Quote:
Originally Posted by Caged Great
Fight club had a twist in that Edward Norton's character was actually Brad Pitt that had not been done before that if I recall correctly. Otherwise it wasn't really noteworthy in my mind. There was no moral musing to dwell over and you were not left with anything to consider. Just this guy who fights with other people in an underground boxing club.
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To me there are rather clearly two main topics in Fight Club that everything else revolves around, and both of them are very interesting and give much food for thought.
1)
How and why people form cults and how are cult leaders born.
This is not the main topic really, but since it's such an important part of the backstory, it comes first.
The Fight Clubs story starts by depicting the life of the cult leader before anyone could imagine that he would become one, and ends with what is typically the end of such a cult, their act of terrorism (So it's not really subtle.) It's really well done and puts together many well-known elements of cults, while adding some interesting views on the dynamics of a cult and it's leader, as depicted in the split personality of the Narrator/Tyler Durden.
Calling the split personality thing a plot twist is really selling the idea short, it's much more than that. Many of the films comments about masculinity and/or the Narrator are made through this unusual dynamic. (As an obvious example; to get laid the Narrator needs to become Tyler Durden, who then literally needs to shut the door on his old self to get on with the sex. I'm not saying that it's a great message, but there is still clearly a point to it all.)
The whole group therapy thing is also pretty interesting as a whole. The way Marla and the Narrator "abuse" group therapy could have easily offered enough material for one pretty interesting movie, but it also serves to juxtapose a "feminine" way of dealing with your emotions with the Narrators future "masculine" solution of creating the Fight Club. (The "feminity" of group therapy is pretty blatantly underlined by giving Bob breasts. He has "literally" turned into a woman.)
In his "fight" outside the bar, the Narrator somewhat accidentally touches a upon something that resonates with not just himself, but other men like him. It's almost like a fuse is lit. Suddenly there's vibrance and life, an emotional outlet for their frustration, a powerful group identity, an explanation to everything that they feel confused about. Suddenly, he is also the center of attention.
The movie makes a very strong and interesting statement that a doomsday cult leader is not necessarily a crazy person in the evil sense. Crazy yes, but mostly in a way where he has largely lost sight of reality and where it's all going. By making Tyler Durden literally another personality of the Narrator, it also kind of states that a cult leader is really sort of born out of the circumstances, maybe even more than his personal background. So for example, trying to understand a cult leader by understanding his previous life (which is what the media for example generally does) could to some extent be a fools errand. It's an interesting point, and you could twist it in many ways.
I'll get to the main topic now.
2)
Modern masculinity (and violence)
This topic is a little dated, since most of the current Mens Rights movement was basicly born after this movie. (The ######bag part of it I would imagine largely by people who went "F*** YEAH! THAT'S HOW I FEEL!" when seeing the movie, completely missing out on the fact the men in the Fight Club are either sad, insane or both, and that it all ends badly.)
The most important topic is the question, "is violence an essential part of masculinity", which is a good question, and quite relevant in an age where we our relationship with violence and male aggressiveness has become very, very complicated.
What's cool is that the movie does not give easy answers on these topics.
On one hand the men in the movie clearly get a lot out of the Fight Club. This is not just told, but also the movie makes a point in trying to get you into the whole thing, feeling how cool the aggression is, trying to make you really feel the atmosphere of the club.
On the other hand, the club/cult starts to feed the destructive tendencies of it's members outside of the club. They become more aggressive, and start to turn towards pretty much anyone that pisses them off. It starts with simple pranks, and ends in blowing up skyscrapers. The end is a bit of a hyperbole, but it's movie, not a documentary or an academic thesis, or a book (which has a different ending).
As to the character of Marla and the "lack of women":
Since the movie is mainly about men trying do deal with masculinity, there really isn't much room for females in the story.
Also; all the men in the movie are either crazy (the Narrator), kind of pathetic (Bob, most of the men in the club) or imaginary (Tyler). Actually, they're pretty much two out of three.
So while, Marla is sad and a badly broken person, in comparison to most of the characters she could even be called levelheaded. In any case, she's the harmless kind of crazy. Which I think is not an accident. The group therapy / feminity thing isn't necessarily helping that much, but at least Marla isn't out there blowing stuff up.
Also; If Marla was depicted as a more wholesome / healthy person, she would most almost certainly ended up as one of the infamous "tropes against women".
Of course it's a valid point that Marla "falls for the bad boy" in a way that's more than a little misogynistic, and I'm not really defending that. I'm just saying that I don't think there was no room for a healthy person in this movie, and really the way she represents women in this movie isn't terrible, in comparison to everythign else that's going on.
So there's a short version of what the movie made me think about. YMMV, obviously
It's also quite entertaining, Norton and Pitt are excellent and even the soundtrack is pretty good. (Especially the way they use
Goin' Out West by Tom Waits.)
(Btw, the stuff about consumerism, while not irrelevant, is IMO more of a lead up to the actual topic than a topic in itself. Basicly the lead up as I see it goes something like this: consumerism tries to offer you things to fill your emotional holes. It's really just unhealthy. Now here's a particular emotional hole we want to dig into: lack of masculinity.)
