Street fighting, testosterone, and sex: Fight Club review and analysis

Fight Club is a 1999 psychological action thriller by director David Fincher starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meatloaf, and Jared Leto. 

The film follows a recall specialist whose existence is defined by materialism and male support groups, particularly one for men with testicular cancer. Unfortunately, Cornelius--the film’s protagonist--has a hard time finding a group that's exclusively for men as he is followed from club to club by a woman named Marla Singer whom he strikes a deal with to not attend the same clubs on the same day. She agrees but the fact that she's always a day behind him makes Cornelius’ anxiety worse until a chance meeting with a soap salesman changes his life. The film is based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The film is produced by Art Linson, Ceán Chaffin, and Ross Grayson Bell; the screenplay is by Jim Uhls; the cinematography is by Jeff Cronenweth; the editing is by James Haygood; and the music is by the Dust Brothers. Though Fight Club didn’t win any awards, it was controversial, receiving praise from Roger Ebert and criticism from Time Magazine that described the film as “sensory overload.”

Plot summary

Fight Club begins with the narrator describing his daily life which is defined by both routine and the things that fill his apartment. His name is Cornelius and he works as a recall specialist. His job is to help automobile companies select the cheaper option between recalling defective automobiles or settling claims. Cornelius attends male support groups on a regular basis. At random times when he feels bullied by his boss or other external pressures, a schism opens and shows him a glimpse of his ideal self.

But Cornelius’s main problem is a woman named Marla Singer who gets a kick out of attending all of his support groups, even his support group for men with testicular cancer. One day, Cornelius meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden on a commuter flight. Tyler gives Cornelius a business card which Cornelius doesn’t intend on using until he comes home one day to find his life destroyed. A gas leak in his apartment blows up everything he owns. Cornelius is heartbroken and calls Tyler Durden to pour out his pain and Tyler invites him to live with him in a dilapidated house on the edge of town. But Cornelius still longs for the life of Starbucks lattes, designer socks, and IKEA furniture. But on the day that Tyler Durden invites Cornelius to punch him in the jaw and Tyler returns the favor, Cornelius awakens to a new form of zen that makes him forget his former cares. To help other men awaken, Tyler and Cornelius create their own support group. Fight Club grows underground and undetected, recruiting men of all ages and races from menial jobs. Everything goes fine in the beginning before Tyler decides to blow it all up by expanding Fight Club into other cities and turning it into a franchise.

Themes

Cornelius suffers from insomnia and schizophrenia. At times of stress and pressure to conform, he sees a flash, unaware that his ideal self is rebelling against the carefully ordered world of his superego or what he consciously believes himself to be.
The men at the male testicular cancer meeting are emasculated and on their way to becoming women in a society that has pressured them into being insecure with themselves symbolized by Bob, the champion bodybuilder who has developed women’s breasts.

Cornelius dislikes Marla Singer because she reminds him that he and his male counterparts are becoming women. Marla is looking for a man, which is why she does not join Fight Club and starts dating Tyler who, to her--as he does to Cornelius--represents the ideal man.

The Dildo

Male virility is equivalent to manhood and this is why Cornelius and other men attend the support group for men with testicular cancer, because they feel emasculated. Tyler works in the theater of Cornelius’s mind, occasionally interrupting his scripted life with an image of his version of the ideal man. This penis that Tyler sneaks into the film reel is also the metaphor for Cornelius’ ideal self.

You’ll notice that in the beginning of the film, Tyler appears as a flash out of Cornelius subconsciousness, blinking in and out just like the penis that Tyler sneaks into the films at the theater where he works. The masculine symbolism is also reinforced when Tyler goes over to Marla’s place and stands by the dildo on her dresser, which is intentionally placed there to be compared to him. This is why she tells Durden when he sees it that it’s no threat to him. She had been following Cornelius from group to group in search of a man that the dildo represents and this is why she never joins Fight Club.

Homoeroticism

Cornelius sees Tyler hugging a member named Angel Face. In a fight match, Cornelius acts out his jealousy by disfiguring Angel Face.

Cornelius and Tyler’s relationship is homoerotic throughout the film but in this scene in particular. When Cornelius sees Tyler taunting him with Angel Face who is younger and almost a virgin as a new member of the club, Cornelius is inflamed and gets back at Tyler by messing up Angel’s face. Afterwards, he tells Tyler that he just wanted to “destroy something beautiful.” On another level, destroying something beautiful also means that Cornelius wants to change Fight Club into a franchise.

In the car scene, we again see a homoerotic verbal exchange between Cornelius and Tyler who, like a man and his wife in a dysfunctional relationship, argue in front of their children being the 2 Project Mayhem members in the back seat. In this scene, Cornelius’ psyche reverts to his childhood when he saw his own parents argue. Other symbols in this scene are the rain and darkness, representing the unknown; the center line in the road represents the norms of society and the steering wheel represents the tug-of-war between Cornelius’s ego and superego which wants to control everything and stay within those norms. He also wants to control Durden and Fight Club but Durden--the id--is unrestricted and he lets go of the steering wheel representing the letting go of Fight Club and allowing it to deviate into anarchy, which is symbolized as both the car going off the road and crashing in a ditch and when Cornelius “lets go” in his fight match with Angel Face.

Tyler abandons Cornelius

Tyler leaves Cornelius and Project Mayhem, the group they started together. Cornelius wakes up to a house full of Fight-Clubbers making bombs. Marla drops by to see Tyler and Cornelius tells her that he’s abandoned both of them.

Cornelius and Tyler split apart from each other. Before, they found common ground with Fight Club but once the club escalates to corporate vandalism and terrorism, Cornelius’s superego takes over again. The difference between the beginning and end of the film is that in the beginning Cornelius wasn’t aware of Tyler’s existence. Now, Cornelius knows that Tyler exists and is in denial that he and Tyler are the same person.

Cornelius finds Tyler’s plane ticket receipts and flies from city to city. But Tyler is always a step ahead of him setting up franchises in every city and building an army. Every guy in every city refer to Cornelius as sir like they’ve already met before. Finally, a bartender in a neck brace addresses Cornelius as Tyler Durden. Tyler appears in Cornelius’ hotel room and breaks the news to him--they are the same person.
This scene and ensuing scenes shows Cornelius getting past denial and the ensuing struggle between his superego and his id, Tyler Durden.

Wrap

When I look at Fight Club, I see a lot of other films, starting with the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I also see Dead Ringers, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and even Gaspar’s Noe’s 2002 film Irreversible. The film a lot of people compare it with is A Clockwork Orange. I can even see some Lolita in Fight Club in regard to the fact that Humbert and Cornelius both deal with an inner conflict.

I can remember when Fight Club came out and all the hype around it as being a film about fighting. That fact that the film was marketed to the same WWE demographic didn’t grab me. And then when Fight Clubs began popping up around the country and all these backyard fight matches started popping up on Youtube I didn’t think anything about the movie, I just figured that it was a fad. Once I found out that Fight Club’s director was David Fincher--who’d directed Seven and The Game which I liked--I check out Fight Club and it became 1 of my favorite films.

What I really like about the film is how it combines all of these deep concepts like materialism, male impotency and guys empowering themselves by learning how to fight. This film is very graphic and not for everybody. I wouldn’t call this a date film but I wouldn’t call this strictly a guy film, either. There’s a lot of stuff going on underneath the fighting matches that are universal. Still 1 of David Fincher’s best film.