Analysis 6: Black Swan and Feminist Theory

(there is no clip due to youtube and copyright crackdowns, etc.)

          The ending of “Black Swan” which I cannot provide a link too because it is not on Youtube is an example of Susan Bordo’s notion of the body being a discourse or a text for our culture.  She believes that the body is a cultural statement in the sense that the many of our actions and activities are determined by the cultural climate, our cultural expectations for our behaviors.  Susan Bordo believes this to be particularly true of for women and their obsession with enhancing their appearance to match ideal cultural expectations.  She believes this idea of bodily discourse in females to be particularly true of anorexics, hysterics and agoraphobics because these disorders are indicative of taking practices related to enhancing their appearance to an extreme.  Women are expected to live up to a standardized appearance but they take that to excess and become anorexic.  The damaged body of an anorexic is indicative of the flaws in the dominant prevailing logic of society’s expectations. 

           Such is the case with Black Swan where the main character Nina is pressured by conflicting ideals of purity and perfection imposed by her mother and her role as the White Swan while simultaneously being pressured to tap into her dark side, her reckless nature and raw sexuality, in order to play the Black Swan.  Nina’s body becomes a text of her cultural climate because the outside pressures that compose that climate manifest themselves within Nina’s body.  The pressure is reflected by her masochistic habit of scratching herself as well as her hallucinations and general mental instabilities.  The illusion of power she gains by scratching herself is similar to that of Bordo’s analysis of the hysterical woman’s sense of power.  Power for Nina and other hysterics takes the form of the effect their actions and cries for attention has on the outside world that has so deeply affected them.  Nina easily brings her mother into deep concern and pain when she arrives home late from her night with Lily.  The end of the movie where Nina is seen bleeding after she has achieved her “perfect” performance is also indicative of the body as a discourse for the cultural climate and in this case, the pressure that society imposes on beautiful, talented young girls.