Welcome to Fear Coded, a podcast where we talk about media from the horror genre and take a queer reading of a single book, video game, film, podcast, or TV show to explore just how queer horror can be.

And in this episode, we're dealing with doppelgangers, perfectionism, and mommy issues as we dance away into 2010's Black Swan.

I'm David, I'm Merrily, and I'm Tyler.

And we want to thank all the bats in our belfry for being part of our amazing community by supporting our fear coded Patreon.

Thank you to Will, Knight of Cups, Doug, Jacob, Alyssa, Blake, Pucka, Shrog, Tyler, Derek, Maureen and John.

Now before we start pulling out our hangnails I want to check in with my Co host to see how things are going for them in a landscape of horrors that our real world has to offer.

What is making all scared or what is making you feel prepared?

Gain It is the new year and therefore I am contractually obligated to be.

Prepared.

OK, OK, OK.

This was in your contract.

I'm glad that you you noted.

That it's in the writer.

I read through everything, the TOS and all that.

Sure.

Yeah, I'm feeling like pretty good, I think.

2026.

So I have this crazy, you know, magical thinking that even years are usually like the more struggle, bless the years, and then the odd years are the easier years.

Well, 2025, we did a big move.

We had to deal with the financial repercussions of that and also just kind of adapt to a lot of brand new things.

We had new seasons.

We had an actual winter snow before Thanksgiving, things I had never experienced before.

But now I feel more comfortable.

I feel like I am solidly in a Midwestern state of mind.

And I think 2026, I think it's going to be a good one.

I'm feeling pretty good.

I've got some goals in mind.

I'm also going to be start putting up barriers and start saying no to things to protect my mental health and love it.

And I think because I'm going to have like a little bit more structure and, and more willingness to say no, I'm going to feel more creatively energized because I noticed that like I, I only have so many spoons in the drawer.

And when those spoons run out, I, I truly am done.

But now I think, let me, let me parcel, let me parse the spoons out.

Let's not let's not dump the whole drawer out at the same time for the same event.

Let's give a spoon here, a spoon there, but not necessarily have to empty out the drawer every time.

And so I'm feeling like creatively energized.

I'm ready to go with my tabletop games.

I've got my Delta Green impossible Landscapes game in mind.

I'm, I've given myself permission to change things about it and make it my own and make it, you know, more skewed towards my players and playing other games that I'm in.

And, and then also just start writing again.

I haven't written in such a long time.

And I feel like, OK, I'm going to, I'm going to give it a shot.

Even if it's just tiny little bits, even if it's just like a paragraph here or there, I think I'm ready to do it.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So much right?

So much Tyler.

It's going to feel good.

There's so much to feel good about.

That's what I'm hoping for.

I've I've always been my worst critic, but I'm giving myself permission to think that I suck and then I'm illiterate but keep going.

Yeah, OK, fine.

That's.

Awesome, but also, but also feel like doing it is like the act of creating is is the process and so I I enjoy that process and so I need to just embrace that there are peaks and valleys and that's that's life, baby.

That's life, you.

Just got to you just got to keep putting it out there.

Yeah, every day put something out there.

Yeah.

Save me active creation.

Save me.

Yeah, especially this quagmire of AI crap.

You know if an AI is do this shit then I'm I'm better than an AI.

Yeah, you are.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

You're.

If you chose to write by way of pooping on a piece of paper, it would be better than most of the slop that is created by these so-called generative AI systems.

So Tyler, I say poop on that paper.

I will poop on that paper.

I'm actually just reading a book where someone did poop on a piece of paper and wow, tried to use it to like, create a spell.

It's from a book called The Devils by Joe Abercrombie.

Really good stuff.

Really good.

Did the spell work?

No question.

No, it did not.

Yeah, no, it poop.

Well, it it worked in in a way that was unanticipated.

I'll just say that.

Poop.

Poop magic is very chaotic.

You never, you never know what you're going to get.

Yeah, but you know what else is chaotic?

The mind of our dear, beloved podcast, Dad, David.

David, are you feeling prepared or scared today?

You know, I also feel a little contractually obligated to come in.

I'm prepared, but I will say that I am not just prepared, I am declared because I have for the beginning of 2026 a declaration.

OK.

I declare that 2026 is the year of our independence.

It's the year of our freedom.

And what are we free from, Marilee?

What are we free from, Tyler?

What are we free from?

Listener, 2026 is the year that we are free of cringe.

Yes, Just get rid of it.

Just get rid of cringe.

Just get rid of it.

Let it go.

Let it go.

Just let it.

It doesn't exist.

It's not real.

You're making it up.

It's being made-up all around you.

The people who think it, they don't matter.

They're dumb.

They're probably children.

Don't worry about them.

Just let them go.

Be free of cringe.

Because 2026 is our year to be us, to be stupid, to be funny, to be hilarious, to be moronic.

Just be you and let go.

Let go of the cringe that is holding you back from yourself.

I.

Love very, very thematic for today's episode, as we will soon discover.

Yes.

Yeah, that was not intentional.

That's that's really great, David.

I think that's like a good mindset that we've always tried to foster.

But I think like, yes, this is the year where we're really going to be adamant about it.

I really love that.

And I think that pairs well with my idea.

Like I want to just, I just want to create, I want to write.

I don't care if it's good or bad.

If I think it sucks, Oh well, at least I'm doing it.

And, and I think that's that's OK.

That's that's the cringe free life baby.

Cringe free life.

Cringe free life.

2026 No cringe here.

No yes.

CFL, 2026 CFL.

That's what we're fucking doing.

Hashtag that in the world, people.

We're gonna make those.

Livestrong bracelets.

It's gonna be like such a thing.

Yes, I will.

I will bring back a LIVESTRONG.

Talk about the cringe.

Yeah, yeah, we're living cringe tree.

Cringe tree.

2010 was on the mind this week for sure.

Let me tell you, yeah, today's topic was pretty mired in 2010, but let's, let's go.

Let's go forward 16 years and merrily, Yeah, I like to know today, on this day, not in 2010, but this day, are you feeling scared or prepared?

You know, I know I hear all of your guys's contractually obligated things.

I need to reread my contract because I didn't see that in there.

No, merrily, merrily.

It's a scared in yours.

It like you're this one.

This is is a scared on yours is that.

Well, I definitely doing the wrong thing then, because I was going to say that I'm.

Prepared.

No, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Let me let me look.

Yes with my magnifying, No, it does say you have to be prepared today.

Prepared.

Right this this year's divisible by 70.

Three.

I forgot, fool.

Who wrote these contracts?

Derek and Doug, we have to have words with you.

Yeah, I just, I, and this is literally true.

You know how I have an undercut for heat reasons, right?

It had been so long.

I literally yesterday got my hair trimmed and I feel like a new person.

I'm, I'm, I'm shorn.

I'm shaved and prepared.

I feel so I forgot how how how uncomfortable having that hair growing out always makes me every time until it gets cut off and then I'm like oh I feel like 50% more happy about being alive at all times.

This is fantastic.

Yes, yes, yes.

You know what the back of the hair, The back of the head hair is the cringe of the hair.

Yeah, and I'm free of it.

I'm free of it.

Free of it.

Free of it.

You're going to be free of it every month, barely.

We're not going to wait so long.

No, I, I, I swear to God I'm gonna set up a reoccurring event like every three weeks to make sure somebody's shaving the back of my head like this is untenable.

I can't let this stand for that long again.

Understandably, yeah, make it happen.

Yeah, it's just holidays and.

The holiday, I mean.

Listen merrily.

I know you baked a lot.

I know it was a good time, but like we, we don't do things for ourselves and we're doing so many things for other people.

And I'm glad that in 2026, the year of Merrily you said I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get my utter cut done.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's I, I feel so good.

I feel so free.

I, I do need to reread that contract because again, genuinely, I, I wasn't prepared to know all those details.

So I was like.

They're really complicated, actually very, very thick.

I, I, I you know this is like terms of condition I.

It's also like tells.

The bit about like bat handling, I guess I missed some of the fine.

Print.

It's also like not on standard A4 paper, like it's an actual like parchment that you have to roll and the fact that it's multiple pages of parchment too.

It's like, wow, they really, we were making some vellum here.

Yeah, that's, that's wild Tyler, because mine's on legal paper, but it's printed landscape.

Oh, horrible, horrible, horrible.

Yeah, my contract was in a bunch of like origami that I had to unfold and then sign.

Wow Oh my God.

Heavy Rain confirmed.

Topic to cover on 20/20.

Six No, mine was sealed with like a, with like a wax seal and I had to have like some like an incense burner going and they were chanting and it, it, it was like an ambiently lit room when I had to sign.

A wax seal that supernatural episode with Paris Hilton confirmed for 2026.

No, just giving away the whole schedule here, Tyler.

Oh goodness.

Wow.

Well, listeners, we're, we're learning all sorts of of new things today, all of us.

All of us are.

None of that's actually coming on the schedule.

Who who knows?

Maybe it will.

Maybe, maybe we're putting it out there.

But today we are talking about the film Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky with a screenplay by Mark Hyman, Andres Hynes, who is also credited with the story, and John McLaughlin.

Aronofsky discussed the the journey of this film originated with stories about his sister, about her experiences in ballet, as well as his desire to make a movie about Off Broadway actors competing with one another.

The film eventually transformed into the one that we are discussing today.

Aronofsky frequently focuses on the body of the film's main character, Nina Sayers.

At the time, Black Swan was praised for its gripping, horrific portrayal of the physical toll that ballerinas go through to create their art.

Nina, a young woman grappling with a mental illness, also experiences hallucinations involving her body, which we will discuss in our themes shortly.

Black Swan was a critical success upon release, with special focus on Natalie Portman's performance as Nina.

Portman won multiple awards, including the Oscar for Best Actress.

The 15th anniversary of the film was this past year, which featured special IMAX screenings, leading to renewed interest in attention in this movie.

What's everybody's experiences with Black Swan?

Y'all, this has been on my watch list for I don't know for since I, since I've had letterbox, this has been just sitting there and I think available to me, but I was never, you know, way back in the day, a long, long, long time ago, Netflix used to send you DVDs in the mail and there were two DVDs that just sat on the top of my DVD player for the longest time and I'd ever watched.

Black Swan was one of them, and the other one was thank You for Smoking with Aaron Eckhart.

I I to this day I've still never seen Thank You for smoking, which I think I would probably enjoy very much.

Honestly, I think you would, yeah.

Well, I just, I was never in the mood.

I was always in the mood for Season Angel 4 DVDs, which kept coming, but I was never in the mood for these two because I was like, I don't know, the guy who directed for a dream.

I'm not sure I want to put this in.

How strong is my mental health today?

That's so real.

Yeah, that's.

Very true.

It was never strong enough.

So I think I eventually, I know that I eventually just sent both of them back so I could get more Angel Season 4 DVD's.

But you know, now I have seen it and I am much happier on this side of of the fence.

Marilee, what about you?

Had you seen this one before?

Yeah, no, very similarly, I I knew this was one of those movies that I should watch.

Like everybody told me it was going to be really good and like, Natalie Portman is amazing, yadda yadda yadda.

It weirdly felt like homework.

So I never ended up doing it.

So I never seen it before this this showing.

I totally feel what you mean about like some movies feel like homework.

Like I like, I love this movie.

Like there was this when I first saw this movie.

There was this big marketing push with the the trailers.

And there's this very iconic poster featuring Nina and her Black Swan face makeup staring directly into your soul.

I, I saw it in the movie theater.

And then I've talked about this before.

It was the last movie I bought from Blockbuster during their going out of business sale.

But even since then, like I've, I've had opportunities to watch Black Swan and I'm like, no, I don't know if I really feel like doing it because it feels like homework.

Like my brain is on when I watch Black Swan.

I am thinking things.

I'm trying to analyze things because it's a movie that's asking you to do that.

It's not a very passive viewing movie.

And I, I really love that, but it's, it still felt like homework.

So, you know, I, it's, it's like I love it.

But I do totally see where you were coming from back then.

Marilee, do you, how do you feel about it now?

I think it's a really outstanding movie.

It does kind of feel a little bit more like The Lighthouse for me in that it is a technical marvel.

Like the all of the performances are incredible.

I do not feel passionately about it.

OK, that's fair.

I had a great time.

I will.

I've now seen it twice.

I will probably never watch it again.

I mean, is, is kind of where I'm at, but maybe I don't know.

You know, I said that about recruiting for a dream.

And I've now seen that like a half dozen times, which does feel like saying those words on a podcast should make somebody come and check on me in my home.

Like someone should knock.

Someone should be knocking on my door right now.

Well, you were basically a social worker, so.

That's right, that's right, that's right, that's right.

I was a nerd to a certain amount of trauma that could be caught on film.

But I will say still, Ellen Burstein in that is like just some of the most heart heart wrenching shit that's ever happened.

Yeah, no, I I still have not seen Requiem for a Dream for that reason.

I, I, it's a feel bad movie and I don't know if I'm ever like in a safe space to feel bad.

Yeah, yeah.

Like the world feels bad enough.

I don't know why people want media that makes them feel bad.

This is not what I watch.

Movies for exactly.

Wow.

OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK.

It's to me on having already seen Requiem and then seeing this, I could sort of see a little bit of Aronofsky's like change and growth and trying to do some different things.

I've seen some other films of his as well.

I, when I actually looked through his filmography, I was a little surprised at how many of these titles I have gotten to because I am like notably not really the kind of person who watches stuff like this.

And then I had seen a lot of the work that he'd done.

So it also felt like watching Black Swan was important for like, catching up on this.

That's fair.

Yeah.

I think, you know, I, I wouldn't be surprised if this does end up a movie that I, I gravitate more towards because it is really incredible, but also it just what a film, I guess.

What a film, what a film.

I think that's, I think this movie is also interesting from like a historic perspective because I think so in 2010, you know, we were really coming off of this idea that like torture porn was like the big thing in horror movies.

Every other movie was someone's dying graphically.

Paris Hilton got turned into a wax model in the House of Wax and and there's like a billion saws by this point.

I think one of the reasons why this movie had such an impact at the time it came out was that it became, it was like the first drop in the bucket of what became known as elevated horror to like in the 20 tens.

And I think it kind of signaled like, okay, horror can not just be like graphic body horror, blood and guts kind of that's that's like the main draw.

But instead it could be more of like a thinking thing.

And it can still be horrifying at the same time because there is quite a lot of body horror in this movie.

But it's not necessarily like, you know, Nina Sayers is not being put into a saw trap from Jigsaw.

Really.

Her brain is kind of the the saw trap, but I, I is this.

A secret Saw film, David thought it's.

Not it's not I, I declare no on that one.

You are our expert.

Somehow have drawn have drawn that that distinction.

No, I think I think Tyler's right, though.

I think this is sort of has was a 24 wasn't around as a studio yet right.

This is that's.

No, not really.

I guess really recent actually, that's kind of cool to think about this being some of the first steps forward.

Because we did have heavy psychological horror in the 70s and then sort of gave way into this slasher genre in the 80s and 90s and then sort of struggled to figure out what it was.

Did a lot of meta commentary, then got into the sort of high level gore effects, one that we commonly think of as torture porn.

And then like being like big titles like hostile actually were torture porn.

And then things like Saw, which were just, you know, look at the saw.

I am Carrie Ellis.

As you wish.

I'm going to cut my head leg off Spoiler spoiler alert for SAW.

Well, people should have read the 12 days of SAW miss on on our listening.

So, yeah.

And then I, I think that you're right.

I think this sort of takes us into like thinking man's horror again with this.

This feels a lot more like the scares of The Exorcist than it has of anything else that we've really covered.

Recently, yes, I would agree with that.

Yeah.

So let's go ahead and jump into our themes for today's episode because we got some big ones here.

So our first one, big themes, big themes.

So our first one is for all the Sonic fans out there.

I am the Shadow, the true Swan.

Is that a Sonic thing?

I truly don't know.

Shadow the hedgehog says it.

I am the shadow, the true self.

I'm afraid that my Sonic lore is quite minimal.

This is the only piece of Sonic.

This is the only piece of Sonic lore that I know.

I demand we cover a Sonic title this year.

Maybe maybe we could put that in our next.

Hear me out.

So.

Amish come on the podcast and talk about Sonic.

Not Mario.

Sonic.

No, not Mario.

So again, I am the shadow of the true Swan.

So taking inspiration from the works of Dostoevsky and Polanski, Aronofsky crafted a film with a heavy focus on doppel gainers.

Throughout the film Nina spies her doppel gainer in Strangers on the Street, reflections in Mirrors and Windows and eventually in her rivals slash crush, the free spirited Lily.

Nina tries to achieve perfection as both the white and black Swans, but she cannot get in touch with the shadow part of her.

Herself, the doppelganger's materialize as the suppressed part of herself tries to break out, sometimes literally, as she transforms into a Black Swan slash human hybrid.

Simon McDermott from Film Obsessive argues that this is a manifestation of Carl Jung's theory of the shadow aspect, the unknown part of our psyche free of identity.

McDermott says that when suppressed, the stronger we unconsciously project these aspects and they bring about a situation characteristic of their powers.

Basically, the more Nina suppresses the Black Swan side of herself, the more it materializes in hallucinations.

When she finally gives up control over it, she reaches perfection at the cost of her life.

So David, I know you kind of have more of like the psychological theoretical background here.

What is your kind of take on on Jung and how it could relate to the?

Swan a lot of, I mean, a lot of unions, especially those who are also like Freudian unions, will look at art as the ways in which we as humans describe our human contexts, including sort of this shadow, the shadow part of ourselves or shadow aspect.

I think that because of Aronofsky's decisions in the film, both from a script perspective and from a camera direction perspective, this this is a lot more than just looking at some union concepts and being like, Oh yes, there's the dark part of me and here's the light part of me.

Because it truly is doing something that I think horror as a genre does better than anything else.

And that is to sort of fuck with your expectations.

Because at at multiple points of time in this movie, The concept of reality becomes a little bit hard to grasp, especially as Nina continues to go through sort of the psychological torment of the pressure of this role.

And I think the character that we are meant to ascribe is a little bit of a villain, is the only one doing anything heroic for Nina, and that is her mother.

And it is only through her actions to try to bar Nina from this continued descent.

But we we don't quite get there.

And that's, that's then how the film ends.

So I do think from like a, a psychological art analysis.

Yeah, this, this, there's unionism here.

There's some fruit and dream bullshit in this as well.

There's a little bit more about concept of self, but it's also internal.

And we're we're we're interacting with a person who's having sort of a dissociative episode or a series of dissociative episodes.

And that makes it harder to apply some of these high level, top of the Maslow pyramid psychological analysis, because we're really talking about somebody who's in a in a moment of crisis, which is is fun for us as an audience, less fun for Nina as a character.

Yeah, I, I really love that read on it.

I think that, you know, there's such an interesting interplay of lights and darks in this movie.

And it's possible to track Nina's progress towards accepting this darker aspect of herself for trying to identify who is the the source of the doppelganger.

You know, Nina's costume goes from like, very, like whites and light Grays and soft pinks to more darker Grays and then eventually black.

And I think that's a very, like, interesting visual metaphor for what's going on.

But I think also it's interesting too, that Erica, Nina's mother, she herself is always wearing dark colors, and she's also an emotionally distressed figure.

So I think that's an interesting kind of complication towards what's happening there, because I think it's an interesting idea to say that Erica's mother or Erica is kind of behaving in the heroic role because she is also a very deeply troubled person who is abusive towards Nina.

And so the fact that she is kind of both, I think is also an interesting dichotomy of the white swan, Black Swan concept.

And the fact also that Erica used to be a ballet dancer and then gave up that life to take care of Nina, I think is also an interesting layer on top of that, too.

And then Marilee, what did you think about like, like, how does that darkness and that division of identity play into Dina's queerness?

Yeah, cuz so, so it's been a couple years, so you may probably don't remember this, but in our very first episode or introduction, I talked a lot about how I felt like queer theory really finds a home in horror specifically because as something that people have shunned traditionally, you can find queerness in the darker places because that's where people aren't looking.

And so you can explore there.

And I quoted a really excellent episode of Black Sails for this concept.

And I, you can find that here again, I think like the way that she's repressing that inner darkness.

If you replace like all things with Kingdom Hearts, if you replace darkness with queer, then you get a really different reading and they're talking about something else entirely.

And like here, it's this, it's the same thing where she's repressing this part of herself that she is uncomfortable with.

And yeah, I'm just saying it's the same movie if you just replace darkness with queerness in a lot of ways.

I, I would agree with that totally.

Like I think that the, the queerness is also something that Nina represses because it's not part of like her, her journey towards perfection.

It's not what she perceives as being perfect.

And I think it also plays into she's not just queer for, for Lily and but she's also like trying to find love for herself.

And I think that's a very clear thing to do, too.

And then of course, our next theme has to do with that as well, because it's about Nina's body.

This one is called Goosebumps.

So Nina's body is a major focal point of the movie, and much of the movie's horror derives from what's happening to her physically.

Nina experiences scratches on her shoulder blades, hand nails, goosebumps and feathers sprouting from her body, and even webbed toes.

The movie can get downright grotesque, but this is a deliberate act to demonstrate the horrors that Nina is experiencing.

She is obsessed with her, she is obsessed with perfection, and her body is falling apart in her mission.

This extends to our previous theme of doppelgamers.

The more she suppresses the shadow self, the more her body retaliates.

Yes, I loved all of this.

I I think this is incredible.

I was very happy about all the body horror in this.

This is this Black Swan walked so the substance could run like all of the themes that we talked about in the substance are true here.

All of the idea of perfectionism and chasing it at the toll of your body.

It's all of those seeds are being planted right here with this story.

And I love it.

And I love how the darkness is then made manifest in all of these grotesque hallucinations that Nina ends up having that we are then treated to in a very Aronofsky.

I will force you to look at the grotesque and I do very much appreciate that because it is awesome.

Like the hangnail thing in particular is one of my favorite things that's been caught on film.

I love it.

I watched that over and over and over again.

It's great.

It's it's the worst.

I will think about it every time I pull a hanging nail from now until the end of my time.

Yeah, David came from firm when I when I saw this movie in the movie theaters in I think must have been January of 2011.

Yeah, never stopped thinking about it since then.

Great, Perfect.

I've been happy.

That makes me so happy.

I love you.

Because why would why would it stop?

Why would it?

Why does it stop?

It stops naturally.

And now I'm going to think it'll never stop.

It'll just keep going.

What if it just kept going?

Painful.

Horrible, horrible.

Horrible things.

Yes, yes, yes.

Awful.

All of these things are bad.

Very bad.

I don't like them.

But then the thing that kept striking me about this movie in particular is like, I couldn't help noticing and seeing all of the other more normalized body horrors that this movie also has.

Like 2010 was a wild time in body politics.

And like, you can see it here in this film.

Like, I felt like I was I was a kid again.

And like, I've never been skinny.

I'm been fat my whole life.

Boy, what a rough time to be a teenage girl.

I swear to fucking God I'm like, that was so real.

A ballerina especially.

I mean, Portman and Kunis have spoken very openly about this.

I I think Portman lost 9 kilos.

That's almost 20 lbs.

And she looks that she looks so small and fragile and sunken down and like the movie opens with her cooing about a grapefruit, like looking how pretty and pink and she has just I think is it like 1/2 a grapefruit and like a some I don't cottage.

I think it was like a tall up of egg white it looked like.

I thought I read it as a half a boiled egg.

That's hard, yeah.

And that's not enough food, especially for a working athlete like a ballerina.

And just like I could smell anorexia in that dancing room with all of the girls.

It was just really like the whole thing.

It was a lot.

And like, those body horrors are still around and kicking and it sucks.

Yeah, it's it's really, I think that I said this at the beginning.

I think that's one of the reasons why the movie was so gripping when it first came out was that this was during a time when age 2010 was when people were actually getting more comfortable with talking about like, like our beauty standards are really fucked up and what are we going to do about it?

But at the same time, they're reinforcing those body standards everywhere you go.

And so this movie kind of enters that conversation and shows like these ballerinas, they're putting their bodies through through hell.

You know, there's we see Natalie, we see Nina getting like a massage done like physical therapy done on her body.

She gets measured and the costumer says that, you know, she lost weight again and she's already so thin.

And then Mila Kunis in an interview like recently talked about how she was like tricky broth to lose weight.

And she said, I know we're not supposed to talk about that, but I was doing these things to make sure that I was the size that the movie wanted me to be.

And it's that's, you know, really awful.

And that's part of the body horror of it all.

And I think that's another part of the movie that works as being so effectively horror is that not only is it these really larger than life things like sprouting feathers from from your body, but also just seeing the toll that we put on women's bodies and our bodies in general to try and achieve beauty standards.

It's just kind of showing the mirror to society and saying like, oh, like, look at this thing that we do to ourselves willingly.

Isn't that so awful?

But we are also guilty of doing the same thing.

And I think that's very interesting take on this film as well.

And that is, again, kind of like Aronofsky's thing.

He wants you to confront that part of existence in a way that's really uncomfortable.

Requiems got a lot of it.

The Whale had a lot of it.

Black Swans got a lot of it.

And IA, lot of the scenes which I am calling attention to right now are criticized for like what they portray.

But my my guys got a style and it is to confront you with what a human body can go through.

I was maybe a little bit more interested in both the supernatural and the moments of Nita, like almost twisting her ankle and shit that that was a little bit more effective to me than like the half grapefruit and the like cake thing later, which I thought was just like I almost could have gotten rid of the the the nutrition in the film and kept the supernatural.

And I'm pushing my body so hard because I'm a ballerina and I think I would have had a a better time with the film.

I also.

Would have had a better time, yeah.

It it doesn't go anywhere.

It doesn't ultimately serve anything.

OK, you've lost weight like she's pushing her body too hard.

But I get the pushing her body too hard when she's staying to work late in a, in a, in a studio where the lights have been turned off and that she her like nails are coming off because she's point.

She's on point too much.

That is like some ballerina shit.

And I think you could have then lost the food stuff and then it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been no big loss.

It wouldn't have been no big loss because we don't need to do it.

Like that's to me at least, that was that was vital.

2010 terroir and less to do with the ballerina of it all, yeah.

Yeah, I think ballerina's watch their weight.

Oh yeah, but hopefully.

Not all that well all athletes.

Just like in the way that all athletes and performers do.

But I think it's, I think it's an interesting point though, because because like this really helps inform Nina's mindset and why she is the way that she is.

There is this drive to achieve perfection.

And, you know, there are times when that that cake, I think is less about Nina's body and is more about her relationship with Erica, because Erica is the one who gives her the grapefruit and then half the boiled egg.

And then she gives her like a full sheet cake.

And then she's like, I'm going to throw it out if you're not going to eat it.

And there's also the whole thing with Erica, who was a ballerina and maybe she's putting some of that that hope onto me there to try and live through her, but also kind of sabotaging her too.

And so I think there's a lot going on in this movie.

I think there's, you know, Nina also, we have a couple scenes of her purging into a toilet and or attempting to purge into a toilet as well.

And I think that again plays into where Nina's mind is at.

Is she trying to achieve perfection because she, you know, is suffering with an eating disorder or is it her attempt to try and find control?

Because control is Nina's major thing.

She has to control every aspect of her life and that is what is causing the cracks to show.

See, and, and that's, that's why I think that you actually needed an extra scene here.

Not first of all, again, I think jettisoned all this, but I think if you're going to keep it, you needed a scene where someone is like you're you're you're not thinking straight because you're not getting enough to eat or you're not getting enough calories.

Because I didn't even read the vomiting as purging.

I read it as stress vomiting.

Yeah, because it always accompanied A stressful situation.

But with the light that you've just given me, I can read all that as a binge and purge situation because purging is about control.

And that would be psychologically interesting.

But the film, the film in the story didn't didn't land that for me.

Maybe it would have if I was in a theater in 2010 or 2011, because it probably would have been a little bit more front of mind, but it was not in 20252026.

Well something that is on the forefront of this movies mind is sex.

So our third and final theme for today's episode is Sex in the City, because this does take place in the Big Apple.

That's right.

Get your flirtines ready, baby.

Sex is a major part of this movie.

Tomas, the abusive yet allegedly genius director, kisses Nina, flirts with her and tells her to masturbate as part of preparation for the role of the Swan Queen.

Nina masturbates but stops in the horror when she sees her controlling mother asleep in her room.

Lily is a rival and object of affection for Nina and the two have sex in what appears to be a drug induced hallucination.

For Nina, sex is another part of the side she attempts.

She attempts to control Lily, flirts with men, and is carefree in a way that Nina both detests and desires.

When Nina envisions sex with Lily, she does it out of a place of sapphic desire and the urge to love herself.

So I think that this, it's very interesting to see how sex plays out in this movie because I think a lot of it is being foisted upon Nina and is trying to be coaxed out of her.

And I that to me is a very manipulative thing that people are doing to Nina.

And it seems very clear to me in a way that I think 2025 and 2026 and just the the present that we're in now kind of shows how horrible and abusive to Ma is in a way that in 20-10, maybe it was less so.

Maybe it was more like, because I don't really remember so much of like watching the movie and thinking, Oh my God, Tomas, like the real villain here.

I remember watching the movie and thinking like, wow, this they're really like pushing her and like, that's not good.

But nothing good is happening in this movie.

Like I like I remember that mentality being like, well, that's wrong, but it's not as wrong as everything else that's going on in this movie.

But I think now with this current light of day, we could see how much more abusive this whole situation is that Nina has found herself in.

But I think at the same time, Nina is very sexually repressed.

I think she has been kind of placed into a state of Arrested Development by her mother.

And then it's kind of consistently reinforced by her desire to be this perfect ballet dancer, this fragile, perfect virginal thing.

And for her to get in touch with the darker, more sexual side of that is very difficult for her.

And so I think we do see the Black Swan, the adult part of Nina, start to manifest more and more as Nina becomes more in touch with her sexuality.

But I think the road to get there is very complicated and challenging, and I think it adds an extra layer to this movie as not being a very easy thing to dissect.

I think the problem that I bump into on my second viewing is that it treats all of Nina's sexuality, which is expressed in both an abusive situation and then what I would describe as a consensual one with some like, OK, Mila Kunis, keep your drugs to yourself.

But I but it, it felt there.

It feels like one that was earned and one that was forced, but they're both treated as part of the evil identity or the darkness of Nina.

And that is a, that is not even, that's like a 1980s look at how sex is corrupting.

I think in a lot of ways, and I, I didn't know where I was going to say this, but in a lot of ways, this would make a great double feature with Showgirls because they're ostensibly the same movie.

If if Showgirls had leaned into like wild horror and was directed by Jared Iwanowski.

Like there is a lot of showgirls in Black Swan and there's a lot of Black Swan in Showgirls.

And in that way, I think that there there's just a little bit of a through line with how sex is treated.

Who gets to be the one who makes the calls on sex?

How are you allowed to have sexual flirtation or fun with a Co worker who sort of shares your power level versus a boss who does?

It's not there's there's a lot of ore here and one was released in the 90s, one was released in the early 2000, the late aughts early 2010.

And today, both of them seem very strange to us.

David, please please write this.

I would love to read this on our Fear Coded Patreon.

A comparison of of 1995 showgirls in 2010's Black Swan.

I've never wanted anything more in my life.

If we could throw in Pamela Anderson is the last show girl on top of that.

I would have to watch that.

I've never seen.

That I still have to see that too.

What's interesting though, that you mentioned companion pieces is that Darren Aronofsky, during the time leading up to the release and then shortly after the release of Black Swan, he talked about that this movie was really a companion piece to his previous film, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke.

I've seen the wrestler.

I I saw that very, very long time ago, like when it like shortly after it was released on on DVD.

Probably rent a different blockbuster, honestly.

But that movie also really plays into the body.

And Aronofsky has talked about in interviews where he said that the two are very similar because they're about performers who express themselves with their bodies.

And if the Wrestler, which I believe had a lot to do with Mickey Rourke's character trying to reclaim past glories, but also trying to father, trying to be like a regular human being, but still desiring that limelight of being a wrestler.

Like absolutely.

You could see how that also continues over into Black Swan, even though these two worlds are so diametrically different from each other.

Yeah, it's a good movie.

It's, I mean, not a horror, not we can't cover it up on, but.

Or can we?

Or can we hear me?

Hear me out?

Volume 2, Yeah.

Well, hey, considering whether or not things are horror is actually one of the things that we do every episode in one of two questions that we ask when we consider the media that we've got in front of us and get ready for our conversation about it.

So I will kick us off, as I always do with our first of these questions, which is, is it horror?

Were you scared watching this?

Did this work for you as part of the horror genre of films?

Yes, I, I definitely believe this to be a horror baby.

We, we just spent a considerable time talking about in the themes.

But like there's like the real horror that is going on with the things that are happening to Nina, the the physical toll that ballet is having on her, the mental stress that that is putting on her.

These are all horrific things to watch.

And that's before we start getting into the mental health crisis that Nina is experiencing with the hallucinations, seeing these doppelgaters.

But the physical transformations that she thinks she is going through.

I think this is all played up for horror.

The music also is so wonderful because it uses the score from Swan Lake very effectively to illustrate a lot of that horror and really kind of show what is it that we should be feeling?

What is Nina feeling in this moment?

Yeah, the score is Here's what I'll say is that I don't think if I went and saw Swan Lake, I would read it as a horror ballet.

But the music of it, which I seemingly am familiar with because it is so iconic and popular that I've heard it all over the place, really amps up the horror when it's time to be horror in the film.

Yeah, yeah.

Also, this is a thing.

This movie has a lot of mirrors and things in mirrors moving when they shouldn't, and I think that's such a horror Gimme.

It's so effective in this movie, but like, my goodness, if you have a, if you took a shot every time that happened, you'll be black out by the end of the film.

I swear to God.

Absolutely.

And it's almost always, it's always, it's almost always noticeable.

I guess is what I will say is that a lot of time that horror with the mirror is not noticeable.

And I, I only catch it later because we're doing a podcast about it.

And I'm like, oh, that was cool.

I wonder if that scared me when I was watching it and I just didn't see it like Annabelle creeping, you know, around in, in our discussion from last month.

But here there was so much good attention paid to the mirrors that I, I never missed it.

And that always made me scared when someone was looking at a mirror.

Which they are all the fucking.

Time.

Yeah, there's mirrors.

There's people.

Oh, somebody fucking mirrors.

I sort of got, I think there's a mirror in almost every scene, or at least something reflective.

It's insane.

I have two mirrors.

That's like, how many mirrors do you both have?

Like where?

Where are the mirrors?

Show me the mirrors.

3 standing mirrors.

I don't think we really have any.

I think we just have like bathroom.

Mirrors in my bathroom, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, like normal people, You don't have a trifold mirror set up in your living room with no other furniture.

Get out of here, Erica.

Get out of here.

OK.

That's really ballerina of her though, like.

It was ballerina of her.

It was it was actually kind of cunt.

It was excellent it.

Was like OK can I just throw this out there?

We should use ballerina as an adjective in the same way that we use cunt that was so ballerina of her.

Would would you like to come into my living room?

No, you cannot have a seat.

Just look at yours.

Wow.

Yeah, I will also say that it's such there's psychological horror that's in the I thought, I thought what we were getting was a psychological horror because I didn't actually know much about Black Swan either, and so I thought this was really just going to be a psychological horror.

Ooh, I'm in my head.

I'm thinking about it.

There are a lot of very standard horror tropes that make their way into this.

Nina is constantly being surprised by people behind her.

Like, I get it, I get it.

We have a limited on peripheral vision, but she is constantly looking at some statue or fountain or mirror, and then suddenly there's someone behind her.

And sometimes it's very innocuous, like the nurse at the hospital, and sometimes it is, it is very dangerous, like Winona Ryder.

And I like it always scared me when Nina was scared because there was something behind her, because you cannot see behind you.

So true.

Yeah, I think too bad humans can't tell if there's something behind them.

Only visually is how we learn things.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Much like a swan.

Just kidding.

I have no idea what Swan's field of missions.

Are we should have looked that up.

That was that was a miss on my part.

Sorry y'all.

Tyler, read your contract.

You're in charge of animal facts.

I will say that anytime Natalie Portman was performing as the doppelganger was Capital T Terrifying, Sure.

Creepy.

Like I've been infected by the smile monster face in the bathtub.

That's, that's frightening because Natalie Portman shouldn't smile that way.

She should smile like she just got married to Anakin Skywalker.

Not not like that.

That was the bad smile.

But when we first encountered the doppelganger and she's walking by herself in that construction scene, that was a terrifying metal apartment.

If that metal apartment was walking towards me on a sidewalk, I would cross the street.

That was I, I didn't.

I think that if you said, David, when you watch this, you'll be scared of Natalie Portman.

I would say incorrect.

I love her.

She's perfect.

And now I would say if I saw her doing some of this acting, I might shit my pants in person.

Yeah.

It's very, very, very frightening facial work and body work being done by Portman in this film.

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Truly incredible, very ballerina of her.

Extremely ballerina of her.

I do want to throw this out there that like a lot of the mirror scares that show up in this movie when Black Swan came out and then in the years afterwards, people have talked about another movie called Perfect Blue, which is an animated movie from Satoshi Cone.

It's a it's a Japanese anime at about a former pop star who starts to get she she feels like she's being stalked, but then she starts seeing doppelgangers of herself everywhere, including in mirrors that have reflections that are not accurate to what the main character is doing.

There was some controversy where people were saying that Darren Aronofsky was ripping off Perfect Blue when he came up with Black Swan, but he's been pretty open about his inspirations and he's says explicitly that Perfect Blue is not one of the movies that inspired him to make this.

But Satoshi Cone went on record to say that he met with Aronofsky in 2002.

There were some talks around this time about like Aronofsky bought the film rights to a live action version or something.

There was a lot of kind of like muddling of the waters in terms of what the truth was.

But I think by and large, what I kind of want to get at is that if you enjoy Black Swan, you should absolutely watch Perfect Blue.

That is a wonderful animated companion to this film.

It talks about a lot of the same things but also goes in very wildly different directions, so I'm just going to throw that out there as another recommendation for folks as well.

Definitely watch Perfect Blue if you ever get the chance.

Great companion for this movie.

Are we literally covering that in two weeks?

No, we switch it up.

We're doing.

Oh, that's right.

We were going to.

OK, OK, OK.

I'm I'm very happy with what we chose because you both were so excited about it.

But we will get to perfect blue then.

We will absolutely get to perfect blue.

OK, OK, OK, OK.

I, I truly had forgotten that we switched because I was like, wait, Tyler, why are you ramping this up?

Everyone's seen the monthly schedule, what we're covering.

Everyone but you have seen the monthly schedule, David.

Whoops, talk about not coming to work.

Prepare.

You went on a cruise and then just threw all the homework out the window?

No, wait.

My, my contract says I don't have to do any preparation for any podcasts whatsoever.

Got it.

Perfect.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Can I get on that rider?

Yeah, listen, whatever, whatever, whatever.

Horror.

Great.

To be on Fear Coded podcast, you have to be more than just scary, you have to be queer.

So let's talk about this movie using the lens of queer theory.

Do we think this is a queer film?

Yes, yes, yeah, the for in particular Mila Kunis period.

I I think that I like Mila Kunis, but until watching this I was like, oh, I love her.

I think I will watch anything that she is in, actually.

And the nod that she gives Natalie Portman or that that her character gives Nina when when the casting is made is like the gayest thing I've ever seen it.

It is.

It's such a like.

So it's very like, we don't really know each other yet.

We're sort of both attracted to each other because we're both hot.

We're later going to have sex with each other.

Or maybe not, Maybe I I just, this was a lot gayer than I thought it was going to be as well.

Because in addition to not just being a psychological horror, there's a lot of idea about sex with self, sex with others.

And there never seems to be a moment in which Nina is like, oh gosh, I'm a lesbian.

It's just sort of OK that this is the fluidity of sex for Nina and that I actually kind of like for all my criticism that we were we were doing Toulouse Lautrec sex is the same as hot Mila Kunis sex.

This is much better because it is at least allowing the idea of fluidity, which is very queer.

I did love that.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I really glad that you brought up, like, the different ways that we see sex, David, because I think, like, Nina is going through it.

And I think part of it is not necessarily like, I'm repressing being a lesbian because you shouldn't be a lesbian.

But instead it's just sex in general is something that she has to push down because she has to be this perfect little ballerina.

And ballerinas don't have sex.

Like, that's just not a thing that they do.

And then in comes Lily, who is all of the things that Nina thinks you should not be as a perfect ballerina, as the not the perfect person that she needs to be.

And so I think the fact that she sees sex as something that can be had with with men, with women, with herself, because once she begins to kind of give herself that permission to say like, I am going to like masturbate, I am going to fool around with people, I am going to flirt.

We see more of like this adult womanly person come through.

And I think that's a very, very healthy for her.

So I crazy enough, like I think not only is this movie queer, it's also like pretty sex positive as well.

Because at no point do I feel like the movie is saying sex is bad.

You shouldn't be having sex.

And if you are having sex, then you're a dirty slut instead of saying that is the adult dark side, the shadow self.

But it is still something that we all have.

And you know, I think that's, I think that's very valid.

Now it's not, I wouldn't say asexually positive, but I think at the same time, it is still saying like you have that choice.

You you can have sex.

That is something that you do as an adult.

That is something that you do when you are a healthy person who can get in contact with all these different aspects of yourself.

And I think that's really great.

Yeah, I agree.

You guys are both so smart, you know, such wonderful answers.

I just put the screen cap from Billy on the street saying let's go lesbians so.

Really.

I mean.

Showing who's the smart person?

Who's the little, little guy?

And merrily, I think that's you really just kind of illustrated our point in in a photo.

So really, not only are you the smarter person because you were more effective with your communication, but it is also funnier.

Yeah, and, and and you got me to look at Billy Eichner.

So like, congratulations.

Are you ruined by 2026 here?

A It's pre.

It's pre evil Billy Eichner.

There's never a pre evil.

Listen, I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Billy Eichner is doing a vital service to society because every role that he takes, James Gordon couldn't.

Oh, very true.

Now that's right.

Your Honor, I will allow it.

I will allow it.

The senator from Texas makes an excellent point in this moment, and I withdraw my complaint.

2026 is saved.

And and and yet I've I've watched Bros twice and I would like my money back.

Please.

Thank you.

That's that's that's old David mistakes.

Can't blame old David.

Mistake passed.

Why did you watch it a second time?

Because of my marriage, I don't know what to tell you.

I I don't get to always.

I have to watch Black Swan and ergo I must make some allowances that other things get put on the television.

I can't believe he put on Bros a second time and not Lost Boys.

Well, Lost Boys, you know, we we wore the DVD into a thin, flat disk.

There's there's nothing left for the laser to read, all right, but there's plenty for us to read about this.

So what do you all think about jumping into our plot beat by beat?

Let us begin.

And it does begin on a dark stage where Nina Sires dances the prologue to Swan Lake.

Her character is transformed by a dark wizard into a swan.

As would be presented on stage.

A woman in a graceful ballet costume becomes a frightened woman in a delicate, feathery swan costume.

Nina wakens, having dreamt the whole performance in the morning.

Erica Sayers passive aggressively hopes for Nina to get the role of the Swan Queen, as Nina has quote been there long enough.

Nina goes to rehearsals where she and the other members of the company are greeted by their director, Toma.

After the newest member, Lily arrives late.

Toma tells the company that they will perform a Swan Lake and that the roles of the White Swan and the Black Swan will be performed by the same dancer who can evoke the spirit of both Swans.

Nina tries out for the Swan Queen, but Toma is unimpressed because Nina cannot embody the Black Swan.

Nina leaves dejected, and that night she sees a doppelganger of herself on the street.

Really effective opening, really great start to the movie.

I think the dream already sets us up to be in a place of like, we're not sure what is reality.

I think the passive aggressive breakfast with Erica also informs us a lot about the relationship that Nina has with her mother.

And then like we eventually get to the company, we start to see the color coding that's being used in this movie.

There's darks, there's lights, there's Grays, there's blacks.

Not too many big pops of color.

And then we also kind of get to see who Lily Lily is.

The fact it tells us a lot about her character that she arrives late to the first big rehearsal of the season.

Tomah is this very like trying to be larger than life directorial presence, but he is the one who really commands the room.

And then I think also we see Nina, when she tries out for the role, Tomah tells her, like, if you were if I were only casting for the White Swan, I, it would be yours instantly, but I'm not.

And so, yeah, we see Nina's reaction to that.

We see how it ends, which is her walking down the street and then she thinks she sees her doppelganger.

Yeah, yeah.

God, everything is so much in the segment.

Like, it's so my favorite bit of the costuming is the scarf that she's wearing in the first subway scene that looks like a Ruff of feathers.

Like you, she hasn't really started to like really be affected by the horrors of this movie.

But already you're seeing like that idea of the swan thing.

And then like when Lily comes in, she also has a swan scarf, but hers has black and white Swans on it.

And it's just the costuming is so fun and smart here.

And just like all of the tiny details you can find, and are very fun.

Yeah, well, I already, I already mentioned it, but this is where we get Natalie Partman walking by herself and 1 Natalie Partman, who's like, I'm Natalie Partman, perfect Angel and the other one who's like, get on my way, bitch.

And I, I love her.

I love her so much.

She's incredible.

She's a treasure.

So good.

I I honestly like as, as someone who's like, pretty gay, like, yeah, you know, who knows sexuality is a spectrum.

But I like when I see the doppelganger Nina come by.

Not only do I find her frightening, but I also am like, very.

Very sexy.

Very sexy.

Very sexy.

Very intriguing, like I want to know more about her.

It's very alluring and really it's kind of seductive in a way, even if it's just so brief that we get to spend that time with her.

I find that so fascinating because like we've talked so much about already that the Black Swan side of Nina is a very sexual, sensual side.

And just even in that brief window of time, we get to experience that.

And again, like we've talked about the visuals and the music, but the audio, there's wonderful sound effects, these ruffle of feathers, this ghostly laughter when we have like a whisper of the Black Swan side and Nina come through.

And like, I think that is so evocative and it does so much to illustrate who is this stranger that walks by?

Who is this doppelgainer?

And we will see that recurring often throughout this movie.

Well, I'm for as as constantly as I felt like I was paying attention to the mirrors and my attention was drawn to them.

I just say I was not a good viewer.

This was a good artist.

I was never sure if I actually saw Natalie Portman or not.

And that in and of itself was also an accomplishment of this film.

Like, wait, was that her?

Like even even the subway on the rewatch, I was like, wait, is does she see herself in the other subway car?

And like, no, that was Mila Kunis.

Like it's just fucking with me all the time.

Absolutely.

And that's another part of this movie that I love is that not only is it, like, extremely befuddling for Nina, not only she experienced a lot of confusion.

We.

It's a lot of confusion, too.

So we really kind of place ourselves in ninas, you know, ballet shoes at the same time.

And I think that's also what makes the fear so effective.

Yeah.

Well, that night, Nina practices her moves while Erica talks on the phone about her.

Nina injuries herself but vows to tell Tomah she has finished the routine, although Erica tells her not to bother.

The next day, Nina speaks with Tomah, asking for another chance to try out for the role.

Tomah kisses her and Nina bites him hard.

She leaves in a hurry, worried that she has ruined her chances, only to discover that she's been cast as the Swan Queen after all.

Nina, who had taken former prima Donna Beth's lipstick and wore it to speak with Toma, goes to the bathroom to let Erica know the good news.

When she leaves the stall, she sees the word whore written on the bathroom mirror in lipstick.

Wow, wow.

I got to start.

I got to start here, which was when we're with Nina and she's just practicing and she puts herself on point, right?

That's what that's called.

When you're on your tippy toes, you're on point.

And then there's this, this gut wrenching sound effect that they put in there that sounds like a coke can being being crunched up but at like 1.5 speed.

And then she falls.

I was like, I love that.

I love, I mean, I hate it because it makes me so uncomfortable, but that is a more visceral way to get me to have a reaction than anything you're going to see in a Saw film.

Like, I know, I know all that's fake.

This is something people actually do and your foot can just bend wrong ways and that's terrifying.

Yeah, so extremely bad.

So cool.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I think it's, it really is so deeply uncomfortable when that happens.

And I remember like the whole theater just going like at once, just kind of like a wave of discomfort when that happens.

I think also like the the whole conversation that we overhear Erica having over the phone where she's talking about Nina like she's not there is is really distressing too.

Because again, that tells us a lot about the relationship that Erica has with her daughter where she sees Erica as this very or she sees Nina as this very fragile thing.

And you know that she maybe is not the the best dancer out there that she sure she tries hard, but there's other people that are better.

The whole thing with Erica and Nina is so fucked up.

Like it's so like there's, there's so many scenes where we see how Erica handles her daughter like she is a figurine that she can play with.

I'd like dress up and like set up.

And then every time Nina has her her own agency, she's cut down immediately.

It's really like, let's talk about the cake scene because that's that's.

Is that here?

Yeah, this.

Is the cake scene because like again, she, she comes in and this huge sheet cake with a a Barbie ballerina doll basically sticking out of it like for a little kids birthday, she cuts the biggest corner piece off you've ever seen in her life.

He was like, that's too much.

My stomach's already in knots from the thing goes to go throw it out.

All of that is so it's the most devastating secret hidden thing in that scene to me is when she pull up gestures to the cake.

She says it's our favorite.

Like Nina can't even have her own fucking favorite flavor of cake.

She has to share this with her mom.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, and here, if I'm being critical of the film, it does sort of fall apart because the Erica stuff never actually lands as well, because there's not enough there.

She also has to be a doppelganger for Winona Ryder at a couple points of time because she represents the old.

There's interest there for me as the audience and we don't there's there's too much that I'm interested in in this movie.

And so I think the Erica plotline gets gets subjugated to like C tier and then we never get to come back and do things like who are you versus your mother?

Why is all this happening?

How is this contributing to the psychosis that you're experiencing?

Because ultimately, this sequence, when she's in the bathroom calling her mom to tell her that she got the part, they picked me, mommy, that's the first time that we actually have an idea of their relationship.

I didn't know until that point of the film, besides all the coding, that this is your mom.

But they could just been like an older lover in a weird relationship.

And then I was like, how old is Natalie Portman supposed to be?

Like, is she 15?

Is she 25?

Is she 30?

Like they're because all of that was sort of lost and it's all lost because we're dealing with a character who's going through a dissociative episode or Benny, a sequence of dissociative episodes.

None of that gets answered.

That's okay.

But then I think the grounded story of a mother and a daughter who are both ballerinas that are struggling with the new and the old and the Winona Ryder of it all versus the Natalie Portman of it all.

All of that ends up being weird, pretty beautiful window dressing, but ultimately like it doesn't get addressed.

I agree with that, David.

I think that's a really fairpoint to bring up.

When I was writing these notes too, I was just like, I want to focus on the Mila Kunis and Toma and how all of this is really kind of bearing down on Nina.

But like, at the same time, Barbara Hershey is Erica is such a magnificent presence in this movie.

Oh yeah, she's.

So good.

And when she is present, she is like this towering figure over Nina until Nina has had enough.

And I think that is like she's kind of used more as like a tool as opposed to like another character for Nina to playoff of Erica is kind of this evil, nasty mother type figure.

But then I think it is complicated because then she does kind of do things that we would deem as being correct for a woman in psychosis, but she's doing them in these really harmful ways to Nina too.

And so I think she's complex, but it kind of comes a little late into the film when I would have liked a little bit more of that earlier on.

I do find it unnerving and creepy, but also kind of heartbreaking when Nina admits that she gots the part and she said, I got it, mommy.

The fact that she calls her mommy still is like, yeah, that's that's kind of uncomfortable, but it also is like kind of sad and pathetic at the same time.

And so I feel for Nina, but also just Erica is really this this awful person to have in her life.

But she's also like as in terms of like the mechanics of the movie probably could have had like either like less of her or more of her or complicating the relationship a little bit more.

Like maybe she comes to rehearsal at some point.

She is just kind of like an overbearing presence on the scene.

But that doesn't really happen, so Oh well.

But, but for all intents and purposes, Erica could not exist.

This could be a Bruce Willis situation and it could all be in Nina's mind as part of her psychosis, but the But let me tell you, the film does not do that job.

That is that is that that that is definitely not.

We were meant to read later.

Mila Kunis maybe?

Maybe.

Maybe.

But but not right now, not right now, not this mother.

I I we're, I think we are meant to interpret as the audience.

This is a real person and all of this is happening and it's happening exactly as we see it.

And for a film that will do so much to be like none of this is actually playing out the way that you, that the character thinks that it's it's playing out.

Therefore it's not playing out the way you, the audience is playing out.

That also is a Ding against the whole Erica storyline, because I do think we're meant to read it almost as like an abusive parent.

And and and yet everything else that's I mean, Tomas abusive, the fake Mila Kunis is abusive.

Like there, there's so many abusive characters, but because one of them isn't real, and then I kind of am like, are any of them real?

Is there even a director for this musical?

Is she even going to a musical?

Is she just walking to a warehouse and like dancing?

Like there, there, there's a there, there's.

Once you start pulling on the threads of reality, I think audiences naturally can start to accept some of that.

And this film does a lot of it.

Very true.

Yeah, let's so you've mentioned Tomas.

I I really want to talk about this Tomas scene.

Yeah.

So we're So what we do on Fear Code is we look at through we look at media through the lens of queer theory.

And I think putting a queer character in the situation that Nina is in when she goes to Toma is very fraught.

It also illustrates a lot of sexual politics and power and control and dynamics and everything.

But I think it gets complicated because Toma, it actually kind of reminds me of Erica.

She's trying to do, she kind of does the right things, but she does it in a completely horrible way.

I think Toma is right to try and get Nina to like bring out this darkness within her, to try and evoke the the Black Swan of who she needs to be as a performer.

But he does it in these horribly manipulative and abusive ways.

And I think like the fact that it also plays into this burgeoning sexuality within Nina, where I think she does have some like maybe like a crush or some sort of fondness for Toma as someone to either romanticize or have as kind of like a paternal figure or just be someone to look up to.

I think it all gets very complex in her brain.

And so for this to be happening to a queer character, I think makes it so fascinating because this is a very atypical situation for for a character to be in where like there are supposed to be some sexual aspects to it, but that is not how we see it is like sexuality through the glass darkly.

You know, it's, it's just we've, we've held the mirror up and we're seeing these really mangled versions of what we should see as being like either a healthy relationship or a healthy sexual relationship.

And that is deeply complicated.

And it is, I think, queer because it is so deeply complicated, but it is also extremely sexist and very masculine and very misogynist as well.

Well, and my read on Nina's motivation of all of it is that Nina, if she's struggling with her sexuality, looks to the archetype of what a woman should be, which is her mother.

Her mother, for all intents and purposes, is Winona Ryder's character, Beth.

What did Beth do?

Well, she made love with Toma.

They were a couple.

And so in, in a, in a, in a little bit of a circuitous way that could lead Nina to say to suppress this growing part of myself, I would go after this because that's what a woman does.

So my mother would do, because my mother's went in, a rider went out, a rider was a relationship with this guy.

I got all that.

And that's why I liked the character of Beth existing in this world.

And one underwriter is great.

But I thought the scene.

I agree with Tyler.

It is a directors job to pull these things out of people and directors can be heinous, awful people in helping to accomplish that goal.

I think famously Aronofsky, the sort of rumor about it is that he's like a terrible person to work with.

And yet like Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman were like going to work was so fun.

We were filming this like darks, like a little horror, but we're like best friends.

Like it's it was sort of funny reading all the interviews with them.

Yeah, because they literally like took them in to see Twilight.

I read that too, and I love that.

I love that the three of them.

I love that Daronofsky showed up.

It was like 3 for Twilight.

I am obsessed with it.

Yeah.

I love it so very much.

But I, I in this scene, this is where Tomas says all that discipline for what?

And I do think that a central thesis of the film is that, like, perfectionism will kill you.

Yeah.

And it won't even give you what you're trying to get, which is.

Which is the raw, unfettered soul that your art is.

Your art is a representation of the corruption of that, and everything that you try to do that's perfect controls against that and stops your art from flowing forth.

And that is actually a really good point of Tomas, but I kind of wish that he got hit by a car instead of Winona Ryder.

AI love that B.

Can we talk about how you kept saying that Beth was her mom Erica?

Because I don't know, I kind of read it that she had a crush on Erica.

No, no, no.

Like Beth is kind of like.

Not not Erica, Beth.

That's the one that Winona Ryder.

Yeah, whatever.

Name that is.

Yeah, Beth, I don't.

Know that I, I don't know that I read Nina having a crush on Beth.

I read Nina having an idolization of Beth and saying like, that's what a ballerina is, that's what a woman is.

That's what my mother was.

Which is why later, when she looks at her mother, she sees Beth, I think.

I think it is kind of interesting too though to to see it as being maybe like an like a crush like a in the way that you would maybe crush on someone that you do have as a role model.

It's that that.

Do I want to be them?

Do I want to be with?

Them, yes, yeah.

Because I think because Nina does take Beth's things, like she takes the lipstick and she wears that.

She takes the nail file.

She takes a couple other things to try and become Beth.

And I think in doing so, that is sort of something that she's trying to do with Lily as well, where she's trying to be Lily, she's trying to have sex with Lily, she's trying to have sex with herself.

And I think perhaps she does see herself in Beth and what she wants to become, but she also sees Beth as something that is part of her journey towards self love and self acceptance and perfection.

Right, exactly.

So I do think that is, and I think that is actually a very queer theoretical reading as well, is to see these different aspects of yourself and have that be mixed in with love and lust and self actualization is very interesting.

Yeah, I agree with all of this, and I don't.

I want us to move on, but we can't ignore the foundational queer gift that this film gave us.

And what was that Merrily?

The simply iconic image of of Natalie Portman looking into a bathroom mirror, with the word horror written on the mirror and Natalie Portman's face in the center of the R.

It's simply iconic and I love her.

Many gay men the day after a night out at the club, seeing himself in the mirror and using that meme.

OK, but that's because she wrote it herself, right?

Like like OK OK, because I went to find the answer to this on Reddit and there is a surprising amount of current day discussion that this was actually written by someone else and I said that is simply not what the movie wanted you to think.

The movie wants you to think that she did this herself because she is having an associative episode.

Yeah, no, like, OK, she was, she was in the bathroom for like 30 seconds.

She just went into the stall, called her mom and came back out.

There's no way anybody else snuck into the bathroom with that heavy door, wrote it using the stolen lipstick that she already has in her pocket, and then left without her noticing.

That's I mentioned this is after she and Tomah kiss and she bites him.

And so she might be thinking like, oh, did I have sex to or did I seduce Tomah or do something sexual to to get the role.

And I'm sure, you know, she's even asked that and they're kind of snide remarks about that as well by other people in the movie.

So I think it's very fair to to say, like, Nina is the one who wrote this.

She is having a dissociated episode.

And this is a manifestation of that anxiety.

Yes.

Yes, and I and I, I know better.

Angels have won out the day.

And we're going to use an image of of Portman in the Black Swan makeup for the episode art.

But in my heart, I wish that it was this picture.

Listen, I've already downloaded all of the pictures I'm going to use to make the are different cover options.

This is in the running.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

We aren't sure who is going to be yet, but it could be her.

It could be.

Her.

Could be her, could be her, might be her.

I just we have so far in our fear coated Canon 2 movies where a woman writes really sexist remarks on the wall using red fluid and simply Terrifier 2 could never be her.

Never.

Never, ever, never.

Anyway, Toma takes Nina to a ball where he announces that Beth is retiring from the company and that Nina will be the new Swan Queen.

Nina worries a hangnail eventually, and this is so awful I can't believe David loves this.

Eventually pulling the skin all the way up down her finger, but is interrupted by Lily at the bathroom door.

Realizing it was a hallucination, Nina rushes out of the bathroom, although Lily attempts to keep her in there to chat, distracted by a creepy statue, which is real, by the way.

That's a real statue really, in New York City.

I looked it up, it's awful.

Nina doesn't notice Beth, who accuses Nina of having sex with Tomah.

To get the role.

He intercedes, calling Beth his little Princess.

Nina leaves the two, but we eventually see her in Tomah's apartment.

He asked deeply personal questions about Nina's sex life before telling her to go home and touch herself.

When she gets home, Erica finds scratch marks on Nina's shoulders, then takes her to the bathroom to clip her nails with scissors.

Sit Wild choices.

The next morning Nina starts to masturbate and get gets really into it, but stops in horror when she sees Erica asleep on a chair in her room across from Nina's bed.

So many awful things have happened.

Well, let's.

Let's start with something that's not awful, which is Winona Ryder.

Wow, I didn't again there.

There are two casting jump scares in this, and this is my first one because we'd seen Beth but like.

There's so many white brunettes in this film.

Exactly oh so true exactly.

But we we are close up.

I was like Oh my God we're crazy Winona Ryder like the we are.

We are a whisper away from being Joyce and stranger things.

Like yes, I am here for it.

I am here for the Winona Ryder aged diva throwing things around nightmare like this is excellent.

I hope this is things to come.

Honestly remake whatever happened to Baby Jane with Winona Ryder.

I don't even know who the other person is, but put Winona.

Oh my God, I would love that.

That would be incredible because.

She truly is doing like great unhinged acting here with Nina.

And again, this is this is there's someone behind Nina.

So mark that on your scorecard.

Here's another one.

And that jump was it was a big jump for me.

I got a big jump out of that.

It was such wonderful casting to get Winona Ryder in the role of Beth.

Because you know, this, I think we've talked about this previously, but Winona Ryder had been kind of put in Hollywood jail, not literally, but acting jail after she had her like her time as you know, a shoplifter.

And that was that was very unfortunate.

And everyone kind of mocked her for that and just sort of put her away.

And then she had to go into exile.

And then this is the first time that we as an audience in 2010 has really seen Winona Ryder in a very long time.

And let me tell you, everyone was so happy to see her.

She would did such a wonderful job in this role, even if it's a pretty small like screen time, it is she makes the most of it and she is big impact.

So wonderful, such a big impact.

And it also plays into our selected memory at that time because we had always associated with window to writer as being like very young, sarcastic, clever and just this like new bile 20 something kind of like what Aubrey Plaza was doing like around this time.

And like to see her as being aged is so clever because then it it kind of has that same impact on Nina seeing Beth as this aged person when we had previously always seen her as this young and wonderful young woman.

Yeah, agreed.

Totally agreed.

Hateful to call her aged, by the way.

Well, she's.

She's older by this time, you know I.

Know but like.

She's she's just not Delia Dietz anymore.

Precisely.

Delia was.

Delia was the mom.

Lydia.

She's not Lydia Dietz anymore.

Yeah.

God, I wish she was Delia Dietz all day long.

She's not Lydia Dietz anymore.

She's.

She's something else.

And I mean, she.

OK, so she was just Spock's mom.

Now she's an A ballerina who's too old to dance anymore.

And then she'll be the mom of Will Byers on Stranger Things.

Like this is the new Winona Ryder.

And.

And I do actually love that for her.

I hate that she was Spock's mom.

That was terrible.

Get out of here, JJ Abrams of your lens flare.

Make more alias.

That's all you're good for.

Can we talk about the horrible statue because it's so horrible?

I can't believe that's real.

I can't.

Believe that.

Oh, yeah.

No, it's, it's, it's a real actual thing.

It is outside.

Where is it?

Got some sort of auction hall.

It doesn't matter.

The the The thing is, it's it's a 1999 work by Fritz Scholander.

It's called Future Clone and I hate it.

It's it's recent.

I think it's interesting that it's called Future Clone when we're dealing with doppelgamers.

Yeah, and it's an Angel creature with androgynous features standing on top of a globe.

Wow, I don't know, merely it sounds pretty queer to me and I kind of love it.

And no, it's.

It's, it's a queer, it's a queer creature.

It's but it's like for a creature, for the Halloween gaze, and that's all it.

Because it is.

What a thing.

Merrily get to 1 of the two places in your home that you have a mirror like a normal human being and look yourself in it.

That's you babe.

No, it is the audience for this art.

It is all of us.

Can I talk about something much creepier than the statue, which is Erica and the scissors?

Oh my God.

OK, both of you with these, you know, there are nail scissors.

That's how I read those.

These are just, these are fingernail scissors I own.

So I cut my nails with fingernail scissors.

Nail Clippers, David.

Why?

Girl, I have nail Clippers too, but sometimes you need to like perfect it and I have.

I have a pair of nail scissors.

That's what those were.

OK, but she was definitely not using those to perfect nails.

She was trying to get to the.

Cuticle Yes, Yes, this is a horror film.

Yeah, and that's why she's so.

Uncomfortable.

This is why we had the reaction that we did.

David, don't you come into my house and tell me how to decorate my furniture.

I will be afraid of whatever scissors I want to be afraid.

Of the Foley is really good on making you afraid of what what's happening.

I assure you that should you use nail scissors, they do not make this horrible crunching noise every time you're cutting off a sliver of nails.

So you say.

So I say yes I will, I will next next holiday I will get you a a grooming kit with a pair of nail scissors which is like a common.

Part I've never used one and I'll never need to.

You just use fucking nail Clippers, they're way safer.

Speaking of the hangnail, though, I even have a little device that you like insert into the nail and it like it has like a sharp edge on it and you push it and it helps prevent ingrown nails and related hangnails by cutting you just a little bit, a controlled cut.

I can't tell if Tyler is frozen or just horrified.

I'm just horrified.

OK, great.

Well, back to the film.

At rehearsal the next day, the news breaks that Beth has been hit by a car and will never dance again.

Outside the theater, Toma consoles Nina, telling her that it wasn't her fault.

Regardless, Nina goes to visit Beth in the hospital.

She's asleep, so Nina takes a peek under the blanket.

This, it got me.

I was like, why are you doing this?

Get out of here.

Beth's legs are a mingle of steel, wire and blood, and Nina backs into a nurse because there's another person behind Nina, and then flees the scene.

At home, Nina takes out the trash and finds a plank of wood that she can use to prop her door closed, allowing her a monochrome of privacy.

Time passes.

Nina works hard at rehearsals, putting her body through the ringer.

She still struggles to let go and embrace the more sensual side of the Black Swan.

Tomas humiliates her one day, gropes her, and proclaims that no one would have sex with someone so frigid.

Lily arrives first, appearing as another doppelganger, and tries to talk to Nina.

Lily does the queer thing of complaining about your boss, but Nina denies that Tomas is a horrible person.

Totally out of pocket behavior to to look under the blanket, but I think it does it plays into the whole thing that we were talking about is like Nina kind of Nina sees Beth as mother, but she also sees her as someone that she wants to be someone that she kind of has a crush on.

And I think she does feel like, well, if I'm trying to be Beth, then I should see what's happening.

And so looking at that that steal and the blood and the looks like there's still an open wound on her leg.

It's like obviously that's horrifying from the body horror perspective.

But I think it also is a little bit of like goes to Christmas future fear for Nina too, where it's like, I want to be Beth, but Oh my God, what does this mean if I am Beth and then she does something like this or maybe something happened with Nina and Beth and I don't know.

There's some questions that are up in the air that happened later in this movie, but I think the fact that she does that, I think is also part of the queerness of it all in that this is someone that she loves, that she does lust after.

She wants to be she, and the fact that this is something that she feels compelled to do and then recoil and fear is that sort of like, I want it but I'm also repulsed by it, which is you could extend that to all of the aspects of being the Black Swan.

I am seduced by it, but I also want to push it away and hide it and get away from it and to reveal that part of herself scares her and so she takes off running.

I do think it's very human of like, it's fucked up and you shouldn't, you know, visit somebody at hospital and like, remove their blanket while they're unconscious to look at their wounds.

That's fucked.

But like, I just feel like it's very human of her to be a dancer who needs your body and legs, particularly in a certain way, to have this person that you looked up to with their instrument destroyed and like, wanting to like, see it, that's very human.

Well, it's a, it's a, it's a call the void thing.

Professional athletes when a, when a teammate has a, has a career ending injury, they want to see it because it reminds us of the fragility of the vocation that we hold.

Not even professional amateur athletes do this as well.

And so thinking about dance as a type of sport, thinking about ballet in that way, of course you would want to see this.

That is, there is a draw of all of us to do that.

And that again, it's kind of Aronofsky thing.

There's a ton of this in The Wrestler as well.

There's a ton of Mickey Rourke looking at Grotesquerie and us being forced to see it on his body and the bodies of other wrestlers.

I love all that I love.

I mean listen, just cuz I think it's unhinged behavior to like open the sheet of someone you barely know like you're a Med student, doesn't mean that I did love that we got to see it.

Oh, for sure.

Of course I did.

Of course I did.

That was made for me.

I mean.

It's made for you.

Aronofsky did talk in in an interview as well about that there.

It really was kind of like a gorilla style of filming where it was him on a handycam, like just like filming this stuff with two other guys at the same time.

And so there is a sort of documentary aspect to it.

I remember that a lot more strongly happening in the wrestler.

But I think that desire to really get into what is real, I think is so fascinating and it adds that extra layer of discomfort too.

I'm.

Going to watch the Wrestler again.

I know I want to watch it again too.

Good job, Aronofsky.

But yeah, what did we also think about like the the humiliation that Tomah perpetrates against Nina during these rehearsals?

And it's bad.

It's.

It's fucked up.

It's fucked up, it's fucked up and I think it's, but again, I think we are the as the audience are supposed to interpret, this is like, oh, this is part of art being birthed.

Like how can you have art if you don't have somebody pushing this?

And the truth of the matter is that's just, that's just not the case.

And so it it, it doesn't need to be there if, if it's actually happening, which again, I'm sort of like lost tenure with reality.

If it's actually happening, it's fucked up and he should be doing it.

If Nina is interpreting it this way as part of her metamorphosis, that's also problematic.

And that's part of the dissociation that she's having.

But I just, I don't like seeing it.

I definitely don't like him asking the other actor if he would fuck her.

It's that I do not care for this except that it made him a villain.

And I do like him being a villain.

But you know, this is a this is a bad movie where nothing good happens.

So like, the villain's not going to get his comeuppance.

No.

Right.

But I think it's just kind of like on a metal level that that actor, the the ballet dancer that Tomas says, like would you fuck her actually does in real life.

Mary Natalie Portman after the film.

That's right.

They met while filming this movie and I remember.

He's the choreographer, isn't he?

No.

Cinematographer.

No, no, no.

It's the that's the the Prince dancer.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, but you see like he worked behind the camera, right?

He was.

I don't know about that.

I I hadn't heard about that.

No, I think he choreographed the film.

Oh wow.

OK.

Yeah, not uncommon for choreographers to also be dancers in a film.

I guess that's my yeah.

Yeah, but that was just kind of funny on a metal level.

But I agree, it's it's it's all very skeevy.

But again, it's that we've taken this thing and we've put it through the the mirror of, of what is supposed to be good and what is normal.

And we've complicated it so much because Tomad really does these horrible things, but as a director and Nina is struggling to really perform as the Black Swan.

Like the director is supposed to try and coax that darkness out of her, right?

But not to this level, certainly not to to sexually harass your cast, because that is extremely fucked up behavior.

Truly.

But Tyler, since we're in the meta roundabout, just a quick question.

I've never seen this one like sorry, I don't either.

OK, But I OK.

But we're all going to guess now, yeah?

Isn't the whole, isn't the Prince's whole point that he does fuck the white?

Swan, no.

So to my understanding the idea is he falls in love with the white swan.

And then again, this is based purely on the Swan Lake animated movie that I loved as a lot as a child.

The idea?

That you he had to tell everybody that the like revealed the White Swan as his love and like proclaim publicly this is it.

And then the evil wizard transforms somebody like a different like the Black Swan into the Princess and he makes the wrong proclamation and that's what kills the the white swan.

So the seducing and be like this is this one's my love, right?

It's the different color, but it's all fine.

OK, this was The Little Mermaid.

This one.

Got it.

OK, perfect.

I think it is.

When they're I think they are similar.

Yeah, though.

I just, I just was like, doesn't he want to marry the white swan?

Ergo, you don't want to fuck the Black Swan.

You don't fuck the white swan like so why try to get out this evil?

Maybe it's like he's in love with the White Swan, but he wants to fuck the Black Swan.

Yeah, I'm, I'm a white swan on the swan complex.

Yeah, I'm a white swan on the streets, a Black Swan between the sheets.

If you know what I'm saying, honk, honk, yes.

Honk honk motherfucker.

Wild Goose game coming for you.

Untitled Goose Game coming for you.

I got.

To go, I simply need to leave.

So.

So again, none, none of us are familiar with the actual performance.

So and it seems like the way that Tomas talking about this, having the same dancer be both the white and the black Swans is a traditional.

I have a question.

If you were watching a ballet and it was the same dancer, would you notice?

Because I don't know that I would.

I, it would have to be sold as a gimmick and that it does seem like nobody's coming to the people aren't coming to the ballet the way they used.

There's like 2 lines of dialogue that sell this to me merrily.

And again, you could, you could cut them out and throw them away.

It, it does seem very stressful to do both, which I think is part of the psychosis that Nina ends up going through, which I do think is important.

But otherwise, like what it'd be like, well, we're going to have our, our first baseman also play second base.

It's like, why would you do this?

Just have to play.

There's like, that's a very normal thing to do.

I'm so glad you're on my team with this because that is something I kept thinking about the entire fucking movie.

Yeah, I, that part was sort of a it's fine.

And again, like I said, there are two lines of dialogue that do sell it, which is like no one's going to think about, oh, people are still going to that Royal Academy while they're doing fun new things.

And that's it.

That's all you get in order to be like I, Tomas am brilliant and French and it'll go.

You must be black and white swan at once.

What is this accent?

I do not know.

Yeah.

You gotta leave the accent work to Tyler.

I really do.

Attack it.

Attack it.

Yeah, no.

And then and then of course we have Lily showing up afterwards and she first appears in Shadow potentially as the Nina doppelganger before morphing into Lily.

But I think, yeah, we didn't talk about this in the previous scene, but Lily is very sexually free spirited.

Like she takes off her underwear when they're in the bathroom together in the previous scene at the ball.

And then he or she's showing up and she's smoking.

And Nina even says, like, you can't smoke in here.

And Lily says I'm going to tell if you won't or something like that.

That's hot.

That's hot.

Oh, it's very hot, and especially because she's smoking, which is hot anyway.

They share a cigarette later on too.

And I'm just like, the hottest thing possible.

But, you know, Lily is, I would argue, probably trying the healthier way of getting someone to talk about, like, these parts of themselves they are not comfortable with.

But then she's also very much kind of like an overbearing person.

And maybe that's Nina, Nina's perception of her.

I think the movie does a good job of trying to make us think that Lily is trying to be friendly.

But at the same time, maybe she has gone in for Nina's part and she's trying to get into her head.

And I think that dichotomy is present here, even with Lily seeming to be like a friendly person who's just like Tomas, kind of an asshole.

Like, did he do something to you?

Like?

And and Nina is very defensive of that.

And I think it's also interesting that Nina is defensive of this person who's abusing her.

Wow, Very interesting movie.

Very lot.

A lot.

Happening a lot.

Happening like in this next scene where Nina starts to masturbate in the path, but while she is in the bath she has a vision of her doppelganger attempted to drown her.

She quickly gets out and clips are her nails with these nail scissors, but she cuts herself as she makes a very, very menacing face in the mirror.

I loved this.

I loved this.

This whole.

Everything in the bathroom is good.

This is all very good.

It's very Portman by herself doing it all.

This is great.

At rehearsal, Tomas says that Lily told him that Nina was saying she needed a break.

Nina denies it, but Tomas tells her to quit whining and to stop being weak.

That's pretty good.

Nina confronts Lily, and Lily denies telling to Ma that Nina was complaining.

Nina hisses that Lily shouldn't have said anything at all.

Back at home, Erica tries to talk to Nina, but Nina is largely unresponsive.

When Erica asks Nina to take off her shirt, probably to show off her scratches, Nina's just says no.

Just then, Lily arrives.

She wants to go out for drinks.

Nina initially turns her down, but hearing how much of A control freak Erica is, she changed just her mind and goes out.

OK, so we've got a few sequences coming up that I just, who knows?

But by and large, you can really pull Nina out of them and they still work.

So I didn't, I never know if Nina, Mila Kunis is there or not.

Because when Erica answers the door, she says, oh, no one's there.

And then Nina goes out and is like, no, Lily's here.

Lily.

Lily could be held out of all these things, Mila Kunis.

But when Nita goes out into the hallway, Lily is literally there.

And it it, it almost read to me as is this part of her psychosis?

Is this her having a dissociative episode and sort of creating an imaginary version of Lily to interact with?

And that gets turned up to 11 by the end of these sequences.

But for now, did you all read this as real or were you to questioning reality at this point of time?

I read it as real.

I read that she was actually there.

She went to go like, especially because they had a fight earlier.

So this is her trying to like, you know, apologize and then they make good.

And then her controlling mother was like, no, she's not here leave because I don't want anyone else in the sphere of my abuse victim getting out of control.

And then she goes out because obviously that's what you're going to do when you're rebelling.

And then she loses control of reality as she goes out.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, they're one to one with you merrily.

I think Lily is there, but I think it is also interesting that maybe Lily isn't there.

Like I, I, I'm never certain.

I'm never absolutely 100% certain when things are happening in this movie, Especially as Nina starts to lose her grip on reality further and further.

And so I I do like the idea that maybe Lily isn't there, and I think that's a very valid read.

But I do think at least in for the time being, time being, she is.

Present yes yes, yeah I mean I that was my first watch.

It was only until the second one, but I was like for the for the mother Erica to just be like no, it's no one.

There is almost a little too mustache evil twirling.

I'm controlling you and keeping you in the house that that almost was like well what if there really is no one in the hallway?

Like I was forced to answer that question because it's it's so weird to I don't know who this person is and I'm not letting them in because you and I are having a conversation right now versus like oh it's no one.

What it's no one someone knocked on the door girl like or is this is a ghost movie?

Or or the.

Most of Lily.

Ding Dong ditch.

Ding Dong ditch.

Ding Dong, well, a Ding Dong ditch that's that's fine.

Like that happens.

So either way, I think it's it's very interesting because like to even have this question about is someone at the door or not really shows how deep into sight like the dissociative mind we are right, we are going.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So Nina and Lily talk about the company Tama, and even a little bit about sex.

Lily offers Nina some ecstasy.

Although she initially turns it down.

Nina eventually accepts a drink spiked by Lily.

Nina gets close and sensual with Lily.

They dance at the club before eventually catching a cab to Nina's home.

At home, Erica tries to interrogate Nina, but Nina acts like a drunk teenager caught by her mom.

After Erica tries to cover Nina's mouth to stop her from talking about sex, Nina grabs Lily's hand and they go into her bedroom, where Nina props the door to near shut with the plank of wood from earlier.

Nina and Lily then have passionate sex.

In the morning, Nina wakes up alone in bed.

She's late for her rehearsal.

When she gets to the theater, she sees Toma directing Lily in the Swan Queen role and he is impressed.

I want to start with the Sebastian Stan jump scare because there are some guys at the club and one of them is Sebastian Stan and I was like, what are you doing here?

Every time, every time I watch this movie nowadays in a post MCU world, I'm like.

Yeah.

But it'll.

Be it'll it'll be years before the two of you are at Iron Man's funeral.

Oh my God, you're right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not too far away from each other.

I was like, wow, this is wild.

Wow.

She in in that movie.

She is, she is Thor's love interest from the film Thor.

And because everyone comes back at the end, yes, she is one of the attendees at the funeral.

It is a brief appearance by Natalie Portman in that film.

I know, I don't think Natalie Portman was super, no pun intended, like thrilled with being in the MCU until Thor Ragnar no whatever the last one was that she was even.

Loving Thunder.

Thunder.

Yeah, even loving.

Though she's she wants the paycheck.

Yeah, I get it though.

We all want we.

All that woman was in the Star Wars prequels.

I, I, I get the idea.

Like I'm doing some things for the for the studio and for the money.

And then I'll do a Black Swan, a Jackie for me.

Exactly, exactly.

Black Swan.

Jackie, my girl has picked some winners and she also can pay her Morgan and.

We love to see it.

And somewhere in between was that weird movie with the bear that was sort of that was, that was more artsy, wasn't it?

Was that Cocaine Bear?

No, no, no, no.

The bear that mimics voices.

Oh, annihilation.

Annihilation.

Annihilation.

Yeah, that was, that was a weird art house movie that I saw.

I was like, I'll see anything with Natalie Partman.

And I saw that.

And I was like, David, let's add some clarifications to our criteria.

Oh well, we're going to talk about annihilation at some point, so you better get ready.

I, I liked it.

I just, I it wasn't what I thought it was going to.

Be fair, it's.

Fair it's going to be.

Well, and here's my question, Marilee, what could you think that it was going to be that would deliver on what it was?

I read the book so I had a pretty.

Good.

OK, OK, not but not unlike this movie.

So here's Sebastian Stan.

He's trying to get with her.

She makes out with some other guy in the bathroom.

I love this Nina go If Lily at any point of time is a figment of her imagination.

This whole thing is about I gave myself permission to take ecstasy.

I gave myself permission to drink.

But I have to create a character in order to allow myself to escape the guilt of it.

That would be very true for someone who's going through a decision episode.

So you could take the non Sebastian Stan guy and Lily out of the scene and it still works.

So if those are just figments of her imagination, everything works because Sebastian Stan only interacts with Nina.

That's very true.

And you know, what I found interesting about his character is that he's just a guy.

Like he doesn't seem like a dirtbag.

He seems.

Actually seems like a really nice guy.

Yeah.

He's the only nice guy in the whole movie.

Yeah.

And he he honestly, in a film about ballet, filled with ballet dancers and some French director, Sebastian Stan is somehow the closest that we get to an Arbogast school of portly gentlemen.

This is a very thin movie.

We got we got nobody else to look for.

Yeah, that's true.

And then it it's before he gets ripped to be The Winter Soldier too.

Yeah, yeah, this is this is probably prime Stan era.

Yeah, we stand.

Yeah, but we stand.

We stand the stand.

OK, so then she goes home again.

You can take Lily out of the scenes and it's just an argument with her mother.

In fact, it would be a little bit weird to argue with your mother while your girlfriend question mark is there.

Then she wakes up and is alone.

How did Lily get out?

She barred to the door.

It's this whole.

There's a lot of question mark, question mark, question mark of what's happening here.

It's really interesting when we look at the use of mirrors.

So we've talked about mirrors and how effectively they're used.

I think this is like the best illustration of the mirror showing the division between reality and hallucination that Nina experiences.

Where Lily, like after the lights go up and Nina realizes I'm making out with some stranger at the club and she's running out to leave.

And Lily says, where are you going?

I think that is where Lily is no longer physically present.

And that is the Black Swan of Nina's psyche really kind of manifested.

And when they're kind of fooling around, when they're touching each other in the cab, I think that's all Nina doing that to herself.

And then when we get to the actual apartment, we see this mirror, this big mirror that's like shaped like a like the sun.

So there's just big circle in the mirror, and there's all these different shards, and we see Nina and Lily, and then Lily just kind of slinks out of the scene and out of the mirror where the two of them had been conjoined together because of the mirror shape.

And I think that was so brilliantly done.

And I think this is really where we start to see Nina become the Black Swan.

But that also means that her grip on reality is tenuous, more so than ever.

Agreed.

Agreed.

And then of course, they have this really intense sex scene, which Aaron Austin only had them film once, which which Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis said they appreciate it.

But I think like the fact that the sexual acts that go on there is so focused on Nina, I think really is demonstrating like Nina is not just satisfying a fan that she has with Lily.

It's also that queer identity of I, I have a crush on this person.

Do I want to be them or do I want to be loved by them?

And I think it's Nina trying to do both.

And I think that's actually like it's kind of played up for scares a little bit because I think there is like a doppelganger moment.

But yes, it's, it's honestly like a very healthy thing for her to do.

Yeah, cuz at one point in time she like smothers over the pillow.

Like that's how the scene ends.

She goes from going down on her to like smothering over the pillow and like, that's great.

Have a safe word.

But like, I don't know.

I think the whole sequence is incredible because it's all being scored very well.

I'm still in this horror movie.

I have not gotten away from it.

But otherwise this, if you would put a Melissa Etheridge bop behind this, this would have just been a fun good time.

Indigo Girls probably better.

Yeah.

Come through my window indeed.

Oh.

Man, yeah.

But then of course for them at the very end of that scene, we do have the the realization that Nina is late, she has to run out.

She says I'm moving out, which is, and she's saying it with a more adult like Timber to her voice too, which is demonstrating the difference between this white swan and Black Swan.

But also like she sees Tomah is impressed by Lily and now it's this fear of being replaced when she's so close to perfection.

And that really provides a lot of the antagonism for the remainder of the movie.

Well, and to the show girls of it all, like your mentor was replaced, of course you are replaceable as well.

That is, that is the same call of the void as looking at the injury.

She thinks about Beth when she thinks about her future.

So right.

So getting ready for bed, Nina lays out her Swan Lake music box on her night stand before knocking it across the room in anger.

At rehearsal, Nina performs the ending of the ballet when her character is meant to jump to her death off a Cliff.

Tama gives her the thumbs up to Ninas relief.

However, when Nina goes to get measured for her costume, she sees her reflection scratching her shoulder blade.

I hate that.

I mean I love it, it's scary.

Nina dismisses this quickly as she finds out that Lily has been chosen by Tomah to be her alternate, the understudy.

Tomah tries to console her and tells her to go home and rest, but Nina instead keeps practicing into the night to the point that the piano player also leaves And is like, I have a life and I was like, give this man about it.

Well, that sassy man also was a pretty famous drag queen, as it turns out.

I love.

That yeah, he passed away like a couple years ago, but this was like a fun little like moment because I think he also has a lot of, he had a lot of history with the ballet in real life as well.

I love that, that's fantastic.

After another scare, as Nina's reflection turns to glare at her, the lights go out backstage.

She goes to investigate and sees Lily having sex with another actor.

He turns into the terrifying dark wizard from Nina's dream and Nina takes off in terror.

When she goes to the hospital to beg Beth for help, she returns Beth's things that she had taken.

Nina says that she just wanted to be perfect, but Beth stabs her own face with her nail file, telling Nina that she's nothing.

Nina runs away to the elevator, then drops the bloody nail file that she that has found its way into her hand.

Boy.

OK, the stab, the stabbing is so good, but is there anything we've got?

We got to talk about the other stuff first.

OK, so like, we're at rehearsal, Nina is jumping off of off of the Cliff, and then she gets a big thumbs up from Tomah.

And Tomah even says you had a breakthrough on stage.

And I think that is, again, that's a very interesting way to put things and to perform things and the choices that Aronofsky and the screenwriters made to have that happen because this is interesting foreshadowing for what happens at the end of the movie.

And it's only because she has begun to get in touch with her Black Swan persona that she can do this.

But I just think it's interesting that the moment that Tomas is like, hey, you actually did good for once, is when Nina is supposed to die or her character is supposed to die.

Right.

Well, then let's talk about the hospital.

Yeah, Wow.

All I really think is like what is happening?

Yeah, yeah.

Like what is actually happening, what isn't happening?

And like her, I don't know, her going to Beth to try and fix what's going on is so interesting to me.

You know what I mean?

Because at no point have we ever really gotten a sense of how close these these two relationship are.

We've seen them talk like twice and neither time was particularly good.

But like, she's being haunted by these revisions of this, this this creature.

And she's like, I'm going to go talk to the hospitalized ballerina that I kind of know for help, which is such a strange choice.

Well, think about it.

It's if we do see Beth as like her, her dance mother, her dance mom, that would make sense.

Like she's going to mom for help.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I don't think she actually goes.

This is, this is part of it is I don't think this is actually happening, right?

This is not happening.

I think I'm that's the fun thing about this movie from this point on.

So I think like, once she starts seeing the the scary reflections, that's when it's like, reality is out the window.

Yeah.

And so we don't know what's going on anymore.

I do think she does visit the hospital.

I don't know if Beth is stabbing herself, though.

I don't know if any of that happens.

I don't know if Nina stabbed Beth and that's why the nail file was in her hand.

But all I can go is off of what I am seeing on screen right now.

And so for Beth, who may be a manifestation of Nina and her psyche in this moment, this this shaming side of her, to say that Nina is nothing, I think is very interesting because it also says like the white swan was always looking for a type of identity and there is none to be had.

So in a way, she is nothing until she could become the Black Swan.

But at the same time, like, is this just like a scary thing that that Beth is saying because Nina is trying to be Beth, but Beth is already taken.

Beth is Beth.

Yeah, but I would, I would almost imagine Beth to do a Jon Hamm Mad Men thing.

Like, I don't think about you at all.

Yeah, yeah.

Who are you?

Yeah, I think that's absolutely it because I do not perceive them as having a strong relationship before this, right?

Me neither.

I really don't think Beth ever even recognized that Nina was a person.

I would imagine it to be parasocial, yeah.

If anything, yeah.

Parasocial is a great way to to frame that, yeah.

And if you have a pair of social relationship with us, you can follow us on Facebook, Facebook, Oh my God.

Oh, you're a Facebook?

God, Oh my God.

Are we back in 2010?

If you have a pair of social relationship with us, you can send us $5 on Patreon because $5 is the pair of social tier.

Yeah, I I think there's just a boomer chest pressure coming out of me in this moment.

It's gonna erupt out of me and demand you get off my yard.

Oh my God.

Well, you know, there's something that we haven't Speaking of Beth and the nail file of it all.

There's something that's been happening in the background.

We haven't really talked about is that with all of the stolen items that Nina has taken from Beth, she has this almost ritual where she will lay all of them out very carefully.

And like, it's so specific.

It just every time I saw that, I kept being like, what is this ritual for?

Why is it agreed?

Yeah, I was like, I was like, I don't know what this is, but it freaks me out a little.

Bit I mean, I will be honest, it kind of looked a lot to me about like somebody who's laying out tools for self harm and like that part or the ritual part of that process.

So like, that's what it that's what the thing that jumped into my mind.

I don't know if that was like on purpose.

And but we never see her hurt herself with those items.

That doesn't mean that's not what's going on, at least.

I think that's maybe.

Mentally or.

I think that's actually a really great call out Marilee, because I think that like, in a way, trying to imitate Beth is harming to herself, is harming to Nina because she is not.

She's suppressing these parts of who Nina is to try and be Beth as who she perceives as being the perfect ballerina.

And that does kind of make sense.

Like I am ritualizing this thing that I know hurts me.

And because I am ritualizing it, I am having control over it.

And so I am giving.

It's OK when I do it.

And I think that's that's so fascinating to to call that out merrily.

I really like that.

Yeah, that's great.

Because I think there are also a lot of things happening in this in like the corners of this movie that we don't really get to see, but we do get hints of.

And I think part of that is like the bingeing, like, well, there's no bingeing, but the purging that Nina will do sometimes.

Like we spend very short bursts of time on that.

The ritualization of laying out the the different Beth artifacts, We get very brief moments of those.

It's really kind of just like we have like a play on stage where we can only see what's happening in scenes, but anything else that's not in a scene, we do not get to see.

Yeah, so good.

Nina returns home.

She can hear Erica crying and calling her by her pet name, Sweet Girl.

When Nina turns on the light, she sees a bloody dopplicator dressed like Beth.

She runs away to vomit, then goes to Erica's studio, the source of the crying, only to see that all of Erica's paintings have come to life, each one sobbing and saying Sweet Girl and then that Sweet girls turn into my turn in Nina's voice.

She tears all of these pictures down and then is found by Erica.

Nina escapes to her room and uses the wooden plank to keep Erica out.

Just as Nina's bodily transformations reach a new level, becoming more and more swan like.

She breaks Erica's hand with the door, then Nina's knees bend into swan positions with loud bone cracking noises.

Nina collapses, hitting her head on the metal bed frame as she goes down.

The next morning, Nina awakens to find Erica caring for her.

Nina's hands are covered in mittens because Erica says that she was scratching all night.

Erica says that she told the company that Nina was unwell and couldn't perform.

Nina fights her mother and rushes out the door.

Yeah, OK, So what is happening Part 2 when dreams come true?

Because I truly and honestly couldn't make sense of it because I was like, OK, well she obviously didn't break her legs like a bird so I could let's work backwards.

When when do things stop being real?

And then I thought, oh, maybe she didn't actually fight her mother at the door because her mother does get in later.

But then when she attacks her mother to leave, she attacks her hand and that seems to cause pain to Erica.

So then I think the hand thing did happen.

I don't think the pictures actually talked to her.

So this is what's very interesting about using a central character and focusing point of view on someone in psychosis is that you, the audience, then there's just there's no way to know what's real and what's not.

And that is very compelling to watch for this kind of horror film.

Absolutely.

And like, we see her block the door, but if that had happened then she wouldn't be able to get in in the morning.

So.

So what's the truth, Ellen?

I think Erica is able to break the, the plank because I, I, I think when I was watching it again yesterday, I, I remember hearing something snap, but there's so much going on in the scene.

Like it's very easy to miss because like, I kind of was thinking the same thing for the longest time.

Like how is Erica able to get in if the wooden plank is in the way?

So what is the truth, Ellen?

Indeed, But it's, it's difficult.

It's difficult to navigate exactly what is real and what isn't, as David said.

And I think that's, that's fully happening here.

I absolutely want to talk about the drawings and then the sweet girl of it all.

The drawings.

Oh.

My God, they freaked me out.

Like that was like my big jump scare for the film.

When like they started moving.

I was like that's fucked.

I don't like that.

If there's a very blink and you'll miss it moment, like near the start of the movie when Nina is going around the apartment and she looks into Beth's or Erica's study.

God, these everyone's a brunette and you can actually see the eyes on one of the pictures, look at her and then look away.

Oh no, I don't like that.

I hate that bad.

Yeah, it's Blake, and you'll miss it, but it's always there.

Which again, is kind of foreshadowing that Nina has always been on on the break of psychosis and a dissociative state.

But then of course, we do have Erica's pet name for Nina is sweet girl.

And this was featured in all the trailers.

This was a Bing moment.

This is I remember the delivery of these lines is what pushed me to be like, Hey, friends, do we want to go to in the in the Facebook Messenger group chat?

Hey, guys, do we want to go see Black Swan at at bell tower?

You know, and lo and behold, we we did.

And but it was Erica saying what happened to my sweet girl?

And then Nina say she's gone.

And it was just like, I have to see this movie.

I have to see what this is about.

That's so valid you.

Know but merrily I I see that you have some notes here about sweet girl.

Yeah.

So I just, I think it's very interesting that the two nicknames that we get by people who are like in close orbits with two different ballerinas are Little Princess and Sweet Girl, which are both so infantilizing.

And I thought that was very interesting.

And especially in the way that like Tomah keeps trying to make Nina into a more of like a sex object, but he's still also doing the same thing that Erica is doing by using these this language to invoke a child about these adult women.

Yeah, and I mean, Lily even calls out at one point that Tomah calls Beth's little Princess and Nina says, oh, that's just what he calls her.

It's special for her.

And Lily says no, I bet he says that to all of like, the ballet dancers, which becomes true by the end of the movie.

But it is.

It's gross and it's infantilizing.

And it's also very much that controlling male dominated figure that, you know, got called out so much in in the Me Too movement where there were these people in positions of power who were sexually abusing women, but they would also infantilize them and try to make them special to try and make them feel less than and, and all these other different things.

And I think having him be this person in the movie just further adds to our credence that like.

Tomas, like our villain of 2026, like calling it now like this is the biggest Dick bag in the world.

Yeah, yeah, he's got to go.

He's got to go.

But I the fact that Erica also does it to Nina is reinforcing the white swan virginal girl that she wants Nina to stay forever.

And I think also like the fact that Erica is an adult woman who Nina is, proof that Erica has had sex is again, kind of like a threat to Erica because Nina can be the things that Erica had to give up.

So she can never return to the white swan.

She is permanently going to be this adult Black Swan.

And to her, that's very painful, which is why we see these really awful drawings and we can hear Erica crying at times during the lucid moments in Nina's life.

Or are they?

Or are.

They see again or are they like?

Seemingly lucid.

I'll say seemingly lucid because like, really like.

It's difficult to say what is and isn't real in this movie.

Yeah, like the whole the back half, you could just like put a question mark over and.

And I will.

I will continue.

To I mean, David even wrote What is happening Part 2 in our notes here, and I've already spoiler, so let's see that that keeps going.

I love and treasure that well.

Speaking of keeping going, Nina rushes to the theater.

More confident than ever, Nina tells to Ma that she, not Lily, will be the Swan Queen tonight.

Nina discovers that she has webbed toes, but the show must go on it.

Just like if you miss it.

We don't.

Don't worry about that.

Nina goes on stage as the White Swan, and although she performs admirably, she gets distracted when she spies her doppelganger as Lily.

She loses her balance, falling after being held aloft by the Prince performer.

Nina is distraught and Tomah proclaims that it is a disaster.

When Nina goes to her dressing room, she finds Lily dressed in the Black Swan costume.

Lily offers to perform instead, and then becomes Nina's doppelganger.

Nina fights her doppelganger, throws her into a mirror, and then the doppelganger chokes.

Her doppelganger gets distracted as Nina's neck twists upwards like a Swans.

The noises gang.

Nina stabs the doppelganger with a Shard of the mirror, snarling.

It's my turn.

The doppelganger becomes Lily again as she dies.

Nina's freaked out, but as she puts on her Black Swan makeup, she calms down and grows more confident.

Yeah, OK, well, this is what is happening, Part 3, because, OK, well, the dance starts and the dance, we haven't really talked about it, but the dancing is wonderful.

A lot of it's shot waist up because, you know, these people know how to dance, but they are not professional ballet performers.

And but it is selling the evocative nature of the dance.

It's all very wonderful.

And then this whole thing happens in the dressing room.

Oh, I guess before we get to the dressing room, the drop.

I love that Nina blames it on the guy.

Yeah, Yeah.

I love that.

She gets backstage and she's like, he interrupt me.

And I was like, Queen, you know what?

No crimes committed.

You were flawless.

This is great.

I still choose to believe that it's his fault.

Yeah, it is his fault, that asshole.

Yeah, fuck that guy.

Should have said you're going to fuck him with her.

Like come on, dude.

But then we're in the dressing room and this is like Gonzo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because Lily's not there.

This, this I feel confident in saying Lily is not there.

Yeah, for sure.

This is all the Black Swan part of Nina's psyche trying to manifest and say like, I mean, you fell as the perfect white swan.

I have always felt so uncomfortable seeing the fall and seeing Nina's reaction to it because I want her to be perfect too.

As a as a criminally perfectionist person, I want her to be perfect.

And seeing her fall and having Tomas say it's a fucking disaster is like, so it hurts me deeply.

But like that she comes in and she sees this Black Swan who's like, I'll take over, I'll perform.

You seem tired.

And then the fact that they fight and, and Nina kills the Black Swan, but she becomes the Black Swan is so good.

It is so, so good.

Yeah, I really, really liked all this.

And I and I think too, that's like it is also a very queer thing to do because like, if Nina is trying to kill her doppelganger, that is a part of herself that she is trying to kill.

And I think that when as queer people, we have to experience that sort of identity death at some point in our lives.

Like we go from drinking.

I am a straight person who's going to get married to a person of the different sex when I'm a grown up.

That eventually goes out the window and we have to say goodbye to that part of ourselves.

And I think that's that, again, that's like kind of a healthy thing that we have to do to become, you know, healthy queer people.

But Nina goes through such a violent ordeal with this, and I think it's very queer to see that.

I love it so much though.

I love it.

I love the stabbing.

I thought it was good.

I loved her being like, I have to hide this body.

It's not really there symbolism.

It's working.

It's working on visual effect.

It's making me concerned about what's going on.

I'm just happy on every level even though I had no idea what was happening.

And so I will say every good theory has a moment in which it is wrong.

And I have said many times in this podcast, you can't scare me if I'm confused.

And here we are.

And I have to admit that I was wrong.

I was both scared and confused about what was happening here because it was done masterfully.

It's the exception that proves the rule.

I'm yeah, I'm quietly applauding David for character growth.

Yeah.

You know what, it's growth is what we call it.

Growth and then I think so like we have we have like one last thing that I that I'm looking at my notes that I really want to bring up that before Nina goes on stage, like when she arrives and before she goes on stage is the white swan.

Tomas comes to her because Lily is freaking out because she's not going to get to be the white swan after all.

And Tomas says the only person standing in your way is you.

It's time to let her go lose yourself.

And they think that is good for Nina to hear, but it's coming from this terrible person.

So it's that onion meme of the worst person you know, just made a great point.

Sure.

And it's also something terrible to say to someone in psychosis because like you're saying, you should get rid of your identity and become something else.

And so it's it's such a complex, it's very complicated.

Everything that's happening is so complicated.

But I think that is what will eventually signal needed to fall.

She because she cannot be the white virginal swan anymore and but then as we will see in the next scene, how she could perform as the Black Swan.

Yeah, and that is exactly what happens because Nina appears on stage as the Black Swan, and she's incredible.

As she dances, her eyes turn red, her arms sprout wings, and she moves with a ferocity, grace and passion.

She has never exhibited it before.

At the end, she receives a standing ovation and she goes backstage.

She passionately kissed Toma and then swaggers back to her dressing room.

Lily's blood oozes out beneath the door, so Nina hides it with a pink towel.

As she applies her white swan makeup, she hears a knock at the door and it's Lily a not dead Lily.

Lily compliments Nina, but Nina doesn't hear it.

She checks the towel.

There's no blood.

She opens the door where she hid Lily but finds nothing.

She looks down and finds a growing blood wound in her abdomen.

Nina begins to cry, then stops as she realizes her destiny is to die like the Swan Queen.

She plays for the final time.

Nina dances on stage.

Everyone is mesmerized by her, even Erica is in the audience.

Or is she enraptured by her daughter's performance?

She dances to the top of the Cliff, then at the ballet's climax, she leaps onto the mattress below her to the sound of wild applause from the audience.

Her fellow performers and Toma crowd around Nina, and then Lily gasps.

Nina's bloody wound is growing.

A huge Toma asks what she's done and Nina responds that she was perfect as the screen turns white.

Oh God.

So like, the Black Swan performance is mesmerizing.

It's gorgeous.

It's also really scary because when she first comes on stage and she is pushed forward towards the camera, it's like Natalie Portman is staring directly into the camera with her big red contacts to look like a Black Swan and it scares the shit out of everyone in the audience.

Yes, yeah, I I loved it, but I don't like my.

This is not the flavor of Natalie Portman that I ordered.

Waiter, I don't like this.

This is unhinged.

It's it's really scary, but it is so beautiful and so evocative.

And again, we're using, we're just using the song in the from Swung Lake.

And somehow it it has turned into a real terrifying moment.

And I think, Tyler, you're right, a lot of it has to do with looking at me.

I don't like when characters look at me.

They spend years learning not to look at a camera.

And yet here we have now asked Natalie Portman, please dance.

But you, you know, did ballet as a kid.

But please dance in a ballet and look at a camera so that you have trained yourself not to do.

She did.

She and Mila Kunis trained for so long to do the ballet.

And I remember that being another reason why people were saying she deserved the Oscar.

But like, and, and I know like they're, they're, I'm sure they're using a body double for a lot of this.

And it's, and it's Natalie Portman's face, but Natalie Portman's also doing the waist up moves.

And it's just, it's so incredibly done.

It's so incredibly performed.

And it is the apotheosis really of the Black Swan.

Like she does turn into this Black Swan.

She does become this mature, commanding and in control.

No, not in control, out of control.

This this woman who has finally let go.

And I think that's it's so beautiful to see.

Agreed.

Yeah, totally agreed.

It is this is this whole thing.

It's at this ending point though, that we we sort of go back to the dressing room.

We reveal that Lily is not dead.

Which, like, it kind of knew, right?

Still shocking, Did you?

Shocking because it's told I think in a shocking way that's why it why it shocked me but I I don't think that I was shocked shocked I I was shocked because the movie gave me visual narrative to like this is a reveal yeah and then her sort of like acceptance of death so like she stabbed herself right like that's that's.

So that's the thing that I feel like she stabbed herself on the way down from the Cliff.

Like she had something that because she was dancing, which is very physically, you know, and like in a white costume, there's no way that like if she was actually bleeding that whole time that nobody would have noticed until she had jumped off the fuck the thing onto the mattress.

So I kind of almost feel like she she did that on the way down, you know what I mean?

I well.

She pulls a Shard of glass out of her abdomen after she realizes.

Oh Lily is I?

I hallucinated that and.

I feel like that was also a hallucination I think.

It's all a hallucination.

There's not even a performance.

Barely.

I I, I do think though, that like, I think maybe she doesn't even die, maybe maybe nothing like that happens.

Like, maybe she just does perform and she performs incredibly and she hallucinates people being freaked out that she's going to die, you know, I think.

Yes, yes, that's all possible as.

Well, I think all of it is is extremely valid.

I think maybe she does stab herself on the way down and like it's.

It's so difficult to say.

There is no true answer here because we are fully in the grips of someone who has lost touch with reality.

Yeah, you know what?

Also it could be maybe she missed the mattress and like landed on and that's why people are freaking out because she's actively dying cuz she hit the floor really hard.

Or maybe there was some rebar a la Cordelia, like, yeah, just what's happening here, What is happening here?

And you know what?

What is happening here is just this movie and.

It's simply none of our business.

It's not gonna tell us what it is.

It's not, and that's okay.

That's okay because it's gorgeous from start to finish.

I had a really good time with it and I thought this was a really nice ending actually cuz it was cathartic.

And I think that a good core experience gives you a moment of catharsis.

And this one was like, here is a little catharsis for the end.

And that is it.

We're fade to white on this one.

Because it does tie in nicely with this tale of the Black Swan or of the the Swan Queen.

Like she gets turned into a swan.

She thinks she's perfect.

She's she's in love with this man.

And then she becomes betrayed, becomes the Black Swan and then dies.

And that's basically what happened to Nina.

Yeah.

So I think.

It's it could be the death, I mean, it could be lots of that could be the death of her, her innocence.

It could be the death of whatever, but it is an ending and I love that it's an ending.

Yeah.

And I it is final.

So I watched this on, on Amazon Prime and Prime does the thing where it shows like trivia when you have the movie paused.

And apparently Natalie Portman, I, I cannot find a source for this, so I can't say for sure it's it's real.

But it's said that Natalie Portman said that she was concerned that the bloody makeup was made to look kind of like she was having her period and she was uncomfortable with that.

And Darren Aronofsky said, no, that's important and on purpose because we wanted to show that Nina is killing the girl and becoming a woman.

And so Natalie Portman actually doesn't think that Nina dies at the end.

Not literally.

Yeah, that's on Wikipedia also, so you know, whatever grains of salt you'd like to take with that.

Yeah, I got nothing.

On I got nothing on this, I, I truly I, like Nina, had lost all tenure with reality.

I don't even think we're recording a podcast right now.

I think like this is all happening inside my head.

You're right, David.

We're trying to wake you up.

You've been in a coma for six years, David.

Wake up.

Oh my God, David.

Come back to us.

Did I miss anything important over the last six years?

Was there a global illness that spread through multiple countries?

Yeah, you slept through it.

Don't worry about it.

OK, great.

Perfect.

Well Gain, how did we feel about Black Swan in terms of horror or queerness after our conversation?

And do you have any other final thoughts for this episode?

I have two final things.

One is from an interview Tyler pulled that he's going to talk about something else from.

But in this interview, they were talking about Kunis getting the role and Aronofsky was like, oh, I'd like to meet her.

Can you have her fly out to New York?

And Kunis said, they're going to fly you to my team said to me, they're going to fly you to New York.

And I was like, I'm not flying to New York.

That's a bit much for a lunch meeting.

We can Skype.

And I I love her so much.

Incredible.

She's not just a great actor, she is a soothsayer.

She saw this all coming.

She was like, why waste the jet fuel from go to LA to New York City.

We'll just do a video call 22,009 Mila Kunis, The woman you were, the woman you are, the woman you will always be.

Wash your kids though.

Wash your kids as she does.

She doesn't wash your children.

No, she and Ashton Kutcher kind of got cancelled because they said that they only wash their children when they need to be washed and they don't need to wash their hands or something.

Emilia Kunis has gotten cancelled for other things.

That's not the worst thing she's done.

Don't worry about it.

Is that really true?

I don't know.

I don't anything about.

I know so little about her outside of that.

She was very good in this in this film.

She and her husband have have have said some things about some bad people that we're just not going to.

We're not going to deal with that right now.

OK, yeah, we're, we're, we're vibing.

Well, we've got a good vibe going on, right?

Now we're vibing well, because I will.

Well, I'll take.

I'm going to take us to a different vibe then and say there is a huge controversy over dance in this film.

Yeah.

So part of, so I mentioned this just a few moments ago, but Natalie Portman was really hyped up for her best actress Oscar because they said that she learned ballet and she did all the ballet dancing.

And then it was kind of revealed like, well, it's not entirely true because it's waist up, it's Natalie Portman dancing.

But anytime she's like on tip toes or they're focusing on the feet, it's not Natalie Portman.

So they were saying, well, then she isn't doing all of her own dancing and she has a dancing double and she didn't learn all the ballet.

She didn't become a prima ballerina or anything.

She just learned that she had to.

And so there was some, there was a lot of controversy about that because then it was saying that she did, it's kind of like stolen valor maybe, or, or something like that.

So because those other ballerinas were not getting their due.

And so, yeah, there was, there was some controversy.

I, I, I think even at the time, I was like, this is a little much like she still acted the hell out of those scenes and really deserved the, the Oscar that she got.

I think that I think 2010 was a very like a heated year for the Best actress race.

Best Actress?

No, but it was.

There was a lot of feelings about the Oscars otherwise because King's Speech took so much.

For the 83rd.

Yeah, yeah.

And the best actress was actually a little bit of a like there weren't a lot of women roles is kind of what it was.

And so like good, like great nominations there, but not like Michelle Williams was nominated for one of like I think one of her more less powerful performances.

I love seeing Michelle Williams get nominated for things but like this was not it for.

Her is that Manchester by the sea?

No, no, no, no, no.

What was what was 83rd would have been 2010.

Well, obviously Simmons, this movie, gosh, I don't even remember.

It it was actually because Oscars are always the the next year.

So it would have been the 2011 Oscars.

I'm looking it up right now.

Give me a second.

Yeah.

I don't remember what Williams was nominated for, but she was there with Annette.

Bening was nominated.

That was trivia on this.

The kids are all right.

Kids are right.

I don't know if that's what Benning was nominated for, but I know kids are right.

OK, so the actress nominees were and that betting for the kids are all right.

That's right, Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole, Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine.

Excellent, excellent, excellent performers.

Most of these were were not their best roles.

I I would never in my my life when I watched Blue Valentine again I.

Don't think I ever saw a Blue Valentine.

You know Michelle Williams, isn't it?

Yeah, isn't.

Frank Roger's bone.

Is really good.

Richard's bone.

I liked That was Jennifer Lawrence's like big debut.

Yeah, that was sort of her getting, getting away from like a different type of acting.

Yeah, Yeah.

But then she'd win later for Silver Linings.

Like, like just these are good actors.

They're just, this was not their year.

It was not the year for women.

Definitely not the year for women, no.

Yeah, very few ears are.

Oh, I'm still so mad about The King's Speech beating the social network for Best Picture.

Oh my.

God.

Anyway, and later later news, Natalie Portman apparently loves it when drag Queens do Black Swan drag that makes.

Me happy.

That makes me very.

Happy.

It makes me very, very happy.

We've always known Natalie Portman to be an ally, but just like knowing that about her, like I just want to go out to brunch with her and and watch some Queens perform.

I think that would be wonderful.

I agree.

Has she's has she ever done guest judge on RuPaul's Drug Race?

I don't think.

So no, I don't think so.

I think she's an.

Opportunity.

It's an opportunity, I don't think.

She's like, she seems to be like a very private person.

So when she's not acting in a movie, I think she's just kind of like, leave me alone.

That's fair.

So you know what?

She doesn't have to do Ru Paul's Drag race, but Ru Paul's Drag Race.

You should do a looks of Queen Amidala at one point of time.

I feel like that just sort of sells itself.

Yeah.

Yeah, come on, you could do a night of 1000 Natalie Portmans.

She's got enough looks in her catalog.

The night of 1000 Natalie Portmans is incredible.

Because you can do Jackie, you can do lots of Padme, you can do Black Swan.

That's a brilliant.

For Vendetta if someone wants to go ball drag.

Yeah.

Yes, that's I would.

I would actually love to see a night of 1000 Natalie Portmans.

Yeah, she or she could be Lady Thor.

Yes, or bring a scary bear behind you and you can be annihilation, Natalie Portman.

Yeah, she could be.

One of the pit crew, like a more bearish type, could be the bear.

Exactly.

For free.

You're welcome for that Drag Race.

Yeah, that one's just for you, that.

One's just for you, RuPaul.

Quit fracking.

You know what, this episode was just for you guys.

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And join us next time for more ballet dancers and double acting as we cover Luca Gwadinino's 2018 rendition of Suspiria.

But for now, we will simply say goodbye.

Bye.

It's about a girl who gets turned into a swan.