Did you enjoy Fight Club? Did you think it was a glorification of violence or a study in group mind control?

Do you have any experiences to share?

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

Answers

Response to fight club- was there a statement?

Hey, Something didn't sit well with me in this movie, and I finally figured out what.

I agree with you that the movie is in parts about cult manipulation, but I really think that the movie is in two parts- and what the movie suggests is what I disagree with. I agree with what you said in the aritcle today, and I think you said it well; this film is about cultism. But ultimately what it is about is happiness, and how old Ed can't seem to get any in his life. Edward Norton could not sleep in the beginning of the movie- we see him as disturbed and looking of some outlet for his emotions. He ultimately can't find it from shopping, so he goes the opposite direction- he eschews everything- and finds nothing their either. We see him as someone who is not happy when he has things, and not happy when he doesn't have things- what makes him happy? The last shot, when he finally is able to love Helen Bonham Carter ("Everything is going to be all right") because love, like all hollywood endings, conquers all. This is the conclusion that I came to last night, and why I was finally disapointed with the film- the last shot. It becomes just another Hollywood romance, that has a tidy ending (okay, I know that the city blew up and it can't be a tidy ending, but you get the idea) where a woman is all that the man needs. What does she need? I think that the ending was, while visually pretty cool, was a cop out. What do you think?

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

Response to fight club- was there a statement?

I am Jack's happy movie-goer. (Alright, I just saw the film on Saturday and that construction is already getting old in my mind.)

I absolutely loved this movie; it's unquestionably my favorite of the year so far (and I don't imagine that anything will displace it). My initial reaction to it, though, was almost the opposite of Eric's. The Narrator achieves change in his life only by completely excising the material trappings of his former existence. Later, Tyler focuses Fight Club's energies on destroying material things (like credit card company buildings) to remake society. These things seem to ascribe a huge import to material objects; if the self is truly distinct from one's car and one's job and one's Ikea-furnished apartment, then why bother destroying these unimportant trappings? I took the movie to mean not that we are what we are irrespective of extrinsic factors, but that our selves are, to our detriment, inextricably intertwined with these extrinsic factors.

Truth be told, though, I think pamie's interpretation is a good deal sharper than my own. Perhaps the whole consumerism motif just represents a particularly insidious form of the mind control of which she spoke.

It will be interesting to see what kind of effect this movie has on people. Case in point: One of my favorite online movie critics, Mike D'Angelo, is sadly retiring his website (http://www.panix.com/~dangelo/) to pursue screenwriting, and he ascribes part of his motivation to the scene with the shopkeeper who wanted to be a veterenarian.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

Response to fight club- was there a statement?

No, Eric. A woman is all you need.

You love pamie. You need pamie. Let the city blow up.

Having said that, I think it symbolizes the demolition of the cult. He breaks the cult up, and it couldn't come without some distruction. I don't think that he ends up "happily ever after" with Marla, but instead finds his own person again. She met him in a "weird time" in his life, right? He really doesn't love her, they've never shown him to be in love, she just happens to be there when he figures everything out.

And you can't have "Where is my Mind" playing without wanting to hold someone's hand.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

Funny pamie, I agree with you almost entirely but I didn't think this was a great film. I guess there is a recent trend in films to make the viewer feel smugly superior. Maybe it started with Pulp Fiction. Films like this have a number of characteristics in common. They are self referential (they take pains to make sure you _know_ it is a film).

They poke fun at the poor schleps who have to populate the film (yo, check out Bobs D cups). And the star is a sort of a twisted hero who can laugh at death because nothing in life is worth caring about anyway, but never really suffers in a meaningful way.

I remember thinking when Tyler causes the car to run off the road that either he should die right then, end of film, or he should be paralyzed. Of course, if that happened we have Waterdance, a film with more substance and less glitter. Plus no one will get to feel like they can kick the shit out of the first random slob they see as they leave the theater.

It probably is a good study in mind control. And fight clubs will probably start popping up around the country. And the rest of us can laugh at the irony of the sheep who just didn't get it. Pretty funny, huh?

By the end I don't know anything about the characters. Norton is so bizarrely psycho that I have no real idea why he started fight club. He escaped his unhappy materialistic life by convincing others to engage in bloody fights underneath a bar and blowing up credit card buildings? In the end he throw off his madness and disbands the club a little wiser for the experience? Maybe now he will marry Marla and start a tutoring program for troubled inner

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

for troubled inner city youth. Right.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

I am Matt's sense of confusion. I really liked the movie. I think that Pamie has really hit on something with her cult stuff. I've studied cults before, and this one really fits in. I am Matt's confusion, because there are almost too many conflicting messages in this movie. Is it about male bonding? Is it about the 'feminization of the modern world'? Is it about the evils of consumerism? Is is about the unavoidability of consumerism? Is it about Ed Norton's bruised psyche? Is it about bitch tits? I just don't know.

On the whole, the movie is certianly enjoyable. Will there be Fight Clubs springing up everywhere? Yes, in the same way that people think they became Jedis after The Phantom Menacem, or vampires after Interview With... I don't think they'll last though, the members will get their Doc Martins all bloody and call it quits.

www.angelfire.com/ut/mattsmind

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

I didn't see it, but my wife Barb did, the movie buff in the family. She loved it, and thinks a lot of the critics are overreacting. One critic critized the club's assignment to go out and start a fight--- but didn't mention the person had to LOSE the fight. In an era where boxing is Pay-Per-View and football is HUGE business, I can't get too worked up over this one. I don't have the slightest urge to go out and beat someone up...unless they park in a handicapped space, but I had that urge BEFORE the film.

Besides, anything that makes fun of self-help groups is ok with me.-- Al

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

Daniel's point about smug, self-satisfied characters is part of the reason why I really didn't like this film. Like "American Beauty," it assumes that anyone who doesn't agree with the filmmakers is a sap who has bought into something worthless.

The tip-off for me is the fact that both movies make endless use of voice-over narration to tell you, every minute, what you *should* be thinking about the film. Take out that aspect, and you might not feel much sympathy for Spacey or Norton's self-induced angst.

I think that suburbia and IKEA, irritating bosses and Starbucks are pretty easy targets for a film to tackle. I also find it interesting that, rather than have either character face the financial consequences of his actions, both Spacey and Norton's characters successfully blackmail their bosses. Sure, we want to change our lives, so long as we can keep our salaries.

What kind of release from consumer culture and status symbols are you advocating when you can still hop a plane on your frequent-flier miles or buy a sports car with cash?

A film about someone who's so fed up with his corporate-culture life that he actually goes out and does something that has *consequences*... Now THAT'S a movie I'd like to see.

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

I don't have time to toss out everything I'm thinking about all your responses, and how I felt about the film.

Right now, all I can say is, if you've seen the movie and you haven't read the book, I recommend you do so. Now.

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

one of the most visceral visual experiences i've ever had, i think it's pretty clear that 'fight club' is the 'clockwork orange' for the 90's.

i think your cult parallel is very apt, as the cult mentality and fascism are nigh identical in most aspects. i could be completely off here, but i interpreted 'fight club' as a sort of 'lord of the flies' in reverse. rather than being cut off from society, the narrator in this film was so immersed in his dehumanizing job and commercial lifestyle, that like the boys in 'lotf' he reverted to his primal, bestial nature. i think this movie is trying to lift the curtain on the darkness in every human soul. when everything is taken away, all your restraits, all your mores, what is life? what are you then capable of?

of course, even i recognize that that is only one level of meaning. the genius of this movie was that it worked on many levels. a biting social satire on commercialiam, nihilism and media violence with more than a little bit of freud thrown in. wrapped in a visual style so clever and intense, it was a masterpiece.

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

one of the most visceral visual experiences i've ever had, i think it's pretty clear that 'fight club' is the 'clockwork orange' for the 90's.

i think your cult parallel is very apt, as the cult mentality and fascism are nigh identical in most aspects. i saw project mayhem as fascism for nihilistic ends. i could be completely off here, but i interpreted 'fight club' as a sort of 'lord of the flies' in reverse. rather than being cut off from society, the narrator in this film was so immersed in his dehumanizing job and commercial lifestyle, that like the boys in 'lotf' he reverted to his primal, bestial nature. i think this movie is trying to lift the curtain on the darkness in every human soul. when everything is taken away--all your restraits, all your social mores--what is life? what are you then capable of?

of course, even i recognize that that is only one level of meaning. the genius of this movie was that it worked on many levels. a biting social satire on commercialiam, nihilism and media violence with more than a little bit of freud thrown in wrapped in an intense visual style--it was a masterpiece.

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

Mike's Impression Of The Works Of Fincher--

(This is also posted on my own journal, if you needed to hear it.)

• Fight Club

  The first half of Edward Norton's journey takes place in the first 15 minutes of the movie. He can't sleep. He starts going to the 12-step survivor classes. He pretends to be a loser like all of the other survivors and cries with them. He sleeps better than a baby. Every night he dies, and is reborn.

  Reluctantly he is thrust back into the real world. Helena B. Carter shows up, and by getting in on Norton's action, someone else now knows what a loser he is, and it ruins the experince for him. He can't sleep.

  Because he is returned to the real world, Death becomes a significant theme. You only know something is alive, because it will one day die. You only know something is real, because it has a height, a depth, and a width. Even when Brad Pitt confronts people with their own mortality, with gun or with car, they know then what they want to do. Everyone knows, except Edward Norton. This is the vacuum in Norton from which Brad Pitt emerges.

  So, the next 2¼ hours of the movie is Norton's complex machinations to save the World as he himself was saved in his nightly resurrection. Brad Pitt is Destruction. Killing Brad Pitt is Resurrection.

  The Fight Club itself is Brad Pitt replicating the Cult Consumerism, which he uses for his own ends to save the World.

• The Game

  At first I didn't like this movie. It appeared as if Michael Douglas was grateful that he had been driven to commit suicide.

  Michael Douglas's wealthy father commits suicide by jumping off of the roof of his house. So, living in the same house, Michael Douglas spends his life insulating himself from his father's final act, by sterilizing his life with wealth and power.

  Participating in the Game, his insulation disintegrates, and he is forced to suffer, and into the guilty shame of accidentally killing his brother. He then jumps off the roof, and is able to die of himself, and is allowed to be reborn.

• Alien³

  I need to go out of order, because much of my understanding of Fincher's movies comes from this one. (This is the only one I've seen more than once.)

  Ripley is the last survivor of the escape pod from the second movie. Newt and the Marine are dead, and the android couldn't handle existing in pieces. At the funeral, Charles Dutton asks, rhetorically, why must innocents be sacrificed. Newt will never know the agony of those who survive her. If you like, only the good die young.

  The criminals who tended the refinery were men who gave into murderous temptation, and transformed their lives with puritanical religion into day to day suffering. When the monster arrives, after briefly considering allowing the Company to capture and exploit the creature, they adopt the laborious task of killing the alien themselves.

• Seven

  The deadly sins are insulators to life, like the wealth and power Michael Douglas had surrounded himself with in The Game. People give into the temptation of sin and vice, as they give into the Consumerism Brad Pitt fights in Fight Game. Why? To numb the suffering of everyday life.

  Morgan Freeman is a seasoned homicide detective. Brad Pitt, like his wife, Gwenyth Paltrow, are innocents. Gwenyth Paltrow is sacrificed, and Brad Pitt is confronted with the guilt and suffering of surviving her. And, when given the choice of living day to day in suffering, and giving into the sin that robs us of our complete lives, like so many of us everyday, he gives in to sin.

  At the end, Morgan Freeman, the only survivor in the movie who lives whole, dismisses a quote by Hemingway (who killed himself), about the World being such a wonderful place worth fighting for.

Al, I know you reasd this. Fight Club is like V For Vendetta. Just think of V and Evey treated as one character.

-- Anonymous, October 23, 1999

As for the romance with Helena B Carter, I'm not sure the Id/Ego/Super Ego model gives as clear an analogy as the Fisher King/Pagan/Grail analogy. In grail analogous quest stories, the search for the thing sought after is championed by 2 forces, the Grail King, and a Pagan king. They fight over it, but neither of them gets it. In their struggle, the Grail King is emasculated, and the Pagan King is killed. In the Babe movie, the lead dog loses his hearing, and, of course, the sheeps themselves get killed. The world is full of people like that. Babe bridges both worlds.

In Fight Club, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are the Grail King. Brad Pitt represents enlightenment, but his destructive nature was unrestrained, and Edward Norton was emasculated for it. Carter represents the Pagan Champion. She is symbolic of the death/rebirth nature of the 12-step survivor programs, which Edward Norton gives up (and must return to at the end), because she lives a loser lifestyle.

Pamie, slowly over the course of your entries about your relationship with Eric, I've come to a conclusion (which may or may not be true). You aren't the dreamer in your relationship. Eric is.

Between the passing of Lillith, getting the new cat, and even Eric's interpretation of Fight Club, Eric has showed an unearthly championship of unconventional wisdom. His waiting to hear the doctor declare Lillith dead. His rescue of of the new kitty. His intuitive understanding of what Brad Pitt was saying about consumerism.

His Audrey Hepburn comment that wounded you? He was talking metaphorically, not physically. His relationship with Lillith has that beauty, as does his relationship with the new cat, and his relationship with you. He has his eye on what is eternal.

Your concerns over your relationship with Eric? As a consequence of your protective nature (one of the things we keep coming back to Squishy to see), you pressure Eric to make the relationship official. A marriage certificate won't keep this one. The beauty of your relationship will. Protect the beauty of the relationship, not the relationship. That's how (I think) you will keep this one.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 1999

How I Think I Will Keep This One, by Pamie:

Don't complain when he needs his own comforter.
Don't make more of a mess than you're willing to clean up.
Keep making sure his family likes me.
Maintain a vow of silence during Homocide and Law and Order.

I haven't noticed I was pressuring Eric into anything "final," or "sealed." Perhaps you see it differently. I'm not one to bring up marriage.

But I think he's happy that Slappyjack's torch for the Patron Saint of Eric shrine has been passed.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 1999

Crap, maybe if I had reorganized my thoughts to end on some other odd speculation, this would still be a Fight Club forum.

Fight Club: hey, how 'bout those brains spilling out of that guy's head, eh?

-- Anonymous, October 25, 1999

i still havent decided if the movie glorified violence or not. it was a very violent movie..... i do agree with the whole group mind- control thing... tyler found the common ground, which was the desire to feel alive, or to feel that there is more to life than stuff.. (pain makes you feel alive) and he used that to gain control over the men in the fight club... he was a guru/cult leader...... he revealed this 'other level' of life to them, and they would listen to and do anything that he said, even die for him... very david koresh... over all an interesting movie.... one aside here... did anyone notice what movie was playing in the theatre behind ed norton when he was telling helena to get on the bus??? kinda funny... i thought...

-- Anonymous, October 29, 1999

you know, i didn't think it was either, since there have been so many movies about both of these that it didn't occur to me that someone would consider re-hashing either of those themes.

okay, now i'm going to respond to this *before* reading anyone elses' responses. i tend to be easily influenced and i also sit on the fence sometimes - so here is my full blown, straight from the brain, undiluted, unfiltered opinion.

*what a waste of my time*

okay. visually - very cool movie.

but the ideas behind it? what i got from the film - all the stuff about consumerism and us being a lame ass group and having no purpose besides that new IVAR wall unit - how *many* times have we heard this one? *YAWN* been there discussed that moved on.

and men who have no purpose? who feel lost? well then how about you get off your ass and do whatever you want? at least you'll feel better even if it just results in sitting on a beach. but beating eachother up and blowing up buildings? wait so now you have no purpose and no teeth either? puh-leaze! and what, capitalist society owns you because it teaches you to shop. don't you have a mind of your own? if you can think this far, you can think *past* this point and head on into the "do your own thing, live simply" realm as well. you're disappointed? yeah well what about people who are dying of disease - i bet they're pretty pissed to. but they don't blow things up, they *live* as much as possible. get over it, move on.

and the other thing i came away with - that it is possible to thwart yourself. that, through your own issues, you can destroy your own dreams. uumm - no shit. really? you *don't* say? my own fear has kept me back so many times. again, examined that, as most adults have, and moved on.

i felt like it was a movie that explained some very old ideas to people who obviously hadn't been thinking at all.

now. that might be snotty, overly-suprior, really mean-ass thought to have. but. that's what i thought. i don't feel *that* bad for thinking it, although i do wonder why i think i'm so smart..

so that's the undiluted truth.

i talked to some boys at work, and they think it's because i'm female that i didn't enjoy the film. one guy tried to tell me i missed the point. i don't think i missed the point. i think that for me, it was a silly point. the other guy insisted that it was a guys movie and that's why. so okay, my thought process then says "wait, are you telling me that guys just don't think about these things, and *that's* why this movie spoke to them? if that's true... that's really sad." or is it because he figured i'm a girl and the violence freaked me out? whatEVER is all i say to that.

now i'm going to go and read the other posts. perhaps it will clear some things up and make my post look all mean and snotty. *sigh*

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

I just noticed this in the "New Answers" format Pamie was so kind to point out. Luckily I just saw the movie for the first time a few weeks ago. While I pulled out a lot of similar viewpoints as those that have been mentioned here, to me it made a very strong point of remembering one's humanity by becoming bestial for a time. I've gone down that road before, so maybe that's just what I chose to see.

On the subject of fight clubs springing up: yes, it has happened. My roommate and some fellow waiters (at a nice restaurant, like the one where the bartender has the broken neck) decided to have their own fight club, without hitting in the face, on new year's eve. In college we just called it brawling.

And Pam, do you think Mike has a hetero-guy-crush on E?

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2000

Nurse Ratched, Please don't tell my mother!

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2000

i am jack's return to commercialism.

I mean, yeah, you COULD strap on a portable, LCD-enhanced DVD player just to watch Fight Club every dying moment of the day, but I'd even settle for a good poster. Has anyone else noticed that they've refused to make a good poster for this movie? Fight Club's message is too important to not be continually reminded of, escalating this issue to an oversight of monumental proportions. Heck, I'd settle for an elargement of the DVD's interior art, but $84.00 just to kick out the large-format inkjet print plus framing would have me selling a LOT of jeans...

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2000