Fight Club: A generation of men raised by women
Fight Club may seem an odd choice: it’s got one female character, and it’s all about a man’s search for identity in the form of manhood in a world of men. But one line of dialog says it all:
A generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is the answer we really need.
This is the finish to a conversation about the rather underwhelming guidance the two main male characters had gotten from their fathers: go to college, get a job, “I don’t know - get married”. In other words, follow the formula.
But the point of the whole movie is that the system is breaking down. What once guaranteed a life of rewarding employment, a gold watch at retirement, and hopefully a reasonably nice family life just doesn’t cut it. Employers would rather deal with morons than pay for talent. They punish loyalty because they’re too busy looking at the steady raises and earned retirement benefits they’ll have to pay. And even if you make enough to keep a wife and kids in nice style, your family will want more. In fact, they want the same elusive thing you want: identity.
Fight Club is the story of a nameless man (nicknamed “Jack” by fans for convenience) whose system is literally breaking down. He’s got a job, he’s got a condo and the complete Ikea package to furnish it, he’s finally got his whole life together, according to the system laid out by prior generations. And yet he can’t sleep, and it’s starting to interfere with his life. When he goes to the doctor, the doctor doesn’t want to give him drugs - no, no, he recommends chewing Valerian root: a cunning woman’s cure, a witch’s cure. The doctor’s solution is a feminine one which doesn’t even begin to address Jack’s real, underlying problem: that he has a second personality which is getting well out of hand.
Misplaced feminine energy is as much a part of the problem as displaced feminine energy. And the men in Fight Club have all experienced an odd feminization process, due to a society which has tried to diminish feminine energy, only to have it bubble up and fill the vacuum, ready to explode: the equal but opposite reaction to be expected in any system of balance. Jack’s boss is heavily into the color “cornflower blue”: a soft, desaturated shade of blue (the color for infant boys), the name of which combines the ideas of “corny” and “flowery”. Jack’s own fascination with setting up house properly represents sensibilities to his surroundings that are popularly considered something only women concern themselves with. Notably, his alter ego’s first serious intrusion into his nicely mapped out little life is to blow up Jack’s condo.
And it’s Jack’s fascination with a self-help group for men who have literally lost their balls to cancer that gives Tyler (the alter ego) a starting point for creating Jack’s identity. Tyler and Jack start their own self-help group: Fight Club. Where men go to beat the living crap out of each other and find out what they’re made of. Neither had ever actually been in a fight before.
(I’d like to note here that I don’t believe in hard and fast definitions of “feminine” and “masculine” as a rule, but our society does, and it is these values that the movie is playing with to make a point.)
As the Fight Club gains members and progresses, Jack and Tyler find themselves looking at Calvin Klein ads and asking snidely, “Is that what a man looks like?” They no longer need to be told: they have become men of their own making - not of their fathers’ making, or society’s making. Fight Club answers the question “If men run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties?” It’s because those neckties running the world aren’t really men: they’re just power mongers. And there is nothing positive, impressive or masculine about someone who only feels empowered by standing on the shoulders of others.
I relate to this completely, despite the Orwellian lack of corresponding feminine terminology: being a real man means being self-reliant. Doing what you believe you should, not what you’re told. Cooperating because you see the benefit, not because you’ve been trained like a monkey. And fighting when necessary, not to prove a point.
There is no way in the English language to express these things for women. Grow up and be a woman! That’s what separates the women from the girls. She’s really got a pair on her! Girls are presented with no goals for adulthood. No matter what a great woman they become, it’s hardly worth the trouble because only the achievement of manhood is respected in our language - and therefore, in our thinking.
So I vote we steal the terminology, or at least the concepts from the men. Fight Club’s message about becoming a real adult instead of the adult you were programmed to become speaks just as well to women as to men. Fight Club portrays a society that is completely breaking down, and taking individuals of both genders with it. It’s going to take both genders to turn it around.
Tyler Durden issues a rallying battle cry to the men of Generation X, the smallest generation of the 20th century, the tiniest target audience in a society driven by demographics. But consider how much it sounds exactly like the complaints women have been making for decades:
I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential; and I see it squandered. God dammit, an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised by television to believe that we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars - but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed-off.
Our society hasn’t just broken its promises to women; it’s broken trust with all of us. And the people at the top are neither men nor women; they are genderless piles of insecurity in the form of human flesh. They are as afraid of real men as they are of real women, and tricking us into thinking we’re pitted against each other has been their greatest weapon all along. Our language doesn’t bother giving us a way to talk about the importance of growing up to become a real woman, because it’s not considered a laudable goal. It’s up to all of us - women and men - to change that. It’s in our best interests to put individualism ahead of “manhood” because “manhood” has always been defined by the folks who are in power. You think the folks in power are going to train you on becoming powerful enough to challenge them? Think again, boys.
And I’ll take one part of Tyler’s speech and raise it by a point: advertising does a lot worse than keep us chasing crap we don’t need so that we’re too busy to actually achieve anything that might overturn the powermongers at the top of the food chain. It has been pandering to the weakest instincts in young men and boys for a couple of generations now. 18-25 year old white boys don’t want to see strong women? Solution: don’t put a strong woman in your movie! For heaven’s sake, don’t show them that a woman can be strong and feminine. Or that a woman can be rather manly and still extremely sexy and attractive to manly men. Or that a woman can be a failure, and the failure have nothing to do with her gender.
No, don’t show them these things, because then they might become strong and secure. And they might in turn encourage women to be strong by not running from strong, smart or secure women in terror. And then the power mongers at the top might suddenly find themselves in their proper place on the evolutionary ladder.
Posted in *Action, *Women in Absentia 
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22 comments
[...] I wrote a while back that the film Fight Club said quite a lot about gender, despite having only one female character. Today I’m going to write about that female character: Marla Singer. [...]
Impressive. What a great synopsis and such an accurate one at that. Thank you.
I’m going to have to rewatch this movie. I saw it a long time ago, and was a little bewildered by it, to be honest.
For a young man seeking an identity that may fullfill the promise of this life, being raised by women is only slightly better than being raised by wolves.
Did you mean that to sound as insulting to women as it came out?
I’m sure we could come up with a few choice stories of how, for a girl, having some fathers are worse than having no father at all, but I’m not going to compare men generally to wild animals since that’s insulting and inflammatory.
That’s a romance trope I’d love to see Go Away: that when the woman gets pregnant, to marry the idiot who helped her get that way, is better than having no man around the house at all.
There ARE other ways for girls to get valid, helpful, warm and compassionate role models in the lives without having a father around. Here’s a great movie where that’s a major theme: Akeelah and the Bee.
I completely object to that notion; a bad man around the house is worse than no man around the house.
Aren’t movies rife with examples of father figures (who aren’t the actual father) substituting for incompetent fathers or absent fathers in movies? Not nearly as many mother substitutes…I can think of at least one off the top of my head in “Pleasantville”.
No disrespect intended, BetaC. You could substitute “young woman” and “raised by men” in the stated comment, i guess. But not being of your gender, i don’t know if that would make any sense. The statement was a little tounge in cheek and was meant to convey an absence of any role model that may present, at a critical period of development, an “explicit” or (nowadays) “subtle” right of passage that functions to provide direction and a sense of purpose to the budding young male mind.
Returning to my comment and now that you force me to think a little deeper, I would imagine that males raised by (healthy) females may be better off than the obverse, since the female is hardwired for nurturing (excuse the generalization).
I don’t believe females are hardwired for nurturing. I know I’m not, and neither are a lot of women I know. My grandfather certainly was, though.
We’re trained by the media, TV, folk tales and tradition to gloss over indications that some women are not nurturers and some men very much are.
I do agree that everyone benefits from positive role models of BOTH genders, since they need to have some standards both for who they want to be and who they want to associate with.
So then, you think that what you “believe” in this immediate generation somehow defeats millions of years of evolutionary biology? I had hoped to avoid that branch of reasoning with the caveat “excuse the generalization”. Of course, there are nurturing men. I like to think that i am one. I also realize that i am the exception rather than the rule. And there are times when nurturing isn’t effective and i must be firm as my familial role dictates. My home-schooled child may say “i don’t want to do my homework”. His mother responds “if you want, you don’t have to do it now, but it has to be done because this is the path of education that we have chosen for you”. This nine year old is not quite capable of choosing his own curricula or if he could he would choose a multitude of inappropriate activities that would do little to insure his survival in this world. Let us say that this time the homework doesn’t get done. The mother says, “you know if you don’t do it there will be consequences!” There may be a timeout, which has worked in the past but no longer works because sitting alone in his room is now preferred to doing the work. Well, how about positive reinforcement. Do your homework and you can go swimming with your friends. To which the retort is “i don’t want to go swimming anyway!” You get the idea. Two days and the homework is not done. At this point, i get serious, and say…”unless you can give me a reason why you shouldn’t do it, get in your room right now and finish your homework!” He thinks and thinks, sometimes coming up with various rationales. If none of those are satisfactory, he reluctantly goes to his room and in twenty minutes has completed his work. I guess my point is that there is something in my demeanor (i am not a violent or even angry person) that motivates him to respect my wishes and the homework gets done.
Bottom line the (generic) mother says, “no matter what you have done, or not done in this case, i still love you.” I say “get in there and do it or i’ll kick your butt (implied, of course). I love my children and would never and have never resorted to any physical discipline.
Now Beta, you seem like an intelligent person and i know you’ll respond to this honestly. Did you write your own curricula, or did you have loving parents and grandparents that traditionally guided your development? If the former, please enlighten me on how this was accomplished. If the latter, then you were brought to this point by traditional methods. If you were raised by TV and disinterested parent(s) then maybe i should renew my cable subscription.
The reason I deleted this comment when you made it before is that you’re in violation of commenting guidelines. Please take a hint. All future comments from you will be deleted, and here are some clues.
Are you blissfully unaware of the many scientific theories which do not support your interpretation?
This is a bullying tactic. It attempts to extort an answer from the person by implying that if she chooses not to share her personal history with you, a random stranger, she is not being honest and has something to hide. Classy.
This is another bullying tactic - the attempt to trap me into a reply which, either way, will support your interpretation. If I say I got guidance, you will say that supports you. If I say I did not and came to my thinking on my own, you will start down the path that assumes I’m only a wacky feminist because I didn’t get love as a child. And if I say that my parents were hippies or something not “traditional” to use your word, that will also be used by you to prove what’s “wrong” with me that I don’t recognize the status quo for the beautiful thing that it is.
It’s not like I haven’t seen this routine a thousand times before. Do you guys have a manual or something?
Your comments are also completely off-topic at this point.
Aw, I never got a manual. Maybe that’s why I had to learn to think for myself.
Excellent review and reflective insight on the story. It is a story and it may have some validity as a parable but as the writer once commented when everyone started rallying around it, “It is a piece of fiction. It is not meant to be a self help book”. I wonder if you have read Robert Bly’s “Iron John” and what you took away from that in its more forward approach to the male and female relationship? There is a point in educating one’s self in all things that you take what you want and leave the rest behind.
[...] here’s the thread that caused me to make that rule. In fact, there was so much wrong with the approach used by “no-thing-there” that I also wrote this [...]
This womans interpretation of fight club slowly takes my mind from “powermongers” to how women do not get the social equality rights they were promised by a society that’s just not cutting it. And giving credit where credit is due, she did address many of the ovious intentions of perception of Chuck Palahnuik in her review.
A community of men living like slaves in a “free” country. All dies some time or another, what does it matter when? Does anyone else ever get the feeling like they would be better off in the times of the first human existince? Hunting and gathering, what we were made to do.
To Jennifer Kesler.. great analysis of his argumentation and tactics. I haven’t been pleased about reading a retort like that in some time. Usually it’s just the neanderthal-esque “YOU’RE stupid” response. Anyhow.. getting back to the thread. Great ideas on a great movie. Simple question though.. even prior to reading this e-article do I get non-sexist credit for liking Fight Club?
AJ, LOL, I have come across guys online who liked Fight Club for what struck me as very sexist reasons. It’s not so much what a person likes as what they like about it.
I’ve been thinking about FC again lately - I will be writing a new article on it sometime in the near future.
This is quality stuff, seriously
The same questions been playing on my mind a lot recently,
the powers changing though, men are becoming men, Only a few now granted, but it will spiral
really liked this thanks a lot
-Harry
I watched Fight Club for the third time last night after a 3 year hiatus. In the time since my last viewing of FC i have studied Philosophy and Martial Arts so i was able to gain a clearer insight into the matter at hand.
From my perspective it seems that FC is a comment on how Materialism is damaging to our Spiritual well being. In the first section of the movie we see how Society trys to bandage over its problems through the avoidance of pain. The “false gods” of IKEA and Starbucks attempt to subvert the individual by offering a lifestyle, which if one invests in is detrimental to true inner happiness.
Inner happiness can only be found within ourselves (no…i’m not a Buddhist) through confronting the problems we face as opposed to avoiding them through Group Therapy and excessive, unnecessary retail purchases. Tyler Durden’s purpose is to force Jack to learn to deal with the pain and pressures of modern day society (Middle History / Generation X) by looking inside himself. In my opinion the actual fights which take place are a metaphor to help us understand the conflict in our own souls: that is what we need and what we “think” we need.
Obviously advertising has played a part in hypnotising society into feeling that their lives are incomplete without the inclusion of material goods. This point is made apparent throughout FC and the lack of Spirituality in today’s society is reflected in the mis en scene and bleak lighting which the Director has employed.
Fight Club utterly condemns Materialism and it is rare for this to opinion to be portrayed in American Cinema succesfully (American Beauty), a genre of Cinema which is typically used to glorify the ideals and values of the American Dream.
Tx
Phantasy
I want my Golden Ball back and I sure won’t get the key by sucking on mommies tits. The modern “man” lacks the rites of passage that has been previously practiced for thousands of years. Due to the lacking of father figures, and the awakening of the feminist movement in recent eras, men began drawing strength from the strong women around them. Never to have separated the maternal bond that was so tightly enforced as when they were boys. Hence the “…generation of men raised by women…” As a result, we’ve became half grown “boys” who ultimately had never stepped into the realms of manhood. Our society praise the “receptive man” who in contrast lacks any sort of vitality what so ever. The receptive man who has no intentions of war or violence, the receptive man who advocates the harmony of the universe, yet the receptive man who is just as miserable and lifeless as any 35 year old boy who’s got bills to pay and mouths to feed. I see it as the receptive man who never got a pair. “I’m wondering if another woman is the answer we really need”
Iron Hans, I actually think it’s something else, and have been contemplating writing a new article because I’m not sure I was clear the first time around. I believe the point of Fight Club is that men have been fed an image of manhood by their fathers THAT DOES NOT WORK. Period. That’s why it’s broken down - not feminism, not changes in culture. The old model of manhood is simply wrong.
Jack is trying new models throughout the movie. Touchy-feely stuff, violence, harming himself to scare the boss into more than submission, etc. It’s that last one that comes closest to bringing him any sort of fulfillment, and that’s only because he’s suicidal!
The movie doesn’t tell us what the new model of manhood is going to be, but there are hints. Tyler says after the system is destroyed, we’ll go back to hunting and gathering, but Tyler’s wrong about many things. And throughout, it’s Marla who knows who she is and isn’t looking for answers. She gets that there is no answer.
Ah, now we’re down to it.
The old model of manhood was all about one thing, one desperate need: to feel useful. Some men thousands of years ago looked around themselves and thought, “Well, women have a purpose - babies! I’m sure they’re perfectly content, but what about poor me? What’s my purpose?” And then they invented one. But nothing ever changed the fact that we are worm food. Born to die. Doesn’t really matter who gets born and who doesn’t, nor who dies young. Not in the grand scheme of things. We are not unique snowflakes. We don’t matter.
That’s the essential truth human beings need to grasp. That’s the “rock bottom” Tyler wants Jack to hit, and he never gets there until the end of the movie.
The old model of manhood keeps feeding men the lie that they matter, that there’s something they can do that will make them immortal, that there’s some enduring god/culture/whatever that cares. That if Shakespeare hadn’t been born, we wouldn’t have just found some other playwright to celebrate in his place - no, no, history would be damaged.
The new model of manhood has to be a model of humanhood - both men and women need to realize we are not unique snowflakes and we don’t matter. And yet, here we are, so we might as well do something with our time. Find a passion and go with it - but don’t think your culture has some answer that’s going to make you Someone Special. There is no such thing.
That does take a lot of the pressure off of individuals, doesn’t it? And as a paradox, manages to *allow* individuals individuality within that humanistic framework. Without the pressure of having to be special, you have more *room* to be special, as long as your culture gives you room to be and makes space for thinking and improvements.
(and if I’m not making too much sense, I’m thinking what you wrote through in my own mind)
Isn’t that what feminism (perhaps should be renamed “humanism”? but that’s already taken) is all about, eh?
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. When you realize it really doesn’t matter what you do, that can be depressing at first. But if you continue it and realize this means you’re free to do anything, that’s when life gets interesting without the pressure of imagining you have specialness to achieve or live up to.
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