A Definitive Ranking of Black Swan’s Most Heavy-Handed, Yet Genius Metaphors
Theatrical poster for “Black Swan.”
I have a question for you, dear reader. Have you ever watched a movie that was so wildly inappropriate for your tender and formative age that it comes to shape your entire worldview for the worse? I have! And yes, that movie was Black Swan. I was 15 years old when Black Swan was released in theatres, and saw it soon thereafter in the comfort of my own home via a highly coveted awards screener, all the while sharing a couch with my sister, mother, and father.
You all know what comes next: an awkward silence preceded by roughly 100 minutes of shocking physical and sexual abuse, grotesque body horror, and erotic sapphic fantasies. I know several people who saw Black Swan with their parents, and boy did it mess us all up. However, despite some lingering trauma and teenage embarrassment, Black Swan also had a profound impact on me, and shaped my enduring tastes for the tropes associated with melodrama, mainly the joys of witnessing prestige actresses perform harried descents into complete mental delusion.
Movies like Black Swan rely on this captivating descent, and it can be incredibly stirring when done correctly, as is the case with Natalie Portman’s performance as a ballerina obsessed with perfection. It can also be deeply hilarious and campy, as is the case with Natalie Portman’s performance as a ballerina obsessed with perfection. As a whole, Black Swan is a rare film that is somehow both decidedly genius and so unbelievably campy that it can actually be appreciated for both of these qualities simultaneously, particularly when it comes to the film’s metaphors and symbolism.
And, so, to prove my point, I present to you (for my 2nd Halloween Content™️ post) my definitive ranking of the most heavy-handed (yet also somehow genius?) metaphors and symbols used in the film Black Swan. For this list, I’ll be focusing specifically on visual symbolism and recurring metaphors that make more than one appearance throughout the film. I’ll then be scoring each of the five most-used symbols and metaphors based on their repetitiveness, effectiveness, subtlety, or obviousness, or lack thereof in any of these categories.
I would like to be clear that, while this list takes some digs at the heavy-handedness of Black Swan’s directorial style, I write this from a place of a deep love and respect, and want to emphasize that this list is meant to celebrate gaudiness and artistic bravado in a world that often extolls blasé, hyper-realistic dramatic films. Black Swan is a safe haven from such dull realities, and it’s in no small part because of its choke-like grip on its metaphors and symbolism.
Without further ado, let’s begin!
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) carefully inspects her reflection.
5.) MIRRORS AS NINA’S PSYCHE
For those of you who have never seen the film, Black Swan (directed by Darren Aronofsky) follows Nina Sayers (Portman), a talented ballerina struggling to maintain her sanity as she tackles one of the most iconic, yet challenging roles in ballet: The Swan Queen from the ballet Swan Lake. Not only is the role physically demanding, but the role requires a very specific duality.
The performer must first embody the role of Odette: a young maiden cursed to transform into a swan with each new day and only return to human form at night (The White Swan), and then subsequently portray the White Swan’s evil doppelgänger Odile (The Black Swan) as she attempts to seduce an illustrious Prince, the object of Odette’s affections. Furthermore, if the Prince were to fall in love with Odette, the spell placed on her would be broken. However, by the ballet’s third act, he is stolen away from Odette by the Black Swan’s intoxicating wiles. In her sorrow, Odette, the White Swan, kills herself, finding freedom in death.
It’s a barrel of laughs!
In preparing to perform the challenging role, and throughout her grueling rehearsals, Nina stares herself down in various dance studio mirrors. As her obsession with perfecting the role begins to consume her, the reflections often move out of sync with Nina Prime, echoing the ballet’s dark tale of evil duplicates gone rogue. Amongst a plethora of other psychological problems, Nina also grapples with a dangerous tendency towards self-harm, which often manifests as a delusion of her reflection inflicting the wounds. As the film progresses, the duplicates in the mirror grow bolder, and more aggressive, eventually culminating in one such duplicate attempting to strangle Nina to death (more on that later).
Though an often used metaphor, mirrors as both a literal and metaphorical reflection of a character’s inner-psyche is highly appropriate for Black Swan, particularly as the world of dance relies heavily on mirrors for performance and logistical purposes. And, as the story of the ballet Swan Lake also heavily relies on a fear of doppelgängers, this metaphor covers a lot of ground towards helping the audience understand the storytelling similarities between the film we’re watching and the “show-within-the-show” Nina is working on.
“The Mirror Metaphor” loses some points for not being quite as heavily featured as some of the film’s other symbols, ranking it as slightly less than overbearing (which, remember, is a good thing on this list).
FINAL RANKING: 2.5/5 Swans.
Lily (Mila Kunis) arrives for her first day at the New York City Ballet.
4.) HAIR & MAKEUP AS SEXUALITY
Playing opposite Natalie Portman for a majority of the film is Mila Kunis, who plays Lily, a new ballerina fresh off the plane from San Francisco and freshly ordained featured soloist for the New York City Ballet. Lily is everything Nina is not: sexual, liberated, care-free. With an oppressive mother and innocent temperament, Nina envies Lily, who conversely sees Nina as someone desperately needing an escape from her sheltered lifestyle. This contrast between the two is often depicted in each characters’ styling. Throughout the film, Nina is often covered up with layers of clothing, pink and white in tone. She wears minimal, naturalistic makeup, and her hair is always up in a bun.
Conversely, Lily’s hair is often left down throughout dance rehearsals (a fact that makes a friend of mine, a former ballerina herself, yell at the screen: “So impractical! Put your hair up!”). At events for the ballet company, Lily is dolled up, decked out with dark, alluring makeup. Lily is flirtatious and coy where Nina is stiff and rigid. Then, when we see Nina try to seduce her director into giving her the role of Swan Queen, she applies tempting red lipstick, and lets her hair down like Lily’s. Even in one of the film’s most iconic and meme-able scenes, in which an anonymous dancer leaves a hateful note on the bathroom mirror accusing Nina of sleeping her way into her part, the word “WHORE” is drawn out in red lipstick.
This metaphor is effective and precise, but used relatively sparingly, and unlike some of the other symbolism running throughout the film, it is never specifically addressed in dialogue. Rather, it is perhaps the only metaphor in the film that is left to the audience to decipher ourselves. And again, remember this list is here to commemorate garishness and a lack of subtlety that compliments effective storytelling, earning this metaphor fourth place.
FINAL RANKING: 3/5 Swans.
Nina’s broken music box.
3.) THE MUSIC BOX AS NAIVETÉ
Nina Sayers lives with her overbearing mother, and it is obvious. Her room, still decorated with the trappings of childhood, looks frozen in time from when Nina was likely in elementary school. It’s filled with plush stuffed animals, pink satin sheets, and most importantly, a ballerina-themed music box that plays one of the core musical motifs from Swan Lake. Every night in the film, Nina’s mother tucks her into bed, winding up the music box as a sort of lullaby to ease her into sleep.
In an intense scene towards the end of the film’s second act, Nina and her mother have a clash of wills, leading Nina to barricade her bedroom door, slam her mother’s fingers into the door jamb, and collapse onto the floor of her bedroom in a fit of mania. All in a day’s work for a manically obsessive (and likely just hungry) ballerina! The next morning, after this episode, we see the music box quietly playing her lullaby, but now it’s been broken (supposedly by Nina), leaving only a single leg from the box’s ballerina figurine twirling delicately.
This symbol is used only a few times throughout the film, but it’s this shot of the broken music box that propels this motif to the middle of this list. It is so disastrously heavy-handed and I love it. The shot is left on screen for several seconds and plays a creepy, out of tune version of the lullaby we’ve grown accustomed to hearing. It’s perhaps so on the nose that I often cringe at this shot during my rewatches of the film.
And yet, it is also so perfectly in step with the tone of the movie (which perfectly blends horror tropes with psychological disturbances) that I can’t help but feel sad at the notion of lifting it out. We see clearly now (perhaps too clearly) that Nina’s innocence is lost, her relationship with her mother irreparably damaged, and that perhaps in the process, she herself is broken forever. Expertly crafted, ridiculously overt, I tip my hat to you Mr. Aronofsky.
FINAL RANKING: 4/5 Swans
Nina in her first and final performance as “The Swan Queen.”
2.) FEATHERS & OTHER AVIAN ACCOUTREMENT AS MADNESS
Quick sidebar: one of my all time favorite running gags from 30 Rock pertains to Emily Mortimer’s character Phoebe, Alec Baldwin/Jack Donaghy’s significantly younger fiancée and art dealer. She explains early on to Baldwin that she doesn’t like to shake hands as she has “Avian Bone Syndrome,” meaning her bones are hollow like a bird’s, and physical contact for her is often painful as a result. I would like to offer up Nina Sayers as another sufferer of Avian Bone Syndrome, and will be organizing a charity 5k this November to raise awareness for this devastating disease.
As Nina descends into madness, and her delusions push beyond that of her maligned duplicates, we begin to see visions which suggest that Nina herself may be transforming into a physical manifestation of The Black Swan. She begins to scratch at herself (part of her crippling addiction to self-harm) and the rash marks left behind often give way to black feathers and bumps.
Her bones begin to contort later in the film to resemble the legs of a swan, and in her climactic performance as the Swan Queen, Nina imagines herself to have grown black wings, representing both her sudden ascent into ballet stardom and full descent into insanity. Lily even sports a prominent and all-encompassing back tattoo of black wings spread across her shoulder blades, offering up additional contrast to Nina’s White Swan.
In a particularly harrowing scene, Nina overtly pulls a small black feather out of her shoulder blade and holds it up to herself in the mirror in shock and awe. Here, the tropes of body horror align so perfectly with the film’s themes on metamorphosis and obsession that it’s impossible to deny the moment’s relevance. And yet, it is objectively silly and powerful simultaneously. It is the essence of Black Swan’s tone contained in one scene.
I love to imagine Darren Aronofsky coaching Portman through this sequence, explaining that she needs to imagine that she’s plucked a feather from her own shoulder, pass out, and then proceed to go into work the next day as if nothing’s wrong. It’s unbelievably on the nose, and yet I find myself in awe every time Nina comes to dance the Black Swan’s coda and slowly sprouts wings throughout her performance, leaving her half-human, half-swan. Absolutely unhinged, ridiculously over-the-top, and yet genius.
FINAL RANKING: 4.5/5 Swans
Nina dances the prologue from “Swan Lake.”
1.) BLACK & WHITE AS...WELL, THE BLACK & WHITE SWANS
In first place, with a photo-finish and a perfect score (5/5 Swans), we have not so much a metaphor, but more of a blatant insult to my intelligence. In most scenes with Nina, she is dressed in white, or off-white. The director of the ballet himself says towards the beginning of the film that Nina, being so innocent and naive, would be ideal casting for the White Swan. Nina’s bedroom is pink and white, and when she is in conversation with any antagonist of hers, whether it be Lily, her mother, or the ousted ballerina Beth (whose position as principal dancer Nina usurped), the antagonist in question is often dressed contrastingly in black.
Furthermore, in both the ballet director’s office and apartment (which we get brief glimpses into), much of the decor and furniture is a stark mix of black and white. When Lily offers Nina a top to change into while out for dinner, the top Nina changes into is a black, lacy garment that covers her off-white undershirt. She literally covers up the white with the black, further signaling her transformation from innocence to malice.
Everywhere in the film, the colors black and white are at war with each other. It’s so overt, that the film even underscores (overscores?) this contrast with a climactic fight scene in which Nina does battle with her Black Swan duplicate, unsubtly dressed in a black tutu that juxtaposes Nina’s white one. The resulting confrontation literally has black and white fighting each other physically in the same way the costume and production design implies metaphorically throughout the film’s first and second acts.
This metaphor not only highlights the contrasts between Nina and her inner psyche, but also the contrast between her and Lily, the inner madness that drives a wedge between her and her mother, and, of course, her avian transformation. For those of you keeping score at home, those are all the previous metaphors we’ve discussed wrapped up into one.
“Black-and-White” is the Great Metaphor, the Metaphor to End All Metaphors, if you will. In fact, Black Swan relies on this metaphor so heavily that the film essentially doesn’t work without it.
And yet, it is also the perfect representation of a film that deftly mixes cinematic artistry with over-the-top camp in a way almost no other film does It is the definitive element of the film writ large, and I truly wish more films would approach symbolism with the same broad brush strokes Black Swan does.
If you go back in time, say In the time of Shakespeare, elements of melodrama, the occult, and Grecian Tragedy all played out on the same stage, whereas nowadays, tastes tend to favor the realistic, or the grounded. And, while there is merit in realism, I sometimes yearn for more films that indulge themselves in the type of delightfully over-the-top narrative Black Swan tells so well. And even while the film indulges in such tastes, is still manages to maintain a commitment to truly incredible storytelling, breathtaking performances, and a unique taste for camp and melodrama that remains unrivaled to this day.
Black Swan is available to stream on Hulu.