The Search for Male Identity within Modern
Society: A Rhetorical Analysis of David
Fincher’s F ight Club
Manuscript History: An earlier version of this paper was presented at
the Far West Popular Culture Conference, in Las Vegas, NV,
February 2004.
Postmodern man is unlike any group of individuals in contemporary
American society. For decades, middle-class, heterosexual, white males defined
the workplace and the economic infrastructure of the nation. Today, a new
generation of service industry professionals has emerged, which is no longer
characterized by the hard physical labor of blue-collar work or the financial
well-being and respect of white-collar workers. This is a generation that has no
unique place in a society that has cast aside traditional masculinity. In a movie
directed by David Fincher, which was adapted from the novel Fight Club by
Chuck Palahniuk, the very role of men is addressed in somewhat animalistic
terms. This is not a movie that encourages talking about one’s problems to
resolve issues. This is not a movie about how men can be better integrated into
society. This is not a movie that even wishes to make the audience feel
comfortable with the beliefs they hold. This movie is Fight Club, and it breaks
down all the conventions of what it is to be a man in a society that no longer has
a need for them.
When the movie was first released in 1999, a firestorm erupted
surrounding the movie’s romanticization of violence, the apparent anti-feminist
message expressed by the film’s characters, as well as the fascist tendencies that
the film’s groups espouse. One reviewer characterized the film in less than
glowing terms: "‘Fight Club is cinematic Nietzsche; Luddite revivalism; a
screaming anti-capitalist tantrum; a sucker punch in the face of reason, markets,
faith, redemption, and, well, God” (Jarvis 24).
Fight Club presents a unique, yet disturbing, perspective on the
problems faced by modem men. We will argue that Fincher’s movie has a useful
application to the real world as a method of understanding how social
organizations develop and how they define their values and ideologies, which
not only apply to founding members, but also extend into larger sociocultural
arenas. We will also argue that Fight Club represents the glorification of
masculinity as a means for men to come together around a central psychoemotional issue.
We begin with a description of the film, followed by a discussion of
other analyses of Fight Club, Next, we wilt explicate Ernest Bormann’s fantasy