomore and junior, I started getting cast in more featured roles in plays - and once even as the understudy to the lead in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Excited for the opportunity, I memorized my lines dutifully. I attended every rehearsal, taking mental pictures of the blocking and the mannerisms, should emergency strike and my services ever be needed. And then one day, a spat between the lead actress and the director erupted. I sat wide-eyed in the wings while I watched the lead storm off. And then suddenly: it was my turn.
But instead of being liked more in first place, I became the object of dethronement. I was now an obstacle to second and third place's success, as though I was stealing something that wasn't rightfully mine, making the director fall in love with the wrong girl for the right part.
Of course, ultimately, it didn't matter, when I was out there on stage, in costume and spray-grayed hair. I had no understudy. I was it.
In my senior year, high school drama productions still weren't enough, so I got involved in local community theater. Although my parents grounding me forced me to quit a role in Brighton Beach Memoirs, I was allowed to attend rehearsals during tech week as part of the crew. When the 13-year-old actress portraying the youngest daughter, Laurie, came down with chicken pox and was missing a week's worth of rehearsals, I was called upon as a stand-in so the other actors would have someone with whom to read their lines. During one of my first rehearsals, the director started mumbling and sputtering something, pausing her finger to her lips, until finally declaring, "Well, I quite like you in this role better than our other girl. Can you do it?"
And so I quite accidentally became the evil understudy once again.
When I got ready to graduate high school, I was so secure in my academic success. Imagine my shock when I appeared in second place in the class rankings. Completely unnoticed and unceremoniously unannounced, a junior had decided to take advantage of a loophole which allowed her to accelerate her studies and graduate a year early, as long as she completed all of the requisite credits. So while I was getting As and A+s in Calculus, AP English and college-level Biology, she was getting perfect scores in basic level humanities and sciences, nudging me out of the running for valedictorian by a point or two.
Certainly, I complained, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't help thinking that I wasn't even supposed to graduate that year anyway. Had my parents let me accelerate back in fourth grade like I was supposed to, I would have been valedictorian in my sister's class. But instead, we were both salutatorians of our respective graduating classes, both in second place in school, she the White Swan who tried very hard to be perfect, and me the Black Swan who wanted love, attention, and to let myself go.
Since then, I've always felt second best. In my career, I've always taken a backseat as an executive in the music industry, always a Vice President to someone else's Senior Vice President. In love and romance, I've always been chosen as the lover rather than the wife. I often catch myself playing second fiddle to my date's career, fielding excuses of late nights at work, long work weekends, and work-induced fatigue. Meanwhile, I can't even find a job to keep me occupied.
Rather than embark on a campaign of counterproductive self-mutilation and a hallucinatory psychological meltdown as the New Swan does in Black Swan, I tell myself that even second place is better than third place, or not placing at all. As long as I'm in second place, I can still taste first place - not only because I continue to nip at it, but because I have been there before.
