st. brad pitt, edward norton, helena bonham-carter, meat loaf, jared leto
scr. jim uhls, based on a novel by chuck palahniuk
Aimed squarely at the 20-somethings of the Next generation, Fight Club is anarchy sponsored by Pepsi - commercialised rebellion, edited in the sophisticated language of hip youth advertising. Less radical than it is convoluted, the film's voice is a conservative one. It's fun to be Tyler Durden... unless it's real. The notion of opposing the American dream is negated within the film - the terrorists are one dimensional - their political statements naive fanaticism, their resistance to capitalism futile and violent. Fighting the system is portrayed as deranged, the work of impulsive, insecure males - a brotherhood of losers who find a faith to cling to. Tyler's disciples are designed to be ridiculed, they are mainstream stereotypes of revolutionaries - the alienated working class, their charismatic leader, an angry unpredictable mob, commies, anarchists, ex-cons. Usually hard to identify with, why is it different this time? Well it's super-beau Brad Pitt for starters, and his friends are so fucked-up every one of us in the audience feels a little better about ourselves (the essence of entertainment).
Importantly, the politics Tyler preaches taps into real doubts within each of us concerning our existence as consumers. There are great imbalances between first and third world countries, a growing divide between the haves and have nots, even within western society. Why do we work ourselves to death accumulating magic numbers (wealth) and consuming luxury goods made by the two thirds of humanity living below the poverty line? (Why can I even make the assumption that if you are reading this, you are in the privileged third of humanity?) On top of this, traditional identities and values are unraveling with globalism, multiculturalism and technology interpenetrating everyday life. Fight Club starts with this acknowledgment of the guilt and confusion many of us feel for participating in this exploitative, impersonal consumerism. But whilst Fight Club blows up a few buildings, takes us on a roller-coaster of revolution and self-empowerment, the film's sermon is delivered with fingers crossed, penis firmly in hand.
Fight Club is not some clever anti-establishment statement. It does not return agency to the individual, or provide answers to society's atomisation, instead it celebrates power and achievement - the very tenets of capitalism. For all his soliloquies about self-empowerment, Tyler Durden is an authoritarian dictator in search of underlings to discipline and punish. The film's only alternative to a lifetime of work, credit card debt and IKEA furniture is petulant violence and intimidation. Fight Club is not serious in its protest against capitalism's failings, it is a lifestyle product in it's own right. It seduces us with Brad Pitt starring in the wetdream of the middle class, his character liberated from the punishment (paranoia, guilt, alienation, innocents hurt) most of us associate with uninhibited desire (lust, aggression, domination). The middle class rebel is supposed to be an individual yet ironically not too individualistic. They have to be understood by their peers, accepted as a role-model. Their dissent is manufactured and illusory - they are not outside the system but are instead complicit in its machinery - a valve that releases pressure and restores equilibrium, the status quo.
Fight Club is part of this manufactured dissent, an outlet for the vague feelings of dissatisfaction, guilt and unrest of the first world's burgeoning middle classes - people who have been conditioned to compete, to build nest-eggs bigger than the GDP of small African nations, to justify their existence through material wealth, believing blindly that their society contributes to the well-being and advancement of humanity; people who occasionally feel guilt-stricken and impotent in the face of third world misery, incurable diseases, endless civil wars, environmental disasters, famines; people who feel threatened by working class resentment, and that seething mass of exploited, underpaid, overseas labour. Yes there's something wrong with this system. Deep down, we all acknowledge it (before quickly putting it out of our minds). Fight Club taps into this zeitgeist where the disparity of living standards and increasing complexity of living has lead more and more of us to question whether we're doing the right thing, whether our lives are worth living. In the words of Tyler Durden, Fight Club is seductive because it's an outlet for "people who work jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need."
But is the movie advocating or dismissing dissent? Is its gleeful violence merely releasing pressure to restore equilibrium? Dammit, YES. This movie co-opts the rationale of resistance but twists it to assert how immature, irresponsible and impossible rebelling is. Its 'violence' is virtual, leaving the real world unchanged, its audience entertained; its 'protest' is pawned off to Pepsi who's product placement is not only blatant but deeply deeply cynical; its characters are misunderstood males dressed all in black spouting motivational slogans no one takes seriously. The only female character is a manic depressive "bitch" begging to be fucked properly. Fight Club's concepts are the simplified excesses of high-school rebellion, the dialogue lifted straight out of the boys changerooms. It is seductive because it apes the youthful desire for petty rebellion - rebellion of the tawdry kind, geared towards being noticed, being popular, getting laid more often. Its revolutionary posturing is a facade for middle-class self-loathing. Like whitemen wearing blackface in the early days of film, Fight Club's stereotypes beg references to propaganda. These are anti-oxidants dressed up as free radicals to entertain all the other cells busy doing their bit for the body.
Fight Club is a confused product of America's self-obsession and cultural fragmentation. Its events reflect the increased terrorism aimed at 'the world's policeman' and richest nation, combined with the surreality of multiple personalities, non-linear time and constant night. And whilst it has witty dialogue and some exhilarating cinematography and editing, morally and politically it is a disturbingly flawed film. According to the film, capitalism is the lesser of two evils (the other evil being a typically American conflation of socialism, despotism, anarchy); and resisting it is not grounded in organised protest or grassroots activism but in random acts of terrorism. Those who resist are not intellectuals, labour unions or oppressed ethnic groups but a ragtag sect of therapy junkies and very sick men (impotent, insomniac, insane, masochistic, aggressive fratboys). The filmmakers, whatever their intentions, essentially trivialise the very real injustices faced by two thirds of humanity.
Whilst I found this the most challenging and interesting Hollywood film in awhile, it will be dated before the next decade is out, for it expresses the hesitance of a society that knows it's unjust, exploitative and tremendously rich, but is starting to listen to its detractors and question its values. Hopefully Fight Club will appear conservative to our children, who will live in societies that have cancelled third world debt, struggled to become ecologically sustainable, adapted to a point where words like 'multi-culturalism', 'political correctness' and 'feminism' are redundant, because humanity takes precedence over demographics.
eugene chew
comments? email the authorAlso in toto:
Adrian Gunadi thinks Fight Club is a deranged and inspired satire, representative of our generation.
Adam Rivett was not impressed by Fight Club's supposed cleverness.
