What made you decide to see Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan? Was it the Oscar buzz? The allure of seeing Natalie Portman in a tutu? The promise of a steamy lesbian sex scene?
I saw Black Swan many moons after Portman nabbed the Oscar, and many moons after the hype died down. What drew me to the film was the numerous references my Psychopathology professors made to it when explaining the diagnostic elements of paranoid schizophrenia, delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, PTSD, and other psychobabble terms that psychiatrists get all wiggly about. In spite of myself, and my general disdain for psychiatry, I was intrigued.
Having now seen Black Swan twice, I feel 100% confident in my interpretation of the film. Contrary to what the trailers and marketing led me to believe, this is not a ballet movie, nor is it a movie about steamy lesbian sex. It's not even a movie about Mila Kunis trying to upstage Natalie Portman, or a hot French guy trying to get in Natalie Portman's tights. It's a movie about mental illness. More specifically, it's a movie about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)-Induced Acute Psychosis, Secondary To Childhood Sexual Abuse.
I may be giving Aronofsky & Friends too much credit with this theory, but this wouldn't be a theory of mine if it was not unnecessarily over-blown and absurdly intricate. At any rate, there were several puzzling moments in this film that, after careful consideration, coalesced into a magnificent revelation: Nina (Portman's character) was molested by her missing father!
Follow me on this for a hot minute.
First, we hear nothing at all about Nina's father for the entirety of the film. He's simply...non-existent. Not even one, "Your father would be so proud" from Nina's mom, Whatever-Her-Name-Is, The Lady With The Cake (seriously, how delicious did that cake look?). I find this suspicious.
Second, there is abundant imagery concerning Scary Old Men (hereafter referred to as SOM). The fact that the story being performed is Swan Lake, a tale whose villain is basically a SOM in demonic form, is significant, as is Nina's fascination with the hot French guy who directs the company. The hot French guy is not exactly a SOM, but he's not exactly age-appropriate for Nina, who looks like she's sixteen and pre-menstrual. We also see a SOM on the subway, and the SOM actually catches Nina's eye and makes some weird, lascivious gestures. The final SOM is a statue at the opening night gala. Nina stares at this SOM with horror in her eyes for quite some time, which made me wonder: What is her deal with Scary Old Men? My feeling is that the SOM recall the repressed memories of her father, who terrorized her in her childhood and is no longer in the picture. It's also interesting that she experiences a hallucination involving Rothbart (the demonic SOM from Swan Lake) doing the nasty with Mila Kunis's character, Lily, who morphs into Nina. Overtly, Nina's horrified response to this vision can be explained by her fears that Lily is attempting to replace her in the company, but I'm not so sure. I think that this scene is a recurrence of her own repressed memories of being ravaged by a Scary Old Man. Why choose a sexual encounter to demonstrate how threatened Nina is by Lily? This sexual component permeates her interactions with the hot French guy, as well: while the teacher/student nasty-doing is not unique to Black Swan, it's interesting that the hot French guy is much older--old enough, in fact, to perhaps remind Nina of her missing father? She certainly seems ambivalent towards the hot French guy when he begins making advances; then, as she begins to embrace the Black Swan component of her character (the sexuality that she repressed as a consequence of the shame she felt about being molested?), she starts to take control of their encounters.
Third, Nina appears to be socially delayed, a hallmark of individuals who have experienced sexual abuse. Her environment, demeanor, and speech patterns are all infantile, which may be a strategy employed by her subconscious to recapture the innocence she lost in her childhood. She is further infantilized by her mother, who seems overly protective. I interpreted her mother's patronizing micromanagement of Nina as a compensatory measure for the guilt she felt over failing to prevent Nina's molestation.
Fourth, Nina obviously suffers from anxiety, a symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Patients who have experienced trauma often have triggers for their anxiety symptoms. I believe that Nina's triggers are the prospect of failure and, later in the film, the possibility of disappointing the hot French guy, who is the manifestation of her abusive father. Her anxiety is evidenced by the self-mutilation (which we knew originated long before the events of the film), the pointless theft of Beth's possessions, the refusal to step out of her rigid comfort zone, the frequent purging, and the slavish attention to detail that she employs in order to perfect her art.
Fifth, physical abuse is clearly on Nina's mind, based on the history of self-mutilation, and the other violent imagery that peppers this film. Self-mutilation is a defense mechanism that patients who have suffered from childhood abuse at the hand of a parent may utilize in order to justify the conflicting feelings they experience towards their abuser. Furthermore, Nina's hallucination in the bathtub involves blood, as do the hallucination of the Giant Freaking Hang-Nail (ew), the mirror-image hallucination of stabbing herself with the nail scissors, and the Winona Ryder vs. Winona Ryder's Face knife battle. I found it difficult to find a place for the violent imagery in my Molestation Theory, but I believe that Nina's fear and fascination with violence is evidence of her childhood abuse. On that note, did anyone else notice how Nina obtains a large plank of wood to brace her bedroom door shut? Is this, perhaps, a remnant of a protective measure she employed as a child in order to ward off the attacks from her father?
Sixth...well, we might as well talk about the steamy lesbian sex scene, since it's what attracted 95% of the heterosexual males that saw this film. Why include this pointless scene, other than to provide men with lighter fluid for grilling alone? The truth is, I don't have an answer for that question. I can only speculate that Lily was a projection of Nina's repressed sexuality, which has lain dormant since the molestation occurred. As Nina gets in touch with the darkest corners of her psyche in order to portray Odile (the "Black Swan"), the shameful feelings that have caused her to deny her sexual urges are replaced with steamy, and then violent, feelings of lust and rebellion against her dominating, controlled conscious mind. The violent, scary things that happen when she has these sexual fantasies (the image of Nina smothering herself with the pillow just after she has the O; the image of Nina creepily hovering over herself in the bathtub just after she tries to have the O) are fragments of her childhood associations of sex with pain and terror. As to why this had to be such a prolonged, steamy scene between two gorgeous women...uhhh, profit motive?
Regardless of whether or not you believe that Nina's father was molesting her, Black Swanis rife with interesting psychological nuggets and the potential for speculation. Above are six reasons why I believe that the film is about a young woman who suffered from a terrible childhood trauma that her subconscious struggled to sequester from her conscious mind, until the pressures of attaining perfection as a dancer forced her to tap into those repressed feelings of fear and shame. Are there any other interesting theories out there?
