In the bathroom, after she is officially announced as the Swan Queen, Nina envisions herself pulling back her cuticle skin all the way to her knuckle. She is so nervous around others and impressing them, that her mind drifts to peeling off her skin in reaction to the stress.
As the film progresses, Nina completes her transformation into the Swan Queen. She continuously scratches a specific spot on her back, which viewers are told she has done in the past. This behavior develops into the visual and tactile hallucination of Nina sprouting wings.
These tics, such as skin picking and nail biting, often appear during times of stress as a method to center oneself. This is one of the most explicit instances that illustrate Nina's own difficulties with OCD, due to the sights of the scratches and the verbal confirmation from her mother.
Nina's Obsession Starts to Manifest in Body Horror
Her paranoia and mental strain cause her to hallucinate that she's physically turning into the role of Odile, the Black Swan, complete with red eyes and black feathers protruding from bird-like skin.
In a rendition of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Nina takes the double role of the White (Odette) and Black Swans (Odile) with Mila Kunis' Lily serving as an alternate dancer. With fears of being replaced by Lily, Nina descends into madness which is perfectly exemplified by the open-ended finale.
'She's Being Guided By a Demon': Ex-Witch Jenny Weaver Issues Stark Warning to Raven-Symoné
Why did Nina's eyes turn red?
The nightclub scene is all in red light, so are the sex fantasy scenes and the scenes where Nina is becoming the black swan. Even her eyes turn red, a symbolic color of madness, passion, danger.
In particular, Nina's relationship with Erica feels incredibly abusive and restrictive. As the film progresses, the foundations of this precarious mother-daughter bond begin to crumble precipitously.
Nina says they're nothing but a rash and her mother becomes angry and hints that Nina hasn't scratched herself like this since she was younger, and she thought Nina was over this. Nina tries to brush her off but her mother grabs her hand and takes her to the bathroom to cut her fingernails with scissors.
She is anxious, moody, and temperamental. Nina is fixated on the romantic tragedy of Swan Lake and she ultimately kills herself in tribute to it. However, while Nina is clearly and explicitly suffering from mental illness, many of her symptoms are considered standard for an elite ballerina at the height of her career.
She has awful hallucinations in which she sees herself tearing bloody strips of skin away from her fingers. It's important to note that Nina's self-injury, conscious or not, is closely linked to her fears that her dance performance isn't perfect.
Destruction of the body is the basis of all horror, but Black Swan's body horror serves a dual purpose by not only freaking out the viewer but also using symbolism to represent the decline of Nina's mental state. Though it isn't as overt as most other horror films, Black Swan is no less terrifying.
According to Malaspina, Nina's affliction is most consistent with a severely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive patient with features of a borderline personality disorder who suffers from “mini-psychotic episodes.”
In Beth, we see Nina's fascination with the company's fading female star played out against the backdrop of society's disdain for aging females. Eager to emulate Beth and feel what it's like to be in her shoes, Nina steals her lipstick, an act which foreshadows Nina "stealing" her role and her power.
In both of these scenes, Lily is a near-physical manifestation of the growing duality inside Nina's mind, specifically of the persona that will allow her to portray the Black Swan. Lily seems quite different during her next appearance.
Undone by Erica's haranguing, Nina impulsively goes to a bar with Lily, where she's persuaded to take a disinhibiting drug that Lily insists will just relax her and only last for two hours, “most.”Tempted by her desire to be free of her mother, and by Thomas's insistence that she “touch herself” as homework to help her ...
Maybe she had the first one at the bar with Lilly and the two guys, because Lilly confirmed they existed the next day. NOT REAL: Therefore, Lilly and Nina did not have actual sex (we know this because after sex, Lilly said something to Nina about being a ‘Good girl’ and then tried to smother her. Not real!)
The broken mirror symbolizes that she is no longer a victim to the black swan and that she is in control of its dark power. As the corruption of the Black Swan effected her mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, the transformation attributed to her fall as the White Swan that was completely diminished.
What eating disorder does Nina have in Black Swan?
- She is under her mother pressure to become a perfect ballerina and her mother does not aware that Nina has problem in that ballet world. Based on the movie scenes she experiences Anorexia nervosa. The hints of this clinical condition is when she refused to eat cake that her mother have bought.
In Black Swan, we see extreme emotional enmeshment: the mother is not allowing her daughter to be a separate individual, instead she sees Nina as a reflection of herself (wanting her to pursue same career) and someone who exists to meet the mother's own needs.
Black Swan became a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis. Its plot revolves around the true story of Nina Sayers. Production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet by a prestigious New York City company.
She envisions the black swan version of herself on multiple occasions. She has fantasy encounters with her understudy Lily (Mila Kunis), one where they are romantic and another where Nina appears to kill her. However, the latter is when Nina actually appears to stab herself.
Lily was the evil twin and the director of the play was the prince, Lily was seducing the director (Thomas) but Nina becomes the black swan and seduces him but ended up killing herself to finally free herself from the constant burden she puts on herself to be perfect all the time.
Following another hallucination of seeing her face imposed on someone (Beth), Nina winds up outside of the hospital holding a bloody nail file, which is what Beth used to stab herself with.
