Analysis of Fight Club Movie - Essay Example

? Fight Club Introduction Since Fight Club release in 1999, the movie received an array of polarized dis because of its critical and problematic portrayal of late capitalism because of its obsession with profits and excess consumerism. Jack being the main character in the movie, depicts a modern ‘organization man’ and a company man who spends his life shuffling papers, sitting in planes and purchasing furniture for his apartment and with time becomes dictatorial to members of his troop. The story is a distortion of core US obsession culture of consumerism, therapy and violence because the movie initially offers fighting as remedy and male bonding exercise in hope to re-masculine men castrated by consumerism. The understanding in the movie never seeks to resolve personal dissatisfaction within the public sphere; but rather suggests that organization is feasible via private and violent expressions. However, the brilliant representation of violent acts in the disruptive way offers a way of inciting discourse regarding gender identity and violence, which leaves space for public discussion. The movie tends to open this space, regardless of its critique because violence offers a way of analyzing culture dictated by consumerism and commercialization and showing the challenges associated with normal gender relations. Hence, fight club seems to be a necessary way of discussing the gender identity and the generation of white masculinity. The fight club presents the discipline of violence as a therapy for masculine powerlessness and such a discipline prepares a man for pain essential to contest social power in job, relationship and conceivably in the large socio-political arena. The cleverness in the movie leaves one with the feeling of powerless and insensitive as the movies plays with serious problems within the society; even though, it does not offer any resolution. The movie tweaks the discourse because qualities of discarded objects are significantly brought to life in the film as they are animated in the relation between use of value and exchange of value. However, the movie illustrates capitalism by the struggle within domains of use and exchange and defends the use of value and exchange of value in a manner consistent with moderate defense of capitalism. At its best the boxing movie offers suffering as a way of attaining insight instead of endorsing pain as an avenue of power and appropriates conflict within the movie. The value of the movie lies in its power to stir people and force them to contemplate their own lives in a crucial way and then decide if the individuals have chosen reasonable option to undergo change. Although, the movie does not offer answers, which remains the single reason the movie is disdained, the movie aims at evoking the right concerns and motivating the people to act. Fight club offers a contemporary emotional wasteland and ridicules people fledging attempts to cope exemplified when Jack wakes while on business flight and meets Tyler, who offers a different solution that involved blowing out apartment, learning to strike and taking a hard punch and relishing the pain. In the movie, boxing translates to pain, which is essential in liberation because the movie advocates that through willingness to embrace suffering, one can overcome fear and exercise power that would culminate in resurrection of one’s masculinity. Members of the club engage in knock down aimed at making individuals feel good through fist fights and the club soon attracts disciples who consider Tyler to be their leader. Tyler take the mission of urging followers to reclaim masculinity through renouncing possessions, stale routines and comforts by expressing their rage through bloody, bare-knuckle fistfights. The movie’s triumph is paradoxical because one overcomes powerlessness through channeling anger in bare-knuckle fights that regenerate the psyche while battering the body. Hence, power in the movie arises from self-immolation because at night the desire to hit and be hit remained the goal of in bouts and the pleasure in pain. In the movie there were only winners in bloody fights as confederates cheer the fighters who were ready to enter the ring. Within a short time, Jack began showing up late at work while having bloody gums and black eyes and starts to argue with his boss. The quest for freedom changes into a perverse embrace of pain as shown by Tyler becoming a squatter within an abandoned building. The exercises in the movie soon instilled a boastful bravado in Jack’s white collar whimpering. When the owner of the bar where the fight club was based tried removing the club out of his basement, Tyler invited a beating that shocked the man and that made him concede. Jack’s boss believes that Jack is crazy; however, after witnessing the “recall coordinator” beat himself up within the manager’s office, the supervisor caves into Jack’s demands of being paid without work. Hence, the conquest of pain in the movie induces such awe in a way that grants power over others. The fight club functions in a shadowy basement and its existence below the surface signifies its perversity that helps in its endeavor of promoting pain in order to decrease sensitivity. Sensibility that permeates the movie offers an individual multiple perspectives; for instance, toward the end of the movie, Jack is liberated to follow a romantic relationship with Marla and by this time the false consciousness regarding consumer culture has exploded (Fincher, 1999). Considering the enormous violence, aggression and political indifference that imbue contemporary daily life, it is clear that representation of violence and scorn for everything feminine in the film resonate with the broad historical and contemporary forces in order to reproduce rather than challenge some of the oppressive forces within the American society. Victimized and feminized by the culture, Jack seeks to recover what he considers as his lost masculinity through violent ways. The film’s anti-consumerism critique is evident as Tyler points out the pathetic consumer lifestyles that make people slaves to things they own and the desire for more things; hence, the movie offer men an alternative that is more real instead of owning more stuff. The movie makes a powerful argument regarding the complicity of the consumer culture by standing somewhere beyond the capitalist system. Moreover, the movie shows men engaging themselves in the struggle of finding themselves and one another through the ability to inflict and receive pain since the movie points out men are supposed to be hunters instead of functioning as shoppers; hence, the need to strive and reclaim their identities of masculinity. The violence in the movie received a lot of attention and joined other movies that de-sensitized people to violence; however, this blind categorization misses the movie’s searching points. The movie confronts the society with violence by suggesting that hitting someone feels good and that pain and violence offers release and that violence is a suppressed urge. Moreover, the movie shows that violence does not always work for the aggressor because when Tyler is beaten by his opponent, Tyler does not triumph because of his ability to inflict pain but rather because the opponent could not cope with the consequences of his violence. In the movie, Mafiaso was able to cope nicely by beating Tyler; however, the movement’s readiness to draw out abnormal blood levels from its victim and Tyler’s strange gratification of the thrashing that defeats Mafiaso. Even though Fight Club does not offer a strategy for fighting emasculation, it offers powerful comments on the banality of masculine fantasies. The movie provides a unique perception to the prevailing debate regarding the crisis of masculinity since it never condones simple critique of hegemonic manliness. The movie portrays the attempt to resuscitate the lost masculinity in a ridiculous way since it attacks both the movie attacks both hegemonic muscle-pumping masculinity and complacency feminist-friendly manhood. The movie is distinguished by its many targets that include soul-deadening consequences of too much materialism, repressed male rage and critique of individuals attracted to political cults. Within the movie, socio-structural and class-based sources of feminization men is plain throughout the movies since the movie depicts men feminization to have began in their daily existence as laborers in community even before they became consumers. The huge gender irony in the movie is precisely service class within the contemporary society, which shows that it is dominated by women instead of men; although the movie indicates most members in these service positions are men. The movie tends to express a return of the 19th century American manhood that relied on misreading historical codes where men are properly homo-socialized and women’s lust for sex and power severely checked. The movie is not about fighting, but rather it is a manifestation of the desire to get rid of everything and rediscovering an individual’s self. Moreover, even though the movie offers gruesome spectacle of brutality, violence is more than a mere ritual because it offers the audience an ideological context of legitimizing understanding of certain aspects of masculinity and their relation significant issues concerning moral, gender, civic agency and politics. In the movie, violence is considered to be a sport and an essential component that enables men to connect with one another by overcoming fear and pain while reveling in illusions of the culture associated with paramilitary. For instance, in the stunning scene where Tyler initiates Jack to highly thrilling sadism, Tyler pours acidic lye on Jack’s hand and watches the skin coil and effervesces (Fincher, 1999). Therefore, violence in this scene violence signals its essential function that both affirms the natural fierceness in men and offers them concrete experience that permit them to establish relationship at a primal level. The movie by affirming stereotypical notions regarding male violence while being silent on the amount of violence that helps serve male power in lowering and abusing women, legitimizes and develops pedagogical conditions for violence to occur. The male violence in the movie appears to link directly to fostering of such ideologies that justify abuse of women by indicating masculinity exclusively to expression of violence and the definition of male identity against anything feminine. Fight Club originates in a context of men liberation movement and the liberationists take from the contemporary feminism validation of emotional release and the permission to air pain and grievances and significantly the opportunity to express rage. In the movie, Tyler is a fascist where his ideologies center on the notion that pain accompanied by violence tend to be progressive. Fascists believe in the possible benefits of war, especially for men since war has the ability to illustrate the best in people because it allows individuals to fight for a common good. By creating his army, Tyler believes that he has the ability to alter society for good and the changes would include acts of destruction and violence or real threat of violence. Tyler in Fight Club, controls his army like a dictator because in the movie he is heard shouting to them “you are not beautiful and unique snowflake”, which serves to control what the members of the club think; hence, taking away their personality (Fincher, 1999). Moreover, in the movie, Tyler forces the members of the club to wear black uniform and trim their heads for them to look the same and calls them space monkeys that ought to be willing to sacrifice themselves in order to attain the greater good. Therefore, Tyler has substantial power over his army which enables him to control the actions, thoughts and words of the members in the army. Project mayhem members in Fight Club begin to behave in a manner similar to that of indoctrinated members of a cult because they are unable to think for themselves in chanting Tyler’s name because they do not question authority (Fincher, 1999). In the movie, Tyler insists that Jack should never talk about Marla and at some point Jack pointed out that Tyler sometimes spoke for him, almost in manner that resembles an abused housewife; hence, although, Tyler seemed to be a revolutionary in politics and a liberator, he remained a controlling and domineering force in the movie. Tyler considers unnecessary possessions and media marketing to enslave individuals to their jobs and using products that never actually need. Tyler tries to persuade young men out of the need to work in boring jobs and purchasing whatever marketers told them to buy, because he wanted men to be liberated from comforts of the modern way of living. Although, Tyler seems to be a revolutionary, he has to be a dictator in order to begin a revolution where he wants everybody to liberated and all humans to be equal. The movie is critical of corporate control over men within the modern world as shown by Jack’s boredom and depression because of the monotony in his job. Jack’s boss communicates with him like a faceless robot and it appears that most of Jack’s life is controlled by his work because he travels in accordance with work and the way he is told (Fincher, 1999). Advertising is another form of control Tyler criticizes for convincing people what to purchase, wear, eat, drink and the way people should look. Fight club seems to go against these forms of control; although, in the end Jack rejects Tyler, which shows that it is more complex than just assuming that the movie is just anti-capitalist and control by corporations. In the movie, Marla seems to be liberated because she does not fear going to testicular cancer support and she manages to steal from other people without fear. Jack seems to have control over her because he manages to mess with her mind; however, she manages to continually come back to him. Toward the end of the movie, Marla gets dragged to Jack’s life, which serves to show that the movie is concerned about power as it is concerned about control and liberation of the masses. In conclusion, the portrayal of Tyler’s army in the movie leaves no doubt regarding its cult like nature and revealing the members of project mayhem as nameless willfully shows them as robots that proclaim their leader with unquestioning loyalty and their mindless shouting of his slogans. Tyler proselytize his troops through bullhorn, which is a clear indication that the members have been manipulated and dehumanized by their leader in similar manner the members are by the corporate civilization from which Tyler seeks to rescue them from. The Fight Club is mainly made up of middle class who bear the feeling that their material success has been empty or working class men who feel frustrated because of their social status. The bare-knuckle fist fights and violence evident in the movie act as trial by fire initiation of the modern man. The main aim of the fighting and patience taking of the beating within the movie is considered to be significant in defining an individual’s personality through pain. The movie considers fighting to be a way of enabling men to go beyond their innocuous existence because it reinforces social order through persistence and the capability to endure pain as a way through which an individual can save his masculinity. Reference Fincher D. (1999). Fight Club. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Fight-Club-Brad-Pitt/dp/B001H1SVO8/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1386170123&sr=1-1&keywords=Fight+Club Read More