An analysis of the film Fight Club

Fight Club is a multi-layered film with many subplots and multiple themes. Fincher delves into such topics as consumerism, the feminization of society, manipulation, cultism, fascism, and even the psychosemantics of the human id and ego. Primarily, it is a film that surrealistically describes the status of the American male at the end of the 20th century: disenchanted, unfulfilled, castrated and looking for a way out. It depicts how consumerist males have been emasculated by their modern life styles, by a feminized consumer culture that places more worth

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It is by no chance that our Narrator is not given a name: he is the Everyman of the 90s, "a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct" (Fight Club) with an apartment that owns him more than he owns it. In Fight Club it is essential, not only to comment ironically on the action, but also to raise the idea that our narrator may indeed be completely unreliable. There is a consistent tone running through all his films which could perhaps be characterized as bleak. The Narrator's way of living like a sleepwalker is certainly no way to live a fulfilling life, but Tyler's Project Mayhem group is no better. At one point, our narrator explains how reel changes work, and how this enables Tyler to insert a single frame of porn into family movies.

When he arrives back at his apartment building, he discovers his apartment on fire.

Fincher works in the nether regions of the color spectrum, preferring blacks, grays and other muted colors. Unlike the Narrator, she attends support group meetings purely for the voyeuristic entertainment value. Violence, just like therapy groups and other various drugs is addictive and it quickly leads to disturbing acts of terrorism. The film ends with a single frame shot of porn which suggest that it is actually being projected by Tyler himself. Their yin yang dynamic is also symbolized by the Narrator's IKEA table. Tyler is the image of male power, literally the phallus, while the Narrator, the ego, struggles to control the socially unacceptable impulses.

Much criticism has been made about the film, especially that it glorifies violence (Ebert, "Fight Club", http://www.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 1552
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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