Black Swan is a psychological horror and thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky. The movie showed the internal struggle of the main character, Nina, who is an obsessed perfectionist in the physical realm of her dancing career. The sick obsession earns her much external success, which is the starring role in Swan Lake. However, Nina begins to exhibit psychotic physical tendencies and appears to encounter various dreams involving an evil depiction of herself following and haunting her. Nina is bothered by her nightmares and arrives late to a show, she finds Lily prepared to dance as her replacement and stabs Lily, when she actually stabbed herself.
The film can be analyzed by applying psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a procedure for the investigation of mental process, mainly through exploring the unconscious. Based on the Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory, the movie presents various aspects such as ID, ego, and superego. There are three characters that stand opposed to Nina, and each of them represents an element in Freudian psychoanalysis.
Nina’s ballet teacher, Thomas, represents the id. Nina is having trouble showcasing the black swan, which is the opposite side of the innocent white swan that Nina portrays perfectly. Thomas is the aspect of Nina’s subconscious that tells her to let go and release herself, and uses her sexuality to improve her performance. Since Nina is a virgin, she is viewed as the pure and good ballerina. After Thomas sexually “enlightens” her, Nina is evoked by the forbidden fruit that her mother prevents her from tasting.
Nina’s mother, Erica, represents the superego. Throughout the film, Erica is very rigid to Nina and controls every aspect of Nina’s life. She sets up Nina’s mindset to ballet solely, and tries to make Nina the perfect dancer. The mother makes Nina do all the right moves in the right time and tries to restrain her from living independently. She controls Nina as if she was still a child and imposes her morals on Nina. There are number of scenes in the movie showing Nina’s room before she completely went crazy, and they show her room stuffed with pink objects and toys that only children would have. This depicts the overly-protected image of Erica that influenced Nina’s self-actualization and self-evaluation.
Nina’s friend at the ballet studio, Lily, represents the ego. Lily is exactly who Nina wants to be, because Lily is free-spirit and fits right into the role of black swan. There are clips from the film show that Nina can see herself in Lily. The question of who she is and who she wants to be has finally made Nina blends herself with Lily and becomes the perfect ballerina, someone who can show both the white swan and the black swan. It ultimately leads to her killing Lily, someone that she fears of stealing her role, when in reality Nina stabbed herself.
In conclusion, Nina’s fragile mental condition is the result of a disconnection between her external and internal beings. Externally, she is talented and accomplished, but she feels empty and unloved internally. Nina wants to let out the black swan side of herself, which is conveyed in her dreams as a wish fulfillment. Her dreaming of her evil self is the evidence of the unconscious coming to play. The nightmares experienced by Nina are visual manifestations of her subconscious and ego.
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