Black Swan

[ashlesha]

i just watched this movie and yeah its fucking amazing.

i had seen this thread and that nina had been seen as an EII and at first i wasn't sure about that because of her drive and strict control - but then as i watched i could totally see it as an example of using the HA to compensate for the polr. making sure she had all of her moves perfect to avoid having to let go in the moment. i can see the compulsive scratching being related to this as well. the trouble with Se makes a sensory type hard to fathom. i agree w/ marie about N subtype.

i thought lily as SEE was obvious. thomas i'm not sure about - i could see beta but i thought he seemed rational. i wasn't as unsympathetic towards him as i think i was supposed to be even though he was obviously douchey. i don't have an opinion on anyone else.

anyway the movie is totally deserving of the hype imo.

[April]

I just saw this over the weekend and agree with EII for Nina.

Also, OMFG at the skin picking and bloody nastiness. That was truly the stuff of nightmares.

[Jarno]

i thought lily as SEE was obvious.

it's an EIE that plays an SEE.

don't look at the role, look at the type of the actor.

or are we typing roles?? then SEE is ok.

[ashlesha]

it's an EIE that plays an SEE.

don't look at the role, look at the type of the actor.

or are we typing roles?? then SEE is ok.

i was typing the role. idk mila kunis's type.

[marooned]

hmm. i really don't understand the lily = SEE thing. i mean she's extrovert-ive and outgoing. i guess i felt that nina was somewhat wary of her and unsure if she could trust her because lily doesn't make these things clear... and lily also didn't show any sensitivity to nina's wariness about this and didn't seem to even acknowledge that she was acting like her friend and then going behind her back. it's impossible for nina to tell whether lily likes her or not. i have difficulty seeing lily as the dual of "ILI" for this reason. I would think that ILIs might be really sensitive to this and choose to avoid people like Lily because whether or not she's your friend kind of depends on which way the winds are blowing at the time.

although i guess being manipulative isn't type-related, neither is behaving in the girl back-stabbing way where one is really "nice" to everyone whether they're going behind their back or not so as to never appear as though that's what they're doing. it's why imo girls are often 3000x more cruel than guys.

[ashlesha]

hmm. i really don't understand the lily = SEE thing. i mean she's extrovert-ive and outgoing. i guess i felt that nina was somewhat wary of her and unsure if she could trust her because lily doesn't make these things clear... and lily also didn't show any sensitivity to nina's wariness about this and didn't seem to even acknowledge that she was acting like her friend and then going behind her back. it's impossible for nina to tell whether lily likes her or not. i have difficulty seeing lily as the dual of "ILI" for this reason. I would think that ILIs might be really sensitive to this and choose to avoid people like Lily because whether or not she's your friend kind of depends on which way the winds are blowing at the time.

hmm, you might be right. i suppose my typing of lily is pretty dependent on this idea that nina goes crazy with the polr pressure and lily is like the embodiment of that. but if she was trying to sabatoge nina and take the role, would she make it obvious and known? i don't think so, even if she was an Fi type. being ambiguous about it and leading nina to think they might be friends would be a smart use of Fi for shitty ends. (edit: oh you addressed this, sorry.) also i do have trouble seeing her as weak in Se, like the way she barges into the bathroom with nina or flat-out asking if she has the hots for thomas, or pushing her to go out and then stay with her. (though who knows how much of that was real, i guess.)

[HERO]

But you're forgetting the scene where she just about walks out of the room when Thomas tells her she can't have the part. Weak, weak Se. All it took was for him to say "No" and she gave up all intention of fighting him for the role. If he hadn't stopped her and asked her why she even came in the first place, she might have just let it go.

Sounds like me, yet virtually no one types me Se-PoLR.

I've seen the movie twice. [One of my female cousins used to take ballet.] I actually really related to Nina's character. Many months before I looked at this thread I typed Nina's character Fe-INFp (N-IEI), yet I can see EII (which is probably more likely). I typed the character of Lily Se-ESTp (C-SLE). I think the character of Thomas Leroy might be EIE. And that's as far as I could go regarding typings. They're probably wrong, since I tried putting everyone in the Beta quadra, although it seems like quite a Beta movie to me.
And I consider myself quite a perfectionist in every sense of the word. I think irrational types can be like that too. People have often told me that I need to "let go" or 'find the fun' or what have you. So in my life I always felt like I was holding back too much, and that I was too tense and rigid. So, I don't know. There have been times in my life when I have been very well-behaved, pleasant, self-controlled, meek, humble, and/or quiet, etc. [at times also a door mat who's easily manipulated, used, doesn't stand up for himself, can't defend himself, yielding, etc.]; and there have been other times when I've made all the wrong choices, ran away, been 'rebellious', emotionally volatile, etc. So I don't know how you can reconcile the two extremes and find a balance between them. That's what I'm working on.

In addition I'd like to share some excerpts from a book:

- from The New Psychohistory (Lloyd deMause, Editor); pp. 151-153 [The Popular Cinema as Reflection of the Group Process in France, 1919-1929 (by Paul Monaco)]: The concept of collective fantasy or mass psyche, however much used by psychohistorians in the past, was terribly unsatisfying as long as no specific empirical evidence could be pointed to which could be depended on to reflect the content of the fantasy at any particular time. Paul Monaco proposes we use persistent themes in popular cinema as a major index of mass fantasy, and demonstrates the significance of some central themes in French cinema during the 1920's to political conditions of the time.

The art historian Walter Abell has written: "Psycho-historically considered, art is one of the cultural symbols into which society projects its existent states of underlying psychic tension . . . Thus, we are led to conceive the higher forms of cultural expression in any society as manifestations of a 'collective dream.'." [1. Walter Abell, The Collective Dream in Art (New York, 1966), p. 5.] In support of his theory, Abell cites examples mainly from literature and architecture. The popular cinema, however, may offer a better reflection of the collective latent tensions in society than the works and artifacts of high culture. A movie is usually "essentially a group production". And for that reason alone a popular film likely bears a closer relationship to the group processes within society than an individual artistic creation. The term 'mass culture' does have meaning, and that meaning is accented in the cinema. The high unit costs of feature films mean that they must appeal to a broad cross-section of society, rather than to an elite within society, in order to produce profits. Films come and go quickly, being seen by millions. The 'timeliness' which a film must possess in order to strike the mass fancy should not be ignored. During the 1920's a feature film normally 'played itself out' within about six months after its premiere.
Walter Abell speaks of all art works as manifestations of a collective dream. The nature of the cinema experience suggests that films have a unique kinship to dreams. Among Sigmund Freud's observations was that "our dreams think essentially in images." [Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and ed. by James Strachey (New York, 1965), p. 82.] All films . . . express themselves primarily through images. The rhythmic luminosity of the film projection itself produces an aura of hallucination. The discoveries of REM-researchers during the 1950's and 1960's make the argument that the dream experience and the film experience are akin to each other particularly compelling:

Approximately fifteen years ago, scientists discovered that dreaming occurs during sleep characterized by a particular patterning of electrical activity of the brain and by rapid movements of the eyeball, as if the eye were watching the pictorial content of a dream. When awakened from this stage of sleep, which occurs periodically through the night, subjects almost always are able to recall a vivid, perceptual hallucinatory (at the same time it seemed real), and somewhat distorted drama that would unhesitatingly be called a dream. [David Foulkes, The Psychology of Sleep (New York, 1966), p. 3.]

The eye movements of the dreamer are not random, but are "associated with the visual characteristics of [his] dream." The same is true of watching a movie: "The film spectator occupies a fixed seat, but only physically . . . Aesthetically he is in permanent motion as his eye identifies with the lens of the camera." [9. Edwin Panofsky, "Style and Medium in Motion Pictures", in Daniel Talbot, Film: An Anthology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), pp. 18, 19.] Any film projection "temporarily modifies" the psycho-motor comportment of any viewer, in ways quite similar to the psycho-physiological 'third stage' which characterizes dream sleep. [11. Foulkes, op. cit., pp. 21 and 23. Herman A. Witkins and Helen B. Lewis, Experimental Studies of Dreaming (New York, 1967), p. 9 and pp. 45-47.]
Several general elements reinforce the viewer's psychological absorption into the material presented on the screen. These include the dark magic cave environment of the movie theater, the continuous, uninterrupted nature of a film-showing, the rhythmic luminosity of the projection itself, and the social isolation of the spectator. Specifically, the cinema has mastered techniques and devices that permit a film to cut from scene to scene ignoring limitations of time and space. "The primary structural . . . peculiarity of cinema is discontinuous presentation; the primary means of producing it is the cut." [13. Raymond Spottiswoode, A Grammar of the Film (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), p. 201.] By comparison, notable in dream recollections recorded by numerous REM-researchers, is the subject's use of the descriptive phrase: ". . . and then all of a sudden the scene changed." Just that happens in films, with a frequency and abruptness duplicated in no other art form. Freud unintentionally points up this parallel between film and dream:

Sometimes, in a dream in which the same situation and setting have persisted for some time, an interruption will occur which is described in these words: 'But then it was as though at the same time it was another place, and such and such a thing happened.' After a while the main thread of the dream may be resumed, and what interrupted turns out to be a subordinate clause in the dream-material -- an interpolated thought.

Enrico Fulchignoni claims that "the movie screen compares to a doctor or a center for analysis to which crowds come to indulge in the rite of recognizing their most secret dreams." Yet, the way in which a given film might reflect an individual's unconscious concerns is impossible to study and analyze. When particular films gain exceptional popularity with a defined group, however, those films become valid documents for analysis in terms of collective psychological categories. As Peter Bachlin, the author of Film als Ware, neatly puts it:

The popularity of a film, indeed the very reason for its existence, arises on the whole from the adaptation of its contents to the dominant thoughts, conceptions and basic wishes of contemporary society.

The producers who make feature films do not worry about the medium and what can be done with it; they concentrate, instead, on keeping ahead of the tastes of the mass audience. [18. Pauline Kael, "Movies: The Desperate Art", in Talbot, op. cit., p. 54.] The popular cinema is a group phenomenon, and should be studied in that light. The 'basic wishes of contemporary society', of which Bachlin speaks, are likely latent. Very few popular films address themselves directly to manifest public concerns.
Historically the cinema is an industry and film is merchandise. An analysis of the latent meanings of the popular films of a given society must at least briefly inform itself of the rudimentary facts of how the film industry functioned in that society.

- p. 154: . . . The popularity of these films does not, however, invalidate the study of the most popular native-produced films as a dream-like reflection of the shared latent concerns of the mass audience . . .
Latent collective meanings of films reveal themselves through analysis of manifest film contents. On the conscious level, movie-goers are, and have been since the advent of cinematography, primarily interested in the content of a movie -- that is, the film story and its cinedramatic development. Hence, attention to the cinematographic devices through which that content is portrayed is minimized. Still, the repetition of certain such devices in the popular films of a national cinema may reveal psychologically important tendencies. Moreover, the way in which technical means are used to intensify the impact of certain scenes cannot simply be ignored, and, in some cases, can be of great consequence.
For clarity it is best to begin the process of analysis with the thematic material which is easiest to recognize.

- pp. 158-159: Movies which portray the individual attaining his or her greatest achievements when alone and abandoned convey, in different form, the same message as the orphan films.
Abel Gance explained why he made Napoleon in a single line: "I did the film about Napoleon because he was a paradox in an epoch which itself was a paradox." That may have been Gance's conscious intention and inspiration, but the emotional emphasis in the film is not on elements of paradox. The dramatic high points come in moments in which Napoleon is alone and abandoned and must master a situation through his force of character. Emphasis upon the lone individual abandoned is also exploited in the two Joan of Arc films which were popular with French audiences during the 1920's. This is particularly true of Theodore Dreyer's much acclaimed La Passion et la mort de Jeanne d'Arc. The film's action is confined almost entirely to a courtroom where Joan faces her brutish interrogators. The composition is so dependent upon close-up and medium shots that Joan is seen almost exclusively isolated in the frame against a neutral background. There are few titles in the movie but one of those comes at a dramatic moment when Joan can mumble only: "Alone, alone, alone." Joan is taken to the stake alone, as she has suffered the abuses of her interrogators alone. Only in the very last scenes of the movie do the townsfolk recognize her true human worth and rise in protest against her persecutors. In La merveilleuse Vie de Jeanne d'Arc (produced in 1929, two years after the Dreyer film) the message is likewise clear that Joan must stand alone to realize her true heroism.

- p. 161: . . . frequent repetition of water imagery is the unconscious representation of group psychic wishes dealing with birth. This interpretation follows the established analytical view that water dreams are most often birth-related in individual cases.

- p. 168: It is common for feature films to portray violent deaths, accidents, murders, crimes, and so forth. Violence as a manifest element in a given cinema reveals little. Of greater importance are the differences between the ways in which filmic violence occurs and what it means. If there are crimes, who is the villain and who is the victim. If there are murders, what sort of murders and which weapons are used. These are the sort of subtle analytical considerations that reveal most about the real meaning of violence in the cinema of a particular nation in a particular era.

- pp. 169-170: Another element typical to the handling of violence and danger . . . is the blood the viewer sees. Its meaning is not to be disregarded . . .
More precise and illuminating references to blood which is shown can be drawn from other films. In Rose France the young American Marshall Dudley Gold goes to a fortune teller to find out if the patriotic French girl Franciane really loves him. Not insignificantly, the woman draws a sample of Marshall's blood and reads from it of Franciane's passionate love for poor, suffering France. When Joan of Arc, in the Theodore Dreyer film about her trial and persecution, is finally forced into a confession by her interrogators, she must submit to a bleeding. In Le Miracle des loups the villain Lau tricks Robert Cottereau into firing upon his own true love Jeanne. In the last scenes of the film, however, Robert and a blood-covered Jeanne are reunited in a loving embrace. At the end of Les deux Gamines, the long-lost father of Ginette and Gaby is reunited with them. He had led a wretched criminal life. In the last reel he reforms. He offers blood to a dying hospital patient. It is a noble sacrifice, and as doctors finish bleeding him, a title tells the viewer that Manin had been morally regenerated. He dies peacefully, a hero born of this sacrifice. In L'Homme du large, when the young man who has gone bad robs the meagre savings of his own poor family, his sister attempts to stop him. In so doing, she is cut on the arm and bleeds copiously. A sequence of close-up and medium shots emphasizes her bleeding as she raises her hand to cross herself, symbolizing her decision to enter a nunnery to atone for the sins of her brother. In Coeur fidele, when the crippled girl shoots the villain, he falls dead beside a baby's crib. A medium shot captures the joyous face of the baby and the blood-covered face of the slain brute in the same frame. In Les Exploits de Mandrin the evil Bournet d'Erpigny, who has nefariously seen to it that Mandrin be hanged in spite of the King's reprieve, is found stabbed to death, his shirt soaked in blood. In Violettes imperiales, little Violetta emerges blood-spattered from the Empress's carriage after her own anarchist brother had planted a bomb. Blood flows too in Jocelyn, Genevieve, Joueur d'eches, Tao, Travail, and Le Secret du 'Lone Star'.
Violence can be dramatized in the cinema without a trace of blood being actually seen. This is emphatically the case in the films of other national cinemas of the 1920's, in which blood is never shown on the screen. The blood that is repeatedly seen in French popular films is a minor detail; a minor detail, however, only on the surface level. On the unconscious level the blood seen represents the French blood lost between 1914 and 1918. Proportionately France had suffered the greatest human losses of the war. She had been bled, and she knew it. And during the 1920's the collective national psyche was obsessed with the memory of that bleeding . . .

The blood which is seen in the popular French movies of the twenties relates to the theme of sacrifice in that same set of films. This theme reasserts itself repeatedly. In films such as Genevieve, Jocelyn, Violettes imperiales, Joueur d'echecs, and Les Mysteres de Paris the theme of sacrifice is as strong as the orphan theme. In L'Enfant des Halles and Les Miserables, the sacrifice of the hero is undertoned, but its presence is still significant. The notion of sacrifice is blended into the hero stories in both Joan of Arc films, in Napoleon, and in Chignole.

- p. 171-172: The recurrence of the sacrifice theme in various popular French films of the 1920's reflects the on-going group obsession with the notion that France had made a noble sacrifice as a nation in World War One, and that the sacrifice had been worthwhile. Here the wish-fulfillment in the set of celluloid dreams comes closest to merging fully with the mythological. France's role in World War One was in no way 'sacrificial'; that it was, however, is precisely what the French group mind wanted to believe. France had entered the war in 1914 hoping for a swift victory and sweet rewards. Instead, the fighting bogged down within her own frontiers, and the war of attrition which followed cost her dearly. After 1918 in many quarters in France the view was held that France had won the war but not the victory . . . The alliances which were to assure France's future security disintegrated. The unconscious wish of the French group mind as revealed through the analysis of her most popular native-produced films was that she, the abandoned orphan, the old true lover, the good heroine, should be recognized for what she was, whence would follow the happiness and sense of security she deserved. The claim upon that recognition was embodied in the myth of France's sacrifice. The group mind wanted to believe in "France, yesterday the soldier of God, today the soldier of humanity, always the soldier of the ideal." Thus, the group mind attempted to convince itself at the unconscious level by way of its film-dreams that France's role in World War One had been one of sacrifice rather than merely one of suffering. This was the group psychic way of working-off the collective trauma born of France's immediate post-war disappointments. For France had entered the war, then the peace, with naturally selfish aims and expectations which were quickly dashed by the evolution of the historical situation and the conflicting self-interests of other nations.
Only five French-produced films set in World War One attained broad popularity with the national audience during the 1920's. These movies were Chignole, La grande Epreuve, J'Accuse, Rose France, and Verdun, Visions d'histoire. Another half dozen films handle dramatic material dealing with some other war: La Bataille, Joeuer d'echecs, La Mendiante de Saint-Sulpice, La merveilleuse Vie de Jeanne d'Arc, Le Miracles des loups, and Napoleon. Three other films contain direct references to the First World War: Les deux Gamines, Koenigsmark, and La Nouvelle Aurore. In all these cases the references to World War One or some other war are conscious and undisguised. More revealing are the concealed references to France's wartime experience of 1914-1918. Shortly after the premiere of Theodore Dreyer's La Passion et la mort de Jeanne d'Arc in 1927, an English reviewer commented:

To any who have an historical, political, sociological, or even a logical flair, Joan [the Dreyer film] will be a failure. We are tired of seeing the war anyhow, but how insufferable it would be if we saw it tricked out in a romanticism that made it just a sensation to wring our hearts. So with Joan. [74. Kenneth Macpherson, "As Is", Close-Up, vol. III, no. 1, July, 1928, p. 9.]

Intriguing it would have been had the author of those lines elaborated upon that odd half-sentence -- "We are tired of seeing the war anyhow . . ." Elaborate he did not, but the meaning of those words can only be that the Dreyer film, featuring hobgoblinish prosecutors who abuse and persecute the innocent, childlike, abandoned heroine Joan, is a parable of World War One.

- pp. 172-173: The manner in which national events and their consequences are reflected in the popular cinema is oblique, disguised, and unconscious. The attempt here has been to try to unravel and decipher the meaning of the repetitive themes and motifs of a particular cinema. Psychological and historical categories of analysis have been interwoven to get at the unconscious meaning of these popular movies for the group mind of the audience to which they appealed. By these standards, the interpretive analysis of the French popular cinema of the 1920's discloses disguised patterns of reference to the shared trauma of World War One and its immediate post-war consequences for France as a whole. [75. Two French film historians have written: "At the end of the war (World War One) one can say that France continued to exploit, though perhaps less forcefully, the themes that were popular before the war," Maurice Bardech and Robert Brasillach, Histoire du cinema (Paris, 1966), 201. The statement is misleading. On the unconscious level the popular films of 1919-1929 were the reflection of group psychic tensions born of the post-war period. But even on the surface level, post-war French films differed from their pre-war predecessors. The pre-1914 favorites, the fantasy films and primitive science-fiction movies of Georges Melies, the comedies of Prince Rigadin and Max Linder, and the adventure serials of Louis Feuillade differ essentially in manifest content, and to some degree in technique, from the films which were popular in France after 1919. On the other hand, the persistence of the theme of the individual isolated and abandoned in French films right up to the eve of World War Two has been suggested in Raymond W. Whitaker, The Content Analysis of Film: A Survey of the Field, An Exhaustive Study of 'Quai des Brumes', and a Functional Description of the Elements of the Film Language, unpublished dissertation, 1966, Northwestern University, pp. 254 ff.]
In the text the terms 'group mind' and 'collective unconscious' have been used . . . 'Group mind' refers to concerns, some conscious, others unconscious, which were evidently shared by large numbers of persons who composed the mass movie audience in France during the 1920's. World War One was an event which the nation shared as a nation, and every Frenchman's consciousness of this personal sharing overlapping into the realm of collective sharing was stimulated, heightened, and exploited in various ways during the war itself. The sense of nation and one's belonging to it was, of course, fostered in many ways, through many institutions, long before the cinema was discovered.
The 'group mind' refers to received ideas and notions which enjoyed broad conscious or unconscious currency. These were, at times, manipulated by governments or elements within society, but they were spawned in the first instance by shared experiences. The formation of the group mind is situational, hence historical. The intensification of the feeling of belonging to a group is precipitated by a rise in group consciousness (brought on by a shared experience, such as war) which, in turn, increases the level of participation in the shared feelings of the group unconscious. The 'group mind' has nothing to do with national character or race, and this is demonstrated in the analysis of the French popular cinema of the 1920's. Those films reflect a collective obsession with particular historical events and their aftermath; they reflect nothing of the 'Gallic spirit' or the 'French mentality'.
Not all individual members of a group, whether it be a nation or a social class within a nation, are fully aware of the group mentality and the extent of their absorption into it. Not all potential members of a group are individuals who actually do share in the group mentality. The integration of any given individual into the conscious or unconscious processes of the group mind, or alternatively an individual's remaining aloof or hostile to the group mind, is a variable which can swing either way in any individual case. In this regard material and situational conditions for integration into the processes of the group mind are as much modified by individual psychological factors as those factors are by material and situational causes of a determinant nature.
The analysis of films in this study derives its interpretations only through the shared, public, mass dimension. The notion that some may have that an individual's public concerns are relatively superficial in his individual psychology is irrelevant. The popular cinema is collectively produced, and the most interesting level of response to it is collective and unconscious.


[lazybones]: I'd also like to add that (while the character of Nina may very well be an EII) not all (if any) INFp's are born "dark" and/or "troubled" or with a "love of tragedy" or whatever. At least I don't think I was born that way. And anyway, I don't have a "love of tragedy": I have a love of truth . . . Either way, I don't think I have an exorbitant focus on tragedy.

My Aunt also saw the Black Swan movie, and here's what she had to say:

"I did not like the film The Black Swan, it had such a barren story, or maybe so naive and no strong characters, except for Nina, everybody else was serving to demonstrate the point (not very original) of the director.
There are so few good films receiving awards nowadays, same with books."

This is what I had originally written to her:
"...I did see The Black Swan at the cinema a while ago. . . in a lot of ways I found it quite meaningful. Sacrificing oneself for a performance or the creation of a work of art. Metamorphosing, letting go, becoming one with creation, or the performance, what you wish to express. Being it, instead of being detached from it. I found it quite interesting. I guess it's about 'freedom'. 'Hell is other people.'"

[Objectively, though, the character seemed to be undergoing what some might consider a psychotic break(down).]

In addition I could probably add, that the director Darren Aronofsky is typed as an Ni-INFp in Socionix, and him being an Introvert could explain why he focuses on the main character so much (at the expense of say Winona Ryder and the rest). Yet interestingly, he didn't write the screenplay (as far as I can tell from reading the info on wikipedia). The story was created by Andres Heinz. And aren't IEI's like Darren Aronofsky supposed to be "lazy." Yet he was involved in the writing of Requiem for a Dream, and that movie focuses on several characters quite thoroughly from what I remember. It's probably his best, and although Black Swan wasn't written by him, I'd say it's a close second, or just as good in a lot of ways. [Actually I now believe that Black Swan is even better than Requiem for a Dream which I tried watching again recently yet wasn't able to.] Yet I can't really make an accurate judgment, since I don't think I've seen all of his movies.

Yet isn't IEI a dynamic type:

http://www.wikisocion.org/en/index.p...#Dynamic_types

And don't "The stories of dynamics usually involve multiple main characters."? So that either means that one of the writers (Andres Heinz) himself, isn't an IEI nor a dynamic type; or that I'm misinterpreting the description(s) or taking it out of context.



To conclude, can anyone think of any other movies in recent times that depict the character as undergoing some sort of transformation or metamorphosis and feelings of being misunderstood and/or alienated from other people?

[marooned]

I could buy Lily as SLE > SEE. I could also buy Leroy as EIE > SLE.

[Suz]

Finally watching Black Swan now.

I could see EII for Nina. ESI would probably be better at playing the Black Swan than she is, I would think, and would do a lot better under the pressure, unless i have a wrong idea of what ESI is like.


As for Lily, really hard to tell, since we only see the manipulative side of her, like some have already mentioned, and a lot of it seems to be in Nina's head. The WAY she was manipulative though can, imo, narrow down to some types, namely the Se-valuing ones i think, but again it may all have been a figment of Nina's imagination. In the end, Lily seems like a cool girl, who albeit somewhat intense, really had only good will towards someone who does well. Not sure what type that would be though.


My overall impression of the movie, I actually didn't like it all that much. i thought it was a little out there as far as the crazy. Also i think it would have been a lot better without the sexual scenes--I didn't think they added anything really. Plot, like some already have mentioned, didn't seem all that deep or developed. Just felt like I was in a crazy person's mind.

Hard to type crazy people.

[Amber]

Nina E1 Fi type Sx/sp ? (passionate&dedicated, but with some "blockage of the sexual instinct" ...? )

her mother - E1w2 Sx last Si type (well she's so psychologically distorted that she's kind of insulting for any type ... vibes and behavior are Si though ..and man, how that lipstick lay on her tight lips)

Lily SLE e3 sx/so

Thomas LSI (the actor is playing his own type actually ...)

[Surreal]

I'm just thinking there could be a possibility of Nina being LII instead of EII. The movie itself places a lot of emphasis on the Fe-Ti axis. Nina's focus on technique and her inability to perform in an emotionally provocative way would make a lot of sense for someone with weak 1D Fe as well as Se. She could indeed be in a supervision relationship with Lily, since Lily does not seem to be much affected by Nina, while Nina's perception was pretty dramatic. Thomas strikes me as EIE, while Nina's mother comes across as an unhealthy ESE.

[youfloweryourfeast]

I rewatched this because I watched it a long time ago.
Nina is EII..My life is kinda similar to her but I don't relate to her completely because I'm not as dedicated, I could see arguments for ESI.

Beth: EIE or SEE
Thomas: SLE
Veronica: LSI
Lilly: SLE
Mom: EIE I want to see her as ESE and alpha but unfortunately I can't.((
It is a beta movie though some of the aesthetic could seem more gamma, but all the characters are beta. I didn't really like it either because it didn't really explain some of a lot of the plot holes.

[youfloweryourfeast]

I could see that but she seems to want to get along with everyone and she is strictly guided by her morals. Nina is a highly sensitive person and is often seen as dramatic in her attitude and appearance. I'd even say that Nina is far too immersed in her inner feelings which leads her to not adapt to her roles and other people. I think that points to her being an IF type. She also depicted as being hardworking and grounded at the start of the movie.
Your point thought about her inability to be emotionally expressive though is interesting..do you have any more ideas for her being LII?
I feel she didn't have very good usage of Te but I could see arguments for her technique being derived from Ti.

[youfloweryourfeast]

I agree she is a little too ungrounded for ESI and she struggled a lot with understanding how to use Se