Girls' Night Out: Lily, Nina, and Molly

 There’s an extreme juxtaposition of two very different worlds clashing when Nina and Lily go on their wild night out. Aronofsky clashes the beautiful and graceful world of ballet, with the harsh party world of the EDM scene. In fact, this whole movie is filled with juxtapositions and opposites: perfection vs. passion, and old vs. new. Yet there was something particularly enticing about this scene. It seems to be Nina’s turning point.

"You've never rolled before?" 

Molly… Ecstasy… MDMA… whatever you choose to call it, it sets Nina free, and it seems to also set the viewer free. From the very beginning of the movie it seems like you’re right there with Nina. You’re stressed out hoping that everything goes right for her. Hopefully her moves are perfect, it pains you to see Thomas constantly yell at her, sexually harass her, and work her to the point of insanity. In a sense you’re just as innocent as she is, until Lily comes to take her out. And all of a sudden, that innocence is destroyed by alcohol, ecstasy, and sex. Again the juxtaposition: vices and virtues.

The drug is the catalyst; it set the transformation in motion. Nina loses control for a “couple hours tops”. And in reality, although the drug itself wore off Nina was too far away from her old self to return to that state of innocence. And so is the viewer. Everything becomes a little bit darker, there is a lot more screaming, and the creepiness factor increases (when Beth starts stabbing herself in the face… SCARY). Nina keeps losing control, moving farther and farther into the world of vice, and into the world of insanity until we see the greatest juxtaposition in the movie: the white swan and the black swan.

-Ameet Eini

How Nina Lost to Win

Initially, Nina is pure and dedicated, swathed in pretty pinks and grays, which expose her untouched, unscarred naiveté to the audience. Then we see the scratches on her back, the first to mar her delicate purity. We feel her horror as she yanks out her hangnail at the announcement of her starring role in Swan Lake, and cringe when she cracks her toenail during a particularly intense series of pirouettes. The scars on her back deepen and spread until finally, her dark side—the black swan—literally bursts through her flesh and consumes her. 

 

At first, what was jarring to me was the fact that no one noticed what was going on with Nina. I realized, however, that the reason why no one was concerned—except for Nina’s mother, who was the only one who saw her daughter in her most vulnerable state—was because no one was trying to harm her. Lily was simply to trying to be a supportive friend, Tomas was just really committed to making his show the best it could be (even his creepy sexual advances were meant to help her performance, to help her break past the creativity-stifling confines of her innocence), and despite initial tension between Nina and Veronica, the other ballerinas were just doing their jobs. Yet, Nina immediately believes that everyone is out to get her. As Nim quoted, “The only person standing in your way is you. You need to let her go. Lose yourself.” But then Nina proceeds to the stage, where, as she is being lifted into the air amidst the other dancers, she sees herself glaring back at her from every direction. 

Nina resorts to blaming everyone for barring her from perfecting her role, but she never understands that the only person who needs to change is herself. And change she does, but every fiber in Nina’s rigid body fights that change because Nina is so used to strict routines and regimens that the freeing spontaneity of the role ends up tearing her apart. Even after her inner black swan broke free of her restraints, Nina is still the perfectionist we saw in the beginning, as the last words we hear from her are, “I felt it. Perfect. It was perfect.” Her idea of victory all along was a flawless performance, which she achieved, but was it really worth everything that she lost?

-Ly 

The Final Solution

I first watched this movie with my roommate about two weeks ago. I'm a wuss when it comes to blood, so she warned me it would get gruesome really quickly. Armed with that clue, about fifteen minutes into the movie I looked at her and asked, "She's going to commit suicide, isn't she?" The response was in the affirmative.

The reason this is relevant is because the entire time the movie unfolded, I was thinking about how she was going to do it, and how the director was going to portray it (mostly out of self-interest, I was worried about it being too gory). Seeing the movie from that perspective, there are many, many instances where the scene is set to intentionally make it seem like she's about to do it; every time Nina held Beth's nail file I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, and until the scene changed I was convinced she was going to drown herself in the bathtub. These, amongst other instances, made the moment when she did kill herself... anticlimactic.

Seeing as her self-harming was so frequently and blatantly alluded to throughout the movie, and the fact that she was going to kill herself pretty inevitable, why did the writer/director choose to make her suicide, well, not really a suicide? Psychologically, she never actually stabbed herself; her hallucinations are so powerful she obviously fully believed in them. And yet, once she's done it, she doesn't try to help herself or fix the situations. It's almost like she just let her suicide happen, passively. There was no "okay I'm going to do this now" the way it would have been if she had hung herself, jumped off a bridge, poisoned herself, etc.

While she does ultimately dramatically jump off of the stage-cliff, she and we as an audience know she was already dead/dying (another discussion point in its own right) when she did it. So the question rests, which was her suicide? Did she actually commit suicide? And, probably most importantly, why did the writer/director make her suicide so ambiguous?

-Christine Jarjour

PS. Why is Natalie Portman just the most wonderful talented person ever?

Rest Room?

What made Black Swan so cringe-worthy to me, other than the obvious moments of blood, vomit, and the occasional disfigured and bruised foot, is that so many scenes occurred in bathrooms. Bathrooms are often not very pleasant places for obvious reasons, but for Nina this is especially true. Whether vomiting up her most recently eaten meal, peeling off an exceedingly long and bloody hangnail, or hallucinating someone (possibly herself?) staring at her from above the water, bathrooms prove to be a horrible place for Nina. 

Despite all this, bathrooms provide some relief for Nina. The notion of "restroom" as a place of privacy and rest becomes especially important, as Nina is constantly under the eyes of her director, peers, and mother. Unable to be alone at both the studio and at home, Nina finds her few moments of solitude in the bathroom. Alone, her true self is able to come out. This true self is very disturbing. As I have already mentioned, it is in some of these moments where the worst things happen. 

Mirrors, found not only in bathrooms, but also in Nina's changing room and dance studio, also play a big role in revealing Nina's character. The function of a mirror is to reflect one's appearance (and beauty or lack thereof) as it is. Yet what is often reflected for Nina is not reality, but her disturbing and conflicted view of it. She looks into mirrors and sees herself peeling off a chunk of skin on her finger, her bloodied and scratched back, and overly red and bloodshot eyes. She finally imagines killing Lily/herself by smashing her(self?) into a mirror, then stabbing her(self?). As she smashes the mirror, she destroys the current reflection of herself, the white swan, and allows the transformation to the black swan to be complete. It is poetic that what reveals Nina's troubled character is also what ends her life, as she stabs herself with a broken shard of mirror.

-Andrew Thvedt

“The only person standing in your way is you.”

Nina’s bulimia and inability to adapt to the role of Swan Queen shows her compulsive personality. It is likely that she developed these characteristics because of her overbearing mother, who maintains tight control over her. This creates an inner struggle, which the director makes apparent through the use of mirrors in Black Swan. On numerous occasions when Nina is gazing at her reflection she notices her reflection doing things outside of her control. This depicts the conflicting personalities that reside in Nina, potentially suggesting that she struggles with schizophrenia. 

Nina fights to control the alter ego that attempts to take control of her. In the scene before her performance, she attacks the mirror in her dressing room when she sees the Black Swan as her reflection. While Nina’s personality before being assigned the role of Swan Queen is obsessive, this role requires her to transform into a loose and passionate ballerina. When she looks into a mirror and sees the sexual and dangerous black swan looking back at her, she is frightened. Yet the reflection in the mirror is what she must strive to become.

When Nina shatters the mirror in her dressing room, she becomes one with her alter ego. Thus she breaks the barrier that is preventing her from truly becoming one with the Black Swan.  

The Swan

When the Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (anglicised as Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky) composed Swan Lake in 1875, he envisioned the swan as womanhood in its purest form. (It its unknown what the male swans thought of this choice.) Legends of swan-maidens can be found in ancient Greek mythology (Apollo's birth), The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, Sweet Mikhail Ivanovich the Rover, and The Legend of the Children of Lir.

If we assume the Swan Queen is modern a portrayal of womanhood in its purest form, then Nina's character reveals some of the pressures that womanhood faces. Nina is obsessed with trying to be "perfect," if such a thing even exists. She even goes as far as to steal Beth's things to try to be like Beth, whom appears to be the ideal dancer. Day after day, we see Nina practice at the studio far longer and harder than everyone else, even driving the pianist to finally quit playing the day before opening night. Nina evens turns to bulimia to maintain her already skeletal figure. (Was anyone else a little disturbed by how unhealthy she looked?)

While Nina was busy trying to perfect herself, she also had to worry about other competing dancers and saboteurs. Lily's attempts to take the role of Swan Queen from Nina appear to be the last straw, and Nina begins to hallucinate. Even after the hallucinations begin, Nina is still determined to be Swan Queen and refuses admit her problems to anyone. It is not until her company sees the blood blossoming across her stomach that anyone even suspects anything is wrong.

Nina must face the pressure from herself and those around her to be perfect, while fending off others who will do anything to take from her what she has. She also does not feel that she cannot turn to anyone else for help. It is no wonder that she, and many other women, turn to self-harm and succumb to medical issues.

The Ugly Truth

"It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention..."

...of Black Swan. Think of Nina, who is obsessed with perfecting the role of Swan Queen. But according to Thomas, that is her problem, and Mulvey (quoted above) would agree. Nina looks at passionate expression, which needs a certain element of unpredictability to be truly convincing, and she tries to quantify it into a series of imitable steps. But in doing so, she destroys the very vessel to create said passionate expression: bulimia emaciates her body that must be kept tiny and countless pirouettes and plies tear her toe nails and pop her ankles until she appears no more than a relic of beauty.

But what of Nina's other side, her 'black swan' that surrenders to sensuality and impulse and lacks all control? It causes equal destruction to Nina, causes her to scratch her back and drink and do drugs and at the last, impale herself with a shard of mirror. I do not believe anyone would call 'black swan' Nina "beautiful" or "pleasurable"--venereal maybe, but then again lust could be considered a corruption of the appreciation of beauty or pleasure.

Black Swan destroys the idea of beauty by exposing the dark unknown of creativity. But that's the important thing: it exposes all of the ugly goings-on masked by beauty, and thus we no longer see beauty. The ugliness was there all along though, so I don't know if it is as much destruction of beauty as introduction of veracity. Maybe everything/one/where is ugly, really, and we're all fools to think otherwise.