The Curious Case Of Nina Sayers
The movie, ‘Black Swan’ produced by director Darren Aronofsky is a psychological thriller with nuances of mystery and drama. It is an adaptation of an original story, written by one of the scriptwriters, Andres Heinz. Natalie Portman plays the character of the protagonist, Nina Sayers, who is portrayed as a young ballet dancer, with a pure, fragile and infantile personality.
The plot develops along the lines of Nina’s aspirations for perfectionism in her pursuit of the role of Swan Queen, in the composition of Tchaikovsky’s 1876 symphonic creation of Swan Lake. As an innocent, and gentle girl, Nina perfectly embodies the White Swan, which is, Odette; however, in demonstrating herself as the Black Swan, i.e. Odile Nina loosens her hold over reality.
In the process of manifesting herself as the Odile, Nina is not only dissociated with her cardinal traits of fragility but also unleashes her shadow-self while impersonating a dark sense of ego with rigidity and stubbornness to outdo her inherent nature even when she has to compromise her psychological state. She reaches the brink of absurdity and instability at the cost of perfectionism.
In many parts of the movie, Nina finds herself facing hallucinations from the very beginning. As she steps into her role, she falls prey to her whims and fantasies. She invariably sees a dark embodiment of her disposition in her doppelganger.
Due to her tendency to tread on hallucinations, she persistently resorts to self-harm, without realizing the amount of damage that she inflicts upon herself physically and mentally. As she progresses in the later stages of her role, she finds her hallucinations become stronger each time she drives herself to perfect ballet.
The escalation of Nina’s psychological state is indicative of diverse forms of symptoms, that are presented in the movie with a contorted timeline of events. According to the mental health professional, Matt McKnight, Nina’s visible signs of behaviour exhibit her symptoms of ‘delusions of persecution’, wherein, she constantly nudges herself into believing that the onus of her actions slipping in a morose direction lies entirely on her, even when she is sexually harassed by her ballet trainer, or when projects the enmeshment of the mother-daughter bond, in which, she is obliged to act following her mother’s wants and ambitions, be it taking up the role of Swan Queen.
Moreover, throughout the movie, she finds herself entangled in a cycle of ruminations comprising child-like thoughts and assumptions as she questions every person and everything around her, with the feeling of being victimised, teased and threatened by the other ballet dancers, who according to her, seem more suited for the position of Swan Queen.
With her figurative umbilical cord tied to her mother, Nina persistently finds herself seeking approval from figures of authority, as gets perplexed by the inability to make fully independent decisions, for example, she constantly seeks her trainer’s approval while practising for her performance.
While she is seen as a dutiful person in terms of practising her work, at the outset, she is unable to lose herself in the art of ballet. She is hell-bent on perfecting her moves, and thus, displays the negative symptoms of emotional expression.
As she digresses into the role of Odile, she finds herself revealing a dark, and murky side of her personality. As per Jungian psychology, Nina finds her ‘shadow-self’ or the repressed overcast personality traits taking over, which includes her restrained sexuality. As she throws all her toys away, she finds herself breaking through the shackles of her naive and gullible nature.
Just before her performance, Nina faces the most dreadful hallucination, wherein, she inflicts the ultimate damage upon herself. She presumes that one of the ballet dancers, Lily, is insistent on sabotaging her. As a consequence of this, she ends up wrecking herself, thinking she’d caused harm to Lily. In reality, she’d manifested her repressed and dark persona, which she saw as a reflection of Lily. Despite giving an impeccable performance as Odile, in her final performance, Nina incarnates as Odette and falls onto a mattress on which she loses consciousness and dies.
The movie is depicted through the character of Nina Sayers, but a parallel is regardless drawn between a psychological disorder and the collective neurosis that exists in society. Earlier, Nina dwelled in a sheltered life, devoid of any tribulations, and was subdued with an inability to ‘let go’. However, her shadow self takes over and manifests through the art of ballet, which highlights ‘madness’ as a characteristic of art.
Nina’s dissociation from herself in the chase of perfectionism transforms her entire personality, while it also calls attention to her progression from childhood to adulthood and the collateral afflictions that result. Thus, Nina’s fall from innocence and her transformation into Odile, all in all, brings out the theme of duality through the reflection of her inner desires along with the manifestation of the Black Swan.
Picture Source: Featuring Natalie Portman in ‘Black Swan’, Darren Aronofsky, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010.
Originally published on Liberarian
