Fight Club, Hypermasculinity and Misogyny

1038 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Toxic masculinity in fight club

You are not your bank account. You are not the clothes you wear. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your bowel cancer. You are not your Grande latte. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis--Tyler Durden, Fight Club

In 1996, Chuck Palahniuk published his first novel, Fight Club. On the surface it can is seen as a backlash to the feminization of men, and a celebration of violence for violence sake. But what is it really about? Fight Club is a protest against not the feminization of the western male, but against men themselves. (Audio track three on the special edition DVD featuring author Chuck Palahniuk and screenwriter Jim Uhls is fantastic and can help the reader understand the motivations of the characters much better if they haven't read the book.)

What is the Motivation of the Hyper-masculinity of Fight Club?

How much do you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight--Tyler Durden, Fight Club

The question posed by Tyler to the unnamed narrator, (from here on, referred to as `Jack') may seem brutish on the surface, but it is has very deep meaning. It is a battle call against suburban sensibilities. Jack is domesticated, an animal caged by an office, and he doesn't know it. He is his own keeper, shuffling from one cage to another five days week. Much like many affluent young men of my generation, to whom this work is targeted, have not led fulfilling lives. Society has not given them ample rites of passage. There is something empty. Fathers leave to start new families, advertising tells us what we should look like, how to be cool, et cetera. Tyler addresses this, calling men "slaves with white collars...working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need...we're ...

... middle of paper ...

...currently being fought by western civilization, a war with no end in sight. A reading of the novel pre-September 11th, and a reading post-September 11th are two separate things. Before the tragic events, it was an indictment against the nurturing of man and long held ideas of manliness. Post event, it's a view back of how things were and possibly could have been for the modern urban male. As it stands, many of those men who were in dead end jobs or are still in those jobs during the time of the books events have shifted their concerns to something less insular. How long that attitude will last remains to be seen.

Sources used:

Palanhuik, Chuck. Fight Club. New York City: W.W. Norton & Company,

1996.

Uhls, Jim, et al. Fight Club. Hollywood, California: Twentieth Century Fox, 1999.

Tzu, Sun, et al. The Art of War. New York City: Delacorte Press, 1983.

Show More
Related

  • Doubles in Fight Club and Cofer's The Other

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jack is "a twentysomething wage slave" of the late 20th century who bases his identity in his material possessions (Smith 58).  The scene in his apartment where he discusses the type of things that he owns illustrates this point, and shows that he thinks he can find happiness and identity in these items.  As he walks through the apartment it is portrayed as an Ikea catalog with his possessions having product descriptions and prices underneath them.  This illustrates the fact that Jack is trying to find happiness through materialism, which proves to be a very hollow lifestyle to partake in and serves as the main catalyst for the creation of Tyler.

    Read More

  • Tyler Durden Fight Club Essay

    1599 Words  | 4 Pages

    Over time, the United States has experienced dramatic social and cultural changes. As the culture of the United States has transformed, so have the members of the American society. Film, as with all other forms of cultural expression, oftentimes reflects and provides commentary on the society in which it is produced. David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club examines the effects of postmodernity on masculinity. To examine and explicate these effects, the film presents an unnamed narrator, an everyman, whose alter-ego—in the dissociative sense—is Tyler Durden.

    Read More

  • Criticisms of Consumerism and Materialism in Fight Club (1999)

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” This is the underlying message in Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), which satirically analyzes and critiques consumerism. The films characters vividly depict society’s immersion in materialism and presents viewers with the harsh reality regarding the irrelevance of material possessions.

    Read More

  • An Exploration of the Dynamics of Ghetto Masculinity and the Upholding of Negative Representations in Training Day

    1462 Words  | 3 Pages

    An Exploration of the Dynamics of Ghetto Masculinity and the Upholding of Negative Representations in Training Day

    Read More

  • Brokeback Mountain Masculinity Analysis

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    For centuries, the ideal masculinity has been seen as the provider, the macho man, the cowboy and the emotional rock, but new representations of manliness in the media have been challenging this idea (Watson 2015, p. 270). Within these new depictions, there lies a hierarchy where one form of masculinity is more accepted than the rest (Kluch 2015). Macho masculinity has been seen as being dominant in the hierarchy for generations, however, in recent years, there have been an influx of new representations of masculinity that disrupt traditional hierarchal ideas. The masculinity of the twenty first century includes emotions, sensitivity, discipline, and intelligence. These new aspects of the hierarchy have been introduced by movies such as Brokeback Mountain, 22 Jump Street, The

    Read More

  • Hegemonic Masculinity in American Society

    1499 Words  | 3 Pages

    Masculinity is described as possession of attributes considered typical of a man. Hegemonic masculinity is a form of masculine character with cultural idealism and emphasis that connects masculinity to competitiveness, toughness, and women subordination. Masculinity hegemonic is the enforcement of male dominion over a society. Masculine ideology dates back to the time of agrarian and the industrial revolution in Europe when survival compelled men to leave their homesteads to work in industries to earn a living for their families while women remained at home to take care of family affairs (Good and Sherrod 210). Women did not work in industries then because industrial labor was considered too physical beyond their capacity. This led to definition of roles which placated the position of men in a society while condemning women as mere subordinates who cannot do without men. The critics of gender stereotypes in America describe the following five hegemonic features of masculinity: frontiersman ship, heterosexuality, occupational achievement, familial patriarchy, and physical force and control (Trujillo 4). The advent of the 20th century led to sweeping changes in American masculinity.

    Read More

  • Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    “I had to know what Tyler was doing while I was asleep. If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?” (Palahniuk 32). When Tyler is in action, narrator is not contemporaneous in a sense that he is Tyler now. Tyler is someone who doesn’t give any importance to money-oriented world but he indeed believes in the willpower of constructing a classless society. The narrator is insomniac, depressed, and stuck with unexciting job. Chuck’s prominent, pessimistic, radical work, Fight Club, investigates inner self deeper and deeper into personality, identity, and temperament as a chapter goes by. Through his writing, Chuck Palahniuk comments on the inner conflicts, the psychoanalysis of narrator and Tyler Durden, and the Marxist impression of classicism. By not giving any name to a narrator, author wants readers to engage in the novel and associate oneself with the storyline of narrator. The primary subject and focus of the novel, Fight Club, is to comment socially on the seizing of manhood in the simultaneous world. This novel is, collectively, a male representation where only a single woman, Marla Singer, is exemplified. “Tyler said, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can” (46). This phrase is a mere representation of how to start a manly fight club. However, in the novel this scene is written as if two people are physically fighting and splashing blood all over the parking lot, in reality it’s just an initiation of fight club which resides in narrator’s inner self. The concept of this club is that the more one fights, the more one gets sturdier and tougher. It is also a place where one gets to confront his weaknesses and inner deterioration.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of Fight Club

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fight Club is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. This is a story about a protagonist who struggles with insomnia. An anonymous character suffering from recurring insomnia due to the stress brought about by his job is introduced to the reader. He visits a doctor who later sends him to visit a support group for testicular cancer victims, and this helps him in alleviating his insomnia. However, his insomnia returns after he meets Marla Singer. Later on, the narrator meets Tyler Durden, and they together establish a fight club. They continue fighting until they attract crowds of people interested in the fight club. Fight club is a story that shows the struggles between the upper class and lower class people. The upper class people here undermine the working class people by considering them as cockroaches. In addition, Palahniuk explores the theme of destruction throughout the book whereby the characters destroy their lives, body, building and the history of their town.

    Read More

  • Collective Deterciousness In Emile Durkheim's Fight Club

    1024 Words  | 3 Pages

    The main theme that is demonstrated in Fight Club is collective consciousness. Collective consciousness is a term coined by Emile Durkheim and it refers to a set of shared attitudes and beliefs that operate within a society as a unified force. They are a way of understanding and acting in the world in a specific way among society members. It was concluded by Durkheim that earlier societies were banded primarily by nonmaterial social facts or a strongly held morality that was common among members of the society. According to Durkheim, social interactions among members of a society lead to the development of a collective consciousness, particularly interactions between families and small communities, among people who have common interests, spend their recreational time together, or who share a common religion. All of these are present in the movie Fight club. The movie begins with a small group of people who are joined together in the act of fighting recreationally. At the beginning, only a small number of people take part in the fighting. Over time, however, more and more people gain an interest in it and eventually the group grows larger, while the members come to know one another within their group. The group is eventually “officially” organized as “fight club”, and with it, certain rules are established that are to be followed by its members. This sets up some of the values and norms that the members of the group follow. These rules become their shared way of understanding and acting in a specific way within the group. Collective consciousness is formed in the group when the individuals in Fight Club act and think in similar ways. More Fight Clubs are developed across the nation, and eventually the main character organizes the...

    Read More

  • Masculinity in "Fight Club"

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    Others often use masculinity, most often associated with strength, confidence and self-sufficiency to define a man’s identity. The narrator perceives Tyler Durden as a fearless young man who is independent and living life by his own rules. So is Tyler Durden masculine because of his no nonsense attitude or are his law breaking antics and unusual lifestyle seen as a failure because he is a man with neither family, money nor a well respected job? These typical aspirations are commonly defined as the male American dream, but does following life by the rulebook placed on males by society really make a male masculine? Fight Club specifically debunks the male American dream. It challenges’ the idea that the masculine identity is defined by material items and instead embraces the idea that masculine identity can be found in liberation from conformity and the ability to endure pain.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Masculinity In Fight Club

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, masculinity is a recurring theme that is present throughout the novel and is directly linked to the creation of Fight Club in the first place. After meeting Tyler Durden, the narrator’s masculinity and outlook on life starts to dramatically change. As a result of this change, the theme of masculinity becomes very disastrous throughout the novel very quickly because Palahniuk uses masculinity in order to explain the many problems the consumer driven males may struggle with. In this case, the narrator’s masculinity is constantly in question because of his struggles with insomnia, a consumer driven lifestyle, and Marla Singer. In our society today, the view of masculinity has changed a lot where it almost seems that femininity plays a big role in masculinity.

    Read More

  • One’s True Identity in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ruddell, Caroline. "Virility and vulnerability, splitting and masculinity in Fight Club: a tale of contemporary male identity issues." Extrapolation 48.3 (2007): 493+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.

    Read More

  • The Perpetuation and Preservation of Male Supremacy in Mainstream Media

    865 Words  | 2 Pages

    A number of popular television shows and films filling mainstream media today have taken a spin to promote women to main character roles of power and command. The traits of these female characters, however, become illusionary as plots thicken to reveal their status to be subordinate to leading male character roles; of which are typically controlling or manipulative over gender stereotypic female traits within the script. While media is being blindly applauded for their newfound glorification of women in power, there remains an underlying message of male supremacy in more than many broadcasted portrayals. Today’s mainstream television media delivers a notion that only a man can pave way for the merit of a woman.

    Read More

  • Marxism In Fight Club

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fight Club “Its only after we’ve lost everything are we free to do anything”, Tyler Durden as (Brad Pitt) states, among many other lines of contemplation. In Fight Club, a nameless narrator, a typical “everyman,” played as (Edward Norton) is trapped in the world of large corporations, condominium living, and all the money he needs to spend on all the useless stuff he doesn’t need. As Tyler Durden says “The things you own end up owning you.” Fight Club is an edgy film that takes on such topics as consumerism, the feminization of society, manipulation, cultism, Marxist ideology, social norms, dominant culture, and the psychiatric approach of the human id, ego, and super ego. “It is a film that surrealistically describes the status of the American

    Read More

  • Setting Analysis – “Fight Club”

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    “My boss doesn’t know the material, but he won’t let me run the demo with a black eye and half my face swollen from the stitches inside my cheek”(Palahniuk, par. 1). Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” deals with a man frustrated on many different levels; from his childhood to present day life. Fight Clubs' setting contributes to what makes Fight Club such a powerful story. The narrator who is never named, starts off in chapter six with what could be described as an office hell; complete with empty smiles and feeble minded speak of which color icon they will use for office reports. The beginning of chapter six reminds the reader of mindless zombie office speak and a lack of life, that is all too common in many peoples lives. The reader will most likely identify with what is written in a manner easily transferable to anyones life. I believe most people, when reading would characterize the office environment as the light side and the hours during fight club at the bottom of the bar the dark side. I would argue the complete opposite. For the narrator, all the hate, the disgust, the total contempt for humanity is created in that office environment. All the feelings of life, and meaning, and what I would characterize as happiness is all felt during the time fight club is in effect in the bottom of that bar.

    Read More

More about Fight Club, Hypermasculinity and Misogyny

Open Document