Editorials
Repression and Duality of the Self: The Horrors of ‘Black Swan’ [Unveiling The Mind]
Welcome to Unveiling The Mind. This bi-monthly column explores psychological horror and representations of mental illness within the genre.
Coming into my first viewing of Black Swan in 2010, I had no idea what I was about to see. At the time, I knew little of Darren Aronofsky‘s work. I had seen Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, and while I found myself intrigued with the latter, I wasn’t all that blown away by the former. But Black Swan grabbed my attention.
Much of my taste in horror up until that point involved slashers, monsters, ghosts, and demons; I had seen psychological horror, but my passion for the subgenre had not kicked off yet. It’s fair to say that Black Swan played a big role in guiding me towards that direction, for I was intrigued by the spiraling mental descent of Natalie Portman’s character Nina.
For Black Swan’s 10th anniversary, I present an analysis of Nina’s horrifying journey – how the film establishes her character and the narrative techniques it uses to explore her mind state.
Please note this article will contain spoilers.
A brief synopsis of the film: Nina is a young ballet dancer in an upscale New York City ballet company. At the beginning of the company’s season, it is announced by Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the company’s artistic director, that he will be putting on a new rendition of the iconic Swan Lake – where a single female lead will play both the White and Black Swan. One thing leads to another and Nina gets the part, but though being in the spotlight has its perks, she soon comes to discover that the pressure of such a role comes with more struggle than she could have ever imagined.
The core horror of Black Swan comes from that of Nina’s deteriorating mental state; from the pressures put on her by her mother, Thomas, and the role, she strives to let go of the control that weighs her down. Aronofsky goes about displaying Nina’s psyche through scenes of rigorous obsession and hallucinations she endures. Each hardship reflects the struggle she faces to not only master such a grand role, but to also embrace her being and let go of control.
From the start, Nina is framed in an innocent light. Her room is pink with stuffed animals and she has a somewhat child-like relationship with her mother (Barbara Hershey). She doesn’t speak up much and primarily represses strong emotion when it comes to conflict. She is also a tad naïve, which further plays into her innocence. When she goes to initially talk to Thomas for the role of Swan Queen, she puts on nice lipstick and says how she has learned the part. Yet, as she’s talking, Thomas – and the audience for that matter – notice how timid she is.
There’s never an explanation as to why Nina is this way; that said, one may be able to connect the dots when it comes to scenes between her and her mother. The viewer learns that Nina’s mother was once a dancer too, but when she became pregnant with Nina, she gave up her career. In each scene where the two are together, the mother is always domineering. She is either picking Nina’s life apart or overly coddling her. Early in the film the audience is shown a small rash on Nina’s back; this has to do with a nervous tick she has developed where she scratches herself. When the mother finds that the rash has gotten worse, she strips Nina down to her underwear and pulls her into the bathroom to cut her nails. With this level of aggressive parenting, one could understand why Nina has such a tense and shy personality.
But Nina is not entirely pure of heart. Upon walking into the dressing room of the company’s lead star, she pickpockets one of her lipsticks (the one she wears for Thomas). Behind all the sweetness and charm, there is something else there.
This character setup is the foundation for which Aronofsky and the screenwriters use to bombard Nina with conflict. Upon winning the Swan Queen role, her craft and focus are continuously questioned and challenged. Thomas makes a comment about how her movements are too controlled – and as the Black Swan – she needs to move more freely. He makes remarks about the Black Swan being someone who can exude sensuality. Throughout the film, Nina strives to continuously push herself and tap into the Black Swan, yet each effort is short of reaching the evocative spirit of the character.
Now while much of this may come off as a tortured artist sort of narrative, that isn’t what the film is going for. That theme is certainly present, as well as the struggles that young female performers may face when working in entertainment. But a big key theme in Black Swan is repression – a concept the film explores through Nina’s relationships and practice of the Black Swan dance. For as she continues to practice the role, she begins to endure nightmarish hallucinations.
Some inspiration for the film comes in the form of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Double, a narrative that involves a man discovering he has a doppelgänger. In a manner, one could view Swan Lake as a story that involves doubles – given the dynamic between the White and Black Swan counterparts. The doppelgänger concept is one of Black Swan’s biggest story elements.
Through her practice to become the Black Swan, Nina begins to slowly tap into her repressed feelings. The hallucinations she sees of herself – whether dressed in black or acting in some menacing factor – are meant to represent the urges she keeps buried. The desire to be more carefree. A quality she wants to live by but doesn’t express out of fear of losing control. As she puts it to Thomas at one point, she wants to be perfect. So for as much as she wants to be perfect, there is also an itch to let go of that perfection – a clash of desires that does not fare too well for her.
Over time not only does Nina’s rash on her back worsen, but she also starts imagining gruesome wounds. One scene shows her pulling at her finger, as if there is some sort of pain taking place. When she’s in the bathroom later, she sees the finger is somewhat damaged; upon pulling at the skin around the nail, she tears a long strip of flesh from the nail down to her hand. But the wound is not real.
The Nina duplicates serve to taunt her, hinting at something darker that exists within. They work to get under her skin by either appearing in unsettling ways or being part of some lurid fantasy – one example being when Nina comes across a duplicate stripping off her clothes and readying herself to have sex with Thomas. In these moments, Nina panics, running away to catch her breath and find some ground in the real world. There are more violent hallucinations that overtake her as well, with one involving a scene where she watches a former dancer stab herself, for Nina to then run out of the room and find she’s holding a bloody weapon.
As the pressure surrounding the performance builds up, Nina’s grasp on reality weakens. However, the panic shifts into a whole new gear once Lilly (Mila Kunis) becomes a greater presence in her life.
Lilly is a foil to Nina. Unlike Nina, Lilly is more outspoken, takes more of the lead in her social interactions, and has a chill, not give a shit attitude. She gives off a flirtatious vibe that contrasts with Nina’s awkwardness with other men. Lilly is kept at a distance at first; the camera will slip into brief moments of her talking to someone or dancing, but doesn’t give too much attention outside of some glances Nina sends her way.
Eventually the two do connect and Lilly invites Nina out. The two share drinks, Nina does some drugs, and they go dancing. The evening ends with the two returning to Nina’s to make out and Lilly goes down on her (all before Nina sees Lilly transform into another one of her duplicates). It is revealed shortly after that scene that Nina and Lilly did not make out or do anything sexual. Nina then begins to grow suspicious of Lilly, believing that she may be trying to steal the role of Swan Queen. Seeing Lilly practicing for the role with Thomas intensifies her anxieties.
Towards the end of the film, as Nina has become more aggressive with her mother, she undergoes a brief physical transformation, her legs inverting into the shape of swan legs. This transformation is in-line with another hallucination that Nina has been experiencing throughout the film – that of becoming a swan. The rash on her back begins to develop a swan-like flesh around it; overtime, this flesh spreads to other parts of her body. She even finds a small black feather sprouting out of her. These moments of transformation provide hints of what is to come in the film’s final act.
For all the struggle that Nina goes through, the conclusion to Black Swan is somewhat uplifting(?). Though she has been under so much mental and emotional torment, Nina comes to embrace her whole being, her psychological journey coming to a marvelous, heartbreaking finish.
As Nina heads to the company for the opening of Swan Lake, determined to do her best, her head is not in the most stable place. She takes to the stage as the White Swan, giving an excellent performance until, in her state of nervousness, her fellow dancer drops her during the act. She recovers and finishes the segment, but the mistake flushes her with embarrassment. She returns to her dressing room, knowing that the Black Swan portion of the show is about to start, and finds Lilly in her chair. The two fight and Nina stabs her with a shard of glass. This is the final step needed for Nina’s transformation to complete.
Entering the stage as the Black Swan, she gives a dazzling performance. As she dances, her body undergoes a massive transformation; her black dress morphs into a body of black feathers, her arms growing into giant wings. As her dance concludes, the room stands up and roars in applause. She has mastered the Black Swan.
Nina returns to her room and shuts the door, panicking as to what to do about Lilly. Then there’s a knock at the door – and it’s Lilly. Nina checks the bathroom where she thought she left Lilly’s body to find nothing. Upon looking at the broken mirror near her, she realizes that the person she stabbed is herself. And in poetic irony, she takes to the stage for her final part where her character dies. As she stands atop a structure, looking down to the stage and into the crowd, she jumps and embraces the moment. She lies down as the room explodes again with applause. Thomas and all the dancers run over to congratulate her, but then they notice she is gushing blood. As the screen fades to white, the crowd still applauding and those around Nina frantic, she says that the performance was perfect.
From the moment the viewer meets Nina, they know her goal is to be the Swan Queen and give a solid performance – and damn is she astounding. There’s much to find in Black Swan’s conclusion that is tragic; the hell this young woman endured, from the pressures of the role to the people around her who continued to burden her. But against all the odds, she pushes through and achieves her dream. That said, even in her success, I feel Black Swan is more of a grim experience. Nina’s repression of herself is brutal to witness at times. Her desperation to be perfect and to excel at her craft are admirable, but they are also drives that end up devastating her psyche.
Black Swan was one of the first films I ever saw wherein, while creepy visuals were present, the true horror was that of the character’s mind. The story has a consistent rhythm of anxiety; as Nina pushes herself and strives to keep everything together, the viewer is present in worrying for her. Portman’s acting is superb throughout, being a key factor in selling Nina’s declining mental state (as well as providing some chilling moments). In its exploration of duality and repression, Black Swan stands a decade later as a thrilling work of psychological horror.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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