He is just as surreal as Palahniuk's Tyler Durden, and yet he is not freeing any hero from consumerist enslavement but -- on the other hand -- burying the reader behind a false and deluded masculine mythology -- namely, that a masculine hero is virile not because he "knows himself" and seeks virtue but because he knows how to drive fast cars, win at cards, be physically fit and agile, and out-step evil doers. Bond does not embody the traditional masculine role or even the omantic hero that Palahniuk's hero represents, but rather the kind of self-centered, egomaniacal machismo fantasy that springs out of the head of Hemingway in the early 20th century, like Athena out of the head of Zeus. Bond is not truly antagonistic to homosexuality because he fails to secure for himself a feminine mate: even though he offers to marry Vesper, she is pursued by…...
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Reference List
Fight Club DVD Special Edition, 2000, motion picture, 20th Century Fox, USA
Fleming, I 2009, Casino Royale, Penguin, NY
Kavadlo, J 2005, 'The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist,'
Fight Club
The 1999 feature movie, Fight Club, directed by David Fincher and starring rad Pitt and Edward Norton seemed as if the entire film was dedicated to the phenomenon of antisocial behavior. This exploration into the mind of an apparently normal man demonstrated the significance and the trials of an individual dealing with the pressures of society. The purpose of this essay is to explain antisocial behavior as it is represented within this movie. Specifically, I will describe the climactic last scene of the movie as the culmination of this social psychological phenomenon which entails rebelling against society and finding one's own individual voice.
This story centers around an anonymous individual, who, through a series of strange and dreamlike events, becomes "associated" with a more rebellious and inspiring character named Tyler. Throughout the movie, Tyler and the narrator become closer and begin to share in an unique hobby of fighting one…...
It is also important to note that major offenses within the fight club are punished through castration, as if to imply that the punished person is no longer a man and therefore no longer worthy of being part of the violent organization.
The roles of women in Fight Club are extremely limited. Marla Singer is the only female character in the film. She shares qualities that are present in "Durden," yet the narrator is unable to recognize the relationship that he and Singer develop due to his preoccupation with "Durden." Much like the narrator, Singer is nihilistic and attends support group meetings in order to feel complete. Furthermore, the only relationship that she develops with "Durden" is one that is strictly sexual; "Durden" has gone as far as instructing the narrator to not talk about him to Singer. As the narrative of the film progresses, and "Durden" gains power over…...
Project Mayhem on the other hand focuses outwardly towards society, rather than the members of the organization. The secrecy of Project Mayhem has evolved to being a secret even from its own members, and particularly from the protagonist, suggested by its first and repeated rule "You do not ask questions." This also suggests that Project Mayhem is a far more sinister entity than its predecessor, in that the rules no longer focus on the safety of its members. Instead the focus here is on utmost secrecy and trust.
The complete obedience and trust required by the third to fifth rules then form the basis from which Project Mayhem aims to destroy all the elements of society against which Fight Club was a rebellion. It is only by disobeying, asking questions and relinquishing his trust of Tyler that the protagonist is able to overcome his own destruction, if not the destruction of…...
They lived in a derelict building with the other white males they recruited -- the army they recruited. They created their own world where everything was masculine and they plotted against the capitalists in order to redefine their masculinity. They continued to engage in violent acts which grew more and more destructive. Through these, they were able to gain back their power, the power they have lost through the feminization of society.
They rejected consumerism and capitalism. This was one of their ways to stop the propagation of the feminized male. They waged their own war and in the end, they used their violence to stop the capitalists from further harming their ideal of what should be masculine.
Masculinity was also depicted in the relationship that Marla Singer and Jack have. Their on and off relationship was, in a way, a reflection of the power of man over a woman. Jack…...
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References
Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. 20th Century Fox, 1999. Film.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Duke University, n.d. Web. 15 November 2009.
Fight Club" and the creation of a false urban masculinity in cinematic and real life
One of the most interesting aspects of the narrative art is seen in the unpredictable ways in which individuals are apt to embrace filmic narration and cinematic narrative techniques and to transfer them into the narrative texture of their own lives. Also reflected in this phenomenon is the fact that viewers can develop ways of approaching and understanding films that depart entirely from the filmmaker's original conception and intent. For instance, in the case of "Fight Club," the evident intent of the filmmakers was to create a film that was highly deflationary in terms of masculine posturing. The film depicts a number of highly paid executive young men who create societies devoted to bare-fisted pugilism. These boxing societies are held illegally and underground. The film is fictional, and began as a fiction. Eventually, the societies…...
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Works Cited
Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Fight Club." Starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, 1999.
Disassociation, Personality Disorders, & Global Capitalism:
Open Your Eyes to the Fight Club
Fight Club is a cinematic adaptation of a novel of the same title; therefore, the novel will be referenced peripherally in this work. While the focus of the paper will be upon Fight Club, in an effort to expand the context of the ideas to be discussed, the essay will also include analysis of a related Spanish film, Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). This film preceded the release of Fight Club by two years and went on to later be adapted for an American audience under the title, Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, and Penelope Cruz, who is cast as the same character, Sofia, in both versions of the film. The paper will discuss these films, questions they raise, and ideas they execute in relation to Doniger's piece, "Many Masks, Many Selves." The paper will demonstrate…...
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References:
Amenabar, Alejandro (dir.) Abre Los Ojos. Sogepaq Distrubucion, 1997.
Bennett, Robert. The Death of Sisyphus: Existentialist Literature and the Cultural Logic of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club." Stirrings Still: The International Journal of Existential Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2005.
Constandinides, Costas. "Adapting the Literature of the Double: Manifestations of cinematic forms in Fight Club and Enduring Love." Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009.
Gender Studies
The central premise of gender studies is that gender is a socially constructed category that is not always aligned with biological sex. Gender traits are those that are deemed appropriate or acceptable by a culture or society. Discuss the presentation of masculinity in Fight Club. hat traits are deemed ideal for males in the novel? hat are the men in fight club searching for? hat is the significance of this being "a generation of men raised by women" (50)?
The gender studies field is composed of a multi-disciplinary approach that tries to look at the roles genders play in cultures from different perspectives. Many area of interest in this field include perspectives such as in the fields of literature and language, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema and media studies, human development, law, and medicine (The University of Chicago, N.d., p. 1). In the realm of literature, the book Fight…...
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Works Cited
Palahniuk, C. (2005). Fight Club W.W. Norton & Company.
Gender and Communication
Fight Club: A world of feminine influence barring open communication
David Fincher's Fight Club released in 1999 has acquired more than its due share of critical analysis by many critics and viewers while the film embodies a variety of themes including the often uttered gender and communication issues. Among other themes many have found isolation, emasculation, consumer culture, violence and even lack of father figure. In this paper we're going to look through the kaleidoscope of these themes to throw light on the issues of communication and gender (Giroux, 2001).
An effort to have communication among the isolated male folks
Isolation has been one of the major themes in this haunting film. We find that Jack's insomnia and lack of fulfillment branch mainly from his isolation. We never hear about any of his friends, nor do we come across any. The human connection is completely missing in his case and so…...
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References
Giroux, Henry, (2001). Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight Club, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculinity. JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 21.1
Lizardo, Omar. (2007). Fight Club, or the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism. Journal for Cultural Research 11, 3.
Terry, Lee. (2002). Virtual Violence in Fight Club: This is What the Transformation of Masculine Ego Feels like. Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 25, 3-4: 423.
According to Bennett, there has not been a sufficient amount of discussion regarding the complexity of the Fight Club text in the sense that critics and supporters alike have limited a full exploration of such a profound text. Although he does not reject the idea - expressed by many critics, that Fight Club tackles issues as gender and class identity, Bennett argues that existentialism, understood both as a philosophical and as an aesthetic practice, provides a superior critical framework for interpreting Fight Club (Bennett: 67). His stance is that Palahniuk's Fight Club is a brilliant sample of the "existential literary tradition with certain postmodern differences" (Bennett: 68) in the sense that the existentialism of the book is very much adapted to its historical context, i.e. The age of "postmodern capitalism" (Ibid: 68). In fact, his argument goes a bit further; he draws a parallel between Fight Club and Dostoyevsky's…...
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Kavadlo, Jesse. "The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist."
Stirrings Still - the International Journal of Existential Literature 2.2 (2005): 3-24.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Owl Books, 1997.
Resiliency
As Webster and Rivers (2018) point out, the notion of resilience has been promoted in a variety of fields and essentially research on it has focused on the need for individuals to “toughen up”—particularly in what has been called a “snowflake” culture, a term popularized by the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club. As Palahniuk said later when the book was made into a cult hit film, “Every generation gets offended by different things but my friends who teach in high school tell me that their students are very easily offended…The modern Left is always reacting to things. Once they get their show on the road culturally they will stop being so offended” (Londoner, 2017). While there is a lot to unpack in that statement (offense and culture are implicitly linked to resiliency and the ability to cope with conflict), the essence of the point made by Palahniuk is that…...
Sociology Film Review: Fight Club
Fight Club was produced in 1999 and has a running time of two hours and 19 minutes. The film is narrated by a nameless hero (played by Edward Norton) who suffers from insomnia. It opens with him tied to a chair, a gun held to his head by a man named Tyler (played by Brad Pitt). The narrator speaks directly to the audience and tells how he arrived at this moment through a flashback which essentially serves as the bulk of the film, the opening scene also serving as the ending scene and setting of the film. Throughout the film, the audience learns that the hero created an alternate ego for himself (Tyler) to help him address his malaise—his boredom with his work, his home, his life—in other words, his inability to find satisfaction in the materialistic existence he has created for himself. He introduces Tyler…...
Conflict Theory in FilmIntroductionConflict theory is a sociological perspective that emphasizes the role of power and inequality in shaping social relations and structures. As itzer (2011) points out, conflict theory was an attempt to bridge the gap between Marxism and sociological theoryand it served as a response to the structural functionalism (p. 215). While there are similarities between conflict theory and structural functionalism, the former is a kind of inversion of the latter, or as itzer (2011) puts it, a kind of structural functionalism turned on its head (p. 265). According to conflict theory, society is divided into different groups with competing interests, and conflicts arise from the unequal distribution of resources and power (Tajfel & Turner, 2006). Those with power and influence seek to marginalize and oppress those without power; the goal of those with power is to maintain power; the goal of those without power is to push…...
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ReferencesFincher, D. (1999). Fight club. 20th Century Fox.Ritzer, G. (2011). Sociological theory. McGraw-Hill.Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (2004). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In Political psychology (pp. 276-293). Psychology Press.
Film Analysis of Fight ClubDavid Finchers 1999 cult classic film Fight Club was polarizing when released at the end of the 20th century: it hit audiences hard, shocking some and enthralling others. It divided critics as well; however, looking back on the film and analyzing from it various aspects, such photography, editing, story, ideology, drama, and more, one can see with a clearer critical lens that the film works from start to finish as a unified piece of art that is totally aware of what it is doing and why it is doing it. Fight Club was a film made to offend and it succeeds because it topples the sacred cows of society and sets ablaze the prairie upon which they grazed (even the bermensch bad-boy boy-toy Brad Pitt gets discarded by the end of the filma rug pull for every adolescent male idolizing the anarchic bravado of Pitts Tyler…...
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Works Cited
Ebert, Roger. “Fight Club.” RogerEbert.com, 15 October 1999, Fincher, David, director. Fight Club. 20th Century Fox, 1999.Giroux, Henry A. 'Brutalized bodies and emasculated politics: Fight Club, consumerism, and masculine violence.' Third Text 14.53 (2000): 31-41.Liktor, Coskun. '“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here”: The Critique Of Consumer Society In American Psycho and Fight Club.' Moment Dergi 3.2 (2016): 369-384.Robinson, Sally. 'Feminized men and inauthentic women: Fight Club and the limits of anti-consumerist critique.' Genders 53 (2011).Ta, Lynn M. 'Hurt So Good:' Fight Club,' Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism.' The Journal of American Culture 29.3 (2006): 265-277.https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fight-club-1999 .
Fight Club
The 1999 film Fight Club is filled with Freudian references, especially those related to death wish, masculinity, and male sexuality. If Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and the narrator played by Edward Norton are indeed one person, then the film addresses the psychoanalytic elements at play in a fractured psyche. Death wish is one of the most poignant themes in Fight Club, which explores an ironic, postmodern violence that is directed against both the self and society. Masculinity and sexuality prove also to be problematic elements for the narrator. The Oedipus complex also surfaces, as it is implied the narrator kills his mother.
Aggression is one of the ways that the narrator can act out his homoerotic fantasies. The narrator feels a keen and poignant sense of alienation and isolation. His predictable life gives him such little pleasure that he develops pathological insomnia: for which he seeks treatment and intervention. Because…...
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References
Fincher, D. (1999). Fight Club. [Feature Film].
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