"Black Swan" is an inaccurate portrayal of bisexuality. The film furthers the struggle bisexuals in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community have experienced with the way they're represented on both the big and small screens.
"Black Swan" is the most prominent portrayal of a bisexual as of late - but unfortunately, the protagonist's bisexuality comes off as a drunken and drug-induced dream sequence. It's never clear whether Natalie Portman's character was actually attracted to the girl she fantasized about, and thus her bisexual portrayal is for naught.
This film merely continues a trend that we're seeing media-wide. Just a couple weeks ago, FOX's "Glee" tackled the topic when main character Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) explored the possibility of his own bisexuality when he became interested in Rachel Berry (Lea Michele). Unfortunately, by the end of the episode, Blaine assured his castmates and audience alike that he was in fact gay and his "bisexual foray" was merely a result of a night of underage drinking.
For bisexual viewers, what appeared to be a huge step forward for a popular TV show turned out to be a tease and, ultimately, a step backward.
Too often, bisexuality is deemed to be an experiment drunk girls take part in - not unlike in "Black Swan" - in order to turn on their straight boyfriends. "Bisexuality" is nearly a myth to anyone who does not identify as bisexual. When the film and TV worlds do nothing to change these views, instead making them more ingrained into our societal understandings of sexuality, a large segment of the population is lost to invisibility.
Even in a show like "The L Word" where sexual boundaries are being crossed left and right, the bisexual is hidden and lost. Character Alice Pieszecki (Leisha Hailey), the self-proclaimed bisexual, has only one true male-female relationship over the six seasons the show was on, and that relationship was with a female-identified male, making the relationship essentially lesbian, not bisexual. Thus, instead of a true sexuality, Alice ends up depicting bisexuality as a "phase."
Similarly, in the films that have tackled alternative sexualities, the bisexual is not usually labeled as such; bisexuality is usually portrayed as fluid without any boundaries in such films as "Kissing Jessica Stein," "Velvet Goldmine," "Transamerica," "Rent" and "Imagine Me & You." While the lack of a label can be warranted and even desired by some sexual minorities, it can also contribute to the bisexual not being seen and accepted by greater society.
As long as these types of portrayals continue, the bisexual will remain nothing more than a myth without societal acceptance. It is necessary to have broader portrayals of minority sexualities in order to show the culture in which we reside that lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders are just as common as any other sexuality.
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