SPOILER WARNING:
THIS COMMENTARY REVEALS CRUCIAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE OVERALL PLOT AND ENDING OF THE STORY. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN FIGHT CLUB, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ NO FURTHER.
Fight Club--one more time--don't want to go on about this film forever.
Another point raised in the film initially suggests that there is a high level of violence in men. However, I think this is a bit misleading and simplistic if one takes a closer look at the film.
1. The initial scenes of violence were set either in bars or in the parking lots of bars. I suspect alcohol played a significant role here.
2. Later scenes were set in the guise of sporting events with cheering audiences. The violence now becomes an integral part of a competitive event. Our society places high value on competitiveness in its members--especially males in the past, but this is now becoming important for females also.
3. The last part of the film was set in an entirely different milieu from either of the first or the second parts. This is now organized violence in which groups of men went out in combat with society. Just hurting others wasn't the point--this was a direct attack on society. Physical pain now has disappeared. In fact, their attacks were designed to minimize the chance of others being injured or killed. I can't help but think of an earlier film--Network--in which the newscaster had everybody go to the window, open it, and shout out--"I'm mad and I'm not going to take it any longer", or words to that effect. In the third part of this film, they also are mad and they are doing something about it.
This part also reminded me, in part, of a film I had seen last week--Full Metal Jacket--which was initially set in a Marine boot camp. The basic training scenes in both films were very similar--the recruits were subjected to physical and mental abuse--all for the purpose of breaking down their self-regard and their feelings of self-worth, and replacing it with an attachment to the group and its ideals, as defined by the leaders.
But what was also brought out in the film, in a brief but significant episode, was the difficulty in simply going out and starting a fight. Cheryl, in one of her comments to Pt. 1, has pointed out how difficult it seemed for the members of the club to simply go out and start a fight with a stranger.
Another point that may be relevant here is that military basic training spends considerable time getting the recruits to the point where they will kill someone, even in wartime. There's considerable propaganda about the evil nature of the enemy and the use of pejorative terms--gook, slant eyes, rag heads, etc.--which dehumanize the enemy. Military organizations still consider "fraternizing with the enemy" a crime. This again suggests that high levels of violence are not normal among most males.
There seems to be a contradiction here. One possible resolution is that many men have high levels of violence while others have considerably lower levels. Since it was so difficult for the club members to find strangers at random who will fight with them, one suspects that the club members were a minority here and that most men do not have a high level of or tolerance for violence, unless there are other factors involved which increase the possibility of violence. The three points I mentioned above could be those factors which increase the likelihood of violent behavior-- (1) alcohol; (2) a highly competitive event in which violence is not only socially acceptable but encouraged; and (3) an organized group which has been trained to engage in acts of violence.
I suspect there may be other explanations.
Whatever else Fight Club might be, it is one film that brings up a number of intriguing issues.
Showing posts with label Fight Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fight Club. Show all posts
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Fight Club--who is the real opponent? Pt. 1
POILER WARNING:
THIS COMMENTARY REVEALS CRUCIAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE OVERALL PLOT AND ENDING OF THE STORY. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN FIGHT CLUB, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ NO FURTHER.
The Fight Club is a unique film. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are completely believable in their roles, as are Helena Bonham Carter and Meatloaf, who play two of the most important supporting roles. You may not like one or more of them, or possibly all of them, but they are convincing, and they engage the viewer to the point that liking or disliking becomes irrelevant.
Unlike too many films I've viewed recently, this one was unpredictable. I never expected what was going to happen, and when it did, it seemed perfectly natural. It was unexpected but reasonable.
Fight Club begins with a chance conversation on a plane and ends with a catastrophe possibly greater in its effect than that of 9/11. Each step is a small one, but seemingly inevitable, so that the viewer will accept it as being the next logical step. Only at the end does the viewer realize just how far the inexorable logic of the film has taken the characters and the viewer.
The plot twist comes near the end of the film and radically changes the viewer's perception of what has been going on in front of him. Frankly, I found it as hard to accept as the nameless narrator, but like the narrator, I eventually had to accept what I was seeing on the screen.
The twist or reversal of the foundation of the story is based on a literary device which was developed in the 19th century and has produced some of the most memorable literature ever written--the double or the doppelganger. Briefly, the main character or the protagonist is doubled in some way--there is another person who bears a striking resemblance to the main character, but strangely only the main character seems aware of this. But, the double is not the exact duplicate of the main character in all respects; while the double may physically resemble the main character, the personality differences between the two are most often exactly the opposite.
As it is in this film, the double has been used to illustrate the dual nature of the human being: sometimes it's the good and the bad within all of us or at other times it's the difference between our external behavior and our repressed inner nature. It does this by completely separating the two opposing elements in our nature that are, in reality, hopelessly intermingled.
One of the first examples of the double occurs in Dostoyevsky's short novel, The Double. In this story, the main character is a meek and mild civil servant, who is so shy and retiring that he has no friends and hasn't spoken to his supervisor at work in weeks, if not months. He is unable to put himself forward. One day at the office, he sees a man who resembles himself to a remarkable degree. However, this man is outgoing and, in spite of just having appeared for the first time at the office, engages in a conversation eventually with everyone at the office, including the head of the department. Later, at a party given by his superior, our unnamed narrator again sees his double. While the narrator spends most of his time buried in the crowd and isolated from everyone around him, his double is the life of the party, acting in a way the narrator wishes he could.
Edgar Allen Poe's "William Wilson" features a schoolboy who discovers that he has a double among his fellow pupils, one with the same initials, the same physical appearance, and the same birth date. No one else seems to be aware of this. This double also frequently whispers advice and warnings to William Wilson that nobody else notices or hears. Moreover, the double frequently interferes with Wilson's activities for Wilson is an evil person. Either the double advises him to avoid actions which are harmful to others or frustrates them in some way.
Probably the most famous "double" tale in literature is Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so much so that the names of the characters have become embedded in our everyday language. People are frequently characterized as being a Jekyll and Hyde. In this story, Dr Jekyll has discovered a drug that will allow either his good side or his evil side to dominate his entire being.
In a more modern retelling, one of the Episodes of the original Star Trek series had Captain Kirk the victim of a transporter malfunction which somehow separated him into two separate beings. One of these beings was his good side, and the other his evil side--an up-to-date version of the Jekyll and Hyde tale, but with the difference that both sides existed independently of the other. What was intriguing about the division was that the evil side had Kirk's energy and drive, while the good Kirk was weak and ineffectual throughout most of the episode.
There are other examples of the double in both literature and in film, but I think this post is long enough. If any wish to look further into the topic, I would recommend the following work as an excellent starting point:
C. F. Keppler, The Literature of the Second Self, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson , Arizona, 1972. He has also published a novel, The Other, in which "centers in the unique relatiohship between the first self and the second self.
THIS COMMENTARY REVEALS CRUCIAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE OVERALL PLOT AND ENDING OF THE STORY. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN FIGHT CLUB, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ NO FURTHER.
The Fight Club is a unique film. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are completely believable in their roles, as are Helena Bonham Carter and Meatloaf, who play two of the most important supporting roles. You may not like one or more of them, or possibly all of them, but they are convincing, and they engage the viewer to the point that liking or disliking becomes irrelevant.
Unlike too many films I've viewed recently, this one was unpredictable. I never expected what was going to happen, and when it did, it seemed perfectly natural. It was unexpected but reasonable.
Fight Club begins with a chance conversation on a plane and ends with a catastrophe possibly greater in its effect than that of 9/11. Each step is a small one, but seemingly inevitable, so that the viewer will accept it as being the next logical step. Only at the end does the viewer realize just how far the inexorable logic of the film has taken the characters and the viewer.
The plot twist comes near the end of the film and radically changes the viewer's perception of what has been going on in front of him. Frankly, I found it as hard to accept as the nameless narrator, but like the narrator, I eventually had to accept what I was seeing on the screen.
The twist or reversal of the foundation of the story is based on a literary device which was developed in the 19th century and has produced some of the most memorable literature ever written--the double or the doppelganger. Briefly, the main character or the protagonist is doubled in some way--there is another person who bears a striking resemblance to the main character, but strangely only the main character seems aware of this. But, the double is not the exact duplicate of the main character in all respects; while the double may physically resemble the main character, the personality differences between the two are most often exactly the opposite.
As it is in this film, the double has been used to illustrate the dual nature of the human being: sometimes it's the good and the bad within all of us or at other times it's the difference between our external behavior and our repressed inner nature. It does this by completely separating the two opposing elements in our nature that are, in reality, hopelessly intermingled.
One of the first examples of the double occurs in Dostoyevsky's short novel, The Double. In this story, the main character is a meek and mild civil servant, who is so shy and retiring that he has no friends and hasn't spoken to his supervisor at work in weeks, if not months. He is unable to put himself forward. One day at the office, he sees a man who resembles himself to a remarkable degree. However, this man is outgoing and, in spite of just having appeared for the first time at the office, engages in a conversation eventually with everyone at the office, including the head of the department. Later, at a party given by his superior, our unnamed narrator again sees his double. While the narrator spends most of his time buried in the crowd and isolated from everyone around him, his double is the life of the party, acting in a way the narrator wishes he could.
Edgar Allen Poe's "William Wilson" features a schoolboy who discovers that he has a double among his fellow pupils, one with the same initials, the same physical appearance, and the same birth date. No one else seems to be aware of this. This double also frequently whispers advice and warnings to William Wilson that nobody else notices or hears. Moreover, the double frequently interferes with Wilson's activities for Wilson is an evil person. Either the double advises him to avoid actions which are harmful to others or frustrates them in some way.
Probably the most famous "double" tale in literature is Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so much so that the names of the characters have become embedded in our everyday language. People are frequently characterized as being a Jekyll and Hyde. In this story, Dr Jekyll has discovered a drug that will allow either his good side or his evil side to dominate his entire being.
In a more modern retelling, one of the Episodes of the original Star Trek series had Captain Kirk the victim of a transporter malfunction which somehow separated him into two separate beings. One of these beings was his good side, and the other his evil side--an up-to-date version of the Jekyll and Hyde tale, but with the difference that both sides existed independently of the other. What was intriguing about the division was that the evil side had Kirk's energy and drive, while the good Kirk was weak and ineffectual throughout most of the episode.
There are other examples of the double in both literature and in film, but I think this post is long enough. If any wish to look further into the topic, I would recommend the following work as an excellent starting point:
C. F. Keppler, The Literature of the Second Self, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson , Arizona, 1972. He has also published a novel, The Other, in which "centers in the unique relatiohship between the first self and the second self.
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