held for years.
14. What happens to Beth? What is Thomas’s attitude toward her? How does the
incident affect Nina?
Feeling abandoned, Beth walks to the street, gets hit by a car, and her legs are seriously injured. Thomas feels sure that Beth does it on purpose because she always acts out of a destructive impulse. Nina is quite shocked and feels guilty for taking the role from Beth. Though Thomas assures Nina it has nothing to do with her and she should not get distracted by the tragic incident, the guilt of destroying Beth and the fear of being later destroyed by someone else still adds up the pressure on Nina. 15. In their late hour practice, how does Thomas inspire Nina through action and
words? Does Nina think Thomas is a brilliant teacher? Why or why not? Thomas picks up the role of the prince to show Nina how to be seductive and dominant while dancing the Black Swan. At first, Nina moves stiffly and nervously, but soon she starts to respond to Thomas‘ seductive words, touches and kisses. Nina cries for her slow improvement, and she believes Thomas is a brilliant teacher. Thomas is harsh and tender, strict and helpful, making efforts to mobilize her full potential, helping her achieving real perfection on stage, and thus make her dream come true. 16. Nina has been feeling frustrated at not able to perform well the Black Swan.
What happens to Nina when she is taking a bath? What does Nina finally see in her mirror? Why is Nina being haunted by the dark figure of her other self?
Back at home, Nina is taking a bath and she starts to touch herself again, trying to follow the director's suggestion to let go of herself. When she immerses herself into the water and opens her eyes, she sees drops of blood dripping from above and suddenly, she sees her other self showing up right above her, giving a scary and evil grin at her. Jumping out of the water, Nina sees blood on two of her fingers. When getting out of the tub, Nina sees in the mirror the bleeding scratches on her back, and she starts to cut off her nails but only to see her vicious other self again in the mirror, staring at her with hatred. 17. Why is Nina’s mom so concerned about Nina’s career? How would you
describe the relationship between the mom and the daughter?
Nina's mom is once a ballerina who also dreams to be a star dancer. But then she falls in love with her director, gives birth to her daughter, Nina, and that brings an end to her career. Nina's mom wants Nina to achieve what she fails to achieve at a young age. However, the mom's high expectation and possessive control lead to an unbridgeable distance between the two of them. 18. How does the evening at the night bar affect Nina? Why does Nina fantasize
with Lily in her room? How does Nina feel about herself sexually and emotionally?
Nina resents her mom‘s control and to show protest, she accepts Lily's invitation to go out to the night bar for fun. The evening soon turns out to be a dramatic
adventure for Nina. Being pushed by Lily, she starts to try drugs, flirt with guys and indulge herself with wild movements on the disco dance floor. While coming back home, Nina, under the impact of drugs, has a fantasy about having sex with Lily, out of which she has experienced for the first time the ultimate sexual and emotional pleasure and freedom. For a time being, she sees Lily's face suddenly turn into her other self. This sudden shift of her fantasy indicates how Lily is taken by Nina‘s sub-consciousness as someone resembling her suppressed other self. When whispering \confront her and that seems to indicate a self-awakening moment when her sub-conscious other side of mind is fully aroused.
19. In the next morning's stage rehearsal, does Nina perform differently from
previous days? How can you tell? Why does Nina throw away all her stuffed animals when getting home?
Nina's dancing in the next morning is no longer frigid and mechanical. For the first time, she smiles a hearty smile and for the first time, Thomas gives her an encouraging gesture, and later tells Nina her performance in that morning is a breakthrough. However, Nina is still deeply worried about the premier. Out of deep fear and anxiety, she convinces herself that Lily drugs her on purpose so that she can take advantage of her being late for the practice. Lying in bed, she is at first lost in thought, then suddenly knocks the music box off the bedside table and finally jumps up and throws all her stuffed animals into the garbage. While doing so, Nina appears no longer as her mom's sweet little girl, but a grown-up adult with full power and strong determination to exert control of her own life. 20. Why does Nina feel so upset when knowing Lily is picked as her alternate?
How does Thomas respond to Nina’s pleading at Lily as her alternate? Why does Nina see that Thomas is having sex with Lily? What is she actually scared of?
Nina takes Lily as her rival who has plotted all the time to steal from her the role of Swan Queen, and even worse, she believes it is all personal and Lily is out there to destroy her. When she gets very upset and goes to persuade Thomas to change his mind, Thomas assures her that it's a common practice to have an alternate and she should be confident and focused on the performance instead of worrying too much. He also suggests she should take some rest that night. However, Nina stays late, dancing and practicing. Still, she's haunted by the idea of Lily stealing her role by winning Thomas' favor. This fear can be seen from her hallucination of seeing Lily having sex with Thomas and the latter finally changes into the figure of Rothbart. What she actually fears is being replaced by Lily and thus loses her chance at the last minute to become a perfect dancer on stage. 21. Why does Nina visit Beth in the hospital again? What does Nina do with
Beth’s stuff? What does she seem to understand? What is it that makes them so much alike? What does Beth say about herself? Why does Nina have such hallucinations in hospital, and later at home?
Feeling devastated by what she sees about Lily and Thomas, Nina believes Lily has already taken her position and suddenly she seems to understand how Beth must have felt while being replaced. She feels close to Beth due to the similar experience of betrayal and desperation. Nina dashes into the dressing room, picks up all the stuff of Beth and rushes to the hospital in wish to get Beth's forgiveness and asks for advice about what she should do now. However, Beth doesn't feel the same, saying she is not perfect and she is nothing (at all). What Beth says feeds Nina‘s despair and finally triggers a mental breakdown, which in turn brings about the most twisted part of Nina's hallucination. She sees Beth stabbing her own face violently, yelling \Nina's own face. Scared by what she sees in the hospital, Nina runs all the way back home, only to be confronted by a ghostly figure and later her mom's monstrous pictures all calling her \because deep in her heart, she is convinced that her sweet but weak personality as well as her self-denial obsession with perfection should be blamed for her being unable to keep the role of Swan Queen. However, the \journey of transforming herself into another self is too demanding and scary for Nina to bear. The hallucination reflects on one hand her pain and fear, and on the other hand, her strong desire to liberate her other self.
22. Why are the Black Swan feathers bursting out of Nina’s back? Why do both
of her legs break? Is it a metamorphosis? If so, in what way? How would you regard this uncaged condition of Nina?
Locking herself in the bedroom, Nina is frightened to feel the pain in her back and then she sees little black feathers growing out of her skin. When her mom is trying to come in and check on her, she breaks her mom's fingers while violently forcing her out of the door. Right after that, Nina sees her legs spontaneously snap in strange directions. Unable to stand steadily, Nina falls down and passes out. All the series of scary hallucination reveals the fact that Nina is losing control of her mind. And the imagined metamorphosis reflects a moment of mental transformation in which Nina's once suppressed other self eventually breaks out of her self-control and rises up to the dominant position in her mind. 23. Why does Nina’s mom try to prevent her from going to the show? What does
it mean when Nina says that the sweet girl is gone?
Nina's mom finds Nina scratching herself all the night so she prevents her from going to the show for fear that she's not well enough for the performance. Nina fights fiercely with her mom and finally breaks out of her grasp. When saying to her mom the sweet girl is gone, Nina means she's no longer the fragile and obedient little girl who has no strength to speak for herself. Instead, she's now fully grown into an independent self who's determined to get whatever she wants. 24. What does Thomas say to Nina in the dressing room right before the show?
What happens when Nina is dancing the White Swan? Why does this occur? Thomas says to Nina that the only person standing in her way is herself and she should let it go and loose herself on stage. While dancing the White Swan, Nina
is back to her usual fearful and unconfident self. She starts to have hallucination again and sees Lily wearing her costume and flirting with the male dancer and she herself showing up not as the Swan Queen but an ordinary ballerina in the corp. She gets so distracted by the horrible hallucination that she falls off on the floor while the dancer of the Prince is trying to hold her up.
25. Who is sitting in Nina’s dressing room when Nina runs back into the room,
devastated? Why do they start to fight? Who does Nina think that she is fighting with and who does she see lying dead on the floor? What does this dressing room scene reveal on Nina’s psychological struggle and level of breakthrough?
Running back into the dressing room with tears in eyes, Nina is surprised to see Lily sitting in her chair, humiliating her, and suggesting she play the part of the Black Swan. Nina throws herself at Lily and the two start to fight on the floor with broken pieces of the mirror scattered around. During the fight, the face of Nina‘s opponent shifts into her other self and while her other self is strangling her, crying for a ―turn‖ of domination, we can see the strange physical changes on Nina. With extreme anger, Nina grabs a sharp piece of broken mirror and stabs her opponent with it, but then only to find Lily lying dead on the floor. This dressing room scene reveals to us the very point of a complete mental breakdown on the part of Nina, who by the time is totally possessed by her other self, body and mind. 26. What happens to Nina’s arms while she gets back onto the stage? Does Nina
dance well for the part of the Black Swan? How does she make it? How does she look while getting off the stage and being hailed by all? Why does Nina kiss Thomas and in what way does she kiss him?
While getting back onto the stage and dancing to the music as the Black Swan, Nina's arm starts to grow black feathers and with Odile's coda coming to the climax, her arms grow into two big black wings. Her dance of Black Swan is hailed by all as a great success and Nina looks enchanted and triumphant. Walking with her tiptoes as a ballerina does on stage, Nina moves towards Thomas and gives him a forceful kiss as a best salute that a ballet dancer can give to her inspiring director. The kiss is actually given by the passionate and aggressive Nina to the one who helps grant her ultimate freedom. 27. Who is knocking at the door when Nina is putting on her costume of the
White Swan? Why is Nina so shocked at seeing her? What actually happens to Nina?
When Nina changes into the White Swan costume, she starts to worry about the killing of Lily. Then someone is knocking at the door and she's extremely shocked to see it is Lily giving her congratulations. After Lily leaves, Nina checks around and suddenly sees the sharp piece of glass stabbed deep in her stomach. With tears rolling down, she finally comes to realize it is herself that she stabs with all her strength.
What does she realize about her struggle in the past few days?
All her desperate struggle in the past few days starts to make sense to Nina whose mind for the time being comes back to its soberness. It's a struggle she carries against herself, a struggle between her obedient and self-controlled side of personality and the aggressive and passionate other.
29. How does Nina dance the White Swan again? What does Nina say in the end?
How do you understand the satisfying smile on her face?
Nina returns to the stage as the White Swan and dances with a tragic air just like the White Swan in the story. While lying on the matt, dying, Nina says with a smile to Thomas ―I felt it. It was perfect… I was perfect‖. As Thomas once says, being perfect is not only about observing the discipline but also about losing control. At that moment, Nina feels the satisfaction of having both sides of her personality perfectly blending into one and thus enables her to give a perfect performance on stage and make her dream of being a perfect Swan Queen come true. 30. What kills Nina? What makes Nina so obsessed with the role of Swan Queen?
What does this obsession bring to Nina, perfection or destruction?
Nina kills herself during a mental breakdown. Being brought up as a sweet and obedient girl, Nina is obsessed with perfection and to make herself appear perfect, she adopts strong self-discipline and suppresses all her desire and passion, not knowing such a self-denial, once coming to an unbearable point, can only lead to self-destruction. V. Research Activities
Four basic aspects of the movie
Background: historical background, social background, the novel on which the
movie is based, the author of the novel, production of the movie, etc.
Themes: the main ideas that the movie intends to convey to the audience.
Conflicts: conflicts within oneself, conflicts with others, conflicts with the
society, conflicts between events, conflicts of ideas, etc.
Performances: actor, actress, director, playwright, song, music, Academy
Awards, etc.
These four aspects, however, can never be clear-cut; they are often interrelated. The information provided below serves as some supplementary material only. The students are free to present any material relevant to the four aspects. Their presentations should include both factual information and their own opinions or comments. Background
Aronofsky was inspired by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky's novel The Double when he was conceiving the film, first published in 1846 as a novella The Double: A Petersburg Poem. It centers on a government clerk, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, who turns crazy with the idea that a colleague has usurped his identity. The novel delineates his internal psychological struggle when he keeps encountering