They want to be the greatest, they aim for perfection, they practice for hours, they sacrifice. The "obsessed artist" trope is one of the greatest cinematic concepts ever written. Movies like Black Swan or Whiplash are the embodiment of this trope and give us insights into the backgrounds of their main characters in their respective domains. But what makes this trope so fascinating for the audience? In this post, I will analyze this concept and compare the two biggest movies within this trope: Black Swan (2010) and Whiplash (2014), because they are not as different as we might think. For this article, I took some inspiration from the YouTube channel Lessons from the Screenplay and their video called "Whiplash vs. Black Swan — The Anatomy of the Obsessed Artist."
Both movies have their first turning points in which the protagonists develop a desire. They want to change something. But for the audience to understand the desires of the protagonists, they need to have fears. Both Whiplash and Black Swan use the domestic lives of their characters to portray these fears. Nina’s mom is a former ballerina who never achieved greatness, and Andrew’s dad is a high school teacher who never became a successful writer. The protagonists fear being “mediocre”; they are scared of becoming their parents.
Of course, both movies would end abruptly if Nina and Andrew simply practiced and became great, so there needs to be something standing in the way for them in order to fight for that greatness. This is how the audience is introduced to the mentor. The mentor plays a big role in the protagonists' lives. They are powerful, one of the best in their domain, and they give the protagonists a challenge—a challenge that will make them obsessed. Both practice hard and harder, inspired by the motive to become the greatest. During this phase of their progress, they will perform an uncharacteristic action, in which they do something unusual for them. Andrew asks out the girl he had a crush on, and Nina goes to Thomas’s office to talk him into giving her the part. These steps symbolise that they are ready for a change. Thomas gives Nina the part of Swan Queen, and Andrew is enlisted in the studio band. The protagonists have their first success and feel victory. But this was only the easy part—the real challenge is about to come.
After achieving their first victory, the protagonists have to change again; they are held back by their old selves. They start to change, and on that path, they begin to self-destruct. Both Whiplash and Black Swan share the key aspect of the fear of being replaced. In Whiplash, the threat of replacement is Ryan; in Black Swan, it is Lily, the complete opposite of Nina. She is everything that Nina is not. Her dancing is explosive, the way the black swan should be. The protagonists’ newly secured spots are now threatened. As Nina struggles to dance the black swan, Thomas starts seeing Lily as an alternative. With the fear of being replaced, the pressure on the protagonists grows higher; they start practising more, until it leads to complete madness.
Black Swan portrays Nina’s madness by showing her seeing a double of herself—first by passing by, later in Lily. Whiplash portrays a different kind of madness than Black Swan. In Black Swan, it is Nina herself, but in Whiplash, it is Fletcher. From the first day in the band, Fletcher reveals what his expectations are while being aggressive and violent. Brought down by the pressure, the protagonists begin to destroy their old selves. Again, both movies use the protagonists' domestic lives to portray some of that destruction. Andrew is rude to his family and breaks up with his girlfriend. Nina goes against her mother by going out with Lily, doing drugs, and making out with strangers.
Upon completion, both protagonists are so obsessed and mad that they are out of control. Nina’s madness turns into hallucination: she murders Beth, hurts her mother, and envisions her lucid transformation into the black swan. As both clamber to make it to their second performance, the movies split here. Andrew crashes on his way to the performance. Although he manages to arrive on time, he fails to play because of the injury from the crash. It is clear that Andrew did not perform to Fletcher’s expectations. Andrew’s injury obligates him to stop his self-destructive behaviour as he departs from the band. This is combined with the declaration of a former student of Fletcher’s who committed suicide. Nina receives a similar caution with the former star of the company, who she is replacing, now having attempted suicide. But the key difference is that this moment happens earlier in Nina’s story compared to Andrew’s. Nina’s self-destruction continues; Andrew’s stops abruptly.
The peak of both movies happens at the protagonists’ “big performance.” The stakes are high, and psychologically, the protagonists are two people. Since Andrew was forced to take a break from drumming, he was able to gain some perspective. Nina, on the other hand, has just reached the height of her madness and is barely able to hold it together. But despite these differences, they both have one thing in common: they still have a piece of their old selves in them; they are not fully prepared. Andrew is still trusting Fletcher, even though the audience knows Fletcher has set him up to fail. Nina still has self-doubt, and after she sees Lily flirting with the dancer playing the prince, Nina’s double appears again.
While both protagonists are on the verge of their big moment, they fail. Nina freaks out, wrenching her body, the prince's grip slips, and she slams onto the stage. That moment feels like an eternity for her. Similarly, when Andrew fails to play, his moment of failure also feels like an eternity. The moment ends with pitiful applause from the crowd as the lights go off: “No one here has ever seen a disaster like this before,” the script says. In light of this failure, the protagonists finally make the principal choice of their trajectory. Andrew walks back to the stage before Fletcher can finish his speech. Andrew launches into double-time Latin. At this point, Andrew isn’t playing for Fletcher anymore—he’s playing for himself. He has control and confidence. While Andrew is having his moment, Nina returns to her dressing room and spots an imaginary Lily in her chair. Nina attacks her double, who fights back, strangling Nina until she reaches the end of her transformation.
At this key point, both protagonists have destroyed their old selves. Both movies continue with the protagonists delivering their best performances of their journeys. They completely let their old selves go. Nina closes her eyes and completely lets herself go; more black feathers burst from her shoulders and back. At last, she truly embodies the black swan. The band roars into overdrive, and Andrew plays like he never has before. Andrew keeps looking straight at Fletcher—he is no longer afraid of him. The narrative in Whiplash shifts dramatically. After Andrew grabs control, Fletcher’s attitude changes; his face now says one thing: he has never seen playing like this before. Near the end, Fletcher almost smiles .
At this point, both movies diverge one final time. Nina returns to her dressing room and discovers that she had not actually murdered Lily but rather wounded herself. Her undisturbed madness has led to the peak of her self-destruction. But the show must go on. Nina returns to the stage to perform the finale as the white swan. In the final scenes, both Nina and Andrew look into the crowd; the audience belongs to them. Their parents watch, amazed—this is their moment.