Nina, who constantly strives for perfection, lives with her controlling mother Erica, played by Barbara Hershey, who gave up dance to have her daughter. They live in a tiny New York City apartment, cluttered with her mother's narcissistic paintings. When the ballet's artistic director decides to replace the aging prima ballerina for the new season production of "Swan Lake," Nina is his first choice. But she has competition in new sexually open dancer Lily, played by Mila Kunis. After securing the role, Nina is asked to "lose herself" to play the black swan, and so she does. In visual hallucinations, she sees a black-clad version of herself across the subway platform and again in the maze of hallways at Lincoln Center. Even the drawings that adorn the bedroom she shares with her neurotic mother seem to come alive and mock her. She conjures up an array of fantasies and delusions, including a lesbian love scene with Lily.
Because there are two sides to Portman's character, there are times when I do align to her and times I don't. Our first impression of Nina is that she's just an aspiring ballet dancer who dreams of playing the lead role in 'Swan Lake', but as she is asked to let her 'Black Swan' side out, she becomes more psychotic and we soon realise that some of her acts such as stabbing the former ballerina in the hospital and stabbing her rival Lily in her dressing room, are real and not delusions. However the final scene shows Lily alive and well as Nina realises she has stabbed herself, or the other side to her. The two sides to Nina make it difficult for the audience to feel one sided to her at one point. Although at the end of the film, there is a bittersweet moment as she commits suicide like the White swan does in 'Swan Lake' which shows she's definitely fully committed to her role, however it is only then when she realises that she was a perfectly fine ballerina before, "I was perfect" says Nina.
In an interview with Empire Online, Darren Aronofsky was asked, "How did you approach the sexual content of the movie?", to which he replied "No-one told me to tone it down, and I'm glad about that. I guess it is a bit adventurous for an American film. But... I don't know. There's so much sexuality in our culture and on the internet that it's tame, compared to the sickness of what's out there." To conclude from this, I think the male gaze in this film makes more sense and was the director's idea of portraying a more realistic stance on society and what it's come to. The director also shed some light into his use of mirrors in the film, saying "Your reflection is your double, isn't it? So it just became a really important part of the film. And very early on we started to think of all the different types of tricks we could do with mirrors." This comes into Lacanian psychoanalysis as there is such a thing as the Mirror Phase where Jaques Lacan wrote "The mirror separates us from ourselves. In order to recognise myself, I have to be separate from myself." This reflects the two versions of Portman's character, Nina, as she is separate from herself, or the version she exudes in reality, when she reflects on herself in mirrors. 'Black Swan' also relates to the Freudian theory because Nina becomes aware of her subconscious mind as well as her conscious mind, like in Sigmund Freud's theory. All of Nina's wishes, desires, hopes, urges, and memories that lie outside of awareness continue to influence her behaviour to a point where her conscious mind isn't present.
Because there are two sides to Portman's character, there are times when I do align to her and times I don't. Our first impression of Nina is that she's just an aspiring ballet dancer who dreams of playing the lead role in 'Swan Lake', but as she is asked to let her 'Black Swan' side out, she becomes more psychotic and we soon realise that some of her acts such as stabbing the former ballerina in the hospital and stabbing her rival Lily in her dressing room, are real and not delusions. However the final scene shows Lily alive and well as Nina realises she has stabbed herself, or the other side to her. The two sides to Nina make it difficult for the audience to feel one sided to her at one point. Although at the end of the film, there is a bittersweet moment as she commits suicide like the White swan does in 'Swan Lake' which shows she's definitely fully committed to her role, however it is only then when she realises that she was a perfectly fine ballerina before, "I was perfect" says Nina.
In an interview with Empire Online, Darren Aronofsky was asked, "How did you approach the sexual content of the movie?", to which he replied "No-one told me to tone it down, and I'm glad about that. I guess it is a bit adventurous for an American film. But... I don't know. There's so much sexuality in our culture and on the internet that it's tame, compared to the sickness of what's out there." To conclude from this, I think the male gaze in this film makes more sense and was the director's idea of portraying a more realistic stance on society and what it's come to. The director also shed some light into his use of mirrors in the film, saying "Your reflection is your double, isn't it? So it just became a really important part of the film. And very early on we started to think of all the different types of tricks we could do with mirrors." This comes into Lacanian psychoanalysis as there is such a thing as the Mirror Phase where Jaques Lacan wrote "The mirror separates us from ourselves. In order to recognise myself, I have to be separate from myself." This reflects the two versions of Portman's character, Nina, as she is separate from herself, or the version she exudes in reality, when she reflects on herself in mirrors. 'Black Swan' also relates to the Freudian theory because Nina becomes aware of her subconscious mind as well as her conscious mind, like in Sigmund Freud's theory. All of Nina's wishes, desires, hopes, urges, and memories that lie outside of awareness continue to influence her behaviour to a point where her conscious mind isn't present.
