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Popular Culture Review
While Fight Club seems to only exemplify antisocial and reactionary
behaviors to its audience, the general thesis of Fincher’s work goes much
deeper. The traditional view of what it meant to be a man, complete with
aggressive and sometimes even violent traits, is no longer rewarded in
contemporary society. This perspective is problematic for men, because as both
Palahniuk and Fincher argue, “men need violence. We are very much still
animals . . . We can channel violent feelings into working hard and buying
things, but they keep popping up. We need to acknowledge that they are not bad
feelings; they are human feelings . . .” (Stein 46). Fight Club represents the
extreme, hypermasculine end of the continuum of human behavior, while the
self-help groups portrayed in the film represent a different, more feminized point
on the continuum. Palahniuk and Fincher contend that while Fight Club is an
extreme example, nevertheless, men must find ways to express their violent
feelings without being criticized and emasculated. While we acknowledge the
author’s and director’s claims, it is not our intent to endorse this perspective on
violence. Future scholars should continue to pursue this line of argument in
order to more fully understand the place of violence and aggression in human
behavior.
Fight Club represents a view of contemporary society that many will
disagree exists in the first place, and which others will condemn because of its
implications for women and consumer society at large. Though this may be the
case, the insight that the film provides into the male psyche and its commentary
about postmodern masculinity cannot be denied.
University of Nebraska-Omaha
Scott Wike and Barbara Pickering
Works Cited
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Boon, Kevin. “Men and Nostalgia for Violence: Culture and Culpability in
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club."" Journal o f Men's Studies 11 (2003):
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Brookey, Robert, and Robert Westerfelhaus. “Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain
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Chodorow, Nancy J. “The Enemy Outside: Thoughts on the Psychodynamics of
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