"Black Swan: Perfectionism" by Ken Jiang

The pursuit of perfection is commonly engrained into the goals of the human mind. It is what drives athletes to break records, artists to create meaningful pieces, actors to strive for embodiment. Perfection within society isn’t just expected in high pressure environments but is demanded. Society only sees results of the pursuit of perfection but never under the facade where they can see the individual mental and physical costs of achieving this unrealistic ideal. What happens when the costs outweigh the results of pursuing this identity? What happens when dedication becomes unhealthy obsession, and ambition becomes destructive? The precautionary warnings are revealed in Aronofsky’s psychological thriller film, Black Swan. The film follows Nina, the main protagonist, as she strives for the main lead in the ballet Swan Lake as the Swan Queen. The role is a two-way representation of two different egos, the innocent white swan and its twin counterpart, the mysterious black swan. These two clashing egos eventually lead to her psychosis and destruction. The film itself is a message, a powerful social critique, a deeper examination of the psychological pressures that shadow artistic perfectionism. Aronofsky’s use of cinematic techniques, character dynamics, and symbolism argues that an artist’s eventual breakdown is not merely due to themselves but is caused by the external toxic, high-pressure system combined with cultural expectations that “weaponize” perfectionism to control and ultimately destroy them.

First, the film directly immerses the audience following Nina’s point of view, using itself as the very form that illustrates the slow decay of her mental state following the pressures she endures. This forcibly makes the audience feel what Nina is feeling, invoking a sense of restlessness, claustrophobia, and heightened tensions. Aronofsky’s deliberate use of a raw, handheld camera style instead of a steady studio camera captures a documentary-like presentation, rarely leaving Nina’s side and making the experience feel realistic as if the audience and Nina are one. This is achieved through long takes where "the camera follows Nina... leaving the viewers' eyes to wander around the frame and, in a sense, discover the space with her," which offers "a greater measure of reality onscreen" (Bordin 4). Furthermore, Aronofsky purposely fills the scenes with mirrors, doppelgangers, and reflections. Joshua Clover, in "The Looking Class," argues visual motifs reinforce the film's exploration of identity and perception. The visual theme becomes more and more prominent as the film progresses; Nina is constantly confronted with distorted images or reflections of herself, symbolizing her splitting identity supported by a stark color palette between lighter and darker tones. Amer and Iraqi argue that color and lighting indirectly enhance the dramatic tensions, with the shift from bright and light colors to dark hues directly mirroring Nina's psychological descent. We first see Nina in a world dominated by white, pink, and bright colors, from her bedroom to her clothing which represents her fragility and child-like innocence. However, as her contrasting dark impulses appear, it follows with an eerie presence and an increase in dark attire representing the black swan counterpart. These techniques are not just for presentation but it acts like a narrative design that gives the audience a tangible status of the mental state of Nina, the audience no longer just views Nina’s inner turmoil unfold; they are experiencing it with her, making the film’s message even more profound in showcasing the dangers of psychological pressures and unrealistic ideals. While the visual aspects can help viewers gauge Nina’s mental state, the film provides a tangible idea of her repressed desires.

Beyond the film’s mood, Nina’s psychosis is made tangible to the audience through the character structure of Lily. Framed as the main “antagonist,” she is essentially a doppelganger who personifies the destructive and sexist pressures Nina faces. Jessica Jean-Baptiste also argues that Lily is more than simply a rival, she is the “darker version of Nina” (4), representing the impulsive and sexually free “dark” self that Nina has long repressed. Nina couldn’t achieve the artistic perfection she has been searching for since she has denied her full humanity, cutting off her impulses, desires, sexuality, and chaos. Because of her conditioning to reject natural human instincts she projects them outward onto Lily and reflections of herself. Furthermore, Lily is essentially the embodiment of the things Nina has repressed due to her controlled environment. The relation with doppelgangers directly correlates with Freud’s Uncanny Theory, where familiar elements, like one’s reflection, become unsettling through continuous repetition, which is shown countless times within the film, with increasing reflections of Nina in mirrors representing her psychosis, her self harm through scratching representing the continuous desire to be free, and finding a projection of a “different” Nina, dressed in dark attire with a walk of mystery and confidence representing the darker version of herself. By using the Uncanny to make familiar things become terrifying, Aronofsky argues that pursuing that kind of perfection eats the artist from within and alienates them from their own humanity. The mirrors and doppelgangers don’t just reflect Nina’s mind but they trap her within it arguing that her identity has already been consumed by external factors like the demand of others for her to be flawless and perfect. Her battle with Lily is essentially a battle against herself (her alter ego), an attempt to reclaim and shape the parts of her identity she was forced to repress in order to live up to the standards of her mother and the rest of society. Therefore, external factors like her mother and the director, Thomas, have been already imprinted on her. She doesn’t need to be affected directly; she has already been conditioned to destroy herself for their standards. Jean-Baptiste argues it frames Nina’s deterioration as direct consequences of the toxic and sexist pressures demanding that she be both a perfect artist who is free and a perfect, docile woman. The doppelganger effect, therefore, helps Aronofsky point out the “mental disorders, sexism within the ballet community, and how it influences the overall mood of the film” (3). Jean-Baptiste argues that connections with highly-intensive environments can be a cause of depression, eating disorders, and other personality issues. The pressure that follows Nina’s breakdown doesn’t only come from her career; it’s mainly about the deep-rooted cultural standards for how women are supposed to act, a problem the film strongly criticizes.

Furthermore, the film critiques the social and familial systems that implicitly enforce such damaging standards. Nina’s “White Swan” personality is not her own identity but an identity directly shaped by her controlling mother, Erica, a former dancer who “infantilizes Nina, calling her ‘my sweet girl,’ trapping her in a bedroom which was butterfly wallpapered,” filled with pink and white, packed with teddy bears, toys, and dolls, treating her as a perpetual child (Calvo-Pascual 121). The portrayal of Nina’s confinement and societal pressures on women is examined in Vi D. Smith et al. 's “The Portrayal of Black Swan through a Multicontextual Framework,” which relates Nina’s struggles within broader social and familial systems that demand conformity: “Although it is clear that Erica has the majority of the power in this dyadic relationship, the enmeshment is reinforced by Nina’s sense of loyalty to her mother” (98). Nina accepts her mother’s behavior as normal and appropriate, not only because that is the only thing she has ever known but also because of her childlike need for parental approval from her mother. Thus Nina wants to be successful in the ballet company to make her mother proud since her mother couldn’t become successful herself. Now, because she is so trapped, she eventually “undergoes a process of metamorphosis when she is forced to unearth and integrate the ‘dark side’ of herself” to successfully embody the role of the “sensual, seductive Black Swan” (Calvo-Pascual 121). It’s an attempt to take control of her own life, sexuality, and power to be free. She does this through disordering eating and other harmful things through the influence of her mother and Lily. These symptoms aren’t necessarily random but structured to show a harmful overcorrection of external influence (Thomas’s pressure and expectations, her mother’s controlling nature). The scratching represents the attempt to literally peel away the skin of the “perfect daughter” and find herself in it. Her disordered eating is a logical result of a system that demands women to be light as a feather in order to become a tool for art. Her self-harm, influenced by Lily, is Nina's way of getting rid of the stain that she sees as the “White Swan,” leading her to accept and follow Lily into substance abuse, smoking, and impulsive clubbing. Nina’s mental and physical deterioration is not due to her own choices but the inevitable outcomes of an environment that promotes destroying oneself for art.

Of course, with an alternative perspective one could argue that the film is not a social critique itself, but just a character study of an individual’s tendencies to a mental illness. This view argues that the ballet world in the film was merely a circumstantial setting for Nina’s pre-existing condition, like schizophrenia or severe O.C.D. (obsessive-compulsive disorder) (Lack). This argument claims that Nina was an unreliable narrator claiming that a viewer couldn’t trust what she sees or says right from the start and her mother’s own obsessive behaviors can be seen as evidence of perhaps a genetic psychological condition. They also argue that some of Nina’s presumed symptoms, like her hallucinations of skin peeling, “have been present with [her] for the majority of her life” (Lack), way before the external pressures caused by Swan Lake. The horror comes from watching someone who was already supposedly mentally ill finally fall apart. However, this perspective doesn’t account for the nature of the pressures the film depicts. Although it is true that Nina may have been sensitive to anxiety, the film has implied the “system” of society as the cause of her psychosis. The horror in the film doesn’t come from the “madness” itself but the real-world sexist pressures that cause it. The film repeatedly focuses on external factors that imprint on Nina: her mother’s possessive control, Thomas’ manipulations, and the constant idea of replacement represented by Beth (the old star dancer who ultimately got replaced). Her psychosis was a symptom of the implicit patriarchal system, not the root cause of the self-harm. The film’s core argument is that such an environment is designed to break artists, framing their self-destruction as the “necessary” component of true art.

While the film itself shows a tragic conclusion, it points toward a necessary solution to combat such an issue. If the problem is the system itself, the solution must be to alter it. One change could begin with preventing the “manipulative genius,” like Thomas, from exploiting and mentally tormenting performers for “art.” This requires implementing overseers on an institutional level, and removing the stigma around mental health, and providing psychological resources that are accessible in high-pressure fields. This can include therapy, hotlines, and immediate support lines. A compromise can be reached where the idea of “perfection” is redefined as a healthy, sustainable process that achieves great success, instead of being defined as a flawless, static execution. The film suggests that this shift is not just desirable but possibly essential to preserve the artists themselves.

In conclusion, Black Swan uses cinematic techniques, character dynamics, and symbolism to argue that the obsessive pursuit of perfection is a damaging ideal, one that has been weaponized by outside culture that demands an artist’s sacrifice for it to be flawless. By forcing the audience to experience Nina’s breakdown alongside her, Aronofsky’s Black Swan was a metaphor not only critiquing the ballet world but any system that believes an artist is only a genius with self-sacrifice. The film’s final transition to a white empty canvas as Nina’s dying claim of being “perfect” is the film’s final message, the external forces causing “an artist's” sacrifice of identity. She has become the flawless example at the cost of her identity.

Works Cited

Amer, Sawsan, and Sally Iraqi. “Color between Lighting and Interior Design in Dramatic Scene.” Journal of Architecture, Arts, and Humanistic Sciences, 3(10), 2018, pp. 279 – 295.

Aronofsky, Darren, director. Black Swan. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010.

Bordin, Raquel. “The Realism of Space in Black Swan.” Cinesthesia, 3(1), 2014, pp. 1 – 7.

Calvo-Pascual, Monica. “’It was perfect’: Desire, Corporeality, and Denial in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.” Revista de Filologia Inglesa, 37, 2016, pp. 119 – 132.

Clover, Joshua. “The Looking Class.” Film Quarterly, 64(3), 2011, pp. 7 – 9.

Jean-Baptiste, Jessica. “The Doppelganger Effect.” Writing Dragons, 2020. https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/rhetdragonsresearchinquiry/5?utm_source=digitalcommons.cortland.edu%2Frhetdragonsresearchinquiry%2F5&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

Lack, Caleb. “Schizophrenia.” Abnormal Psychology: An E-Text! https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc abnormalpsych/chapter/schizophrenia/

Smith, Vi D., et al. “The Portrayal of Black Swan through a Multicontextual Framework.” The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 23(1), 2015, pp. 97 – 101.