A Political Analysis

What aspects of Fight Club discuss or connote something

political?

2

What is the political statement that the director is sending

through the film?

3

Types of Political Systems

• Democracy• Republic• Monarchy• Communism• Dictatorship

4

MarxMarx believed that economics played a dominant role in politics, society, and history . All economic systems create two social classes, with one possessing greater power that is used to oppress the lesser class.

In the CAPITALIST system, the stronger but less numerous class was called the BOURGEOISIE and owned the means of production, such as factories, land, and capital. The weaker but larger class was the PROLETARIAT, whose labour allowed the entire system to function and was the ultimate source of bourgeois power.

Class conflict is inherent in capitalism because the bourgeoisie oppress the proletariat, who become dissatisfied with the status quo and revolt against the bourgeoisie to restore equality between the workers and the owners.The Marxist lens emphasizes the role of economics and societal class in a character’s status and explores how their class influences their decision making. It also examines the interactions between characters from different classes.

When applied to Fight Club, the Marxist lens reveals several clear representations of Marxism in nineties America.

5

Marxism in a Nutshell

• Marxism is a movement that grew around the philosophy of Karl Marx

• It is a reaction against Capitalism• It seeks a fairer distribution of wealth among

the under classes• It believes in the ultimate dissolution of

centralized government• It is different from Anarchism, though they

share many of the same beliefs

Key ideas of Marxism1. Individuals have lost their ability to make money for

themselves – they help others to make money by working in a job. This is an unfair relationship as their employers make more money from it than they do.

2. The people in power seek to maintain this relationship because it means they have a way of controlling everyone (they can always refuse to pay you).

3. If only we woke up and realised this was the case, and changed things in our favour, the world would be a better place entirely.

Fight Club and MarxismThe narrator is a card-carrying

member of capitalist society, until he rejects the aspirational ideals of

his way of life and chooses their binary opposite.

• Before, his home was a perfect replica of a catalogue. After, he squatted in a derelict house in a run-down area of town.

• Before, he cared about his appearance and wore designer clothes; he fitted in. After, he took care to disfigure himself; he stood out.

• Before, he was a nameless individual. After, he had invented multiple personalities for himself.

The World of the Film• ‘Jack’ works in a regular

job, lives in an apartment and buys Ikea furniture

• Fincher sets him up as an everyman – someone everyone can relate to

• He is shown as being a slave to a system where everything has a price

“I flipped through catalogs and wondered: What kind of dining set defines me as a person?”

Reification• According to Marx, reification is the process by which

people become commodities, and is a natural consequence of capitalist society. Fight Club portrays reification several times throughout the film. For example, the narrator’s job requires him to use a formula to determine whether to initiate a recall on defective products:

• “A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.”

Reification

How Marxist is Tyler?

•Tyler uses the body fat of people to make soap to sell.•Project Mayhem takes people’s names and they become ‘Space monkeys’. It’s only after death that members have a name•‘His name is Robert Paulson’

11

Fight Club is the gun to the head of consumerist America. The

pistol's cocked. Say what you will about the explicit nature of the

fight scenes, or director Fincher's tendency to trip up his storytelling

with his fixation on stylism -- he wants us to stop reading the J.

Crew catalogue, turn off "Must See TV," and ask what the hell our

lives really mean. - Robert Zimmer

Consumerism• According to Marx, the bourgeoisie prevent the

proletariat from becoming aware of their oppression and latent power by imposing bourgeois ideology on society, which refers to the ruling class’s ideals of normality.

• The ruling class uses ideology to persuade the proletariat that their miserable condition is either inevitable or compensated by future events. Marx identified the primary ideology as religion, the “opiate of the masses,” which justifies the temporal misery of the workers by promising rewards and eternal benefits in a heaven or afterlife

13

Consumerism

• Instead of religion, Fight Club identifies consumerism as the modern American worker’s opiate. When describing his life before meeting Tyler, the narrator focuses much of his attention on possessions.

• He says the pursuit of the next best product is the current generation’s pornography, as “the people who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue”

14

Consumerism• The narrator initially finds his identity in his possessions, which ultimately harms

him in two ways. First, he becomes a slave to his possessions. Reflecting on his shattered apartment, the narrator realizes that he had become trapped.

• ‘Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me. That condo was my life, okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME! (off camera) I’d like to thank the Academy’

• There is no end to his pursuit of material possessions, and in the process, he becomes a slave to his desires and his possessions.

• ‘The things you own end up owning you.’

• The second pernicious effect inflicted upon him by consumerism is the emptiness and the lack of meaning in a life spent in pursuit of temporal possessions. His purchases never gave him fulfilment or meaning, a fact captured in his assessment of the refrigerator’s contents as “a house full of condiments and no real food”. This acts as a metaphor for the bareness of his possession-driven life; he had all sorts of fancy possessions that symbolized success and the ideal American lifestyle, but they did not mean anything and therefore left him empty, without a true identity, and in desperate need of transform.

15

The World of the Film

• He is a drone: an unmotivated worker going through the daily routine of life

• His life is consumed by ‘shit we don’t need’

The World of the Film• This state of affairs is

– according to Jack – the fault of the corporations (like Starbucks)

• “When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.”

The World of the Film

• Fincher puts forward a cynical view of the world in which people are at the mercy of big corporations and have no individual power

• We are taught to consume from an early age to keep the wheels of capitalism moving

• We are so desperate to keep the things that we have that we mindlessly conform to this paradigm without ever challenging it

Enter Tyler Durden• “Fuck off with your sofa units and

strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

Enter Tyler Durden•Tyler is Jack’s alter-ego. Tyler is Jack as he wishes he could be

“All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”

“If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”

In Tyler We Trust• Tyler is presented as emancipated: free from normal social

conventions• He pays no taxes as he has no legitimate earnings• He is committed to bringing the old order institutions (like

banks) down• He wants all men to be free from normal social conventions –

like him:– “It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to

do anything.”

• He wants anarchy - maybe not Marxism!

In Tyler We Trust• “In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp

canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”

• In this speech notice the ruins of great financial centres: Rockerfeller, Sears, etc and notice the intrusion of the natural world (elk, forests, vines)

A Socialist State• “You're not your job. You're not how

much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

• The ‘all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world’ is a reference to the working class, the proletariat, the normal people who bring revolutions about...

What Tyler Wants

• Corporations to be torn down• For man to get in touch with his primitive

(animal) side• No more advertising, consumerism or money• An end to the established order of rich and

poor• All men to be truly equal

Quotes about Consumerism• Tyler Durden: Do you know what a duvet is?• Narrator: It's a comforter...• Tyler Durden: It's a blanket. Just a blanket. Now

why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then?

• Narrator: ...Consumers?• Tyler Durden: Right. We are consumers. We're

the by-products of a lifestyle obsession.

25

What Tyler Wants

• “It's getting exciting now, two and one-half. Think of everything we've accomplished, man. Out these windows, we will view the collapse

of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.”

Is Fight Club a Marxist FilmYes•It presents a cynical view of capitalism•It champions the working man•We follow a group of people who want to destroy financial institutions and are invited to share their point of view•In the end: the terrorists succeed

No• Jack fights against Project

Mayhem – he is the character we are invited to empathise with the most

• We are shown the abuses of power by Tyler – will his world be any better?

• Although the terrorists succeed, Jack/Tyler end up dead (fair enough – they’re terrorists), but also Marla (who is an innocent bystander)

The Final Word

• Fight Club has Marxist elements to it and we can certainly use Marxist criticism to analyse it

• The film criticizes the capitalist world in which we live, but the alternative it offers is not seen to succeed

• Tyler is more of an anarchist than a Marxist, as he does not believe in the social state

• But what do you think?