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Summary Papers lecture 9
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LECTURE 9Introducing fight club
Fight club is a critique on the late capitalist society and the misfortunes it
generates out of its obsessive concerns that underlie its market-driven ethos. It
is rebelling against a consumerist culture that dissolves the bonds of male
sociality and puts into place an enervating notion of male identity and agency.
It defines the violence of capitalism in terms of an attack on the traditional
notions of masculinity, and thus reinscribes white heterosexuality within a
dominant logic of stylized brutality and male bonding that appears to be
predicated on the need to denigrate, and to wage war against all that is
feminine. In this, the crisis of masculinity lies in the rise of a consumption
culture in which men are domesticated rendered passive, soft and emasculated.
Violence is narrated through the crisis of masculinity.
The film though, ends up reproducing problems they attempt to address. They
trivialize them through a stylized aesthetics that revels in irony, cynicism and
excessive violence. Violence is here reduced to acts of senseless brutality and
pathology and an indifference to human suffering. In reproducing these acts of
violence, they conclude where engaged political commentary should begin. It is
thus a form of public pedagogy, offering an opportunity to engage and
understand its politics of representation as part of a broader commentary on the
intersection of consumerism, masculinity, violence, politics and gender relations.
These kind of Hollywood movies play as a teaching machine. Such films function
as public pedagogies by articulating knowledge to effects, purposely attempting
to influence how and what knowledge and identities can be produced within a
limited range of social relations. They tend to bridge the gap between private
and public discourses, while putting into play certain ideologies and values that
resonate with broader public conversations regarding how a society views itself
and the world of power, events and politics. It shapes public imaginations.
It offers notions of agency in which white-middle class and white-working class
men are allowed to see themselves as oppressed and inadequate because their
masculinity has been compromised by and subordinated to those social and
economic spheres and needs that constitute the realm of the feminine.
What is the context in which the movie takes place? Make a link
between Katz’s discussion on the crises of masculinity, violent
masculinity and Gill’s discussion of the new man?
Contexts: the late 1990’s in the USA
- Rise of women’s status and visibility
- Divorce
- Single mother headed households: men raised by women, no male role
models
- Men growing up without scars and fighting
- Men as productive labourers: non physically demanding works
- Men as consumers: The rise of the new man
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LECTURE 9
, White heterosexual men did not fare well in the 1990’s. They were attacked by
feminists, gays, lesbians and other groups for a variety of ideological and
material offenses and they had to endure the rewriting of the meaning of
masculinity.
The shift from the industrial to the power economy has offered men fewer
meaningful occupations. As a consequence, the male body has been transformed
from an agent of production to a receptacle for consumption. These factors led to
the fact that white males had identity crises.
The modern day worker was not defined by using his body as labour to create
necessities for everyday life, but it was modelled on the young, computer-whiz
yuppie who defines his life and goals around companies, day trading and getting
rich before I’m 21 schemes, as well as conspicuous consumption of expensive
products.
As well, due to increasing uncertainty and insecurity, men had no longer easy
access to communities in which they could inhabit a form of masculinity that
defines itself in opposition to femininity.
Fight club tries to engage critically in the boredom, shallowness and emptiness of
consumer culture, redefine what it might mean for men to resist compromising
their masculinity for the product that speaks them, and explore possibilities for
creating a sense of community in which men can reclaim their virility and power.
It uses violence as a form of voyeuristic identification and a pedagogical tool. It
provides audiences with ideologically loaded contexts and mode of articulation
for legitimizing a particular understanding of masculinity and its relationship to
important issues regarding moral and civic agency, gender and politics. Violence
is treated as sport, connecting fear, pain and fatigue while revelling the illusions
of a paramilitary culture. Violence serves as a form of male bonding and
maximizes pleasure of bodies and pain.
Different types of masculinities are featured in the film. Define which
type is represented by which main character: what attributes, practices
and or behaviour are linked to what type of masculinity?
The film offers a critique to western consumer society. What are the
critiques offered? Identify the elements, fragments and quotation that
illustrate the critiques. Which type of masculinity are linked to this?
Jack
Embodies the “average man”.
Domesticated masculinity
- White collar, yuppie, non-manufactural labourer:
The Neoliberal Everyman: emasculated, repressed corporate drone whose
life is an extension of a commodified culture.
- Obeys the rules of the dominant capitalist society
- Only single-serving friends, no real friends
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LECTURE 9
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