Black Swan

Male Gaze: 
The women in the film are always being watched and men are always watching them with power. The male gaze appears to control Nina and her life. Nina is displayed as a seductive character, particularly seen when she is dressed up as the Black Swan; the white powdered face, dark red lips, and eyes hidden within the painted black-silver swan wings are noted to be seductive to many male audiences. It is noticed that Black Swan focuses on the main female  character's body and ways that she can achieve perfection with this.

The male gaze is the symbol of Thomas who orders Nina to behave in the ideology of the male gaze. Nina is seen as the innocent and 'sweet girl', but Thomas demands Nina to be sexual, the male gaze is seen as women needing to be pure and lustful at the same time, things that contrast one another. Several times within the film the audience observes Nina's dancing from Thomas' perspective and the camera is often shot from his point of view or from the back of his head. We hear him critiquing her dancing and we witness him groping Nina's body, something that makes some audiences feel is sexual assault. Nina sexualises herself, by touching herself, in order to appear perfect in Thomas' eye and she slowly kills what is left of herself in order to return his gaze.

There are two scenes within the film in which we also see this male gaze, when Nina is on the train home and the older man smacks his lips at her and grabs repeatedly at his crotch and when Lily is in the restaurant and gets asked if it is juicy enough; in both of these scenes the male gaze violates the female body by sexualising it. The pornographic scene of Nina and Lily having lesbian sex, shows that the film objectifies women to please men in our patriarchal society as to see two attractive women having sex together is visually pleasing and sexually provocative for men.

Female Gaze: 
As well as the general cinematography of the film, the fast-cuts, high-contrast and vivid imagery breaks up the male desire. The film is led by female characters and is a story completely about a woman. A female reading of the film is seen as a woman's struggle for perfection, this has gained many female audiences attracted to the same experience they have had in their lives. When looking at receptions of the film, both young and older women aspired to look like the character of Nina and her ballerina body became a role model for female audiences. The female gaze picks up on how Nina's most important role in the film is her role as a woman in our world. Audiences notice how Nina's mother expects her to act in certain ways, as the white swan, but this is suppressing who Nina really is and who she wants to be; we see that she dresses in pink and white and sleeps in a bedroom decorated for a young girl.

From this I see how from a female gaze, Nina's character acts as a role model for women and creates the idea that women should be able to have freedom and independence to do what they choose, this can be seen with Nina trying to break free and being her own person, not someone who her mum told her to be. Female audience's often read this film to be about the social pressures and difficulties within their lives that this film discusses.

Fraud's psychoanalysis 
Nina is the character in the film whom is seen to have a split personality, she is a ballerina and is struggling to become the "Black Swan" as she is seen to be such a sweet girl. She then meets a girl named Lily, who is the contrast to Nina, she is casual, chaotic and sexual, like Nina needs to be. Under the pressure of being a ballerina, Nina becomes psychologically sick and she Lily is made to be her imaginative enemy. At the end of the film, Nina kills "Lily", whom is actually herself and achieves the perfect performance of the Swan Queen. Nina tries to be her mothers "sweet girl" until she meets Lily and the temptation within her body of being sexual is released. Nina chooses Lily over her mother, seen when she slams the door in her mother's face and runs out to a nightclub with Lily, showing her desire taking her away. In the end, Nina finally becomes the black swan as she has more characteristics of the black swan than the white swan; the dark side of her ego has totally eroded the white side.

Mirrors 
In the film, the director uses many mirrors to reveal the complex mind of Nina's psychological Dissociative Identity Disorder, the movie presents special visual effects when mirrors don't reflect the reality but the distorted reality. There are many mirrors used in this film, in the dancing room, the bathroom and fitting room, and every time we see a mirror we can tell the dissociation of identities of Nina in the mirror. There are a few scenes in the film where Nina is looking at the mirror and the mirror doesn't reflect who she really is but what she wants to be (the dark side). There are also imaginative mirrors in the film, for example Lily is a mirror of Nina, she is the "perfect" self in Nina's mind and Nina wants to be like her. The director uses mirrors to develop the distortion of character but also a dream created by the character; Nina see's things that are unreal and did things that didn't happen.