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| Black Swan Movie Poster |
Darren Aronofsky’s Black
Swan (2010) is a psychological thriller whose plot is about Nina Sayers
(Natalie Portman), a ballet dancer from the New York City Ballet who succeeds
in achieving the main role in Pyotr IlyichTchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (1875-1876), the company’s new production. Nina is
perfect for the White Swan character, as she is fragile and innocent, yet she
struggles to perform the lustful Black Swan, since she lacks her sensuality and
freshness. Her obsession with perfection leads her to her descent into madness and
death.
The film depicts Nina’s psychological duality
throughout its 108 minutes, and, it employs different sources to illustrate her
opposite behaviours. The motion picture has been frequently compared with
Satoshi Kon’s anime film Perfect Blue
(1997)[i] for its similarities in
the plot and the blurring of reality with hallucinations. Nevertheless, filmmaker
Aronofsky claims that he ‘‘was reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Double, which is about a guy who wakes up and his double is
trying to replace his life’’, and he was wondering how to do it when he ‘‘went
to see Swan Lake’’ and that he
‘‘didn’t know that one dancer played two roles’’, which inspired him
(FoxSearchlight Minute 0:06-0:26).
This blog post will scrutinise this display of dichotomy
in Aronofsky’s work through the analysis of the abovementioned Swan Lake and The Double (1846) as well as the use of mirrors when Nina is on
screen. In order to understand the protagonist’s twofold conducts, the
characters of Nina’s mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), ballet dancer Lily (Mila
Kunis), artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), and former first
ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder) will be taken into account. Both psychoanalytical
and philosophical approaches will be considered to clarify Nina’s dualism.
Becoming
Tchaikovsky’s Black Swan
Aronofsky introduces his protagonist with
Tchaikovsky’s prologue of Swan Lake. This
way he advances the forthcoming events since the audience can see the ballerina
in danger as she becomes a swan, even though in this case she transforms into a
white swan. This foreshadows the impact of being The Swan Queen on Nina; she
will be the vulnerable White Swan in jeopardy.
Experts Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell explain the
story of Swan Lake:
The ballet’s libretto is
based on German folk tale elements and tells the story of the Princess Odette
who is turned into a swan by the magician Rothbart. She and her companions can
only restored to human form if a man swears true love for her. One night she is
met by Prince Siegfried hunting by the lake- she tells him her story: he falls
in love and vows to rescue her. Back at his castle, Siegfried attends a ball
where he is expected to choose his future bride. Rothbart appears with his
daughter Odile who is disguised as a black swan and appears to be identical to
Odette… Siegfried is dazzled by Odile’s trickery and begs to marry her. Once
his vow to Odette is broken Rothbart and his daughter triumphantly reveal their
true identity… (Wulff, 530)
The ending of the ballet varies as, depending on the
production, the Prince fights with Rothbart or dies with Odette and, thus, the
spell on her is broken.
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| Mikhail Vrubel, The Swan Princess, 1900 |
Tchaikovsky employs the folklore of the swan-maidens;
or, shapeshifters who can transform into swans, to compose his ballet. In these
tales, male characters observe these female creatures and steal their feather
garment so that the maidens cannot run away, and the men force the maidens to
marry them (Thompson, 88).
In the case of the ballet, the curse on Odette
transforms here into a swan by the magic of a man. And only a man’s love can
safe her. This ‘‘male gaze’’ by which the women are perceived also affects Nina
at the beginning of the film. When the director Leroy gives details of the
upcoming production, he emphasises the duality the main ballerina must portray
and scrutinises the female dancers of the company: ‘‘Which of you can body both
swans? The white and the black?’’ (Minute 10:09).
As Efthimiou considers, ‘‘Nina and Thomas may not
physically have sex but he arguably penetrates and colonises her female
interiority in the ultimate way- by freeing her erotic impulses, but only
within the parameters of male desire and fantasy, as in lesbian passion, making
her the quintessential male fetish object’’ (6).
Nina’s ambition makes her meet Thomas in his office,
and, when she refuses his advances and bites him, she is the one who seduces
him, and, therefore, is given the role of the Swan Queen. Consequently, the
discovery of her sexuality and her entrance into adulthood will trigger Nina’s obsession
and insanity. Besides, as Leroy explanation that ‘‘perfection is not only about
control, it’s also about letting go’’ (Minute 20:28) will kindle Nina’s desire of
self-accomplishment regardless the pain.
This perfection becomes Nina’s fixation, and she
focuses on the female characters around her to obtain it. James clarifies that ‘‘every
woman who surrounds Nina is, it seems, both a rival and her double –including
suicidal, washed-up former principal dancer Beth; the seemingly friendly, sexy
rival Lily, who wants to take Nina out clubbing; and even her jealous mother
Erica, who’s terrified of Nina growing up and having a real success that she
cannot share’’ (James in España, 135).
In order to convert into the Black Swan, Nina requires
to destroy the three aforementioned women. Beth embodies flawlessness, and Nina
begins to commit small misdeeds to resemble her: she enters Beth’s dressing
room and steals her lipstick, earrings and nail file among other belongings. Nina
confronts Beth during Nina’s presentation as the new main ballerina, and,
finally, when a key scene occurs shortly before Nina perfectly performs the
Black Swan. When the young dancer visits the injured previous ballerina in
hospital and returns all her belongings to her, Nina claims: ‘‘I was just
trying to be perfect like you’’ (Minute 1:19:15), to what Beth answers: ‘‘I’m
not perfect. I’m nothing. Nothing! Nothing!’’ and begins to self-harm with the
nail file. What the viewer can witness at this point is Nina’s face on Beth’s;
hallucinations are blurred with reality and the audience doubts of what they
see. Nina suspects she has wounded, or even, murdered Beth, yet this
information is not clarified.
Interestingly, Nina’s transformation and self-doubt
about her actions, are represented by the duality colours white and black throughout
the film. She wears pinkish/white clothes most of the times in contrast with
the dark outfits other characters dress. As it has been portrayed in the dream scene
above, black surrounds Nina to depict her constant state of danger.
Nonetheless, as the story progresses, her clothes are grey or black.
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| Poster for Black Swan |
The beginning of the motion picture presents Nina at
home, in an everlasting childish lifestyle under the strict control of her
mother, Erica, a former ballet dancer who quitted the profession to raise Nina.
Erica is the quintessential evil mother who annihilates all possibility of
development to Nina. As Julia Kristeva illustrates in her psychoanalytical
theory of the abjection, ‘‘the difficulty a mother has in acknowledging (or
being acknowl- edged by) the symbolic realm—in other words, the problem she has
with the phallus that her father or her husband stands for—is not such as to
help the future subject leave the natural mansion’’ (13). Consequently, Erica perceives
Leroy as a menace, since she is aware of his relationship with Beth, and she
understands that Thomas will try to make Nina lose her innocence. Erica even
guards her daughter in her sleep, continues having a room with cuddly toys, and
is present when Nina attempts to masturbate and advance into adulthood. Her
endless phone calls to the dancer, and her minuscule nourishing of the latter,
create an oppressive setting in which the Swan Queen dwells. Only Nina’s
challenging Erica when she goes out with Lily and before her excellent
performance liberate her from the excessive influence of her mother.
Nevertheless, Lily is the main ‘‘double’’ Nina has to deal
with; Lily represents all the sexual liberties Nina wishes for,yet cannot
reach. From almost the beginning of the motion picture, Nina’s duality emerges
in the figure of Lily, imitating Dostoevsky’s The Double. The following section will focus on the dualism Nina
undergoes in comparison to the Russian’s novella.
Dostoevsky’s
Double in Black Swan
The first hint of the existence of a double in Black Swan can be seen when Nina commutes on the underground. She notices that a girl in black (Lily) resembles her, and that the young woman’s movements occur simultaneously to hers (Minute 5:08-5:24). This first blurring of personalities takes place before Nina encounters her dark twin in black who smiles at her (Minute 14:53-15:16). Actually, every time Nina meets her double a laugh can be heard. This meeting with herself echoes Fyodor Dostoevsky’s protagonist, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, confronting his double, the so-called Mr. Golyadkin junior later on.
Dostoevsky’s novella, set in St. Petersburg, is about a government clerk who unexpectedly meets his double or ‘‘doppelgänger’’, a man with the same name as his and who, besides, comes from the same region. The shocking encounter leads to an alleged friendship, yet Mr. Golyadkin senior soon discovers that his double’s intention is to replace him from his life. Both men seem to be opposite in their personalities, and the confusion between what is real and what is not is present all throughout the plot, in a similar way to what the audience can find in Black Swan.
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How They Met Themselves, watercolor, 1864 |
The term ‘‘doppelgänger’’ ‘‘emerged around the same time as the Gothic novel, appearing for the first time in Johann Paul Friedrich Richter’s Siebenkäs (1796)…The term describes a duality of the self in which a shadow, or an alter-ego, manifests itself to the original subject, and the subject has a simultaneous consciousness of being both his present self and the external other observing himself’’ (Marquette University).
Katherine Bowers explains how the doppelgänger in The Double ‘‘appears after a metaphorical death. This progression is a mirror image of a common nineteenth-century spiritualist belief about doppelgängers, that the double’s appearance is an ill omen that often prefigures death’’. The metaphorical death refers to Golyadkin’s feelings after being expulsed from a birthday party he attended without being invited: ‘‘Mr. Golyadkin was killed-killed entirely , in the full sense of the world’’(Dostoevsky, Chapter 5), and, soon afterwards he begins to consider that there is a conspiracy against him: ‘‘They are simply plotting to frighten me, perhaps, and when they see that I don’t mind, that I make no protest, but keep perfectly quiet and put up with it meekly, they’ll give it up, they’ll give it up of themselves, give it up on their own accord’’(Chapter 5).
Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank clarifies that The Double ‘‘describes the onset of mental illness in a person who is not aware of it, since he is unable to recognize the symptoms in himself, and who paranoiacally views all his painful experiences as the pursuits of his enemies’’(27). The feeling of being attacked by other characters is also present in the figure of Nina, yet, as Leroy states to her, ‘‘The only person standing in your way is you’’ (Minute 1:24:04).
Bowers clarifies how by ‘‘analyzing E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “Der Sandmann” in “Das Unheimliche” (1919), Freud describes the sensation of uncanny, or unheimlich as something not foreign, but strangely familiar, creating cognitive dissonance’’. This disturbing encounter with the double not only depicts the unease of self-recognition of the darkest side of the person, but also of how others perceive that individual. In Black Swan, Nina fears observing her repressed self, and begins to develop the threatening personality nobody considers her to be able of possessing. Leroy claims that ‘‘the real work will be your (Nina’s) metamorphosis into your evil twin’’ (Minute 26:40), her mother is constantly calling her ‘‘sweet girl’’, and Beth insults asking her what she did to get the role and saying that Leonard always considered Nina to be a ‘‘frigid little girl’’(Minute 33:52), which contrasts with the orgasmic breathing of Nina on stage when she transforms into the Black Swan completely. At the end of the film, the audience can witness how Nina rebels against her mother and kisses Leroy.
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| Natalie Portman in Black Swan |
While in The Double Golyadkin converses with a double who resembles him, in Black Swan Nina speaks to Lily, a dancer who shares similarities with the Russian evil twin. From Nina’s point of view, Lily’s intention is to obtain her role as the Swan Queen. Nina observes Lily when she dances as Leroy says ‘‘Watch the way she moves. Imprecise, but effortless. She’s not faking it’’ (Minute 28:05). Nina becomes obsessed with the new dancer of the company, as she embodies all the qualities the Black Swan must possess yet Nina lacks. Lily even has a tattoo of two black wings on her back, though the story leaves untold whether that is another hallucination of Nina or not. Furthermore, the allegedly fragile Nina imagines Lily having sex with Leroy (Minute 1:17:22), though she later witnesses her own face smiling at her. Nina also sees how Lily flirts with her colleague Moreau (Benjamin Millepied), who plays the role of the Prince.
The fact that Lily tries to replace Nina in the company echoes how Golyadkin believes his double attempts to weaken his position at work when he gives some papers to the Director after cheating him and shows excellent social skills Golyadkin senior lacks. After being insulted in front of his co-workers by his double, Dostoevsky’s protagonist ponders: ‘‘Recognizing in a flash that he was ruined, in a sense annihilated, that he had disgraced himself and sullied his reputation, that he had been turned into ridicule and treated with contempt in the presence of spectators… Mr. Golyadkin senior rushed in pursuit of his enemy’’(Chapter 8). And the idea of a plot against him is repeated as in the scene from the film shown above.
At the end of The Double, the protagonist, about to enter an asylum, is in a carriage with Dr. Rutenshpitz, who appears earlier on in the story and recommends that Golyadkin increases his social interactions. The doctor, however, can be interpreted as the doctor’s double since he is described as ‘‘two burning eyes staring at (Golyadkin) in the dark, shining with a sinister, infernal glee’’(Chapter 13). This demon-like appearance is echoed in Black Swan, when Nina eventually transforms into her evil twin completely and her eyes become red.
Nina symbolically destroys the characters close to her who suppose a threat to her search of perfection. Her deterioration into madness and the aforementioned figurative murders she commits are represented throughout the film by the use of mirrors. Reflections serve to illustrate Nina’s doubling at first, yet they continue to depict several natures in her as the plot progresses. This last section of the blog post will focus on the employment of mirrors to explain Nina’s evolution.
Nina’s Evolution in the Looking Glass
The scene here shown is significant to understand Nina’s metamorphosis into the Black Swan. She arrives at her changing room disappointed because she makes a mistake as the White Swan while having an hallucination. This already explains her inability to be absolutely virginal as the role implies since she is not the innocent and pure young woman she was before. Nonetheless, the event also depicts how Nina finally faces the Black Swan outside of the mirror[ii], Lily is sitting next to her, it is not Nina seeing herself in her animal transformation anymore. Nina faces Lily and the mirror becomes the weapon to end with her enemy and, therefore, complete her alteration into the Black Swan.
Consequently, the doubling in the film is basically present through the character of Lily and mirrors, as Aronofsky clarifies: ‘‘The film is also about doubles and your reflection in a mirror is a double, so mirrors became a really important part of the film’’ (Aronofsky in España, 128).
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| Charles Allan Gilbert, All is Vanity |
Mirrors are not the only means by which Nina’s hallucinations are portrayed in the film, as her mother’s paintings and photographs also reflect her emotions and it can be heard ‘‘It’s my turn!’’ (Minute 1:20:30) shortly before she alters into the Black Swan in her room.
Nonetheless, mirrors echo Nina’s evolution from a fragile childlike woman to a sensual ballerina. Apart from the scene shown in this section, there is another key one in which both Nina and Lily’s reflections on the several glasses Nina has at her house depict this evolution. In the case of the protagonist, her aim is to reach perfection and she needs Lily’s sexuality to accomplish it. When they enter Nina’s house and Erica appears, Lily seems to be saying the words Nina speaks. Lily separates from Nina and the mirrors depict how they are two different beings. The sexual scene with which the story continues illustrates how Nina achieves orgasm and suddenly Lily while saying ‘‘Sweet girl’’ transforms into Nina (Minute 1:07:17-1.07:21) before she places a cushion over Nina. With this action Nina becomes a mature woman, the ‘‘sweet girl’’ no longer exists and, therefore, she does not need Lily anymore and allegedly murders her later on.
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan claims that ‘‘the mirror stage is a phenomenon’’ to which he assigns ‘‘a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body image’’ (Chanter, 10). In his theory, Lacan explains how infants begin to recognise themselves in a mirror when they are about six months old, yet his hypothesis also emphasises the aspect of duality, of the Ego and the body, and the Imaginary and the Real. In the case of Nina, she does not recognise herself in the mirror as she fantasises of being someone/something else throughout the visual narrative and her visions highlight her distortion of reality.
When Nina appears in front of a mirror, all that the audience can witness is her continuous duality: ‘‘virgin/whore, grotesque/beautiful, child/woman, human/animal, and masculine/feminine’’ (Efthimiou, 20). Nina wishes to be ‘‘perfect’’, she desires to be a complete being, and, thus, ‘‘to master both the White and Black Swan means to achieve mastery of both the feminine and masculine self –to be able to inhabit and embody each persona. Only then can one potentially release this intense sexual (and ultimately existential) anxiety and transcend to a unified state’’ (Efthimiou, 21).
Nevertheless, the use of the looking glass in Aronofsky’s film can have a philosophical approach: Michael Tal explains how Austrian philosopher Martin Buber ‘‘maintains that any person needs another person to obtain confirmation of what she is and is born equipped with the ability to confirm her fellow-person in the same way’’. In his concept, Buber distinguishes between ‘‘two types of inter-personal relationships: ‘I-it’, characterizing the relation of a person with an object which serves her needs; and ‘I-thou’, where one positions oneself across from another person and both make each other present’’ (Tal).
Interestingly, Tal employs this theory in the analysis of several pieces of work which use the figure of the ‘‘doppelgänger’’. One of the narratives he studies is the abovementioned The Double by Dostoevsky. Tal claims that Buber’s inter-personal relationships fails when it comes to terms with a being witnessing and speaking to his/her own self, as the person does not interact with another. Buber considers a ‘‘dialogue’’ with another necessary for the awareness of one’s other. Therefore, Mr. Golyadkin, as well as Nina, maintain monologues in which they fancy they converse with other individuals. It is significant that in The Double mirrors are also present, although not with the relevance they are given in Black Swan. This fact can be read from the beginning of the novella, when, looking at himself in the mirror, Golyadkin states: ‘‘what a thing it would be if I were not up to the mark today, if something were amiss’’ (Chapter 1). In the case of Nina, her dream foresees her journey, and soon afterwards mirrors commence to depict her fears both at her house and at the ballet.
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| Nina and her Double in the Mirror |
Furthermore, there are two occasions in which Golyadkin meets his double and he is not able to distinguish the mirrors: ‘‘In the doorway of the next room, almost directly behind the waiter and facing Mr. Golyadkin , in the doorway which, till that moment, our hero had taken for a looking-glass, a man was standing’’ (Dostoevsky, Chapter 9). Nina also blurs reality with her imaginary world, in her case she cannot discern whether her own image in the mirror illustrates her evil twin or not.
In conclusion, though many more subjects can be analysed in this film, this blog post has focused on the figure of the double by means of explaining the White and Black swans of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake as well as Dostoevsky’s The Double. The employment of mirrors has also been scrutinised as it is vital to comprehend the protagonist’s evolution and her fall into madness in her search for perfection. Furthermore, other characters from the film such as Lily, Beth, Erica and Leroy have been used to clarify Nina’s journey into adulthood.
[i]
For further reading, I recommend this introductory article: https://thecinemoptimist.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/perfect-blue-and-black-swan-an-homage-to-insanity/
[ii] For
further information about the use of mirrors in the film, I suggest this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UgoRTaE9UY
WORKS CITED:
Aronofsky,
Darren, Black Swan, 2010, motion
picture, Fox Searchlight Pictures, New York.
Bowers,
Katherine, ‘‘Gothic Doubling and the Double, Gothically’’, in NYU Jordan Center
for the Advanced Study of Russia http://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/gothic-doubling-double-gothically/#.VkL1ovnhDWL
(Accessed 12th February)
Cinemoptimist, The, ‘‘Perfect Blue and Black Swan: An Homage to Insanity’’, https://thecinemoptimist.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/perfect-blue-and-black-swan-an-homage-to-insanity/ (Accessed on 22nd January 2019)
Dostoyevsky,
Fyodor Mikhailovich, The Double, https://tablo.io/classics/the-double
(First published in 1846) (Accessed on 20th December 2018)
Efthimiou,
Olivia, ‘‘Becoming the Monstrous-Feminine: Sex, Death and Transcendence in
Darren Arofnosky’s Black Swan’’, https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/14075/1/IM8-masculine-feminine-article-03-efthimiou.pdf
(Accessed 10th March 2019)
España,
Ana, ‘‘The Double and the Mirror in Black
Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) in FOTOCINEMA. Revista Científica
de Cine y Fotografía, 2012, Nª4, pp. 120-139 https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3900918
(Accessed 20th February 2019)
FoxSearchlight, ‘‘BLACK SWAN Featurette: Production and Aronofsky’’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6rPVPVGUTg (Accessed on 2nd March 2019)
Chanter, Tina, ‘‘ Reading Hegel as a Mediating Master:
Lacan and Levinas’’ in Levinas and Lacan:
The Missed Encounter (ed. by Harasym, Sarah) (New York: State University of
New York Press, Albany, 1998)- via Google Books.
Kristeva, Julia, Powers
of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press) http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/touchyfeelingsmaliciousobjects/Kristevapowersofhorrorabjection.pdf
(Accessed 15th February 2019) (First published in 1980)
Marquette University, ‘‘doppelgänger’’, https://epublications.marquette.edu/gothic_doppelganger/
(Accessed
12th March 2019)
Mickeviciute, Ramune Auguste, ‘‘Black Swan (2010)- The
Mirror Shots’’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UgoRTaE9UY
(Accessed on 10th March 2019)
Rank, Otto, The
Double: A Psychoanalytic Study (North Carolina: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1971) (First Published in 1925)
Tal, Michal, ''The Encounter with the Identical Other: The Literary Double as a Manifestation of Failure in Self-Consitution'', https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/7/1/13/htm (Accessed 10th March 2019)
Thompson, Stith, The
Folktale (Los Angeles: California University Press, 1977), p.88-via Google
Books.
Wulff, Helena, ‘‘Ethereal expression: Paradoxes of ballet as a global physical culture’’, Vol. 9, No. 4, SPECIAL ISSUE: ETHNOGRAPHY AND PHYSICAL CULTURE (December 2008), pp. 518-535 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24047913?read-now=1&seq=13#page_scan_tab_contents (Accessed on 2nd March 2019)
IMAGES:
Poster
of Black Swan, https://weheartit.com/entry/13553183
Mikhail
Vrubel, The Swan Princess, 1900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swan_Princess_(painting)
Black Swan poster https://wp.wwu.edu/brittae/2017/01/19/black-swan/
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How They Met
Themselves, watercolor, 1864 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger
Black
Swan Natalie Portman http://www.mobileswall.com/wallpaper/black-swan-natalie-portman-2/
Double in the Mirror, http://ruleof3rd.blogspot.com/2012/05/black-swan.html
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