Last week I watched the controversial 1999 film “Fight Club.” After watching it, I was initially shocked. The movie probably intends to give the viewer that feeling, with its jarring dream like sequences (which reminded me of modern Baz Luhrmann movies) and its extreme violence, Fight Club is meant to make the viewer feel out of place, and it succeeded. Since it became a cult classic, viewer have tried to decipher the other intentions and themes of Fight Club. People say it’s a coming of age movie that exposes the flaws in cult thinking, sexism, and violence by showing the sorrows of people who indulge themselves in those behaviors. People say that the movie uses gory violence as a story telling device, and to highlight the pointlessness of such behavior. However, I think these messages and themes can be told without resorting to the gore and brutality that fight club had viewers watch. The shots of violence seemed like a cheap way to make viewers feel something, similar to how jump scares are a “cheap” method used in horror movies. Much of the premise of the movie is based on the un-named protagonist’s view that society is repressing men from doing “macho” things like fighting, but it’s the opposite. Society is filled with messages encouraging men express their animal instincts. People think violence is in vogue, MMA is one of the most popular sports around, and that shooting guns is cool. So… what exactly are the men in Fight Club rebelling against?
With that said, the movie is partly redeemed in my eyes if it was intended to deliver a good message. Still, even if fight club says it shows all these terrible things (violence, sexism, anarchy) to convince the viewer that they’re pointless, the film did it in a perhaps too subtle way. Not everyone going to see this movie across America went home and analyzed it as a piece of art with a message, it is without a doubt that these good intentions went over some peoples’ heads. These stances may exist and the movie well intentioned, but if that is the case then the messages weren’t presented in any coherent way that sticks. In many ways, Fight Club sells the same deplorable ideologies that it wants to stand against. If most people don’t think the movie is a satire on masculinity and violence… then is it still satire?
Hi Charles, this is a really good review on Fight Club which brings up a novel point–even if something is satire, it could still inadvertently support the very thing it was attempting to satirize. Oftentimes I feel like our society is quasi-obsessed with masculinity and strength, and these obsessions manifest in violence and sexism. I don’t agree with this type of ideology at all, and I don’t believe that simply showing the sorrow of the men in Fight Club would demonstrate that the movie was rebelling against society. All human beings have some sort of sadness in their lives, and movies always show this aspect of characters to make them seem well-rounded. The simple fact that the men in Fight Club didn’t have perfect lives is not a pushback against the status quo. So I agree with you that if that was the message, it should have been more overt. It’s also frankly frightening to realize that almost anything we read or watch could be a satire and we might just not realize it. It makes you want to re-think everything and be paranoid about what you come in contact with. Since that’s not a very appealing way to live, we can only hope that the majority of satirists will be slightly more obvious. Thanks for sharing!