I watched Black Swan the other day, and I really liked the role of the skin in the film. As the extremely dedicated and perfectionist Nina gains the main role in Swan Lake, the pressure is on her, from her mother (who gave up her ballet career when she fell pregnant with her), from the company director, and from herself. A small scratch on her shoulder blade reminds her mother of her past tendency to harm her skin under stress, and as she strives to overcome her limitations to perform the black swan, the seductive dark side she does not embody, the injury worsens and she hallucinates with self-harm. Scratching and tearing her own skin is an aggression against herself, a physical sign that expresses her desire to undermine her weak (soft as human skin) self.
In a toilet scene, her dark side in the mirror pulls from her hangnail back shredding a piece of skin. The visual metaphors of her psychological changes-her hallucinations-involve a metamorphosis of the skin, as the surface of the body is the 'limit of the self' (Armando R. Favazza).
As the opening performance approaches, so does her identity turning point, showed in physical symptoms on her skin to her dellusional eyes. This culminates when she pulls a tiny black feather from her back. The patch of diseased skin embodies her pathology, behind her, her dark side is making its way out, becoming, like a butterfly breaking the cocoon. Nina's perfectly ordered reality cracks (like her skin, as in the film cover) as to achieve a perfect performance she needs to kill her weak present self and allow a stronger darker personality to emerge.
This darker woman she sees in another dancer, Lily, her alter-ego, whom she pictures performing oral sex on her, looking down at her the two black evil wings are tattoed on her back. It is the back of her alter-ego, stirring her sexuality.
In the final performance, between acts, when Nina returns to her dressing room to change into the Black Swan, she finds Lily there saying she will perform the Black Swan. Lily and a double of herself blur as she fights the Black Swan and stabs her. Only to later realize she has not stabbed Lily but herself.
The skin becomes the malleable physical terrain for the expression of the self, a passive substance where to perform identity. Tattoed, scratched, torn, stabbed, covered with makeup. It is like the material cover of the soul, where the symptoms of personality sprout and become expressed in the physical realm. To change oneself one puts makeup on, but this only artificially alters the cover, it is merely temporary and fake. To trully metamorphosise the skin needs to be torn and physically altered. And to annihilate the self (or personality) it needs to be mortally wounded. Rebirth entails, like the snake, the shredding of the skin, where the old self is pushed out of the insides, infused into the skin and disposed of as passive substance.
