Analysis of the Themes in Fight Club
It is easy to understand how and why many who view Fight Club
(Fincher, 1999) would argue that is in essence a critique of post
modern consumer culture within America or indeed the western world.
After all we are faced with Character(s) Jack (Edward Norton) who
seems to gain no cultural sustenance from the world in which he
inhabits. More over it seems to do him harm in the form of insomnia.
This coupled with his obsession with Ikea and material goods leads to
the creation of Tyler (Brad Pit). Whose apparent goal is the
destruction of the capitalist system? The film seems littered with
examples of anti consumer, anti capitalist motifs. The blowing up of
credit card companies, the vandalising of coffee shops etc etc. But,
is there more to the narrative of fight club? Its extreme use of
violence on one hand might seem to represent the desperate act of
those trapped deep within the void of consumer culture driven to
violence in a desperate bid to escape; to re claim some sense of
individualism. This view does however ignore many key issues regarding
Fight Club and gender. Especially those of masculinity and femininity,
and the positions they occupy within the film.
Primarily using the work of Laura Mulvey and Henry A. Giroux I
believe that it is clear to see that the themes and issues which are
central to Fight Club are based primarily on gender. Additional to
this, the fragility of man and narratives surrounding masculine
supremacy are present throughout, and undermine any notions of
critical morality.
“Ostensibly, Fight Club Appears to be a critique of late capitalist
society…But Fight...
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...hic economy encourages male
violence against women. In short, male violence in this film appears
directly linked to fostering those ideological conditions that justify
abuse towards women by linking masculinity exclusively to expressions
of violence and defining male identity against everything that is
feminine. (2000:12)
Bibliography
Cohen, S & Hark, I R. (ed’s). 1993 Screening The Male: Exploring
Masculinities In Hollywood Cinema. Routledge: London.
Giroux, H A. 2000. Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight
Club, Patriarchy and the Patriarchy and the Politics of Masculine
Violence. Dr. Henry A. Giroux Online Articles. henrygiroux.com.
Mulvey, M. 1989. Visual And Other Pleasures. Macmillan: Basingstoke.
Nelmes, J (ed) 2003. An Introduction To Film Studies (Third Edition)
Routledge: London
Can you recall the very last night that you spent with your high school buddies before packing your bags and leaving for college? The films American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused bring you back to that through the recreation of those great experiences. American Graffiti is based on a closely-knit group of teenagers who will all be leaving each other the next day for new adventures. This gang of teenagers, despite their differences, all goes out together and share their last memorable evening. Throughout the night, friendships are strengthened, conflicting struggles arise, and romances are created and disrupted. Dazed and Confused dealt about life during wartime – the wartime of high school, where the faculty is irrational, the parents are
The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema - Phil Powrie, Ann Davies and Bruce Babington.
Mainstream movies are about men’s lives, and the few movies about women’s lives, at their core, still also revolve around men (Newsom, 2011). These female leads often have male love interests, looking to get married or get pregnant. Strong independent female leads are still exist for the male view, as they are hypersexualized, or the “fighting fuck toy,” (Newsom, 2011). This depiction has created a culture where women are insecure and waiting for a knight on a horse to come rescue and provide for her as well as the acceptance of women
As I read the novel, I couldn’t help but to compare each word to the movie. I may have just recently watched it, but I was suddenly unsure of what I had seen. Was my memory failing me or were things truly that different? I felt like these differences changed the entire story line. The narrator shouldn’t be in a building that was about to be destroyed, this defeated the purpose of Project Mayhem. Then again, I was only on page one.
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
In Palahniuk’s Fight Club, Tyler Durden is a conformist to society that experienced a personal tragedy which led him to disengage from the societal normality and found an organization known as Fight Club, an underground street fighting competition. Tyler was once an aspiring businessperson. His failure was the cause of his conformity. Tyler then began to work as a security guard, primarily conducting after hour duties. This led him to begin stealing left over human fat to create the ingredients for the manufacture of explosives with the aim of supplementing his income (Schuessler). Here a personal tragedy, specifically failure, led to a behavioural condition known as disengagement. Tyler retracted himself from the typical American societal expectations and rebelled through forms of crime and backlash.
In the film Fight Club, the political message being relayed through the scenes if of the government keeping its citizens under control. Susan Bordo explains,
“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four” (Orwell 250). Winston lives in a time where a set of rules preventing him to be free are imposed on him – the Party defines what freedom is and is not. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows (Orwell 103)”. Winston expresses his views on The Party within his diary even though he knows it is not accepted by The Party or the Thought Police. The narrator in Fight Club uses fighting as a form of escapism from his anti-consumerist ideologies revealed by his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. “Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns. I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve—let the chips fall where they may. (Fight Club)” Tyler urges the narrator to stop conforming to consumerist-imposed views of perfection and break barriers to evolve. Tyler and the narrator create a medium for people in similar positions to escape from societal bound norms; it is aptly named “Fight Club”. In comparison, both Tyler Durden and the narrator from Fight Club and Winston Smith from 1984 share
Fight Club is a story about the never-ending struggles between classes. The Project Mayhem is formed in an attempt to overthrow the upper class who undermines the lower class. There are a number of scenes in the story, which highlights the struggle between classes. For instance, when Tyler pees in the soup of an upper class person, when he splices pornography into films and the scene when a mechanic takes the unnamed narrator to steal body fat. The characters here do all they can to fight against the upper class people and to get revenge.
People today enjoy the same things that people enjoyed during the Roman Empire. In the movie, Gladiator, Maximus fights in the Coliseum in front of all the people of Rome. In the movie Fight Club they have fights between different people in front of all the people of the club. This shows that people who lived 1000s of years before us where entertained by violence just like most of us are today. The theme that ties both Fight Club and Gladiator together is people are entertained by violence.
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
The narrator is changed by his experience with fight club; his life becomes all about fight club. Fight club becomes the reason for the narrators existence. The narrator experiences a shift in consciousness; in that, he is able to understand more of who he is and what really matters in life through fight clubs trial by fire. Through battle and a mindset of counterculture and a complete expulsion of ...
Cinema studies: the key concepts (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. 2007. Lacey, N. (2005). The 'Standard'. Film Language.