MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE MAIN CHARACTER OF BLACK SWAN MOVIE
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MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE MAIN CHARACTER
OF BLACK SWAN MOVIE
By
LINA PRATICA WIJAYA
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LETTERS UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
ABSTRAK
Artikel ini berfokus pada bagaimana sakit mental (mental illness) mempengaruhi sang pemain utama dalam film layar lebar garapan sutradara Daren Arofnovsky yang bertajuk Black Swan. Dalam pembahasannya juga akan dijelaskan lebih mendetail bagaimana penyakit ini akhirnya berdampak sangat besar pada kehidupan mental dan nyata bagi pemeran utamanya. Lebih jelasnya dibahas dengan pendekatan fisik, sosiologis dan psikologis yang termasuk dalam elemen inti dalam sebuah telaah sastra. Elemen inti pada dasarnya berfokus pada beberapa hal lain seperti bahasa, bentuk, simbol, alur, setting dan beberapa hal pendukung lain. Namun dalam telaah ini elemen inti akan lebih membahas bagaimana dimensi karakter dalam fisik, sosiologis dan psikologis menjadi terganggu dan bahkan berubah secara drastis karena kehadiran sakit mental ini.
Adapun teori-teori yang digunakan ialah; teori menganalisa drama oleh Christopher Russel Reaske, teori literatur dari Rene Welleck dan Austin Wareen serta teori psikologi Karl S. Bernhardt, juga teori kesehatan mental oleh T.R Wang.
Dengan penggunaan teori-teori tersebut di atas, telaah yang fokus dalam pendekatan fisik, sosial dan psikologi ini menghasilkan sebuah jawaban yang jelas yaitu keterlibatan kesehatan mental dalam keseharian hidup serta perubahan sifat karakter utama dalam film ini.
Kata kunci : gangguan mental, karakter, angsa hitam
Literature is a very exiting study. It is a kind of art and creative work. Literary works usually have social phenomenon inside them, which convey the relation between the writer and the reader, which expresses human life in ideology, culture and character. According to the Oxford Learner’s dictionary, literature is the writing
or the study of books valued as works of art (drama, fiction, essays, poetry, biography, contrasted with technical books and journalism). Furthermore, every aspect in literary work, despite all problems, is related to human being. One form of literature is movie or drama that has complex character and plot. Mental illness is a kind of disorder that can be found in human being. It’s interesting to learn because disorder affects human being in literary works and also other characters beside the main character itself.
Character is the most important aspect of a story, which is very interesting to analyze, because it can show the author’s thought that he wants to express, through the story. According to Christopher Russell Reaske in his book How to analyze Drama (1966 : 41) character is the writer’s creations; therefore the nature and use of characters in any story is determined by the writer’s purpose.
The main character of Black Swan movie was analyzed in this study. This movie is very interesting as it can build a suspense atmosphere of people who watch it. This story is about a great and ‘dark’ ballerina’s life in New York city. This kind of life causes depression, including the main character, Nina Sayers. In Nina’s case, she got delusion and another case of mental illness.
Based on the background above the problems are for related as follows:
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1. What kind of character does Nina Sayers have as the main character of Black Swan movie?
2.
How does mental illness affect all the character dimensions in the movie?
There are two aims of this study which are :
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1. To identify the character Nina Sayers as the main character in Black Swan movie.
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2. To find out and analyze how mental illness affects the dimension of main character.
Research method refers to the ways done in a research in order to solve the problems related with this study.
The data source of this study is the Black Swan movie and script. The Black Swan movie is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky.
In writing this research, the method that is used in collecting data are library research, script analysis and documentation method as the data is in the form of a script movie. The unnecessary data will be eliminated. The study conducted by these following steps:
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1. The data in the form of written script of Black Swan movie were collected.
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2. The relevant data based on topic of study by reading and understanding the idea of character specially in Black Swan movie were found.
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3. The data were read several times so could be indentified the meaning of the script and understand deeply.
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4. Part of the movie script showed mental illness of Nina Sayers as main
character was identified.
The data was analyzed by using comparative-qualitative method. In this case, the comparative can be said the way of comparing the delusional facts found in the movie/script about mental illness, with the sign of mental illness in real life. Then how mental illness could be described in Nina’s case changed her behavior in 3 dimensions of character.
The Data of this study use descriptively analyzed based on the theory of character in the literary work proposed by Christopher Russel Reaske in his book The theory of How to Analyze Drama, How to analyze fiction by William Kenney, Theory of literature by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, theory of psychology by Karl. S Bernhardt, M.A., Ph. D in his book Practical Psychology (1953), Rethinking Mental Illness by T.R.; Wang, P.S. and report of The United States Department of Health and Human Services about Mental Health : a Report of the Surgeon General.
Character is a representation of human being, the inner self that determines thought, speech, and behavior. We need to approach fictional character with the same concern when we approach people. We observe their actions, to listen to what they say and how they say, in order to notice how they relate to other characters and how other characters respond to them. In this writing, the main character would be analyzed based on the physiological, sociological, and psychological dimensions.
Through physiological dimension, the analysis of the main character includes sex, age and physical appearance such as shape of body, whether or not a person is beautiful or handsome, color of skin and hair. From this, the audience can see how the character looks, and what clothes that the character wears.
As already mentioned, Nina Sayers was the main character in the Black Swan movie. She is average tall, thin lady, white, has a black hair and brown eyes. She is a beautiful young lady who are very talented especially in ballet. This is clearly reflected in the quotations below that can be read on the script, which also shows his physical appearance. It is said that Nina is beautiful. Another physical point or her appearance can be seen very clearly in the movie that Nina has a skinny 165cm body length, dark hair, a Barbie look face and no disability.
Sociology is the study of the individual in a social setting that includes groups, organization, cultures, and societies. In the social setting, individuals through out the course of history have created the social setting in which people live. Sociology is concerned with the way individuals in the past and the present construct their social setting.
Nina Sayers was described as a young talented in ballerina in New York city. Unfortunately, she did not have a settle social groups. She was only involved in one community; her ballet community. In the movie, it is shown her life in ballet community only, how Nina make other member of the community jealous by her luck; be the chosen one to play as swan queen.
At the night of celebration, the night when Thomas introduced her to the sponsor, and important people, it also gave her new label in community, the Swan Queen, the queen of beauty, queen of the new ballerinas community. The introduction of Nina from Thomas even made other ballerinas jealous, especially Beth, the previous Swan Queen. This, can seen from the following quotation:
As we know, we open our season with my new version of Swan Lake. Taking the role of our new Swan Queen is the stunning and brilliantly talented Ms. Nina Sayers. Soon you will have the pleasure of seeing her perform, tonight we raise a glass. To all of you, to Nina, to Beth, to beauty!
You think I give a shit about you? What’d you do to get the role? He always said you were a frigid little girl. So what did you do to make him change his mind? Suck his cock? You fucking little whore.
[Beth, Black Swan, 2010]
From the quotation above, it is shown how Beth was jealous to Nina because of her new part. Beth, who used to be the Swan Queen was dumped by Thomas, and soon would be forgotten from the ballet community. This, made her mad, then Beth said bad things to Nina.
Psychology attempts to discover the source of knowledge, beliefs, and customs, to trace the development of thinking and reasoning to find the kinds of environmental stimulation that produce certain types of activity, to analyze feelings and emotions. Psychology, then, can be defined as the scientific study of the activities of individuals. The subject matter is the same as what is engaged in the mind of man ever since he began to think about himself, but the methods are different.
Emotion is one of the psychological aspects, and actually, it indicates emotional experiences. Besides, the intense emotions, the individual must follow the milder form of action. Anger motivates individual to fight, to attack, and to say things that would not be said.
Sometimes people must argue to other people’s opinions, as shown by Nina Sayers when she explained to Thomas that she did not say anything about difficult practice that she had done to Lily. Nina also argued to Lily that she did not like Lily talking to Thomas about seeing Nina cried the other night before show.
It is shown in the movie; Nina fought her mother in the night she spent with Lily. She yelled at her mother and locked her room, she refused her mother by the quotation below:
I’m not fucking twelve years old anymore! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
The most brutal emotion she had done was when she yelled to her mother, not once but several times. She yelled to her mother to go away, which she had never done before. With all the pressure about being Swan Queen, her sickness became more dominant. She had delusion; she stabbed Lily in her stomach and Lily was died. But she is not dead, it was Nina’s delusion to stab Lily.
From the story, it is shown that Nina Sayers had Mental Illness. A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not part of normal development or culture. The recognition and understanding of mental health conditions has changed over time and across cultures, and there are still variations in the definition, assessment, and classification of mental disorders, although standard guideline criteria are widely accepted.
Nina Sayers, with all things that happened to her, suspected to have a mental disorder. Her characteristic of Mental Illness are these three: Emotion disorder, Hallucination, and Double personalities.
Physiologically, Nina Sayers tried to scratch her back over and over again. That was her bad behavior since she was a young girl. She used to stop doing it over years, but when she became the Swan Queen, Nina started to do it again. It could be seen that Nina was so nervous, that's why she did her old behavior again. It changed her physiology, rash could be seen all over her back.
Sociologically, her sickness drove her to dark place where she did not have any friends at all. She thought all persons who were close to her, in this case Lily, was competitor who wanted to take her role as the Swan Queen. Her relationship with her mother became bad without communication because of her changing mood and her confusing emotions.
Nina’s sickness also affected her psychology a lot. It was shown on her mental illness category above. How Nina got emotional disorder, her delusion, and also her double personality. It made her really sick, and the top was when she stabbed her own stomach because she thought it was her rival, Lily. She was psychologically sick because of this illness.
Based on the foregoing analysis and discussion, the following points can be drawn as conclusion. The main character of the Black Swan movie directed by Daren Arofnovsky was Nina Sayers. As most important character in the psychological thriller movie because the conflicts was concentrating on her and she was dominantly represented in the story.
Physiologically, Nina Sayers as the main character was a young talented ballerina who had thin body and beautiful face. She was like usual ballerina, loved to wear comfortable outfit, she also had dark hair, and grey eyes. From sociological aspect, Nina Sayers was an introvert person, she didn't talk much to people. She did not have close friends. She was only close with her mother. It was even worse when she became the Swan Queen, because her friends was jealous with her, they did not talk. In psychological aspect, Nina Sayers was an ambitious young lady who would do anything to get what she wanted. She was also perfectionist; it was getting worse when she got role as the Swann Queen and she tended to have mental illness. She could not control her emotion, she often got delusions and she had two personalities. She was really sick.
In Nina’s case, there was also one aspect that influenced them all; mental illness. Mental illness affected all dimensions of Nina’s character. She also change her behavior because of this. It is important to define that the changes in Nina’s case was actually affecting much by her sickness. Mental illness affected physiological,
sociological and psychological aspects of Nina Sayers` life which could not be separated because they were related one to another.
Berndhardt, M.A., Ph.D. Karl S. 1953. Practical Psychology. Mcgraw-Hill Book Company
Kenney, William. 1966. How to Analyze Fiction. New York : Monarch Press
Sukada, I Made. 1987. Beberapa Aspek Tentang Sastra. Denpasar : Kayumas dan
Yayasan Ilmu dan Seni Lesiba
Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. 1955. Theory of Literature. London : Cox and Wyman Ltd.
Reaske, Christopher Russel. 1966. How to Analyze Drama. New York : Monarch Press
Insel, T.R.; Wang, P.S. 2010. Rethinking Mental Ilness. JAMA 303 (19): 1970–1971. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.555. PMID 20483974
Wikipedia. 2011. Definition of Literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature
Black Swan movie, the script. 2011. The script of Black Swan Movie, read it online.
http://www.simplyscripts.com/2011/01/28/black-swan-screenplay/
The United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. "Chapter 2:
The Fundamentals of Mental Health and Mental Illness."
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