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Fight Club

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06 Apr 2017 13:36 #246069 by Shellhead
Fight Club was created by Shellhead
Fight Club was a book before it was a movie, and I just read the official sequel which was published as a limited comic book series. I posted this under Trash Culture Catchall, because Fight Club doesn't fall under just one category here, and because it has a deeper cultural message that may particularly resonate with F:AT.

I haven't read the book. Without fail, it has always been at "checked out" at the local library, and I can't be bothered to do a request or hold or whatever for it. But I have seen the movie a few times, and now read the comic sequel.

One reason that I wanted to read the sequel was to look for resolution to a long-standing argument with the friend who watched Fight Club with me the first time around. He sincerely believes that the reveal of the unreliable narrator at the end completely contradicts the rest of the movie, making it a purely internal story about one man's insanity. I feel that interpretation is worthless because it ignores the exploding building after the big revelation, and would take the unreliable narrator concept beyond the point of absurdity.

So what did I learn (no spoilers here) from the comic Fight Club 2? I'm not certain. It opens with the narrator as an unhappy suburbanite, married to Marla and raising a young son. The story clearly makes the case for the narrator and Tyler Durden as multiple personalities of the same individual. But then there are meta-scenes showing writer Chuck Palahniuk arguing with three women about what direction the plot should go. And there is a scene featuring a zombie with superhuman strength. Other than that, the sequel is right in line with the style of the movie, and presumably the book.

But enough about the sequel for now. The real significance of Fight Club is probably complex and debatable. It definitely offers a critique and satire of consumer culture. But where does it go from there? Fascism? Anarchy? Nihilism? When people talk about the movie, they tend to dwell on the literal Fight Club aspect, which is the fighting in the secret club. But there are so many other elements going on. The support groups for the various ailments. The soap-making. The homoerotic subtext. The significance of that crumbling mansion. What did they mean to you? Did you like or dislike the movie (or book), and why? Did you like the ending, and was that ending a refutation of everything before it?

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06 Apr 2017 14:08 #246071 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic Fight Club
It was all real, except for the "voice in his head". The explosion was his doing - he "reset" the financial system - but he did it "alone"

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06 Apr 2017 14:26 #246075 by hotseatgames
Replied by hotseatgames on topic Fight Club
I have not read the book, but I love the movie. If it's not in my top 10, it's close. But I've always been fascinated by the notion that there are people who are so disassociated with reality that they imagine they are talking to non-existent people. Probably why I also like Dexter.

My bugbear friend, Barry, agrees.

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06 Apr 2017 15:33 - 06 Apr 2017 15:36 #246081 by Disgustipater
Replied by Disgustipater on topic Fight Club
Fight Club was (is?) my favorite movie for a very long time. I have probably seen the movie a literal 25 times. I've watched the 4 commentaries on the DVD multiple times each, and have absorbed every bit of information about the movie I could. I prefer the movie to the book, and to some extent, so does Palahniuk. The end of the book is different ((the bomb fails to go off and he wakes up in a hospital/psychiatric institution)), and again, I prefer the movie version.

For me, the story has never been about the fighting. It's about how conspicuous consumption is no good, but swinging the pendulum as far in the opposite direction as he does is just as bad.

I also love the movie for the technical aspects, and crazy attention to detail. It is such a perfectly crafted movie.
Last edit: 06 Apr 2017 15:36 by Disgustipater.
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06 Apr 2017 16:38 #246084 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic Fight Club
I like the book's ending as well, but something tells me that Chuck wanted it to end the way the film did.

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06 Apr 2017 18:04 - 06 Apr 2017 18:05 #246086 by Black Barney
Replied by Black Barney on topic Fight Club
Wasn't this stupid website all about Fight Club at some point? Like bars of soap everywhere and stuff? I can't seem to remember clearly...


..oh no, that was What Would Tyler Durden Do? I remember now.
Last edit: 06 Apr 2017 18:05 by Black Barney.

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06 Apr 2017 18:43 - 06 Apr 2017 18:44 #246087 by Michael Barnes
Replied by Michael Barnes on topic Fight Club
It was the Clockwork Orange of the 1990s. And by that I mean a cult film where its more lascivious elements were celebrated while its more transgressive and challenging subtexts were ignored. For lots of people, A Clockwork Orange is a movie that lasts from "There was me, that is Alex" up until he gets arrested. For lots of people, Fight Club is "The first rule of Fight Club..." and all of the ultra-male stuff. Also Like with A Clockwork Orange, certain elements of the film are ALWAYS referenced and talked about while the remaining 90% is rarely in the conversation. It is also a film that gets misappropriated by fringe groups and right-wingers.

And like The Bible, people tend to pick and choose what its meanings and metaphors are all about.

I saw it opening night and it blew me away- it was the right movie at the right time, right there at the close of the 20th century. It really resonated with me, and the themes of masculinity, advertising, rebellion and disassociation came at a perfect time in my life. But I never saw it as a manifesto to go out and start Gamergate or to go start a real-life fight club. I saw it as a smart, morally messy, technically immaculate and bound to be culturally significant movie. When it came to DVD, I think I just about wore it out.

But I also haven't seen it in...I don't know, 10 years? And I'm not really sure I want to see it again, there's no way it has the same burn and of the moment relevance it once had and I'd rather remember it as a film of its time than as something that is now pushing up toward 20 (!!!) years old. I could probably quote the script, the soundtrack, and even draw the whole film shot by shot. But I am kind of finished with it, I think.

I have absolutely zero desire to see any kind of sequel or additional material connected to it. I can't believe they did a video game.
Last edit: 06 Apr 2017 18:44 by Michael Barnes.
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06 Apr 2017 21:11 - 06 Apr 2017 21:23 #246094 by Colorcrayons
Replied by Colorcrayons on topic Fight Club
Fight Club, for me, is about purity. Or at least the return to it.

Its a movie/book about self hatred, and wanting to no longer be a disease, but as part of a whole entity.

There is a part where Tyler contemplates how the jungles will reclaim the cities, and how equilibrium will be regained if humanity could start seeing the point of its existence to cohabitate with the planet, instead of becoming wrapped up in a reality we have dreamed up, since actual reality is too harsh.

So fight clubs are birthed to remind us of what we lost, either by coersion or by choice in our long path towards "civility".

The destruction of TRW is another reminder to humanity about what we lost. Since many debts transfer to our children, we have become our own slaves, and the only way out is to destroy the devices by which we have enslaved ourselves. And it must be done completely, no half measures or we risk falling back into the same trap in the future.

Tyler Durden is the sounding of the Rams horn for Jubilee. For sacred freedom.
Last edit: 06 Apr 2017 21:23 by Colorcrayons.

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07 Apr 2017 00:27 #246101 by John Myers
Replied by John Myers on topic Fight Club
The last time I watched Fight Club I was struck by how long the sequence with Marla's introduction goes. How many opportunities Norton's character passes up to ask her out, even though they are both clearly desperately lonely and interested in each other, she even suggests the exchange numbers, but Norton is too repressed, to scared to try to connect with her.

It's not much of coincidence that soon after he invents an imaginary friend, who is strong in all the ways he is weak, outgoing in all of the ways he is introverted. For all the talk of hating consumerism and rejecting social convention what really drives the Fight Club and later Project Mayhem is that it allows all of these lonely, angry people to find a desperate, self-destructive way to connect. The alpha-posturing just gives them a way to do it in a safe way.

It's also not a coincidence that one of the first things Brad Pitt's character does is have sex with Marla.

The anger that drives the story is all about isolation, how consumerism keeps us isolated and focused on things rather than bridging that gulf, so is the anger toward the "elites" of the world. The unclean food and the dick pics in family films are just a juvenile way of lashing out against the cultures that have rejected them.

Norton has a short moment where he talks about how his dad had all these other families all over the country, "like franchises," and then says he has no idea how to start a family of his own.

I think that is the real strength of Fight Club, it's that it understands that we lash out nearly everything around, especially ourselves (something else Norton literally does on a couple of occasions) but we don't know any other way to bridge the distance between us.
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07 Apr 2017 01:24 #246104 by Disgustipater
Replied by Disgustipater on topic Fight Club

Michael Barnes wrote: But I also haven't seen it in...I don't know, 10 years?


I'm the same. I know it so well I don't really have a reason to watch it again.

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07 Apr 2017 12:18 #246154 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Fight Club
Fight Club started me on a path of self-recognition, though it took some time to sink in. I eventually realized that the majority of my friendships that started after college have been based on shared activities, especially gaming. Aside from visits to see old friends in Indiana, I rarely ever just hang out with friends anymore. There always needs to be pretext to get together. Maybe this is an inevitable aspect of adulthood, or maybe a feature of modern life, where the internet enables us to zero in on narrow interests that separate us from most of our fellow humans, or at least our immediate neighbors. In Fight Club, these guys were only able to connect through the immediacy of physical violence and then coordinated assaults on the status quo.

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07 Apr 2017 12:25 #246156 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Fight Club
The sequel was an interesting read, and I need to read it again before I take it back to the library. The artwork by Cameron Stewart was decent in a typical Vertigo way (though this was a Dark Horse publication), but there was no effort to make Tyler, Marla, or the Narrator look like Pitt, Bonham-Carter, or Norton. In a number of places, the dialogue balloons are deliberately and mostly obscured by realistic-looking life-sized rose petals. In the scenes where the story goes meta and features Palahniuk himself, the trade volume of Fight Club 2 physically appears (for example fans holding copies of it while meeting Palahniuk), and the cover art is actually the same as the cover art of the volume that I was reading. It was very nearly as creative and challenging as the movie, though working with the same themes and characters alongside some new elements. If the movie gets five stars, the comic sequel deserves at least four stars.

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07 Apr 2017 15:14 #246167 by Not Sure
Replied by Not Sure on topic Fight Club
Fight Club is my go-to counterexample for "The book is always better than the movie".

Because it so plainly isn't in this case. The novel has "first novel" all over it. It was written in fits and starts (by grabbing time from his dull office job), and it shows.

The film does a great job of compressing the Tyler Durden speeches that appear all over the book in snippets to the iconic "Middle Children of History" bit.

It's a great story, and a good book. However, some aging time and a polish from the screenwriter made it hang together substantially better.
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07 Apr 2017 16:45 #246170 by Unicron
Replied by Unicron on topic Fight Club

Colorcrayons wrote: Fight Club, for me, is about purity. Or at least the return to it..


Oscar Wilde once wrote “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization between”. I think I understand what you mean, but in retrospect, this film’s statements on masculinity are shrouded in a glib class-war caper. There is an eff-ton of literature and film about our detachment from primal roots making us less human or men less… male, but I think it’s naïve to project purity or nobility to savagery and brutality of bygone eras. Palaniuk (and Burgess) had the understanding that when civilization collides with barbarism, barbarism overwhelms. Fincher doesn’t miss the point entirely, but I think his stylized achievements with Fight Club overshadow a climax that would have been more disquieting in the hands of a director like Haneke, Vinterberg, Peckinpah, etc.
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08 Apr 2017 11:01 #246192 by Cranberries

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