An actor is an embodiment of a character that is assigned to him/her/them. Throughout books, plays, movies it can be seen that different characters are there to show a specific role in the plot. In the movie Black Swan, Natalie Portman embraces the position of Nina Sayers, a young adult who is a part of the New York City Ballet Company. In “The Hitchhiking Game”, a short story by Milan Kundera, the female protagonist in the story takes a journey with a young man in playing a game. Both Nina and the girl from the story are able to evolved into a role that is the complete opposite of their given characters by transitioning from classical acting into method acting. Classical acting also known as Shakespearean Acting refers to the type of acting,…show more content… Nina starts out as a young ballerina who is a part of the New York City Ballet. She is young, innocent, and pure; she fits the role of the white swan from the Swan Lake ballet perfectly. The female protagonist in “The Hitchhiking Game” also starts out innocent, pure, and virginal; she embraces the notion that she can show herself as this way to the young man. Both Nina and the girl had the “purity” (Kundera, 2) that others expected of them, in a sense, their scripted role. Over the course of each story, the female protagonist and Nina start transforming into their true natured roles. Nina turns into a dark, sensual, mysterious seductress. She starts rebelling against her controlling mother by staying out at night with friends, taking ecstasy with her friend to rebel against the mirage of the nice, sweet girl that she has put up for others to see. The girl in “The Hitchhiking Game” also assumes a way of becoming more “lascivious” and rebelling against the young man in the…show more content… how the girl in the Hitchhiking game becomes confident and bold. During the movie, Nina is hit with the realisation that she has competition in becoming both sides of the main character in the Swan Lake ballet. Lily, a girl that befriends Nina, becomes her understudy for the performance of Swan Lake. Out of fear of being replaced by Lily for the final performance of the ballet, Nina starts to change and embrace an almost alter ego. In a way, Lily helps to allow Nina to become the Black Swan, lily is the one who convinces Nina to go out and go to clubs and do drugs and to “let loose” in a way. Whereas in “The Hitchhiking Game”, the female protagonist undergoes a self-realisation that she no longer wishes to fit into the role that the young man in the story has set up for her; she is no longer the same angel that she originally portrayed to him. In this moment, her transition into method acting is seen as she lets go and is able to embrace the “indecent joy” (Kundera, 10) caused by her body. Through classical and method acting, both Nina and the girl in the hitchhiking game are able to transition from their already made/expected roles into someone else, someone who is not defined by stereotypes or by expected roles from a certain gender. Nina turns into a strong, confident, seductive woman who takes over the role of the black swan and completes her transition from a soft, young, un-adulterated
