3.4 Black Swan

We are all guilty of it. We all constantly adjust and evolve our personal lives around mankind’s ever changing requirements to be accepted. Society is shaped around the public’s hidden aspiration to be wanted, thus fueling our desire for perfection. Darren Aronofsky’s film, Black Swan, confronts this unseen part of life with an inverted tragic hero plot arc. The film follows Nina’s rise to perfection via the use of film techniques such as lighting, costume and emotionally saturated sound. He manipulates these cinematography techniques to expose the toxic nature of perfection and gives insight of the comparison between what the world sees to what an individual endures.

Firstly, the audience tags along with Nina on her morning routine before her Black Swan audition. Aronofsky introduces the audience to the protagonist with a lack of music and dialogue. The use of diegetic sounds of her bones clicking combined with the sombre lighting in her home create an eerie atmosphere ever since she rises from her bed and they begin to act as the foundations of her lifestyle as mundane yet relatable. The technique of manipulating the tragic hero convention is unusual as the conventional tragedy normally begins with the protagonist being great and powerful. Although, when Nina begins to change, having this small connection to the protagonist early in the film enhances the potential of catharsis. Leaving her home we are presented with a jump cut from a disturbing embrace between mother and daughter to a close up of Nina on a train with sinister sounds. This interference in the simplicity of the beginning leads the audience to consider that Nina’s life isn’t as straightforward as initially perceived. Throughout the start of the film, Aronofsky is conspicuous to have Nina in light colours full of femininity and goodness such as pink and white. These shades symbolize her innocence and immaturity to show what kind of personality traits Nina currently has. Furthermore, changing our perspective on Nina, when confronted with the question “which of you can embody both swans?” by the director Thomas, we see Ninas uppermost attention to these words in close up shot to capture her reaction. Her desire is clear however her competence is not. Leaving a disappointing dance tryout in dark lighting coupled with ominous sounds Nina sees herself walk past in an all black costume revealed to be fabrication of her imagination. The first person perspective shows the audience that Nina’s ambition for the dark side of the dance is beginning to drive her mad.

Aronofsky uses cinematography techniques to show Nina’s rise in status in a presentation to introduce the new Swan Queen. She is standing high on the stairs looking down upon the upper class men, woman and the dancers she competed against for the desired part. He uses a low camera angle for us to look up at Nina high on the stairs. Her rise is also highlighted by “ready to be thrown into the wolves?” These words symbolize that society tends to be self-destructive as one’s success is sought to be judged and pulled down by others. Wolves hunt in packs and use their superiority to tear their competitors down. To look up at Nina we see her as a powerful superior, however during this scene Nina begins to pick at a flaw on her finger. Aronofsky uses a close up shot to focus our attention and incorporates highly dramatic music to build suspense as the finger becomes drastically worse. This furthermore reveals her hamartia of a toxic desire for perfection and as the defect is revealed to be her imagination, we witness the degrading of her mind. Aronofsky uses this inverted tragic hero plot arc to create discomfort as her rise makes us uncomfortable. She is improving her dancing but at the cost of losing everything she ever had. During a scene at a party a close up shot shows Nina’s hesitation to accept drugs and alcohol however she desires the repercussions. In this scene Nina floats in and out of her high but on top of the flashing lights and intense music the handheld camera shakes and we hear a menacing voice of her imagination to further understand the situation of her mental illness as frightening and vile. Aronofsky is careful to create discomfort within the audience as we naturally attempt to hide. Sounds and lighting pull us in and we become exposed. When we feel uncomfortable we look within ourselves for reassurance but all we see is a reflection of Nina and her toxic behavior.

Finally, the night before her performance she clashes with her mother. In this scene Aronofsky uses fast paced dramatic music to empathize on the friction between the two. “What happened to my sweet little girl?” shows Nina’s rise bringing the end of her mother’s affection. Is gaining a desire worth losing family support? To make this scene even more unbearable, we see the darkness of the role infect her mind as wings contort under her skin. The disturbing sounds and bodily dysfunction help expand on our disgust for her condition and increase our desire to never be in her situation. To make us reflect on Nina’s inverted plot arc, we see a close up of the Ballet music box that had been incorporated in the beginning of the film and broken in a previous scene. Although the music that everyone hears stays the same, the Ballet dancer has now changed as she resembles a swan head. This symbolizes Nina as she will go on to perform the usual dance, however her true self has ultimately changed. Leaving her house, she breaks the connection and removes the strings binding her to her mother’s jurisdiction. On the day of her dance a tracking shot follows Nina through the dance studio ignoring her surprised colleagues on her strut to her dressing room. This confidence shows her determination to perform perfectly and her progression from the shy and insecure Nina we met at the beginning. Preparing, we see hints of Nina’s embodiment of a swan but she hesitates to show her fear of what she is becoming. However, after executing the white swan dance with disturbance of hallucinations, Nina encounters the co-worker Lily who she desires to exemplify as she reflects the Black Swan role perfectly. We watch their fight through an intense interchange of close up shots with eerie sounds that pull us into the scene as almost a first person viewing. This technique makes it hard for us to distinguish between real life and Nina’s imagination as we see things from her perspective. Nina stabs the deceptive Lily who she now sees as herself and her hallucinations are used to induce her full embodiment and embrace of the Black Swan. By imagining killing Lily with glass, she is no longer mentally suppressed as she is no longer pure. She is unrestrained from her entanglement of control and preforms the first dance of the Black Swan perfectly. With the use of emotionally saturated music, intense upbeat pitches combined with disturbing imagined wing and breath sounds that make us uncomfortable, Aronofsky shows Nina’s transformation to be toxic. However we watch as Nina realizes backstage that she had in fact fatally stabbed herself and decides to continue regardless. Her decision to complete the swan queen dance and ultimately end her life shows her obsession and desire to be her demise. Aronofsky concludes the film with “it was perfect” to empathize on our catharsis that living a life shaped around the desire for any kind of perfection is toxic for society.

Via the manipulation of an inverted tragic hero plot arc, Aronofsky uses Nina’s rise in social hierarchy to communicate and expose the toxic nature of perfection. Film techniques such as sound and lighting pull us into the film and make us uncomfortable while we have a first person viewing of the rise of Nina as she becomes obsessed to be the greatest of her profession in Ballet. Through Nina’s journey, she destroys her relationships and loses everything she ever had to become her director Thomas’s idea of perfection. The typical convention of a tragedy follows the hero or heroine’s fall from grace, however whilst Aronofsky confronts the audience with the a first person rise of a dancer, he gives us the greatest gift of a tragedy, this being a catharsis and realization about society’s flaws. The Black Swan makes us reflect on the consequences and dangers of society’s desire for perfection.