Female body image in the world of entertainment is sickening. Both in Perfect Blue and Black Swan the central characters feel the pressure to be perfect; to have a career that is centralized on pleasing everyone that watches them. In the process they are abused.
Nina and Mima. Ha! Look at how similar their names are. Ironic, since the way in which they live, forever struggling to please an audience, are parallel. And they've each got a psychotic (or near-psychotic, in the case of Nina's mother) woman seeking control over their careers. Let's examine Mima. The young, innocent pop star wants to change her image. She wants to be taken seriously; to become an actress in dramas. Simple enough, right? Most famous people like a change of pace at least once in a while. But Mima isn't lucky enough to have an easy career transformation. Since she is so sickeningly admired by boys and men who watch her without any expression in their eyes, and since she is unknowingly the embodiment of Rumi's hopes and dreams, she cannot go and act on TV as she pleases. She ends up being disrespected by men and actually raped during the filming of the rape scene. That was the hardest scene to watch for me.
But anyway, then things get really tricky. With the murders, the crazy fish face-looking guy, insane Rumi, and Me-mania, everything in her world is misconstrued. She literally loses herself and her identity while she’s just trying her damnedest to be a well-loved actress. And that’s the price of fame for Mima, unfortunately.
As for Nina, she’s unlucky enough to have a mother trying to live her unattained dreams through her daughter. She feels the pressure to be beautiful and perfect more than anything, because that is what ballet requires. Her whole world and her identity is distorted like Mima’s, because she cannot take the competition, the pressure from her instructor and from her mother, and the need to be perfect. It probably doesn’t help that she’s lightheaded from bulimia either. In the end she dies I think, I’m not sure really since everything in the film is so symbolic. But it’s because she’s finally done what she has lived her life for; she dances perfectly in her show. But what good was that? Did she do it for herself or for everyone else?
I’ve only discussed and compared the misfortune of two girls in this blog. I haven’t examined the need for help for these types of females. There are too many ballerinas, actresses, and normal girls too, who succumb to everything from anorexia to sexual abuse from men. It is saddening the way body image can take over a girl’s life completely.
It is crazy how distorted people views are on the perfect female body. It seems like people get so obsessed with looking the perfect way they forget about what really makes a person beautiful. People also seem to associate their identity with what they look like instead of who they are. A lot of this has to do with the media and they way they portray the “typical” female body, but some of it also has to do with peer pressure from friends and family. There are even guys out there that have turned to anorexia in order to fit into a certain body. I had a few friends back in high school that would try to cut their weight down as low as they could get it so they could get into a smaller weight group for wrestling. All this stuff just makes me mad. What makes us want to try to be something we are not?
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot that you said. Perfect Blue did a good job of showing what celebrities these days will do to make themselves more and more famous. Even though this was in an anime, it is done very often in real life. Almost all the time you see celebrities they are trying to sell out their body's for fame. Although it happens most often with females, it is often done with men as well. People who are trying to obtain fame and acknowledgment will do extreme things to be recognized and to be able to stand out. It is sad that it is that way but it is true. I think that there can be other ways to stand out other than sell out your body, but some people don't see it that way. Mima is the perfect example because she is willing to do anything as well to be able to become an actress. She gets so caught up in the fame that even when asked to do things that she has never done, she sets no standards for herself and does it anyways.
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