Fight Club, Hypermasculinity and Misogyny Essay - 1032 Words

You are not your bank account. You are not the clothes you wear. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your bowel cancer. You are not your Grande latte. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis--Tyler Durden, Fight Club In 1996, Chuck Palahniuk published his first novel, Fight Club. On the surface it can is seen as a backlash to the feminization of men, and a celebration of violence for violence sake. But what is it really about? Fight Club is a protest against not the feminization of the western male, but against men themselves. (Audio track three on the special edition DVD featuring author Chuck Palahniuk and screenwriter Jim Uhls is fantastic and can help the reader understand the motivations of†¦show more content†¦The violence that he creates with fight club is libertarian in a sense that it is out of the way, between two consenting adults, but also a throwback to ritual combat. One man runs as a `chief figure who announces and enforces the rules fight club. During one scene, Jack takes note of this and compares the chanting of the crowd to a Pentecostal service, the crowd speaking in tongues. With the condemnation of many of societys more violent activities, i.e., boxing, action films, et cetera, fight clubs slippery slope argument that men want violence in their lives seems to make sense. Something IS missing in our lives, something that has always been there but is disappearing as the decline of western civilization continues. Tyler addresses this problem on the public bus, pointing out a Calvin Klein ad and asking if that is what a man is. Should we buy what Madison Avenue tells us what to be? For thousands of years man has been the provider of families, the soldier, the knight, and the hero that saved the princess, the intrepid explorer. Fight Club argues that men should return to that state, but the blame is not placed on women, indiviuals, society or even a government. The blame for the emasculation of the male is placed on capitalism. Fight Club evolves (or, it could be argued, devolves) into Project Mayhem. The project aims not to harm anyone just things, corporate art, entities, and