Post #6 Neo-Marxist Perspective of Fight Club

When considering breaking the first rule of the world’s most popular club it has to be for a good reason. A better reason might be found but for today doing a Neo-Marxist analysis of “Fight Club” (1999) directed by David Fincher seems appropriate. The movie, which follows an unnamed narrator (Ed Norton) and the ever charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) as they delve deep into the sexual and violent world of fight club, which is one they have created for themselves to become fully realized and self-actualized men.

This journey that the characters are traveling down sees Tyler Durden’s mission to destroy the modern world as it has made men soft and unable to achieve anything through the trappings of materialism and polite society. His message is appealing and garners a global underground following that in turn becomes a terrorist network with Durden at the head.

This movie has a lot to say about what it means to be a man and how that image can impact you from the beginning. The hegemony of manliness is explored directly and from the beginning thanks to the support groups that Ed Norton’s character is attending in the beginning to cure his insomnia. This is where a character named Bob is introduced, Bob is a man who is suffering from testicular cancer and was once a well-respected bodybuilder who is feeling emasculated due to his ailment and is no longer in his prime but has let himself go due to it. Here the movie comments on the hegemonic idea of manhood within western culture. Someone who is muscular, stoic, and does not confront his emotional side. The movie proceeds state two things, the first is that the hegemonic idea of manhood as just described is the ideal state of being and that through joining Fight Club you can attain this goal. The second is that the hegemonic ideal that is being supported through the media of 1999 is one of a weak man that should be shunned. This dichotomy is challenged time and time again throughout the movie as Ed Norton’s character struggles to attain the fight clubs ideal version of manliness but his best and most heroic moments are when he embraces his more sensitive side, such as when Bob is brought back to the house dead and Ed Norton has an extremely emotional reaction to his death and even buries him which is strictly against the rules of handling a fallen comrade within Fight Club. This break down of one supported hegemony, that of manliness, is a key part within the story of Fight Club and goes on to impact Ed Norton’s later realization that himself and Tyler Durden are actually the same person. This dual personality of the meek and mild man vs. the suave, sexy, and violent Tyler Durden encapsulates the movie’s commentary about male gender roles.

The film also has another hegemonic block that it wrangles itself with. The consumerism that is ever-present throughout the film is front and center during the dramatic climax of the movie when the goals of Tyler Durden are reached and the financial institutions that are housing everyone’s debt are destroyed globally. The beginning of the film sees Ed Norton in a constant cycle of buying new items for his apartment only to replace them with the next issues new thing. This is only stopped once Tyler Durden, the man who is not beholden to society’s niceties and ideals comes into play and devalues all those things that Ed Norton cares about to the point where he blows it up. Tyler Durden is also shown to live in squalor and doesn’t care for any amenity. This is juxtaposed with Tyler’s seeming success as a person. He wants and needs nothing but is “better off” because of his refusal to take part in the hegemonic consumerism that Norton’s character is. Durden wants everyone to break free of the consumerist bullshit as he calls it in order to be free, hence his plan to violently wipe out all debt owed by the common man. By breaking this hegemony Durden knows that chaos will ensue and people will get hurt and die but through this baptism of fire a stronger world will take its place. Durden wishes to break the standard hegemony with one where survival of the fittest is the rule of law. His approach and handling of the situation is barbaric at best, and evil at worst. The new world order that he wishes to rush in.

Now knowing which hegemonies the movie wishes to support and claim are superior it is clear that Fight Club envisions a world where men, and only men, are seen as superior and reach that ideal state of being. Strong, stoic, and violent. A world that is also devoid of the trappings and debt of money and instead focuses on the raw product or service that one can provide in order to support the violent lifestyles that Durden claims to be better. The movie throws out the safe and comfortable world in favor of one that is wrought with hardships but at least hardships that are of their own doing. Durden fails to realize by dismantling the hegemony this way he opens the world up to a lot more violence than he or anyone else is ready for and the ensuing chaos will rip people apart more than it will tough their skin.