Fight Club and the Masculinity Crisis
In this past week, I watched Fight Club, a 1999 film directed by David Fincher. While it was an engaging watch (that I would definitely recommend checking out), the themes of the movie reminded me a lot of our discussions about masculinity in this class. I won't delve into the entire plot to avoid major spoilers, but the essential premise is this: the movie follows an unnamed (often referred to as "the narrator") white collar, Kafka-esque, tired office worker, with no purpose or direction to his life, and living with crippling insomnia. His materialistic, consumerism lifestyle is extremely monotonous, until he meets an interesting man named Tyler Durden on a business trip flight. After the narrator's apartment blows up from unknown causes, he goes to live with Tyler, who pushes him to "hit rock bottom," and to let go of the materialistic life, saying to him, "Once you let go of everything, you can do anything." The two of them start a fight club, ...