“Every word is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental, or newly-coined, or lengthened, or contracted, or altered.”

Look back over your viewing notes and select 5 key quotations from the film. For each, evaluate their significance in relation to aspect of the tragedy genre.

• ‘Perfection is not just about control. It’s also about letting go.’ – Thomas Leroy

This quote is significant as it references Nina’s hamartia. This quote is the beginning of the audiences understanding of Nina’s obessession with being perfect. Thomas is referencing the difference between the white and black swan. Telling her in order to play the black swan Nina must ‘let go’.

• ‘I felt it. Perfect. It was perfect.’ – Nina Sayers

These are Nina’s last words in the film. She is descriving her performnace in the ballet as she bleeds out on the mattress once the curtain is drawn. Throughout the film Nina was obsessed with being the perfect black swan as well as white swan. In this moment we feel a feeling of catharsis as she is finally happy with her performance and therefore the audience can take a breath and stop pitying her.

• ‘This role’s destroying you.’ – Erica Sayers

This quote is in reference to how the role of the black swan is corrupting Nina. Erica is Nina’s mother and can see the physical and emotional changes Nina is undergoing.

• ‘The only person standing in your way is you. It’s time to let her go. Lose yourself.’ – Thomas Leroy

Thomas is once again referring to the role of the black swan and the transformation Nina must undergo to embrace her dark side. By saying ‘it’s time to let her go’ Thomas is talking about the innocent sweet side of Nina as a seperate being, ultimatley referencing Nina’s possible split personality disorder.

• ‘What happened to my sweet girl?’ – Erica Sayers ‘She’s gone.’ – Nina Sayers

This quote relates to the tragedy genre because this moment in the film shows how Nina’s hamartia is causing her to push the ones who love her away. Although Nina’s relationship with her mother is not necassarily the healthiest, her mother is still able to notice the dramatic change in behaviour and attitude in Nina because of the swan lake ballet.

“For the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations.” “…poetry utters universal truths…”

What ‘universal truth’ is revealed in Black Swan? How is it presented as a warning to the audience? Discuss the significance of the key idea. 

• I believe the ‘universal truth’ that was revealed in Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky’s idea that desire for perfection can be destructive. He implies that during the course of desperatley seeking perfection in both mind and body one can drive themselves to insanity.

Consider the influence of the social context of the film- why this idea at this time?

• “Women are expected to somehow magically capture completely contradictory states within one mortal body: to be both the Black Swan and the White, Madonna and whore, career woman and doting mother, Gillian Flynn’s “cool girl” and Disney princess. We paint women as simple vessels of sexuality and then call them sluts for expressing it by their own means; we label the women glued to their desks as terrible mothers and then call the near-absence of female CEOs a “lack of ambition.” We take superhero toys out of the hands of little girls so we can replace them with Barbie dolls, only to then humiliate any bleached blonde who dares walk into a boardroom. To be a woman is to never even know what society expects of you in the first place, let alone suppress any natural desires so we can conform to the crowd. Nina Sayers came to symbolise for me a simple message: that demanding too much of yourself really is a dangerous business.” – https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn5q84/black-swan-was-the-film-that-made-me