David Fincher's "Fight Club" is a post-modern envisioning of economic and cultural ennui, first and foremost. It delves deeply into the psyche of its protagonist, adeptly demonstrating his neuroses driven by a loss of purpose and identity.
Identity is where the purpose of this blog comes in. After all, as we previously discussed, the topics of this blog are all about a search for identity, in terms of external labeling and in terms of self-identification.
The film is a multi-layered process of identification, and to understand how these layers interact and create what is, in fact, an American identity crisis, we have to peel them away, one by one.
The film is quit obviously a critique of consumerism. Our narrator identifies himself in terms of what he buys; he is addicted to the IKEA catalog and buying things that, according to his interpretation, fit his personality. What sort of end table am I? He wonders. While doing this, though, he simultaneously despises the motivations that bring him there. He is doing a job that he hates in order to afford these things. What comes as a sort of psychotic break for him attracts many to him who are also discontent. To quote Emerson, "things are in the saddle, and ride mankind." (Emphasis mine.)
These malcontents seem to come from the economic service class; they are waiters, policemen, security guards, bartenders, chauffers, delivery men, etc. They too are caught in a cycle of identifying themselves in terms of their economic power, and hence are forced to consider themselves lesser. Here the film makes a strong argument against typical class distinctions; these individuals are in no way lesser; they are capable and strong, merely lost in an economic shuffle that has dealt them a poor hand. In searching for a fight against the system, they are searching in fact, not for combat, but for a sense of identity and purpose other than the one they have been given.
It seems salient here to mention that the resonance of the film here is particularly a lower class one. Part of the film's power comes in that appeal to the lower class, and bucks the traditional assumption (and what has been a part of western culture for centuries) that people are satisfied with their economic stations in life. However, it does this in a less than conventional way. They aren't seeking wealth or things, rather, they are eschewing the traditional (or at least, since the 1950's) American perspective that the things we own define us. They are opting out of the consumerist system, and searching for a different identifier.
In so doing, we as an audience to understand the film must peel back another layer of identification and film analysis, and that is the role that gender plays into this identity. In one particularly iconic scene, a male underwear model is depicted in an advertisement. The model is nearly nude, his long taut muscles taking up the height of the picture. His face bears a vacant and listless expression, one that avoids looking at the camera. The narrator asks Tyler Durden "Is that what men are supposed to look like?" The jab is obviously at a key factor of the consumerist culture: it gives a sense of identity by depicting unrealistic (and highly transigent) senses of self.
After all, the consumerist culture has to persuade purchasers by some form or another. Here, the technique demonstrated is a common one (although, due to the influx of feminism in the past few decades, we are much more aware of it when used towards women.) The idea is to give the viewer some sense of inadequacy in his or her sense of identity. A theoretical rich, straight male might see an advertisement and subconsciously say, "I am not rich enough! I need to look more rich! I am not straight enough! I need to appear more straight! I am not male enough! I must appear more male!" The unspoken narrative might be characterized thus: buy X product and you will be a REAL (man, straight, rich, cool.)
Here the idea is to prey on a crisis of gender as sense of identity. Here, the violence of the characters is seen for what it really is: gender performance. Violence and combat are traditionally male characteristics, ones that display a sense of hyper-masculinity. So an individual turns from consumerism which is giving an unsatisfactory sense of maleness (after all, no matter what one buys, there will always be further products that decry your maleness, leaving one feeling eternally inadequately male) to the violence which will make him confident in his sense of male identity.
Ultimately here the film does a disservice: while adequately critiquing the problems with consumerism on identity, particularly in terms of gender, it replaces it with something equally inadequate, that is, using violence. Case in point: many "fight clubs" sprung up around the country in response to this film, easily demonstrating that its glorification of violence is alive and well in this culture. It perpetuates the idea that "maleness" can be had through combat and body image, a hostile message to say the least.
Here we can peel back another layer by asking the question, before the consumerist and hyper-violent culture, where did sense of gender identity come from? We can introspect our way back in time and realize without the deluge of advertisements and film that we are prey to now, our first example of gender comes from our parents. So there's a psychological element at play here: without parental guidance, we have a culture that will define self in terms of external definitions. Here, the film provides a subtle but nonetheless evocative critique: both the narrator and Tyler Durden define their fathers in harsh terms. Both are seen to inadequately give direction in terms of identity. This critique is germane to the purposes of this blog as the suggestion to escape the hostile consumerist and hyper-violent culture is in terms of family dynamics. An identity crisis can have its roots in incapable parental structures, ergo, a cultural identity crisis that the film analyzes can have its roots in cultural parental structures.
Finally, for our last layer, we go back to where we began: economics. The film is, as Marx might opine, a "history of class struggles." Without that, all other disservices disappear. There is no hyper violence, as the economic failures don't force us into that role. Family problems are less prevalent, since the sense of identity isn't in crisis from economic issues. Ultimately, the self-determinism that the protagonist desperately cries out for is an economic one: with sufficient economic capacity, and a flattening of the economic super-structure, his destiny becomes his own. There is no sense of powerlessness or gender crisis because the class crisis is non-existent. He is free to explore the other avenues, no longer a wage slave. He can determine from where he gets his sense of identity, no longer forced into an economic labyrinth of consume and regret.
The film's popularity comes largely from the fact that it tells a relevant story: that of search for gender and class identity. Although the answers it provides are largely lacking, it nonetheless performs a great good in bringing this issues to light.
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