For my critical analysis I am focusing on a film called
Fight Club that was released in 1999. The film focuses on an individual who’s
name isn’t actually revealed until nearer the end, but I refer to him as The
Narrator, and The Narrator becomes friends with a man called Tyler Durten. However,
towards the end of the film we find out that Tyler is actually a subconscious
part of The Narrators personality, everything he wished he was.
One of the many reasons I like this film is because of the
vast amount of ways you can look at it, every person who watches it interprets it
in their own way. But something universal about this film is its genre. Tudor’s
quote (1974) ‘a genre… defines a moral and social world’ applies to Fight Club
as the film is about the Narrator’s battle with his own and others (Tyler and
members of project mayhem) morals and his disgust for the social concept of
consumerism. This of course leads to the question of what the genre actually
is, which I am suggesting, is a coming-of-age film. Although the narrator is 30
he is still immature and stuck in a teenage-like frame of mind where he hates the
government with its big corporations and feels his life is worthless. He buys
things and gets pleasure from surrounding himself with desired objects such as
furniture “I became a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct”. I can relate this coming-of-age theme to
other films such as American Beauty. The main character Lester Burnham is a
middle aged man who has a boring office job (similar to the main character in
fight club) and he also feels as though he is doing nothing with his life. Just
like the narrator from fight club however he finds his path and what he wishes
to do with his life. In the Buddhist sense you could say that he was
enlightened as they both took the view that you should enjoy life and not gauge
happiness by how many things you have. However with Lester it seems as though
rather than maturing, he reseeds back to his teenage years to the time when he
enjoyed his life most.
This Ikea statement reinforces the theme of emasculinity.
Fight Club presents the argument that men in today's society have been reduced
to a generation of men that do nothing themselves, but have become numb with
watching others do things instead. Masculinity becomes a brand, a means to sell
products to men. "Being a man" then becomes owning the right watch or
car instead of knowing who you are and what your values really are. As a result
the Narrator, Tyler, and the other members of Fight Club reject this spoon-fed
approach to living and try to find themselves. By putting themselves through
the experience of fighting and facing fear and pain, they hope to strip away
the unnecessary parts of their lives and discover their true selves. The
Narrator also experiences emasculation in the face of Tyler's relationship with
Marla. He feels like he has lost his place next to Tyler, who embodies a
perfected sense of masculinity. Ironically, Tyler exists in the Narrator's mind
as a prime male physical specimen. Something that is reminiscent of how
advertising says men have to look. Without Tyler's attention, the Narrator
feels a rejection bordering on romantic jealousy. There is also a persistent
theme of castration in the film. First, the Narrator meets Bob at a support
group for men who have lost their testicles to cancer. Later on, the threat of
castration is used by Tyler and the space monkeys to get the police
commissioner to call off his investigation. The Narrator, too, is threatened
with castration for trying to shut down fight club (by the three policemen he
imagines are in the interrogation room). This loss of manhood is the worst
possible fate these men can imagine, particularly because they feel they have
just begun to appreciate their masculinity due to fight club and Project
Mayhem.
Throughout Fight Club the narrator produces statements which suggest
his emasculation e.g. “I used to read Pornography, but now I read the Horchow
collection”. Drinking alcohol, reading
pornography and cars are typical things that are associated with what men do,
however cleaning, cooking, and reading catalogues are things people typically
think of a middle aged housewife to be doing. The narrator constantly does and
says things that make you think about how ‘manly’ he is. Even the narrator’s
physical appearance is weedy and his voice isn’t exactly sonorous. He also
shy’s away from awkward or confrontational situations, as is evident by his
inability to speak up to his boss in the opening and when Tyler tells him to
just ask if he can stay at his place, he still shy’s around the question. A
possible theory for the fighting in the film is that it is not presented as a
solution to the character's problems, but is a means of achieving a spiritual
reawakening. The fighting itself reminds the men that they are alive. As part
of Tyler's philosophy, it also reminds them that they will die. Fighting is
used as a path to reach the core of who they are. While the fighting can be
seen as an attempt by the men to reassert their masculinity, it is more of a
rejection of what they have been told masculinity is by prior generations,
their jobs, and mass media. This can be linked to the coming of age genre as
they are using fighting to in the sense of enlightenment and knowledge of the
universe, “grow up”.
Coming of age notes:
Things that cause a coming of age:
• Love,
relationship, interest in sex
• Job,
money, career change
• Moving
away from parents, independents
• Becoming
more confrontational with parents, rebelliousness
• Responsibility
• New
situations/ environments
• Cars
• New
friends/ social circles
• Angst,
confusion, frustration
• Appearance,
how good they look
• More
politically aware (fight club)
• Buying
stuff
Quotes:
- “Every
evening, I died and every evening I was born again. Resurrected ” - Narrator
- “Only
after disaster can we be resurrected” – Tyler Durten
