An Analysis Of David Fincher's Fight Club

Cinema and entertainment have been connected from the very beginning of cinematic experiments. However, that was never the only purpose for film makers to produce a film. In this essay, I want to discuss the question, if the act of taking movies seriously takes away cinema´s talent to present an escape from one´s everyday live or if, on the contrary, it can heighten its entertaining value for the viewer by providing food for thought.

First of all, I think it is important to differentiate between movies that are mainly produced for the purpose of entertainment, for example animated comedy films like DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar (2005), and movies that are made for more than “just” entertainment. And among these movies one must distinguish

The film tells the story of a nameless narrator, who works as a recall coordinator for the auto industry. He leads a consumer-oriented life and suffers from sleeplessness. In his free time, the protagonist attends self-help groups for people with incurable diseases or other serious problems, although he is physically healthy, and becomes addicted to it. In on of these groups, he meets a woman called Marla who is a simulator as well, but he rejects her. The narrator then meets Tyler Durden, a hypermasculine, very charismatic soap maker, and after becoming something like friends, they establish the so called “Fight Club“, where men can meet to fight against each other. Tyler and Marla start a sexual relationship, but Tyler inculates the narrator with not telling her about him. Under Tyler´s direction, more fight clubs are grounded throughout the whole country and out of them he eventually forms an organization called “Project Mayhem”, which he uses to perform attacks on public policy. After things get out of control, the narrator finally discovers that he himself and Tyler are the same person, meaning that he suffers from a multiple personality disorder, and that Tyler acted whenever the narrator thought he was sleeping. In the end, he manages to kill Tyler by shooting himself in his cheek. However, the narrator

Henry A. Giroux states in his article “Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight Club, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence” that the film glorifies violence and depicts women in a misogynistic way. Lynn M. Ta takes up the counterside in her article “Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism”. She argues that the exaggerated critique on consumerism, the associated emasculation of men and the stereotypical depiction of gender notions highlight contemporary society´s issues and thereby provide a platform for discussing them. This not only heightens the film´s academic value, but its entertaining value as well: we as viewers analyze the film while watching it. Maybe we start to draw conclusions, but then the plot twisted and we are back at the beginning. Nevertheless, this act adds a lot to our enjoyment of the film. In fact, the entertaining value of it can only fully develop when we think about the film, when we take it