FIGHT CLUB (1999)

This David Fincher film features actors Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter and Jared Leto.

Welcome to my blog post for David Fincher's Fight Club!

Two things the author said about the novel of Fight Club were that a lot of it was inspired by a reading writer’s group he was in at Portland and often thought of Fight Club as the modern day updating of “The Great Gatsby”. When thinking about the beginning, the character Jack is living a humdrum existence as an insurance adjuster and there is a strange dark humor to all of this as he is going about creating a formula regarding whether or not his car company will do recalls. He applies this formula and as seen in the film much of it is about death , destruction and normalizing that whether or not the car company actually pays this settlement or does a recall to fix the actual problem. Then there is a nomadic existence of the airport to airport he is playing off and his single serving friends as well as the introduction of Tyler Durden who is a character, he meets on an airplane who is very different playing with this idea of how much Durden is a duplicate / mirror of the things that are lacking in Jack’s life. Marla Singer enters into this world and it is a fascinating place we stop at. There is almost nihilism in a Nietzschean way that one needs to suffer, to know the limits of one's existence as well as one of the Nietzschean quotes “that which does not kill you makes you stronger”. There is a heavy undercurrent in this film of what has been turned in the last several decades of toxic masculinity = a rebellion against what is seen as the over feminization of culture and this great enormous divide about fight club as well as its viability. One of the real major changes we are going to see is the introduction of project mayhem where fight club morphs , metastasizes into a cult/army of rebellion trying to take down corporate America, credit card companies so it is moves from the space of fight club where there is an individual sense of pushing oneself /body to the limit or beating it to know one is still alive in a sense. Great many people who seem anesthetized to life that they tend to go about the motions or are chasing their own things and we see graphically in the scene where he has the Ikea catalog that pops up visually on the screen having that sensibility of what coffee table signifies who he is. So, there is a great deal of fascination and dark play of American consumerism and in a certain way Jack’s insomnia where he is going through the emotions almost like being a zombie at work. All of these things add to the interest of the drastic break that occurs when fight club is instituted and there is a pushing as far as possible involved in the norms of polite society when people do not typically do this. They do not seek to be beaten up and find this as a way of self-realization. A lot of the things Durden says seem to have a cult sensibility about the things one owns end up owning you. The very iconic scene in the bar where fight club is hatched there is a lot of the sense where Jack says his insurance will pay for it and there is a wrestling match regarding whether this is actually himself whereas Durden’s speech is always about how these things end up taking one over and that one starts to lose a sense of themselves. It takes a harsh, very sarcastic look at self-help groups. Jack needs the release of being able to look people in the eye who are near death and speaking to them in order to feel anything as well as to be able to sleep which infringes upon Marla entering into the space. In the tragic comic scene when she attempts to steal the clothes and they are negotiating as he says he wants brain cancer. We are meant to see the dark comical satirical side to tease characters who are somewhat lost and trying to find some sense of group identity by playing pretend. As we enter into the world of Paper Street, and the dark they live in we see them making soap and trial by torture of the lie of bottoming out becomes a larger hold as project mayhem begins to take its full effect. A lot of what we see in fight club is a direct take on the late 90s, the fear of Y2k, loss of individuality and mass market consumerism which seems to be at the heart of the satire throughout fight club about people giving up on this and their jobs. It is appropriated in a world post pandemic to see these concerns of whether or not one's job identifies with who they are has been a concern clearly in this film and a rejection of what a lot of American society was putting out there in terms of advertisement, going off of societal norms but for many viewers there is a sense of whether or not this pushed it to that extreme which it was partially meant to do and it made Fincher tackle this project. There is an interesting extreme voice in Paul’s novel which was sculpted and recreated by Jim Uhls screenplay. In 2001, there was a pause moment with 9/11 actual terrorist and mayhem that was occurring in parts of NY and Washington DC in the latter part of the film the fact that there is project mayhem ( almost domestic terrorist group) unsettled many people and made them question looking at fight club as well as what it promoted/glorified. There is a great deal psychologically to consider. When looking back at the film and the doctor scene, there are quick subliminal messages that are figments of his imagination like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This is about what happens if a fantasy takes over one's reality and when one creates characters in their mind. The doppelganger effect and development of skepticism is present. The morphing of characters not talking about Tyler was a way to build clues. This movie was a reaction to the 90s period of grunge Generation X. When Brad Pitt first pitched the script, he identified with the character for Fincher. The book was published in 1996 and had its cultural effect and the film came out in 1999 where there was a lot of turmoil. People felt discontent in life and jobs. There was no great war/ angst . The film and novel are satire which are preconceived of American culture in terms of consumerism taking over America. It was a counter cultural movement. The book refers to the loss of the American Dream such as a modernized “Great Gatsby '' and what is shown was all the things he has to a degree. The car, search, and wealth are about reuniting with Daisy. It is a darker version of the American Dream and he is trying to figure out his authentic self. Jack’s life is a carbon copy of a magazine and it is meaningless. It is a substitute for something real inside. When it comes to project mayhem, the “joker” is received that disrupts the system. It sets some people off because of the domestic terrorism working in the heart of the film it sprung up. The author was not likable but knew it would be a game changer for his career. There are key changes in adaptation. The prose lulls one in= gritty realism. Chloe is a much bigger character in the film. Tyler is Jack’s alter ego. There are two different stories being told. It moves from the basement to chaos and mayhem out into the world. It also shows the horrors of the mob. Fight club made many uncomfortable because of what it suggests, which is the darker aspect of our culture. Meghan L. Grady