The Dark Feminine in Aronofsky's The Wrestler

Cassidy

He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we were healed.

Randy

What’s that?

Cassidy

It’s from The Passion of Christ. Never seen it? Dude, you gotta. It’s amazing.

Randy

Huh. I’ll have to check it out.

This is a conversation early on in the film The Wrestler (Aronofsky, 2009), when Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), a stripper in her mid thirties, is talking to Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a professional wrestler in his late forties. The subject of Christ and sacrifice is introduced through the lens of cinema, spectacle, and spectator. This is something Cassidy and Randy are intimately and painfully familiar with, as their professional identities, their personas, are based on their performances and their bodies. Jung describes the persona as ‘that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is … the temptation to be what one seems to be is great, because the persona is usually rewarded in cash’ (Jung, 1990/1950, para. 221). They use their professional names with each other, as they have no idea who the other is outside of their identities of performance.