Hello--if you would like extra credit, please visit the following link and read the article from USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-29-fight-club_x.htm
Then respond to the following thought: are the people inspired by the film, and thus responsible for starting underground Fight Clubs, understanding the true nature, message, and themes of the film?
Is the movie Fight Club really promoting violent and aggressive behaviour?
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4 comments:
Truthfully I think these men just want to be cool and be like the movie. If the movie was never made, I doubt this would be a popular thing. By putting this Brad Pitt in the movie (even though I still think it could be because he's a good actor and plays the part well), a guy that guys want to be and girls want to well you get the idea, they all think it's really cool and tough to go to a group where they can hit each other. They think it makes them the next Brad Pitt. In my opinion, it makes them look like idiots. We all do things to make ourselves more like our favorite actors but going to a fight club and being beaten up is a little too far. No one's really impressed that you hit someone in a planned fight. So I think these people just want to look cool and have lives like the movie.
However, I think the movie has a very different goal. I don't think the movie is promoting violence. I think it comes along with it since it's a majority of the movie, however, I don't think it's the movies underlying purpose. I think the fight club in the movie is about being able to release emotions in a different way. Bob, the guy in the support group, starts to find relief in the club instead of the support group. It's a different way of expressing your feelings and being able to let all your inner stress out.
I think there's also the idea of building yourself and testing your limits. Each time someone goes into a fight, I think they test themselves to see how far they can go without saying stop and how strong they are against an opponent. When our narrator, Edward Norton, and the guy Bob fight, obviously Bob is a lot larger than our narrator but he's testing himself and building himself up. After, Bob says something similar to are you hurt? And then apologizes. However, for our narrator, there's no apology needed. I think he thinks Bob was doing the favor to him.
Wow. This article was frustrating to say the least. This is what our society today has come to. "Boys have these warrior fantasies picked up from popular culture, and schools sort of force that out of them," he said. In these fantasies, "The good guys always resort to violence, and they always get the glory and the women." These guys watch a movie like Fight Club and see the blood and violence. They think it is cool and would be a good idea to start one, when in reality they miss the entire message of the movie.
The Fight Club was not started by Tyler and the narrator because they are trying to be "macho" or cool. They are not trying to score chicks or live out fantasies. They are trying to release the emotions and the pains that build up during their everyday lives. They do not advertise or brag about the club (as is demonstrated by the first two rules). They do not take anything from this Fight Club, they use it as a release and a therapeutic process.
If I was to start something similar to a fight club for me, I would probably start like an after school jam session, where musicians could just come and improvise and play whatever they wanted. That would do the same thing for me that fight club does for Tyler and the narrator.
Fight Club is not out to inspire blue-collar American's to start small scale imitations. It is about encouraging people to live a good life and to find a way to release their frustration or stress.
Sorry but as soon as I opened this link I kind of laughed at the first picture, because these guys look so hardcore with the boxing helmets, and those shorts just scream “vicious street brawlers,” as the caption calls them.
On a serious note though, while these men may think they are inspired by Fight Club, I don’t think they are carrying the essence of this fictional club at all. They are inspired and driven by what they think Fight Club is supposed to represent, but not the true meaning that takes a little more examining than I’m assuming these men have done. The first quote is what proves this to me initially. Shiyin Siou said, "When you get beat down enough, it becomes a very un-macho thing." To me, that already doesn’t grasp what Fight Club is about. It’s not about maintaining this “macho” image, it’s about letting go of everything and letting it all out, and in a sense, cleansing yourself. The more the men in Fight Club get beat down, the more enlightened and resurrected it seems they are. There’s nothing “un macho” about that, more like something honorable, in a weird way.
I’d say the closest to approaching one of the messages of this film is Gints Klimanis, but still, he is far from it. He says that, "We have to go to work every day. We're constantly told to buy things we don't need, and just for a couple hours we have the freedom to do what we want to do." This is reminiscent of what is addressed in Fight Club, about an obsession with material things, but it isn’t quite the same. Klimanis refers to this freedom as just being a little thing he chooses to have through fighting, and only fighting. Fight Club though, sends the message that by permanently ridding yourself of material issues and hitting rock bottom, partially through fighting, then you have all of the freedom to do what you want. The movie isn’t saying this is something that happens for an hour one day a week, it’s saying that this should lead to a new life, shaped by some kind of “premature enlightenment.”
Basically from this article, it’s apparent that these men pride themselves in feeling macho, getting glory, and also women. Fight Club is nothing about that, it’s very unglamorous, and it isn’t even about who wins the fight, it’s about what each person gets out of it. There’s no glory or reward for these fights, other than something you then discover inside yourself. So these posers who try to start fight clubs, even if they say they want to release feelings, are looking for some sort of physical reward. Maybe if they don’t get the woman, they’ll stand a bit taller, or dress differently, but they still won’t be close to reaching the center of any waves. The fighters in Fight Club though, are just searching for something in themselves that stops them from being these “insomniacs” who never really live life.
I don’t think that one movie is responsible for promoting this kind of brutal behavior. This issue relates to question of the extent that any media promotes certain behavior. People often say that violent video games or movies or whatever teach kids to kill, and to all of these I say that’s bull. With Fight Club, the issue of violent and aggressive behavior is addressed, but never looked upon as a simple solution or the only way to go about things, because clearly it’s a difficult lifestyle these men live. Same with violent video games, they show things that are currently going on, and while I don’t think they serve any positive influence whatsoever, we cannot blame them for our behaviors and excuse ourselves. I know for a fact that I could play plenty of shooting games whatever they are, since I don’t know specific names of any, and I would never be inclined to beat the crap out of someone, or kill them. That’s because I have enough of a rational mind and more of a moral compass than others that may play these video games, so it all depends on the person, and cannot be blamed on the media alone.
Fight Club isn’t even really about the violence, I mean it seems like it is, but that’s not what gets you, what gets you are the reasons behind it. It’s very likely that anyone who tries to mimic this movie by committing some kind of violent act, doesn’t realize they are far from the true nature of this movie. Fight Club is just as much about self discovery, and accepting lows in your life, while stripping yourself of material comforts, than it is about the fighting that’s the way these things get realized. Since all of that isn’t apparent when you look at a man who just had the crap beat out of him, then people who don’t truly want to grasp the meaning cannot get passed their fascination with that bloodied man, just like the men in these underground clubs can’t. These men aren’t like martyrs for a cause, more like products of a society built around what we believe society is telling us.
The debate of whether violence in the media inspires violence in realty is was that has been going on for a long time. I think at the root of it is a fundamental question - does art imitate life? Or does life imitate art?
The answer is not a simple yes or no -- art both reflects and manipulates society. All of the people who have commented on this agree with director David Fincher that the main message of Fight Club is not about violence. Yet it cannot be argued that the film is heavily influenced by violence, and as the article shows it has influence violence in its wake. No matter how much an artist, author, or director might wish for his art to be interpreted, as soon as he puts it out in the public arena he leaves it completely open to be viewed however the masses see fit.
While I do not personally view this movie as a call to violence, someone else might.
So what is the solution? Censorship -- the most extreme route -- is something I view as profoundly un-American and infringes on freedom of expression. Movie makers could do a better job about how violence is portrayed in their films. Too often fights and gore are just used for the shock factor, and not to promote an actual message. Yet when you start telling a director when and where he or she should use violence, it is once again limiting freedom of expression and making a judgment call about someone else's art.
Therefore, I think any kind of solution has to come from the perceivers, not the creators of the art. Ironically, one of the biggest parts of the issue is something that Tyler preaches about: our society's mass devotion to the media. Too many of us worship "movie gods and rock stars," and believe that engaging in the actions of their on-screen personas will somehow make us more like them. This is not just seen in violent actions; we all see it every day in high school in the clothes people wear, the ways people act, who people choose to associate themselves with.
This is a fairly obvious point, but I also think that violence in America is not caused by the media alone. There are a myriad of reasons that lead to incidents like Columbine and the shootings that happed at several universities this winter. Family environment, gun-control laws, and psychological issues are just a few of the many other factors involved.
Ultimately, though, I don't believe there is an solution to eliminating the effect that the media has on violence. Perhaps this is really cynical, or perhaps I am just too immersed in American culture. Yet as long as we live in a society that allows almost total freedom of expression, there will be extremists who use that to the society's disadvantage. While this might sound harsh, I would much rather live with this freedom and the problem with violence that we currently have rather than a totalitarian system that cracked down on violence at the expense of stifling creative thought.
I found an interesting interview with David Fincher about this subject. Check it out if you're interested.
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