Fight Club - The Movie
Watching movies for class rocks.
From the opening credits, Fight Club alludes to the unrepresentable. As the names spin off into gaseous clouds, what appears to be the universe swirls within the biologic make-up of Edward Norton’s character, yet one would think that the character would exist somewhere within the Universe. So, where does the Universe begin or end? Does it start with human perception or is human perception a byproduct of the Universe? Ooooh, the questions stew already.
In the opening scene, perspective shifts from within Norton’s character’s body, through the gun, and into Pitt’s character’s point of view. Perspective then leaves both characters (or halves of one character) and the camera travels out of body altogether. Now the point of view becomes that of the movie viewers’ as we get a voyeuristic view of the explosives below the city. Throughout the morphing POV, we never fully know where one begins and another ends.
Cut to Bob’s boobs. Is he still a man with no balls and full breasts? What essentially makes a man “manly” if not the biological pieces and parts? Can comfort be derived from any breasts but a mother’s or lover’s? Norton says yes.
Then we back up. The beginning of the movie isn’t the beginning as we traditionally know it. “Nothing is real… Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.” And here, Baudrillard. Really, need I say more? Norton is a copy of himself on many levels. Stuck in the marketing galaxy, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” What else does?
Playing Cornelius and other “characters” so he can cry and sleep like a baby, where does Norton’s character end and his others begin? He dies and is reborn with each new meeting. But who dies and who is reborn? Cornelius, Tyler Durden?
Pitt’s image flashes in several scenes, spliced into a single frame at the hospital, the testicular cancer meeting, when Marla walks off supposedly forever. Later, we learn that Tyler splices frames between reels at the theater. Does he create himself then? Has Norton’s character created him?
Do events shape us or do we shape them? Do we own things or do they own us? Half asleep, half awake… Reality enters dreams, dream enters reality… Half alive, half dead… Not quite whole but not fully cleaved in half… Somewhere between life and death lies meaning.
“It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.”
“First rule of Fight Club? You do not talk about Fight Club.”
Coincidentally, that’s the second rule too.
“It wasn’t about words.”
We’re back to the failure of language again. Instead, the sublime is the pleasure derived from the pain of pummeling and being pummeled.
“Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.”
“This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
The car wreck: All I could think of were the Futurists. Historically, not just in the movie, a car launches into a ditch and gives birth to four survivors who create a Modern movement infatuated with technology, speed and chaos.
“Let go of everything you think you know about life…”
You can’t explain the unexplainable, sublime. Familiar themes akin to Wnnterson’s Written on the Body… Marla: Love as invasive. Love as pure desire. Love as a bridesmaid dress loved for only one day and then thrown aside. Narrating organs in books left by a recluse. Cancer of the prostrate will kill. Combination of form: Movie - documentary - porn - and back again. Characters talk to themselves on screen, then they turn to the audience and talk to … ME! I have just become the object of two subjects. How beautifully postmodern.
Capitalism: The democratization of art becomes public taste governed by money. To free our identity from being defined by our stuff and our menial jobs that make us slaves to purchasing more stuff, Capitalism must be destroyed.
Then the biggie: Dualing subjects. One fights the other for power. Can there ever be two, particularly when they share one body? According to the smoking gun, the answer is no.
I could continue with the play-by-play but we’re all watching the same thing. Suffice it to say, I loved this movie the first two times I saw it. I have a renewed appreciation this third time. Now excuse me while I retire the keyboard and get back to the milk and cookies.
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Kim, you are absolutely correct in that there are so many things to address here, it’s hard to know where to begin. One thing you discussed that really caught my attention was the comment on booby Bob. You ask if comfort can be derrived from breasts that belong to another besides a mother or a lover. While this is a very interesting idea, I believe that it is just another metanarrative that refers to the struggle of masculinity in contemporary culture. It is not a floating question, since, as you state, there is an answer. So, boobs, combat, and loosing hope are the answers to the looming problem of masculinity. So, here we have re-examination of life, problem, answer, solution, reality. Modernism.
[...] already given my raw reaction to Fight Club in a previous post, I wanted to share the following in reference to the car accident [...]
I never thought about the beginning being postmodern until you described it the way you did. There was a lot like you said dualing subjects, Marla, the fight club and the project mahem.
“What essentially makes a man “manly” if not the biological pieces and parts?” I dealt with masculinity in my own post, but mostly in reference to how it deals with Marla. However, the movie suggests that biological pieces are not the (only) source of masculinity: because Bob is “still a man” and because the narrator, who has no testicular cancer, is not considered a “man” until he is the leader of Fight Club/Project Mayhem. Then at the end of the movie, he is a “whole man” because (I believe) he and Tyler merge and that his feminine side is now controlled and exists outside of himself in Marla. There is definitely conflicting ideas of masculinity in this movie.
PS: I loved your comments about the start of the movie.
[...] - Thinking 2007.09.14 Where the Story Starts 2007.09.17 Post Modo Condition 2007.09.19 Fight Club - The Movie 2007.09.20 Futurism in Fight Club (add-on to previous post) 2007.09.25 Why Jameson’s Piece [...]