FightClub (1999

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Key Themes

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ViolenceEmasculation

Consumer Culture

IsolationIdentityLack of a Father Figure

Societal BreakdownZen Buddhism

Misogyny Cult or Religion?

Masculinity

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Misogyny

• We are forced to identify with The Narrator as his voice guides the film. Marla however doesn’t have a voice.

• When Marla first enters the micro features help create her villain persona. Eg. the shadows across her face, black clothing, music and slow motion.

• Tyler is trying to reject all things that are deemed feminine in society. Therefore anything feminine is portrayed as numb with high key lighting.

• However at the end The Narrator begins to care for Marla and sends her away to safety when project mayhem is out of his control.

Isolation•The Narrator and Marla both experience Isolation due to the lack of satisfaction in their lives. By attending support groups they experience the human connection that they lack and crave.

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Lack of a Father Figure

•Tyler and The Narrator both bond over their recollections about their fathers. Both men state that their fathers were not a major part of their lives.•With no distinct male role-models in their lives Jack and Tyler have been influenced by male roles in advertising. The men of fight club have seen an emptiness in this model and reject it.

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Societal Breakdown

•Tyler believes that the use of chaos by Project Mayhem will lead to a better world. •All bosses in the film strongly lack any power or authority.•There is strong themes of consumerism throughout portrayed through an obsession with brands and products, i.e. IKEA and Starbucks.

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Zen Buddhism

• Zen concepts can be depicted in the film, particularly regarding the rejection of material possessions. • Jack buries sadness in what he calls the "Ikea nesting instinct”. Tyler shows Jack that suffering is simply a part of life, but is largely based on attachment to material objects.

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Consumer CultureThe film repeatedly critiques the values formed by advertising. Tyler's philosophy says that people work jobs that they don't enjoy and in reality these people are deeply unhappy. They continue to buy cleverly marketed goods to make themselves feel better. One way that Fight Club supports the system is in its product placement. The film uses these products to show that consumerism has taken over its characters lives.

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Violence

• The fighting in the film is not presented as a solution to the character's problems, but is a means of achieving a spiritual reawakening and reasserting their masculinity. The fighting itself reminds the men that they are alive and not just a cog in the working machine that is society.

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• Fight Club presents the argument that men in today's society have been reduced to a generation of men that do nothing themselves. Masculinity has become a brand, a means to sell products to men. •Members of Fight Club reject this approach and try to find themselves by putting themselves through the experience of facing fear and pain, they hope to strip away the unnecessary parts of their lives and discover their true selves.

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Emasculation

• The Narrator subconsciously creates Tyler Durden, a charismatic but unhinged ‘id’ that is free in all the ways that The Narrator is not.•When Tyler goes too far, The Narrator snaps back to reality and sees that he is losing himself to Tyler. He then must choose to save both Marla and himself from Tyler.

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Identity

•There's a fine line between a religion and a cult. Whichever they are, religion or cult, fight club and Project Mayhem are religious experiences to their devoted followers, and Tyler guides his disciples down a strict path to salvation.

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Cult or Religion?

•Tyler’s character is representative of hegemonic masculinity which men tend to strive for. His character also highlights everything that Jack isn’t.• Jack and Tyler represent binary opposites within the film as Jack is overruled by Tyler which shows the differences in their masculine roles.

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Masculinity

Fight club can tell us a lot about modern culture as the recurring themes give us strong connotations of our morals which reflect the state of our society and help predict the quality of our future.

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Why do we study fight club?