Black Swan Essay Plan
Critically analyse how Aronofsky manipulates the traditional conventions of tragedy for a particular purpose.
conventions: Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song and Spectacle.
What is Aronofksy trying to teach/warn the audience about the desire to be perfection and destructive ambition – and how?
Plot – How the incidents are arranged/Aristotle’s tragedy/ Nina doesn’t have an Anagnorisis – she is so lost in her battle with perfection that she is blinded and can’t decipher between her imagination and reality. This girl bleeds terribly—her toenails break from dancing on them, her back bleeds from scratching, and blood continually reddens the water in which she bathes and washes. But we’re never sure if her wounds are real, and neither, it seems, is Nina.
Thought – Thought means what the characters think or feel during their development of the plot. The thought is expressed through their speeches and dialogues. Thomas’ creepy annoying moments where he tries to push Nina into the black swan role. “When I look at you, all I see is the white swan”, he says. “I never see you lose yourself … perfection is not just about control, it’s about letting go.”
Diction – Diction is the medium of language or expression through which the characters reveal their thoughts and feelings.
Song – The intensity of song when there is a teaching moment about the danger of ambition.
Spectacle – The Spectacle is a theatrical effect presented on the stage. But spectacle also includes scenes of physical torture, loud lamentations, dances, colourful garments of the main characters. The childlike décor of Nina’s bedroom and her infantile relationship with her mother indicates that she is a woman who has not yet grown up. “He picked me, Mommy.”
Beth – Nina believes that Beth is “perfect”. She aspires to be like her idol, disregarding her mental state. When forced to retire due to her age, Beth begins to unravel and, now prone to suicide attempts and self-harming, spends the majority of the film in hospital.
Nina – Black Swan indicates that the real enemy comes from within. Thomas reminds Nina that, “the only person standing in your way is you”. Nina surrenders to the temptations before her, sending her into a schizophrenic state. The use of mirrors in every scene helpfully portrays the split in Nina’s mind; her reflection looks back at her with evil intent. We all have goals and motivations.
We’ve all experienced some form of ambition. For Nina, playing the swan queen role is not merely an ambition. It’s an obsession. This performance is the pinnacle of her career, the role of a lifetime, and Nina must be the best. Nina will sacrifice everything to be the perfect swan, including her sanity and even her life. Her identity is bound up with her ability and achievements as a dancer, and as she plunges headlong into identifying with the black swan, that identity begins to fragment and ultimately destroys her. As in Swan Lake, the only release is found in death.
Nina’s infatuation with perfection maybe a story of obsession and psychological disintegration, but it also serves as a graphic example of a tendency that is found within every human being. We base our identities on things which are not capable of bearing that burden. They become idols – false gods which cannot, in the end, meet our needs. The result is that we are enslaved by them, sometimes even destroyed by them.
Darren Aronofsk directs this probe of the scary dimensions of perfectionism and unbridled ambition in the life of a frigid ballerina. Although many of Nina’s hallucinations are both gruesome and irritating to watch, they do capture and convey the breadth and depth of her self-destructiveness as she moves closer and closer to her debut as the lead in Swan Lake.
The audience watches in horror Nina’s change in descent, from motivated innocent girl to an obsessive power-crazy, violent time bomb.
Links for info:
https://www.bethinking.org/culture/black-swan
https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/20477/black-swan
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-black-swan-stereotype-female-ambition-means-sacrifice/