User:Erik/Interpretations of the film Fight Club
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Interpretations of the film Fight Club by academic studies have included themes of masculinity and violence.
From Curt:
Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk was a graduate of The Landmark Forum, or "The Forum", for short, and this later influenced his work.[1][2][3] In his review of the film adaptation of the book, Roger Ebert likened the character Tyler Durden to Werner Erhard.[4]. Ebert wrote that Tyler Durden was: "..a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor."[4] Fight Club film producer Ross Grayson Bell believes that his "creative synchronicity" with writer Palahniuk was due to their shared experience of attending The Forum.[3]
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[edit] Critical analysis
[edit] Usage of DVD format to avoid homosexual references
The DVD for Fight Club has been cited as an example in which filmmakers, by using the DVD's bonus features element, are able to manipulate audiences toward a specific interpretation of the film. Fight Club blurs the line between primary sources and secondary sources by presenting "extra-text materials" in support of auteur theory, among others. The DVD format provides an interactive experience by exploring the bonus features on the DVD for Fight Club, "investing the viewer with a greater (perceived) sense of agency". In an example of this, reviewers of the DVD referenced commentary from the filmmakers in order to refute negative reviews from those who viewed Fight Club only during its theatrical release.[5]
Fight Club touches on elements of homoeroticism, depicting the male narrator's masculinity internal crisis stemming from an absent father, leading the narrator to form a relationship with another solitary man, Tyler Durden. This male/male relationship is portrayed as narcissistic and calamitous, with its consequent disintegration forcing the narrator into another relationship, this time with a woman, Marla Singer.
The violence in the film's fights could be interpreted as a method to relieve homoerotic tension. The way in which the bonus features of the DVD are presented may avoid the translation of a homoerotic perspective of the film by presenting a heteronormative facade. Crew members of the film that took part in the commentary section on the DVD all seem to share the perspective that the opinion of director David Fincher and the primary actors should be paramount.
[edit] References
- Brookey, Robert Alan; Robert Westerfelhaus (March 2002). "Hiding homoeroticism in plain view: the Fight Club DVD as digital closet". Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (1): 21-43. doi: .
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- Printed, but not yet read
- Diken, Bülent; Carsten Bagge Laustsen. "Enjoy Your Fight! - Fight Club as a Symptom of the Network Society". Journal for Cultural Research 6 (4): 349-367. doi: .
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- Have read
- Friday, Krister (November 2003). ""A Generation of Men Without History": Fight Club, Masculinity, and the Historical Symptom". Postmodern Culture 13 (3).
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- Printed, but not yet read
- Deacy, Christopher (January 2002). "Integration and Rebirth through Confrontation: Fight Club and American Beauty as Contemporary Religious Parables". Journal of Contemporary Religion 17 (1): 61-73. doi: .
- Palladino, P.; T. Young (April 2003). "Fight Club and the World Trade Center: On Metaphor, Scale, and the Spatio-temporal (Dis)location of Violence". Journal for Cultural Research 7 (2): 195-218.
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- Have read
- Tuss, Alex (Winter 2004). "Masculine Identity and Success: A Critical Analysis of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club". The Journal of Men's Studies 12 (2): 93-102.
- Gronstad, Asbjorn (Fall 2003). "One-Dimensional Men: "Fight Club" and the Poetics of the Body". Film Criticism 28 (1): 1-23.
- Dussere, Erik (Fall 2006). "Out of the Past, Into the Supermarket CONSUMING FILM NOIR". Film Quarterly 60 (1): 16-27.
- Eder, Jens (June 2006). "Ways of Being Close to Characters". Film Studies 8 (0): 68-80.
- Whitehouse, Glenn (September 2004). "Unimaginable Variations: Christian Responsibility in the Cinema of Broken Identity". Literature and Theology 18 (3): 321-350. doi: .
- Smith, Gavin (Sept/Oct 1999). "Inside out". Film Comment 35 (5): 58-65.
- Wilson, George (Winter 2006). "Transparency and Twist in Narrative Fiction Film". Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism 64 (1): 81-95. doi: .
- Tripp, Daniel (April to June 2005). ""Wake Up!": Narratives of Masculine Epiphany in Millennial Cinema". Quarterly Review of Film & Video 22 (2): 181-188. doi: .
- Thompson, Stacy (Winter 2004). "Punk Cinema". Cinema Journal 43 (2): 47-66.
- McCullough, John (Winter 2005). "Tedium and torture: Fight Club, globalization and professionals in crisis". CineAction: 44-53.
- Trifonova, Temenuga (Winter 2002). "Time and point of view in contemporary cinema". CineAction: 11-21.
- Kusz, Kyle W. (2002). "Audio-Visual Review: Fight Club and the Art/Politics of White Male Victimization and Reflexive Sadomasochism". International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37 (3-4): 465-470. doi: .
- Wager, Jans B. (September 2005). Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir (Paperback), University of Texas Press, 101-117. ISBN 0292709668.
- Windrum, Ken (November 2004). "Fight Club and the (im)potence of consumer era revolt", in Steven Jay Schneider: New Hollywood Violence. Manchester University Press, 304--317.
- Giroux, Henry (December 2001). "Brutalized Bodies and Emasculated Politics: Fight Club, Consumerism, and Masculine Violence", Breaking in to the Movies: Film and the Culture of Politics (Paperback), Blackwell Publishing Limited, 258–88. ISBN 0631226044.
- Giroux, Henry; Imre Szeman (December 2001). "Ikea Boy Fights Back: Fight Club, Consumerism, and the Political Limits of Nineties Cinema", in Jon Lewis: The End of Cinema As We Know It: American Film in the Nineties (Paperback), New York University Press, 95–104. ISBN 081475161X.
- Giroux, Henry (Winter 2001). "Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: "Fight Club," Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence". JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 21 (1): 1-31.
- Giroux, Henry (January 2001). "IKEA Boy and the Politics of Male Bonding: Fight Club, Consumerism, and Violence". New Art Examiner 28 (4): 32-37, 60-61.
- Dassanowsky, Robert von (2007). "Catch Hannibal at Mr. Ripley's Fight Club if you can: From Eurodecadent cinema to American nationalist allegory". Film International 5 (3): 14-27.
- Petersen, Per Serritslev (April 2005). "9/11 and the 'Problem of Imagination': Fight Club and Glamorama as Terrorist Pretexts". Orbis Litterarum 60 (2): 133-144. doi: .
- Lee, Terry (September 2002). "Virtual Violence in Fight Club: This Is What Transformation of Masculine Ego Feels Like". The Journal of American Culture 25 (3-4): 418-423. doi: .
- Ta, Lynn M (September 2006). "Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism". The Journal of American Culture 29 (3): 265-277. doi: .
- Goodlad, Lauren M. E (2007). "Men in Black: Androgyny and Ethics in Fight Club and The Crow", Goth: Undead Subculture. Duke University Press, 89-118. ISBN 0822339218.
- Smith, Kathy (April 2004). "The emptiness of zero: representations of loss, absence, anxiety and desire in the late twentieth century". Critical Inquiry 46 (1): 40-59. doi: .
- Hunter, Latham (March 2003). "The Celluloid Cubicle: Regressive Constructions of Masculinity in 1990s Office Movies". Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 26 (1): 71-86. doi: .
- Clark, J. Michael (Fall 2002). "Faludi, Fight Club, and Phallic Masculinity: Exploring the Emasculating Economics of Patriarchy". The Journal of Men's Studies 11 (1): 65-76. doi: .
[edit] Notes
- ^ Grigoriadis, Vanessa. "Pay Money, Be Happy: For thousands of new yorkers, happiness is a $375, three-day self-help Seminar. Welcome to EST: The Next Generation", New York Magazine, July 9, 2001.
- ^ Staff. "Why you will find yourself at the Forum", Daily Telegraph, News Limited Australia, June 25, 2006.
- ^ a b Snider, Suzanne. "EST, Werner Erhard, And The Corporatization of Self-Help", The Believer, 2003-2007 The Believer, May 2003.
- ^ a b Ebert, Roger. "Review, Fight Club (film)", Chicago Sun-Times, October 15, 1999.
- ^ Brookey, Robert Alan; Robert Westerfelhaus (March 2002). "Hiding homoeroticism in plain view: the Fight Club DVD as digital closet". Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (1): 21-43. doi: .