I read three or four of Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction books during high school and whenever the subject came up between me and my friend, he would urge me to read Fight Club. After reading a couple of his books, there’s a pattern that you can discern and the different stories start blurring together. Each story starts somewhat normal, and then oddities are introduced and a series of ridiculous events happen until the story devolves into chaos (with variation in ideas and themes, of course). I think that’s why I didn’t want to read Fight Club, as I’d heard enough about it and expected a similar experience to reading Palahniuk’s other books. As I was watching the movie this past Friday, I was surprised to find myself settling in to the reading-a-Palahniuk-book mindset I’d experienced maybe five years ago.

As for the movie itself, it stirred up some primal sense inside me and made my testosterone pump, as I’m sure it did for other guys in the room (Robert Boehlert). At times, it made me feel like punching someone and starting a fight. I didn’t act on these feelings, obviously, but the fact that the movie elicited this response from me was impressive. The themes mentioned by Dr. Hill were pretty blatant, and I couldn’t help but think that showing this movie to the wrong people at a time like this might spur them to actually incite violence, given our country’s situation. Considering the riots going on right now, I don’t think that it’s far-fetched to think that some of those people rioting might have been influenced by watching this movie at some point in their lives.