The Social Constraints Bestowed Upon Society through a Consumerist Culture The film Fight Club (1999), directed by David Fincher, is based off of the novel of the same name written by Chuck Palahniuk. This action packed drama delves into the life of an insomniac caught up in the cyclical mainstream lifestyle many have grown accustomed to. The narrator of this story, Jack, played by Edward Norton, is a pencil pushing desk jockey completely consumed by the frivolous materials he possess, working only to meet this incessant demand of unnecessary things. It is only when the main character meets Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, is he enlightened to the point of realization that his life offered little to no meaning. Tyler manifests these ideas …show more content…
However, it takes a critical lens and an in-depth interpretation of Fight Club to elucidate these societal quagmires. Charley Reed, an author in the Journal of Religion and Film, explores the concept that Fight Club incorporates the tenants of Zen Buddhism within the plotline in order to offer an answer to the complications a capitalist society presents. In order to escape the cyclical suffering caused by consumerism, the Buddhists believe: “it is precisely the attachment to material possessions that keeps a person attached to this world, the soul must liberated from that attachment if they hope to attain some form of inner peace, and ultimately nirvana” (Reed). This tenant of Buddhism is something the movie teaches in numerous ways. One of the most prominent personifications of this teaching is when Tyler creates a chemical burn on the Jack’s hand. Tyler kisses Jack’s hand successively pouring lye on the kiss resulting in an excruciating chemical burn in order to make him accept the pain, symbolically let go of all his worldly possessions. It is in this scene, Tyler says the infamous line: “It is only after we lose everything, that we’re free to do anything” (Fight Club). This conforms entirely to the teachings of Zen Buddhism as once someone lets go completely and loses attachment to their material possessions; their soul attains a newfound freedom. The other way Fight Club proposes a solution to break off from the mundane consumer-materialist lifestyle, is through violence. This violence can be seen throughout the entirety of the film as a way the men reclaim their masculinity which was lost along the way to the consumerist culture they grew so accustomed to. Lynn Ta, a contributing author to the Journal of American Culture, has come to the conclusion that: “The end of Fight Club suggests that with the return of
Fight Club was written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. This novel focuses on an unreliable narrator, his relationship with a dark man named Tyler Durden, and their creation of Fight Club, an underground boxing club which evolves into the anarchistic organization, Project Mayhem. Project Mayhem intends to tear down the American social structure, replacing big-headed bureaucrats with testosterone-filled, manly men as the ruling class. Even though many believe that Tyler Durden and the narrator are two different people, there is a sufficient amount of evidence to suggest the narrator suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
Chuck Palahniuk wrote an afterword for the paperback edition of Fight Club, in which he indicated that his novel was principally an updated version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “Really, what I was writing was just The Great Gatsby, updated a little. It was ‘apostolic’ fiction – where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death” (Palahniuk 215). Much can be written about the similarities and contrasts between these two novels. In addition to this simple plot similarity, both novels provide powerful social commentary on the state of American culture and the detrimental impact of capitalism on the individual during their respective times. The Great Gatsby was published in the 1920s and Fight Club in the 1990s, giving two similarly written literary snapshots of American society at opposite ends of the twentieth century. The temptation is to analyze and compare these novels in terms of American consumerism at different times, the individual’s quest for self-identity in the increasingly conformist capitalist structure, or to focus on literary aspects, such as character and narrative structure. However, these obvious subjects seem secondary to an overarching thematic similarity.
Fight Club is an association of people whose principle objective is to protest against the consumer society and preservation of masculinity. Inner protest shows the audience how character’s abandoned the traditional ways of a cultural norm as a whole, examples from the novel include peeing in a gourmet food to feed the rich, selling soap made out of human fat using the same the rich people pay so much to get rid of. Fight Club emphasis on the ideology of masculinity in male’s lives. A problem said to be in modern men according to Tyler is women are raising men, resulting in the lack of father figure. The Fight Club becomes project Mayhem that commits increasingly destructive acts on anti-capitalist vandalism in the city. The methods of Project mayhem start as funny methods at first such as pasting the bumper sticker on unwitting cars, making fine veal, drunk drivers against mothers etc. Project Mayhem is a protest of millions of young people crushed by the consumer society, pouring out of the basement where at night brutal battles take place thus creating a civilization, which enslaved gem, should take care of itself now. Project Mayhem had only one goal and that
“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four” (Orwell 250). Winston lives in a time where a set of rules preventing him to be free are imposed on him – the Party defines what freedom is and is not. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows (Orwell 103)”. Winston expresses his views on The Party within his diary even though he knows it is not accepted by The Party or the Thought Police. The narrator in Fight Club uses fighting as a form of escapism from his anti-consumerist ideologies revealed by his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. “Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns. I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve—let the chips fall where they may. (Fight Club)” Tyler urges the narrator to stop conforming to consumerist-imposed views of perfection and break barriers to evolve. Tyler and the narrator create a medium for people in similar positions to escape from societal bound norms; it is aptly named “Fight Club”. In comparison, both Tyler Durden and the narrator from Fight Club and Winston Smith from 1984 share
“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.
‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley is a science-fiction book in which people live in a futuristic society and a place called the World State. In ‘Brave New World’, Aldous Huxley used the idea of consumerism to describe the behaviors and lives of the citizens of the World State. The practice of consumerism by the people of the World State fulfilled their satisfactory and happiness. However, it also blinded purity and truth among its people. Different classes and different genders of people practiced different acts of consumerism such as consuming soma, technology and bodies. They sought happiness from them and eventually these acts became a social norm. However, these practices of consumerism also had side effects. It blinded truth such as
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.
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...
The Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, constructs an underground world of men fighting with one another to find the meaning to their lives. Ed Norton and Brad Pitt are the main characters who start the fight club. They make a set of rules that everyone must follow. The fight club exists because individuals get weighted down by possessions, causing them to miss the deep meaning of life. Most of the people in the fight club hold service jobs or lower level management jobs that are meaningless.
In grade school, we were taught to listen and behave; learn and memorize what was in the text books. In high school we started learning to be more independent in our studies, rather than relying on a teacher who still helped and taught, but not like we had in grade school. In college, we are taught to analyze and critically think independently but still had the help we needed from the professor. With teachers being there, guiding us through every step, why does the teacher get the blame for when students fail. A students’ education comes down to selfishness, social class, and consumerism; not on the teacher who is there to help us in ways they are allowed. How can we better
It is lines like these that helped this novel soar in popularity among the Generation X' crowd. It is because people feel trapped in their jobs and material lives. We go to work, we do what we're told, we buy the things they tell us to buy, but seldom do these things bring meaning to our lives. Because the novel speaks to such a large audience of young people, it has become an important statement regarding modern culture.
Fight Club. Novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Screenplay by Jim Uhls. Dir. David Fincher. 1999. 20th Century Fox, 2002. DVD.
As a society there are a lot of qualities that men have been socialized to uphold when it comes to how they act or react, what they support, and what they suppress. This movie produces a harsh critique of male socialization early on and continues
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
Consumer ethnocentrism is a factor that needs to be given considerable attention when coming up with marketing strategies for international businesses. This is because a product can have negative results in the market if the ethnocentrism levels of the target market are ignored. Hence it is paramount to understand the various effects ethnocentrism have on international business, and address the various marketing strategies that might counter ethnocentrism.