This paper argues that Nietzsche＇s view of tragedy as involving the Apollinian and the Dionysian may explain the appeal of the popular film Black Swan. The basis for this argument rests on Nietzsche＇s innovation in ...This paper argues that Nietzsche＇s view of tragedy as involving the Apollinian and the Dionysian may explain the appeal of the popular film Black Swan. The basis for this argument rests on Nietzsche＇s innovation in The Birth of Tragedy, namely, his emphasis on spectacle. Nietzsche argues for a collective experience, where the ego is abandoned in a renewed and shared sense of life. Black Swan provides a spectacle outside the confines of high culture and philosophical categories, where destructive and bestial nature is presented in an illusory and safe way for the audience. From a Nietzschean perspective, tragedy and Black Swan achieve this effacement of the ego through the aesthetic marriage of clarity and confusion, ugliness and beauty, music and image, inducing an experience in the audience that goes beyond moral judgment. This Nietzschean prism provides a case for the film＇s artistic merits where traditional conceptions of aesthetics and morality arguably fail to provide insight.展开更多
文摘This paper argues that Nietzsche＇s view of tragedy as involving the Apollinian and the Dionysian may explain the appeal of the popular film Black Swan. The basis for this argument rests on Nietzsche＇s innovation in The Birth of Tragedy, namely, his emphasis on spectacle. Nietzsche argues for a collective experience, where the ego is abandoned in a renewed and shared sense of life. Black Swan provides a spectacle outside the confines of high culture and philosophical categories, where destructive and bestial nature is presented in an illusory and safe way for the audience. From a Nietzschean perspective, tragedy and Black Swan achieve this effacement of the ego through the aesthetic marriage of clarity and confusion, ugliness and beauty, music and image, inducing an experience in the audience that goes beyond moral judgment. This Nietzschean prism provides a case for the film＇s artistic merits where traditional conceptions of aesthetics and morality arguably fail to provide insight.
