Fight Club may seem an odd choice to review on a site about gender: 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 supposedly 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 cheap hires who don’t know what they’re doing 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 a man makes enough to keep a wife and kids in nice style, his family will want more. In fact, they want the same elusive thing he wants: 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.
(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.)
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 traditionally 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 – a hugely “masculine” gesture.
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.
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 balls! 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 traditionally “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.
Our countries and lives are run by power mongering little men in suits and ties, who think they are men but they are not, true leaders would fearless lead their men into battle at the head of the army.
A true man stands up for his rights and the rights of those around him.
A true man without protect what he loves, be it country or woman, without fear in his heart.
All i see now days is timid men, who shy away from confrontation and work shitty jobs with no goals in life, or couch potatoes who are so filled with apathy they have no purpose in life.
Modern society has really screwed men up.
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I think what Jago meant was that the “true” masculine ideals like honor, courage in the face of danger and peril, determination, and not being afraid to personally suffer for something you believe in, are what’s being taken from the modern man. You could conceivably say that men were less evolved during the times when these “knightly” virtues were more commonplace, but I would have to say that it was society that was less evolved. It is a sad fact, even to this day, that individuals will generally emmulate the common beliefs and practices of their society as a whole. Sadly, sadly this is how things like witch hunts, holocausts, and genocides happen.
Power is only granted from those who already have it.
“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.”
There is no power to take for ourselves. I’m only given power if someone else decides that I should get it.
What i want to know is, how do we take our own power? Obviously, begging for it like we have been hasn’t worked so well for us. We do the formula, because that’s what we’re told will grant us power. But it doesn’t. We’re still slaves asking the master when we get to have a whip too.
Force is the only logical solution. You can’t ask the master to hand you the whip. You can’t negotiate with the master to hand you the whip. You must overtake the master by force and pry it from his hands.
Absolutely fantastic article. I’m glad I stumbled upon it. Thank you!
While your words sound inspiring, I am still left wondering exactly what you are trying to say. you seem to laud over the point that fight club, through courage and machismo, reinvents the role of the average cog in society’s great machine. This I understand, but then what about feminism? your evidence is based on Freudian psychoanalysis and therefore weak (the regular occurrence of phallic imagery is deemed significant, as is the lack of such imagery), evident in your “cornflower blue” segment (a color chosen at random to represent the maddening minutiae of consumer society). This is echoed in his apartment scene, relentlessly listing the names and details of his ikea furniture. Furthermore, you contradict yourself blatantly in the 7th paragraph, where you deny standard gender roles, then use them in your argument.
Certainly a very stirring “speech”, but not very coherent.
Spencer J, you misread. I was analyzing the possible symbology of the movie – just because Freud has been discredited doesn’t mean the symbology is not Freudian. And I certainly did not contradict myself – I explained that while *I* don’t believe in the “masculine/feminine” dichotomy, the movie is clearly using those traditional delineations to make points about the breakdown of society and the individual.
I read it perfectly. You just contradicted yourself, twice. If you don’t believe in a dichotomy, you cannot argue that someone is using it, because, according to you, it doesn’t exist. Your position, I think, is that you do believe in traditional gender roles, as per the basis of your argument, but it seems more trendy and progressive to deny them.
And you misunderstood my point about Freud, that he was discredited is not the issue; the problem with using psychoanalysis on a film (or any artifact, for that matter), is that, akin to the observer effect, it tends to reveal more about the reviewer than about the text itself. While there might be some merit to your conclusions(though this is debatable), it is more likely that you found them because you were looking for them.
If you don’t believe in a dichotomy, you cannot argue that someone is using it, because, according to you, it doesn’t exist.
That’s ridiculous. It’s that I don’t believe it’s valid, not that I don’t believe it exists. By your logic, an atheist could not argue that the Bible is about God.
Quit yer trolling and move along.
Pretty damn good article, got me thinking a fair bit which is a feat in itself 😛
What amused me is that I learned more about people’s enlightened/naive views and personal visions of society and gender roles from the comments.
(and spencer j needs to go and get blown, nitpicking that much is a sure sign his life hasn’t turned out the way he wanted)
Let me see if I understand Spencer J correctly: not believing in something also requires refusing to accept that others believe it?
Huh.
Damn, this thread and the comments are brilliant. I practically teared up at one post. Maybe I’m overreacting ridiculously but I can’t help it, it’s so bloody refreshing. So many pieces click into place with that analysis, even the song lyrics, it makes total sense. Now I have to go watch that movie again (saw it years ago, I wasn’t sure what to make of it then).
It’s interesting how this movie polarizes its audience to sexist/feminist(I reckon this term needs to be changed…again) interpretations according to the very state (of following your social programming) it addresses.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the film before, as I’ve read a short story ages ago I believe was a take on feminism written by Chuck Palahniuk that I found pretty unrealistic and insulting, in which a “women’s group” abuse a new member of their group who is of questionable gender and accused of trolling their group. They were a pretty crude parody, exactly what a lot of men, including my own father, thinks feminists are – exclusionists guilty of exactly what they’re opposing…though knowing how observant the author is, I do have doubts he’d have written that story just to criticize feminists…
Sorry, was going off topic. But this really made my day.
Nice, that was great, I loved Fight Club and I like what you got to said. I got to say I am in Forestry and we have logger sports team and a woman with a crosscut saw is a thing of beauty.
Good lord, I want to scrub my brain of that.
Scarlett, what do you want to scrub your brain of? I think I missed something.
Sorry, the link from the comment that was just above my comment. Guess it got deleted but the gist of it was men and women are both miserable and it’s all feminisms fault.
Oh, yeah – I always check trackback links to see if they’re linking to Men’s Rights Activist propaganda. That one felt like it, so I deleted it.
“I read it perfectly. You just contradicted yourself, twice. If you don’t believe in a dichotomy, you cannot argue that someone is using it, because, according to you, it doesn’t exist.”
Simply because someone does not believe that an idea is true does not mean that person cannot understand what the idea is. The same person while not believing something is true can very well believe that someone else believes it is true and comment upon that belief. It’s called abstract thinking.
There are plenty of people in this world who do not understand the concept of thinking in systems and terms which do not exist. These people are called “morons”.
Welcome to that prestigious club.
Also:
Symbology????? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Symbology is a word.
However, “moron” is ableist terminology we do not allow on this blog (I approved your comment even so, because many people are unaware of the problematic nature of the word.)
I have often wondered – is “asshole” an ableist term?
😉
interesting article. I found Fight Club somewhat inexplicable, but have since read enough intriguing analyses of it to feel I ought to watch it again.
I think there’s a typo where you’ve used ‘”feminine” energy’ twice instead of ‘”masculine” energy’.
No, it’s as I meant it. Not sure what the hell I was trying to say now, five years later, but I remember having that thought.
Sorry, it’s been one of those weeks. 🙂
Good article, like the way you talked about the people at the top being genderless piles, keeping men and women fighting and divided ust like political parties keeping us apart as humans!
Hmmm … the most important thing that you’d want to avoid here is name calling. Kinda detracts from the analysis, doesn’t it?
To that effect let me quote Jiddu Krishnamurthy : “Labels seem to give satisfaction. We accept the category to which we are supposed to belong as a satisfying explanation of life. We are worshippers of words and labels; we never seem to go beyond the symbol, to comprehend the worth of the symbol. By calling ourselves this or that, we ensure ourselves against further disturbance, and settle back. One of the curses of ideologies and organized beliefs is the comfort, the deadly gratification they offer.”
So, stripping stuff like “Masculine” and “Feminist” out of the whole discussion ought to let us get to the clear picture of what the real point is.
@Mod: What do ya think?
I think you’re yet another privileged brat who feels entitled to mansplain to the womenz how we should be looking at the world. The fact that you resubmitted your irrelevant drivel comment after seeing the message that it was awaiting moderation further supports the probability that you think everyone has nothing better to do than revolve their lives and work around you.
“To be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society is no measure of health.”
He said that too. Feminism seeks to eradicate kyriarchy, which includes patriarchy.
After a years of pondering I’ve come to the conclusion that FC is a feminist film mostly by complete accident. Feminism being in the eye of the beholder so to speak. The type of fan who started a real fight club
certainly didn’t get it. The screenplay by Jim Uhls is a miracle and incredibly well crafted, epsecially compared to the wreck of the book.
Chuck is certainly a misogynist. When I say I admire FC I always qualify by adding “for the exact opposite reasons most people love it.” HBC added much to the skeleton of that written role and never got the credit she deserved. Fincher’s finest work is behind him if the last few movies including the again needlessly misogynist The Social Network are predictors.
Wait, you mean Chuck Pala-duck-whatever, the guy who wrote the book?
Wow I’d never really thought of fight club in terms of masculinism and feminism before but now that you point it out it’s really clear! Jack has been emasculated by conforming to society so he’s reacting in the most “manly” way possible-beating the rap out of people in the basement.
Really interesting read. Glad I StumbledUpon you.
Excellent read to Stumble onto. Thank you very much.
If you haven’t read it already, I think you would find Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver interesting.
Regards,
V.
thank you for the article. I’m writing an essay and using a close reading of the Ikea scene to support my argument. I just don’t know what that argument could be yet, though. Anyway, thanks, this helps me generate ideas.