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Hyper masculinity in fight club
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Cinema and entertainment have been connected from the very beginning of cinematic experiments. However, that was never the only purpose for film makers to produce a film. In this essay, I want to discuss the question, if the act of taking movies seriously takes away cinema´s talent to present an escape from one´s everyday live or if, on the contrary, it can heighten its entertaining value for the viewer by providing food for thought.
First of all, I think it is important to differentiate between movies that are mainly produced for the purpose of entertainment, for example animated comedy films like DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar (2005), and movies that are made for more than “just” entertainment. And among these movies one must distinguish
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The film tells the story of a nameless narrator, who works as a recall coordinator for the auto industry. He leads a consumer-oriented life and suffers from sleeplessness. In his free time, the protagonist attends self-help groups for people with incurable diseases or other serious problems, although he is physically healthy, and becomes addicted to it. In on of these groups, he meets a woman called Marla who is a simulator as well, but he rejects her. The narrator then meets Tyler Durden, a hypermasculine, very charismatic soap maker, and after becoming something like friends, they establish the so called “Fight Club“, where men can meet to fight against each other. Tyler and Marla start a sexual relationship, but Tyler inculates the narrator with not telling her about him. Under Tyler´s direction, more fight clubs are grounded throughout the whole country and out of them he eventually forms an organization called “Project Mayhem”, which he uses to perform attacks on public policy. After things get out of control, the narrator finally discovers that he himself and Tyler are the same person, meaning that he suffers from a multiple personality disorder, and that Tyler acted whenever the narrator thought he was sleeping. In the end, he manages to kill Tyler by shooting himself in his cheek. However, the narrator …show more content…
Henry A. Giroux states in his article “Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight Club, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence” that the film glorifies violence and depicts women in a misogynistic way. Lynn M. Ta takes up the counterside in her article “Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism”. She argues that the exaggerated critique on consumerism, the associated emasculation of men and the stereotypical depiction of gender notions highlight contemporary society´s issues and thereby provide a platform for discussing them. This not only heightens the film´s academic value, but its entertaining value as well: we as viewers analyze the film while watching it. Maybe we start to draw conclusions, but then the plot twisted and we are back at the beginning. Nevertheless, this act adds a lot to our enjoyment of the film. In fact, the entertaining value of it can only fully develop when we think about the film, when we take it
Ta, Lynn M. "Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism." Journal Of American Culture 29.3 (2006): 265-277. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 14 April 2014.
Lehman, Peter and Luhr, William. Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
In the Film “Fight Club” the setting was set during the postmodern period. When the term postmodern is mentioned it is a bit of a contradiction. Modern means the here and now, the present. While post means subsequent to or after. It is the same as saying after the present. That is the contradiction! No one knows what is after the present. Maybe postmodernism means before it’s time. Many argue that this movie was before its time, some even believe that people would begin to mimic this behavior. Although no one has a clear on the definition of postmodernism there are many terms that correlate to postmodernism. In the film “Fight Club” there are words that resemble the postmodernism ideation such as consumerism, nihilism, and liberation.
Chuck Palahniuk wrote an afterword for the paperback edition of Fight Club, in which he indicated that his novel was principally an updated version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “Really, what I was writing was just The Great Gatsby, updated a little. It was ‘apostolic’ fiction – where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death” (Palahniuk 215). Much can be written about the similarities and contrasts between these two novels. In addition to this simple plot similarity, both novels provide powerful social commentary on the state of American culture and the detrimental impact of capitalism on the individual during their respective times. The Great Gatsby was published in the 1920s and Fight Club in the 1990s, giving two similarly written literary snapshots of American society at opposite ends of the twentieth century. The temptation is to analyze and compare these novels in terms of American consumerism at different times, the individual’s quest for self-identity in the increasingly conformist capitalist structure, or to focus on literary aspects, such as character and narrative structure. However, these obvious subjects seem secondary to an overarching thematic similarity.
In Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, the narrator creates another identity through his schizophrenia and dissociative personality disorder. While the narrator’s other personality is portrayed as a therapeutic creation focused on bettering society and himself through destruction followed by rebuilding, the narrator actually creates Tyler Durden to destroy his true identity, become the person he wishes he was, and destroy those around him without holding any personal responsibility. Even though the narrator pretends that he has no control over his second identity, Tyler Durden acts according the the narrator’s desires; however, with this arrangement, the narrator can pretend that he is innocent.
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
If you have watched the film Fight Club in regards to the early 1990’s and it’s American Consumerism it has a major effect on the countries early audiences which are males between 15 and 34 primarily all white. This led to a huge problem and was considered a controversial film. A film that would impact the world and the society in which people lived in leading to a public response. The huge question towards fight club is if the society would allow such in tolerant actions and if it’s possible to be controversial over the actions of rebellion. Fight Club has nothing to do with revolution but it is about the impossibility of it. This film criticizes the corporations and media and even pushes to criticize any big organizations looking to react against them. When the term Project Mayhem is introduced you noticed that a disorganized number or chaos, a group of men all wearing the same clothes chanting in unison in an anarchy way. The idea of individualism is terminated which is a major attribute of any revolution. For example fascism, communism or whatever idea you can think of. Some can argue that in this film the idea of individualism as it in introduced to us growing up is not the same but it’s a homogenization of the self, which is served to benefit the powers. This of it like this, you have the option to choose out of the two cars a land rover or a range rover. That is your freedom right there. This film helps open up the eyes of all values leading to individualism and has a strange complex with the main character and his different personality disorders. Fight club focuses on the ideas and the values of anyone who has power and those that are seeking to rebel against it.
Society becomes so rationalized that one must push himself to the extreme in order to feel anything or accomplish anything. The more you fight in the fight club, the tougher and stronger you become. Getting into a fight tests who you are. No one helps you, so you are forced to see your weaknesses. The film celebrates self-destruction and the idea that being on the edge allows you to be beaten because nothing really matters in your life.
Friday, Krister. ""A Generation of Men Without History": Fight Club, Masculinity, and the Historical Symptom." Project MUSE. 2003.
Fight Club “Its only after we’ve lost everything are we free to do anything”, Tyler Durden as (Brad Pitt) states, among many other lines of contemplation. In Fight Club, a nameless narrator, a typical “everyman,” played as (Edward Norton) is trapped in the world of large corporations, condominium living, and all the money he needs to spend on all the useless stuff he doesn’t need. As Tyler Durden says “The things you own end up owning you.” Fight Club is an edgy film that takes on such topics as consumerism, the feminization of society, manipulation, cultism, Marxist ideology, social norms, dominant culture, and the psychiatric approach of the human id, ego, and super ego. “It is a film that surrealistically describes the status of the American
Throughout Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, masculinity is a reoccurring theme that is present throughout the novel and is directly linked to the creation of Fight Club in the first place. After meeting Tyler Durden, the narrator’s masculinity and outlook on life starts to dramatically change. In result of this change, the theme of masculinity becomes very disastrous throughout the novel very quickly because Palahniuk uses masculinity in order to explain the many problems the consumer driven males may struggle with. In this case, the narrator’s masculinity is constantly in question because of his struggles with insomnia, consumer driven lifestyle, and Marla Singer.
Robinson, S. (2011). Fight Club and the Limits of Anti-Consumerist Critique. Genders Journal, 53 (Spring, 2011). Retrieved January 31, 2014, from http://www.genders.org/g53/g53_robinson.html
The introduction of films began in the early era of 1920s and since then technology in many forms as such Televisions which featured documentary and made films more popular with in audiences, according to commentators it is said that film has become the most global and popular seen and followed form of culture. (Shiel, 2001; Urry & Larsen, 2011). Furthermore in late 1960s cinemas and theaters were popular among people also due to entertainment and transformation of different cultures, it has since then captured a large number of tourists. Today that trend has changed into television viewing, which is hence said it is the major leisure activity among people. In addition to that seeing films...
Our group collectively decided to choose the movie Fight Club as the movie to review for this case study. Fight Club was released on October 15, 1999 and is based off the novel written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. The movie was directed by David Fincher and featured several outstanding actors such as Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. We settled on reviewing Fight Club due to the films’ psychologically thrilling nature.
Movies take us inside the skin of people quite different from ourselves and to places different from our routine surroundings. As humans, we always seek enlargement of our being and wanted to be more than ourselves. Each one of us, by nature, sees the world with a perspective and selectivity different from others. But, we want to see the world through other’s eyes; imagine with other’s imaginations; feel with other’s hearts, at a same time as with our own. Movies offer us a window onto the wider world, broadening our perspective and opening our eyes to new wonders.