Dallas Buyers Club and the Price of Living with Death

by Christopher Barr

Dallas Buyers Club is the true story about a Texas electrician named Ron Woodroof who is also a dirt-bag devious hustler.  The film opens with Ron having sex with two girls in a bull stall while looking through a fence at a bull rider getting bucked around by an angry bull.  We then see him taking bets on a bull rider at the rodeo, after losing he makes a run for it rather than paying the men who won the bet their money.  After a run in with a cop he knows, to avoid getting the piss beat out of him, Ron, feeling sick, is driven home only to collapse on his living room floor of his run down trailer.

Ron wakes up in the hospital and is told to his understandable disbelief, that he has the AIDS virus and is expected to die in 30 days.  He’s asked by the doctor questions about his sexual orientation, whether he has engaged in any homosexual activity lately.  Ron is a Texas cowboy coming from a long line of homophobes, so hearing the doctor ask him if he’s gay freaks him out and he storms out.  He goes and does what he does best, drinks lots and snorts lines of cocaine because this man is a bit depraved and destructive when we first meet him.

This film is many things but at first it’s about how a person deals with their own life in the face of imitate death.  This was a disease after all at the time in 1985, where the film starts off at, was widely believed to be a homosexually transmitted disease.  That ignorant way of thinking is likely the main reason it spread so quickly in the 80’s.  Ron, being your average hillbilly Texan, had good reason to be confused, until he did a little research to only discover that AIDS is not limited to homosexuals, as the conservative media led people to believe.

I think it’s quite unimaginable to truly know what Ron must have been going through.  Ron was forced to face some fears most of us would sooner never want to face.  His prejudice and thoughts about the world and how he perceived it all came crashing down.  These ignorant so-called friends of his wanted nothing to do with him, out casting him from the comforts of the group and his electrician job.  People were so afraid of this mysterious virus and Ron had it, so he had to leave and seek help elsewhere, alone. 

Ron was forced onto a sad and rough road to enlightenment, casting out all his beliefs about the world and the people residing in it.  Most importantly he had to grow up and stop doing what he’s been doing.  Ron had to become a fighter, he had to stop his selfish ways, but like most change, he had to fall a couple of times before he could successfully achieve it.  His views on homosexuality changed as well with the threat he once felt disappearing into a humorous but genuine friendship with a gay man that dressed in woman’s clothing.  

Dallas Buyers Club is also about people and greed.  It’s about people with AIDS and a variety of other diseases fighting to live another day.  All they wanted from their government was some assistants, but the government really didn’t help.  There have been scientists that have presented compelling evidence showing the HIV/AIDS virus is nothing more than a pseudo-science concocted by the very government claiming to eradicate it.   The real culprits are AIDS medications like AZT that do more harm than good to dying AIDS patients. 

The FDA, Food and Drug Administration, I’m certain started out as an organization set up to protect the American population from unhealthy food and questionable drugs, but now, like a lot of government sponsored programs, its fallen corrupt under the spell of multinational mega corporations, whose financial interests consist of mass production despite the health risks to the population.

Then there is the pharmacological/medical apparatus with the addition to virologists, researchers and clinics which can now receive huge grants and funding for research.  Like the Military Industrial Complex of the Unites States which is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidarity, the health agencies and pharmaceutical companies must present their research and products under the illusion of the highest standard expected in the world.  This is people’s lives after all, but the problem is these companies and institutions keep obfuscating the issues because they are in the business of illness, sick people are their customers.  Prevention therefore can only be temporary, the crave must return in the form of pain to maintain repeat business.  This is the reality of the World we live in; the financial and fiscal responsibility is for the shareholders of companies and not the people themselves.

These lies run so deep, but the population goes along with what they want to believe.  Their government is looking out for their best interests and the interests of their family.  According to the U.S. National Safety Council; ‘Americans are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.’  But the government would have Americans believe that there is a real threat to their homeland by foreign extremists.  

The problem is people are not educated enough to know better, to think for themselves, investigate for themselves, because the purpose of the education system in America and elsewhere in the first world, is not to spread enlightenment at all, which is why we don’t see psychology and philosophy taught in schools, its purpose is to reduce as many free-thinking individuals as possible to standardize the citizenry, to prevent dissent and to discourage originality, to make people predictable consumers and workers.

Plato said, “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”  Ron became such a person, a person that saw the flaws in the hospital system of his country, he saw them for what they are, representatives of the global juggernauts know as BIG PHARMA.

Monsanto is a monstrous corporation that has massive economic and political strength over the system, so they are able to get away with forcing pesticide-soaked Franken foods on to the populace.  It’s all just business after all, the American dream is to build a future for yourself and your family, it doesn’t say anything about who you have to step on to make that dream come true.

Monsanto is a multinational chemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation who is the leading producer and front runner of genetically engineered plant cells and crops and many other artificial, organically-challenged foods.  But like those AIDS patients in Dallas Buyers Club in the hospital doing everything the drug testing doctors told them to do, we are also responsible for Monsanto when we stopped caring about where our food and produce was coming from, that was the day the first truly genetically engineered seed was planted, and companies like Monsanto have been growing like a Georgia weed ever sense.

Ron’s crime in the film is stepping on the bottom dollar of such corporations, he wanted to help himself and help some other people along the way, that ended up being his salvation, not in the biblical sense but in the human sense.  He finally saw beyond himself, beyond his point of view and how he once saw the world.

The system did end up failing him once he fully formed his dream to help others.  That San Francisco judge did say that a man should be able to do whatever it takes to survive but the law is above man and the law prevailed.  The law in all its wisdom protected Big Pharma thanks to their bought and paid for federal drug dealer representatives at the FDA.

Ron got beat by big business for selling vitamins and protein supplements to sick people.  Because they weren’t FDA approved, because they weren’t part of the acceptable products being marked up for an obscene amount of money.  

Ron died of his disease in 1992, 7 years after he was diagnosed to live only 30 days.  

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, A Symbol of Hope in a Dying World

by Christopher Barr

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a sequel to 2012’s The Hunger Games.  The film tells the story of a young woman, Katniss Everdeen, who is suffering from survivor’s guilt from her recent win at the 74^th annual Hunger Games.  These games are a spectacle hosted by totalitarian President Snow.   This President, rules over a nation in a post-apocalyptic world, where everything was killed off years ago and from under the rubble rose what was left of humanity.  He presides over a city called The Capital in a nation called Panem, the Capital is glorious, and it is where all the rich and powerful live in the lap of luxury.  On the outskirts of the city, over the heavily guarded walls are where the poor and impoverish live.  Their areas are broken up into 12 districts.  Katniss is a poor girl who lives with her little sister and mother in district 12.

The games goes as follows; 1 boy and 1 girl, 12 years or older are entered into a lottery and chosen at a ceremony called The Reaping, when they are chosen they are called Tributes and are brought, often kicking and screaming, to a training facility, only to be positioned in a gaming arena, where they are to grab a weapon and commence killing each other until there is only one left standing.  This is all televised for the citizens of the Capital to relish in while those in the districts root for their tributes to survive and come home safely.  The whole thing is sick but like the Gladiatorial days leading to the fall of the Roman Empire, you can’t put much past bored human beings with a lot of money on their hands and a population of slaves they can turn into entertainment.

The militarized forces that police the districts and protect the Capital are oddly enough called Peace-Keepers.  They are a group of knuckle dragging, one dimensional, blunt objects for President Snow to wield when lessons need to be taught to the people of the districts.  They perform torture and public executions for civil disobedience as well as maintain an official watchful guard over the people.  

Toward the beginning of the film President Snow pays Katniss a visit to remind her that she was victor over a game.  With her win, gave rise to a dissent that was troubling the President and he wanted to ensure that Katniss becomes a puppet for the state and not a beckon of hope for the people of the districts.  With her family and her district threatened with bloodshed by the Peace-Keepers, Katniss agrees to go along with the President’s propaganda campaign of compliance.

Katniss has become a beckon of hope for the district, just as the President feared.  Where Batman created himself to be a symbol for fear to the criminals of Gotham, Katniss became more than a person, she became a symbol.  The only difference between her and Batman, other than cowl and cape, is Batman is a hero and Katniss isn’t.  Batman meticulously orchestrated his image to be used as a tool for Gotham and Katniss inherited hers.  Katniss wants peace for her family and she wants food for them to eat, as all the districts are bordering on starvation.  Katniss doesn’t want to be in the spotlight or to be celebrated, she’s very much aware of how horribly sick the whole sensationalized Hunger Games are.

The show has a glorified host that adds commentary to the heathens watching the proceedings as they stay safely in their secured castles.  He provides them statistics on each fighter where odds-makers in Vegas would surely bet.  The elite population sees nothing wrong with this type of entertainment, scared children slaughtering each other.  This may be extreme but this is where we are in our society, with our first world technology and shallow blinded world views.  We are that future and Katniss is just a victim in a sick game, thankfully in her case she’s good with a bow and arrow.

Katniss and Peeta, her on again off again love interest and winning mate, are invited to a party in the Capital, among the elite to celebrate with them for winning the previous Hunger Games.  While walking by a long table smothered in the finest food, they are stopped by a man offering Peeta a shot of purplish liquid.  This man tells them that the purpose of the drink is to induce vomiting, so they can quickly empty their stomachs and thus have room now to indulge in more food.  Peeta, disturbed by this form of gluttony, righteously declined the offer and walked away.  This of course is squandering power and resources to the point hedonism.  These people are aware of the starvation in the districts outside the city walls.  But I think that’s why Katniss isn’t seeking enlightenment, I think she already possesses it despite herself, she sees the world for what it is, without illusions.

Why do we enjoying watching others suffer?  It might have something to do with it not being us.  There seems to be a curiosity about the body and its capabilities during violence, but with violence comes pain.  I think this is why we enjoy violence better from a distance.  We are animals and violent ones at that, but we are civilized and have sworn to give up or animalistic ways to live in cities and shop at malls.  But we still enjoy toying in and around death, it gives us a thrill, but it’s not for everyone.  Shockingly, intellectuals and free-thinking elevated people seem to be less interested in such things.  They seem to be more interested in furthering humanity on a more progressive path.  The problem with these progressive smart individuals is that they don’t make good politicians because they are not self-interested.  Politicians by their very nature are out for themselves in some form.  Certainly some care about the people but those politicians are usually killed or forced out of office by much more ravenous men that seek power and a solipsistic dream of celebrity.    And Politicians, for obvious reasons don’t like people that question their authority, it hurts their egos. 

Katniss questions authority, she dreams and she thinks on her own.  She’s curious and spontaneous as she lives her life and these are all attributes we could all only wish to possess.  But she is forced into a game to amuse detached, dissatisfied people that only wish to see her killed.  Katniss is in the unique position to see both sides of the societal coin, the poor and depraved and the well-to-do elite.  She is free for the most part to walk among them both, but is of course reminded of where she’s from.  She sees a society so decadent that it’s only wish is to eat itself to death, I feel that’s quite similar to American society, a place so far lost that they forgot where they even started from, a place so corrupt that the word no longer holds meaning.  But that’s the problem with a society unchecked; it is able to run amok without responsibility for its actions.  Katniss is truly trapped no matter what side of the coin she’s on, and that’s the real tragedy of this film.  A woman that only wishes to be a Mocking Jay and fly freely, is caged in an invisible dome like a rat.

Eyes Wide Shut and the Societal Masking of Desire

by Christopher Barr

 













Eyes Wide Shut is about the laws of nature conflicting with social laws in marriage, a film about a husband and wife being sexual beings in a seemingly conservative, binding agreement.  It’s absolutely beautifully shot, acted and directed, this film being Stanley Kubrick’s last masterpiece in a long line of ground breaking, challenging pieces, before his untimely, mysterious death.

The film starts with an exposed woman, Alice, getting ready for a Christmas party.  Her husband Bill looks for his wallet and enters the bathroom where Alice, exposed yet again, is sitting on the toilet peeing.  They go to Bill’s friend Victor’s party where they drink champagne and proceed to enjoy this illusion of sophistication, separated.  Alice dances with an older man aggressively flirting with her while Bill is with two young pretty girls who are throwing themselves at him.  These desires are both thinly veiled behind laughter, art and dance, not to mention lots of alcohol.  Bill is then pulled away from his potential ménage a trois to deal with a pressing medical matter upstairs.  A naked woman in a bathroom was on the verge of overdosing.  Bill lent his expertise and smoothed over the situation.  Alice reminds the groping older man that she is married.  At home Bill and Alice are naked and kissing, Alice looking at the both of them in the mirror, Alice’s looking glass. 

It is important to note that both husband and wife deflected the advancements of their respective flirty strangers.  They both played by society’s rules and didn’t give in, thus breaking the social bond they both agreed to.  We then see them the next day fulfilling all their domestic requirements, Bill goes to work as a Doctor performing routine medical checkups while Alice looks after their little girl, both strolling through the banality of modern daily life.

 

At Victor’s party it was alcohol that allowed them to teeter on the edge of promiscuity and now a day later its marijuana.  Like most people these days, they require a mind altering substance to express themselves in a society that demands control and obedience of its populace.  Alice and Bill are in their bed smoking a joint asking each other about the strangers trying to pick them up at the party.  They argue about the reasons behind their potential infidelity.  This form of jealousy is certainly common among couples that wish to police the actions and the thoughts of their partner to avoid disloyalty.  That’s the seed of their argument, no matter how much Bill says he wants to be faithful because he loves Alice and is married to her, she isn’t convinced and she’s right not be, because we can’t know what’s really going on in the minds of our partner, but through our own deductive reasoning, we can assume that if I am thinking it, it’s likely that he/she is as well.  

 

Alice proceeded to tell Bill about a sailor she saw a year ago, that turned her on so much, that she would have given up her marriage and their little girl to spend one night with him.  As she told the story, this emasculated Bill to the point of tears, she did this as part of a defense mechanism, to combat against her lack of control over his thoughts as she can’t access his thoughts she might as well contaminate them.         

A thoughts war begins between husband and wife, and therein lies the problem with society and marriage.  We can’t control the thoughts of our partners; all we can do is try not to think about it at all.  But in the case of Bill and Alice, these last few days events has shed new light on old memories and our sometimes lack of free will.

The handsome sailor making love with Alice is all that is populating Bill’s mind.  Men often feel inadequate around their women because the pressure of sexual performance that is so prevalent in society.  A man has to be the best at everything and Bill is now thinking that the sailor is what turns Alice on.

Women are generally more introverted where men are more extroverted and the film breaks in two at this point where Bill acts out in the world and Alice plays within the mind in the form of fantasy dreams.

This film explores bottled up sexuality and the failing roles we try so hard to keep up.  In order to build and then live in society we have all given up a form of freedom that hasn’t let us go.  That freedom wants out of all the social cages that have been built to restrain it and express itself fully.  This of course cannot be aloud because that would be the end of civilization.  So our real freedoms must be restricted and suppressed with laws, rules and regulations, with medication and religions, in prison terms our true freedom has been condemned to a life, incarcerate without the possibility of parole.

After Bill is taking a walk with thoughts of Alice is bed with the sailor invading his mind, a group of thugs push him down and yell homosexual, derogatory insults at him furthering his already declining masculinity.  Bill then meets up with a prostitute that offers him a good time.  These are all manifestations of his inner thoughts realized.  What is it to be a real man in modern day society?  How much mucho does a man need to be, to feel satisfied with his self-image and his self-worth? 

Bill goes inside the prostitute’s apartment, I’m sure to discreetly restore his manhood after Alice challenged it.  Unfortunately the restoring of his manhood requires caveman style, naked man with naked woman action and instead he’s stuck in a shady apartment negotiating the terms of a natural act between a man and woman, through a capitalistic monetary system.  I suppose on a biological innate level it defeats the purpose of the hunt. Regardless, Alice calls Bill before anything happens with the prostitute and Bill is reminded of his binding marital rules and leaves without incident.

Bill goes to a bar to watch a medical school friend play in a jazz band.  Nick sits with Bill after his set and tells Bill of a party he will be attending later on that night, where he’ll be required to wear a blindfold while playing piano.  Nick says there are lots of beautiful woman there.  Bill, on his journey further down the rabbit hole talks Nick into telling him the location of the costumed party.  Bill goes to get a costume and is yet again derailed momentarily while rules and functions of society’s suppression prevent him from naturally exploring his sexual desires.

After using his symbolic authority as a doctor, Bill acquires his costume and goes to a mansion where inside there is a cult like, secret society of people all masked and cloaked performing some sort of choosing ceremony that leads to an orgy of sorts.  Bill, for some reason is immediately suspected for not belonging, or is that just paranoia, actually it isn’t, they are on to him.  The women are disrobed and choose their partners; they leave their masks on because it’s the body that’s required and not the personality of the face thus the individual.   

People want to express their sexuality without restraint; the function of society forbids this form of expression in order to control its population.  So using the strict rules that govern society, groups of elite people form a secret society so they can express their sexuality without restraint but are still subject to the rule of law, their law thus negating the desired natural flow of human sexuality.  This is where Bill comes in, he is society’s sexual oppression infected their little theatrical sex orgy.  There’s even an interesting point when Bill is upstairs watching naked people performing sex when a masked man clearly higher up, is with a naked masked woman, they both look at Bill.  When the film cuts to a different angle the naked woman with the same mask on, holding onto the higher up man, is clearly a different woman.  I think this is expressing the objects we often see women as.  This elite group is very clear how they see women and the director was testing his audience to see if they are subject to the same objectification.

Bill is caught and brought before the grandmaster in a sort of tribunal to answer for what he has done.  With all the faceless onlookers, Bill removes his mask thus re-entering his symbolic identity and the baggage that comes with a name.  After a young naked woman asks the council to take her as some sort of sacrifice, Bill is set free but is ordered to keep quiet about what he has seen there.  It is also important to note that the whole sequence at the masked party could have been a dream Bill had after smoking pot with Alice.

Bill gets home to hear about another dream Alice has had about the sailor, which led to an orgy where Alice had sex with many men, and poor Bill listens to this dream as his masculinity takes another hit.  It appears as if he’s yet again, not good enough for a woman like Alice.

Bill uses his symbolic authority as a doctor a few more times to find out that  his friend Nick has left town and possibly by force.  He then drives back to the mansion only to be given a note to cease his curiosity.  Ultimately he’s being forced back to the role of a doctor with a wife and a happy life cover story, and to leave this desire for sexual express and life fulfillment behind him.

After having more thoughts of Alice with the sailor, Bill goes back to the prostitute’s apartment.  I’m thinking at this point he wants to symbolically punish Alice for cheating on him in her mind, for putting him through the reruns of her naked body under the sexually electrified sailor.  The prostitute isn’t home so Bill flirts with her roommate only to find out that the prostitute was tested positive for HIV, signaling the severity of Bill’s own actions.  Bill then finds out that the woman at the masked party who stood up for him, was found dead.

Bill goes to Victor’s house to talk, where it is revealed that Victor knew about the masked party because he was there and that the girl who died was a druggy hooker.  Bill was told the whole thing at the masked party was staged to scare him because they knew he shouldn’t have been there.  Bill then goes home and finds the mask he wore at the party on his pillow beside a sleeping Alice.  She knows.  Bill becomes overwhelmed with what he did and breaks down crying, Alice wakes up looking at her crying, guilt-ridden husband.

At the toy store the next day they reconcile and decide to stay together forever.  Alice says they are awake now and they should go immediately home and…fuck.  This to me is not fully awake; this is recognizing they can’t do anything about their thoughts and desires.  The marriage and the rules in society can only go so far until true desire needs expression.  So if they are awake, they are awake to knowing they are trapped.

Fidelio….

Black Swan and the Darker Side of Existence

by Christopher Barr

 

"There are no limits.  There are plateaus; but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.  If it kills you, it kills you."  - Bruce Lee

Black Swan was a challenging, dark psycho-drama descending into the scornful world of competitive ballet.  This extraordinary film tells the story of a fragile ballet dancer that becomes the lead in the New York production of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’.  She is tasked to play the gentle white swan but slowly goes mad as she frighteningly digs inside herself to become the seductive black swan.

“Either through the influence of the narcotic drink, of which the hymns of all aboriginal humans and peoples speak, or with the invigorating springtime’s awakening that fills all nature with passion, these Dionysian impulses find their source, and as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete loss of self-recognition. Even in the German Middle Ages singing and dancing crowds, ever increasing in number, moved from place to place under this same Dionysian impulse…. There are people who, from the lack of experience or thick-headedness, turn away from such manifestations as from “folk-diseases,” mocking or with pity derived from their own sense of a superior health. But of course these poor people have no idea how corpse-like and ghostly their so-called “health” looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian swarm buzzes past them.”

–Friedrich Nietzsche

 

This film is also a telling of the Apollonian and the Dionysian from Nietzsche’s stand point.  The sweet girl must alter herself into a much darker more ravenous persona.  This becomes quite difficult for Nina, the lead character, to embrace as it’s hard for her to transform what she is; it’s hard to give up structure to change.  In the beginning Nina is subject to Schopenhauer’s principle of individuation, which stresses a gentler reign of reason, intellect, but ultimately banality.  The sexually-aggressive director of the ballet pushes Nina to explore an uncharted side of herself, for the benefit of the ballet and for her own livelihood.  This iconoclastic man was somewhat of a philosopher in his own right, certainly a selfish one at times, but he like Socrates via Plato, pushed Nina to unleash herself from the shadows of the cave to come into the day of enlightenment.   

 

There is a cost to letting it all go, as we see in the film, where Nina spirals down a path that’s self-destructive.  She begins to hallucinate, seeing herself in the faces of other people looking at her as well as the pink stuffed animals adorning her ‘little-girls’ bedroom and her mother’s self-loathing art all appearing to be looking at her, judging her.   She also has a seductive lesbian love scene with Lily, a pretty young woman in her ballet company that becomes quite revelatory as she continues to feel ambivalence toward her desire to be Lily or kill Lily.  This metamorphous culminates with what appears to be real injuries to her body along with webbed feet and her own legs creepily snapping back into bird-like legs during a very intense moment in the film.  She also pulls black feather stumps out of her back and her skin often ripples into bird-like skin when excited.  She eventually sprouts black bird feathers on stage as she finally becomes the exuberant black swan.   

 

From a Freudian view, we can see Nina as the Ego, Nina’s controlling mother as the super-ego and Lily as the Id, leaving the ballet’s demanding Director as somewhat of a mediator or totalitarian therapist.  Beth, the little princess, was Nina’s future, her sacrifice to the dark side.  Beth was older and because of being pushed out of the spotlight she became resentful, hating Nina for her youth, for her attention.  Nina’s ego was what she was battling to keep the little girl intact, behaving and pleasing her moralistic mother while the more chaotic sexual woman was screaming to surface.  She struggled with Carl Jung’s Shadow, that inside darkness that we all fight to keep imprisoned as we live our so called free-thinking lives within the concrete jungle of modern day society.  

Nina’s mother clearly sees herself as a failure and pushes her daughter, vigorously in a direction to succeed so she can, in a last desperate attempt at fame, live vicariously through her daughter’s achievement, no matter what the cost.  Nina pays dearly for her mother’s selfishness.  Her mother in the bathroom clipping Nina’s fingernails was like her clipping her wings, keeping Nina little, meek and easily controllable.  Lily is Lacan’s object petit a, Nina’s own desire within herself, Nina’s quest for fulfillment beyond the satisfaction of her biological needs.  Nina’s expression of her lack can be seen in Lily’s ability to freely do what she wishes to do.   Nina’s unconscious desire to complete herself drives her subconscious to pursue an unlimited jouissance, total satisfaction.  

This pursuit is impossible to achieve within the limits of reality, it is beyond the pleasure principle which gives it a deadly aspect, in that it operates without regard for the welfare of Nina’s symbolic identity.  So Lily is all the things Nina wishes she could be but can’t so this brings hatred and resentment to fruition.  Nina must kill her desire in order to free herself from her own psychological symbolic restraints, so she kills the Lily in her mind.

Nina spent most of the film trying desperately to please others to become perfect.  Because of such a sacrifice to her own self-fulfillment, she finally let go and started to please herself, she psychologically, symbolically killed herself, falling into a complete psychotic state.  She didn’t have the mental faculty to properly balance the two opposing sides successfully in her mind, resulting in her losing both sides. 

Nina was 28 and living home with her mother in a dollhouse-type environment, where her mother controlled.  Nina’s desire was to please the mother, to behave and essentially be her mother’s walking and talking doll, to become the phallus and continue to search for her lack.  Human beings seem to be sort of doomed to this particular plight.  You are born and envy the mother, she leaves you alone in the room and you cry, she comes back and you are happy, then your father steals her from you so you begin to loath him and compete for her affection, thus castrating yourself from the only real hope for absolute freedom.  As one gets older one develops a desire to please others to make up for the failure at pleasing the mother.  One must share her symbolically with the world and this can be very undesirable.  But yet one longs for the time before time so to speak, the time before castration, before you unknowingly and naturally gave yourself over to your mother, a time where it is believed true peace could have been had.  We all struggle with this in our lives, some of us become aware of this need and an understanding of our inability to completely correct it, and some of us still struggle with it, to the point that we begin to hate others rather than please them as a way of rejecting our sensitive side, in a society that only wishes to swim with sharks.   

 

Nina’s mother exploited her daughter’s need for her, subconsciously for the most part, she imprisoned her to such a point that when Nina finally broke free and successfully preceded her she couldn’t handle it and she symbolically died on that stage.

The film is tragic as it tells the story of failed enlightenment, the side effect to awaking, the problem of conformity.  The film is expressing to its audience the downside to fulfillment, not to say that its wrong but some people are so far gone that the path to the door that one must open, isn’t for everyone.  Some become tragic figures that can’t escape the symbolic cage of linguistic assignment.  Some remain a prisoner of this for the rest of their days.  Black Swan is about the tragedy of a girl that had all the potential for enlightenment but didn’t have the psychological faculty to sustain it, to operate within it and live beyond symbolic freedom.