There is a general feeling among movie critics and cinephiles that modern cinema has become too watered down and mild in an effort to appeal to the broadest audiences possible and not offend anyone. In the past, Hollywood studios were much more willing to make mainstream movies that risked provoking outrage from the public. One movie that did so in spades was 1999’s Fight Club starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.
Helmed with an uncompromising clarity of vision by director David Fincher, Fight Club was a violent, profane, bleakly satirical take on ’90s consumer culture and the disenfranchised generation of middle America entering into adulthood at the time. The movie caused a sensation upon release for all the wrong reasons, even getting heavily censored in some places for its incendiary content. Yet over time Fight Club has gathered a passionate global following and is today regarded as a cult classic masterpiece. Let’s take a look at whether the themes and ideas of Fight Club hold up more than two decades later.
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Rage Against the Machine
20th Century Studios
The reason Fight Club got so much negative press upon release was that its main storyline seemed to be teaching all the wrong lessons to audiences. The movie follows an unnamed protagonist who works as an automobile recall specialist. Deeply unhappy with his unfulfilling life despite having plenty of money and a nice apartment filled with every modern convenience, the protagonist suffers from insomnia and a general feeling of emptiness in his life.
He finally finds a purpose after meeting the intensely charismatic Tyler Durden. Together, Tyler and the protagonist start a club where similarly lost and aimless men can beat the stuffing out of each other to feel alive in the moment. Soon the club devolves into something more dangerous, as Tyler secretly plots to destroy multiple buildings using homemade bombs in a misguided revolutionary act to level the playing field between the rich and poor of society.
Is Fight Club Sexist or a Deconstruction of Toxic Masculinity?
Many if not all of the main male characters of Fight Club exhibit traits of toxic masculinity towards each other and the rest of society. The members of Fight Club view violence as a way to find meaning and respect in life. They worship Tyler as the alpha male of the pack, and are willing to become domestic terrorists after being brainwashed into joining his cause at the expense of their own personal identities.
Tyler himself is a charming but sociopathic antihero. He treats the movie’s female lead Marla with little consideration beyond sleeping with her. Tyler also looks down on others weaker than him with disdain and has no problem with committing whole-scale destruction out of a twisted philosophy that values ideas over people, even his own followers. Many of Tyler’s ideas and quotes from the movie and the book it was based on have been co-opted by modern internet groups that celebrate toxic masculinity.
Disturbing and Controversial Scenes in Fight Club
Apart from its main theme of alienation and violence, Fight Club contains many visual moments that would come with a trigger warning in modern times. Like the scene where the unnamed protagonist loses himself in a mental haze during a Fight Club meeting and brutally keeps punching a fellow member well past the point where the latter has lost the fight and is lying bloodied and inert on the ground.
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There is also the copious amounts of profanity that every main character spews generously and frequently. Tyler himself is responsible for many of the movie’s worst scenes, like relieving himself into a bowl of soup that is waiting to be ordered at a fancy restaurant, or the running gag of a male genitalia popping up on screen for a few seconds.
Is Fight Club Too Much for Modern Audiences?
Warner Bros.
The previously mentioned facts are the main reasons why Fight Club caused so much controversy when the film was first released. But with the passage of a few years, audiences were able to appreciate that the movie was not a worshipful ode to male-on-male violence, but rather it had something important and relevant to say about the state of the disenfranchised in society.
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In this aspect, Fight Club shares a startling similarity with 2019’s Joker. Just like Fight Club, Joker was initially lambasted by critics for focusing on “white male rage.” But after the film was released audiences saw that its story was not about celebrating violence and anger, but talking about the poor and mentally ill members of society who feel abandoned by the world and resort to desperate measures to feel alive and valued.
Fight Club Is Still Culturally Relevant
In the hands of lesser talent, Fight Club could have easily been a schlocky, cheaply provocative gore-fest with nothing important to say. But the world created by David Fincher and ably populated by a talented cast led by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton goes much deeper than that. Sure, Fight Club contains many shocking and disturbing moments, but they are always in service of a larger point the movie wants to make about the dangers of violence and a self-centered worldview.
In that sense Fight Club is a much more responsible action movie than so many modern blockbusters where the act of shooting or killing innumerable henchmen is treated as something the hero does all the time just to look cool and badass. It’s okay to not like Fight Club’s message, or how it chooses to convey that message, but there is no denying the impact the movie has had on generations of fans trying to search for meaning in their own lives.
