Hollywood Cinematic Excess: Black Swan’s Direct and Contradictory Address to the Body/Mind

Abstract

A phenomenological exploration and analysis of the film Black Swan considers how cinematography and sound combine to literally ‘touch’ the viewer with the central character’s psychosis. However, since the body is not simply an issue in phenomenology and epistemology, but also a theoretical location for debates about power and ideology, feminist psychoanalytic tools investigate the film’s construction of femininity, stereotypes of gender and lesbianism, and its complex negotiation between misogyny and feminism. Whilst neither of these approaches or insights can offer any ‘truths’ or definitive meanings, they do work together in investigating the complexities of representation and (embodied) identification within a Hollywood dance film revealing the deeply embedded contradictions that make it impossible to fully yield the progressive potential that can be read into it.