Fight Club

Institution Critical Approach

News Corp

• News Corporation or News Corp was an American multinational mass media corporation headquartered in New York City. It was the world's second-largest media group as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009. In 2013 the company was split into two branches – News Corp (publishing) and 20th Century Fox (broadcasting media)

• Assets

Founder Rupert Murdoch Revenue US$ 33.706 billion (2012)Operating income US$ 2.212 billion (2012)Net income US$ 1.179 billion (2012)Total assets US$ 56.663 billion (2012)Total equity US$ 24.684 billion (2012)

Production Context

• “Those idiots just green lit a $75m experimental movie”

– David Fincher

• “This is a seditious movie about blowing up people like Rupert Murdoch”

– Twentieth Century Fox Executive

• This was a very controversial film

Production Context - Paradox• The funding by a global conglomerate of a film

which attacks the capitalist, consumer culture which they are a part of

• The style and structure is unconventional, it is an ‘experimental movie’. Conglomerates don’t ‘do’ unconventional.

• Do you think that FC is an experimental film in its use of visual style and narrative structure?

• Does it conform to the conventions of Hollywood cinema in any way?

• Does it remind you of any other films you have seen?

It was cited as one of the most controversial and talked about movies of 1999/2000

The censor, Robin Duval, said he was forced to make the cuts because of the "indulgence in the excitement of beating a defenseless man's face into a pulp". One scene involves Pitt's character being battered by a Mafia boss and in the other the camera lingers as Norton's character pummels a man's face.

‘Fight Club is shaping up to be the most contentious mainstream Hollywood meditation on violence since Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange’ (Times)

Rating

Release date

Fight Club was original slated to be released in July 1999 but was put back to August. Studios further delayed the film, this time to the autumn of 99 due to “a crowded summer schedule”.

However may critics believed it was more to do with the Columbine massacre that happened in April. The incident was widely publisied as a copycat crime due to too much violence on TV

What implication does this action have?What effect might it have on marketing?

Box Office Information

• Budget: $63,000,000 (estimated)

• Opening Weekend:– $11,035,485 (USA) (17 October 1999) (1,963

Screens)

- £1,177,219 (UK) (14 November 1999) (322 Screens)

• Gross– $37,030,102 (USA) (5 March 2000)

DVD Sales???

Themes and Style

• Key themes are controversial

– US society ( and by extension the West) is represented as fake, superficial, consumerist and dehumanising.

– People no longer have authentic emotions but ersatz/fake ones created through buying things

Themes and Style• This desensitised state is symbolised through the

representation of life and death– Serious illness is packaged into support groups which

can’t deal with real, difficult emotions– Narrator’s job as a risk assessor has reduced life/death

to a formula

• The lack of authenticity in contemporary society (life is referred to as a ‘copy of a copy –PoMo) is also explored in the representation of masculinity– Men have been feminised (no longer have traditional

roles)– Meaning ins life can be found through the close bond

(homoerotic) with other men (not women) and pain

Misogyny

• Hatred of women as a sexually defined group (not individual women) but in this film it is targeted at one female character

• According to Fincher Helena Bonham Carter initially turned down the role of Marla because the film was ‘so misogynist. It’s just awful’

• Is this normal for a Hollywood film in the 2000’s?

Gender and Ideology

• What are the different attributes and characteristics are associated with masculinity and femininity in Fight Club? Give specific examples/ scenes where we see this attributes.

• What does this suggest about the ideology of the film?

• Is this normal for a Hollywood film in the 2000’s?

• Have things changed in recent years?

Key Source

• Film studies A2: The Essential Introduction

• Sarah Casey Benyahia, Freddie Gaffner and John White