Topic 3 – Film & Ideology – FIGHT CLUB (David Fincher, USA 1999)
Ideology is “the body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system” (Oxford Dictionary). Self-destruction, purpose, reality, perception, control, masculinity, violence and chaos are all given thorough examination through the interwoven journey’s of the main characters in the film. Fight Club is a film that challenges these ideological underpinnings to which our society is founded upon. It questions the audience’s view of reality, and brings forth a culture of somewhat misguided hope that through an altered perception, anything is possible.
Fight Club by David Fincher, is one of only four films made by the director whose credits include:
- Alien3 (1992, Twentieth Century Fox)
- Se7en (1996, New Line Cinema)
- The Game (1997, PolyGram)
- Fight Club (1999, Twentieth Century Fox)
All four films could fit into the category of dark thriller, even though their styles range from sci-fi, through film noir and mystery, to surrealism. All his films tend to exist within a “realm of darkness” (Brozy, 1999-2000:14) "Rarely is there a scene in the daytime that isn't under lit, or blackened by a thunderstorm. Fincher once said that he believes in making movies that scar. He reaches out to the kid in all of us--afraid of the dark and all the strange and despicable things that occur at night. Whether it’s through an alien that lurks in the shadows, a serial killer that preaches the seven deadly sins through murder, the paranoia of having your life become a treacherous game, or the schizophrenia in the mind's point-break, Fincher's movies mess with your sanity, question reality, and then make you fear for both." (Brozy, 1999-2000:15).
David Fincher directed Fight Club in 1999. It was released at a time where the world and specifically America, were coming to grips with several shooting atrocities. The film focuses on the life of a typical everyday American, enjoying the fruits of the American dream, an insomniac slave to his IKEA possessions, obsessed with material gain, the narrator (Edward Norton). “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy s*** we don't need”. (Fight Club, 1999). He can’t sleep; and often laments “with insomnia, you’re never really asleep; you’re never really awake” (Fight Club, 1999). Describing the way many of us live by going from one thing to the next, never really having any real focus or goal. He uses incurable disease and post-operation support-groups to find sleep, finding haven in the pain and suffering of others, using it as a tool to his own emotional release. He is disrupted at these meetings by the constant appearance of Marla Singer (Helena Bonham-Carter), another faker, someone also there under false-pretences, but to which rile strong notions of hypocrisy "...Marla, the big tourist... her lie reflected my lie, and suddenly I felt nothing ... I couldn't cry, so once again, I couldn't sleep.” (Fight Club, 1999). Being unable to feed his weekly addiction he is lost again, and it is at this point and specifically on his latest plane flight that things start to change. This journey is different because his normally present single-serving friends (all plane and hotel services cater for one single person) are gone. In their place he therefore imagines his perfect single-serving friend, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Tyler is the person the narrator wishes he could be and whom quickly becomes the centre of the narrator's life, the catalyst for his life-style change. The path to the narrator's eventual “enlightenment” takes him through the sequential creations of Fight Club, and Project Mayhem. All the while he believes Tyler to be a real person – the co-creator and confidant of Fight Club and its eventual evolvement. Little by little, his alter-ego Tyler begins to exert more control over the narrator's life, forming Project Mayhem without the narrator's own awareness. The moment of realisation for the narrator’s “conscious” self comes when he tries to find Tyler, moving from state to state all the time coming closer to the realisation that he is Tyler Durden. The resulting fight between them ends with his subconscious creation physically duelling his initially weaker conscious self. Only in the dying stages of the film does he realise that he is in control of his mind and that he holds the true power. Though unlike most films, once the epiphany is realised, he is unable to stop the “mayhem” of the project ensuing, providing a powerful commentary on the control and chaos of modern life.
