Influence of Fight Club
When
the fragments and affiches of ‘Fight Club’ was presented, many people believed
that this film would be a kind of ‘Kung Fu’ based on fighting style. This idea
was directly given to the spectators. But it isn’t. The film implies even in
the fragments and affiches ‘Don’t believe what you see’. There are a lot of
ideologies in this film but it doesn’t give us a strict message. David Fincher,
the director, wanted the spectator to be active and take any messages they want
to take. ‘Fight Club’ has a complex influence on spectators. What makes ‘Fight
Club’ so complex? The scenario was very simple compared to ‘Matrix’ but ‘Fight
Club’ has the same influence, even a higher one.
The whole scenario is about the problem of the inspector (E.Norton), himself. Normally he is not the man of this social system but he has repressed his real self and just stucked into social norms. His real repressed self is Tyler (B.Pitt). We can put Tyler into the concept ‘Return of the repressed’. Tyler is completely disagreed with the rules of society, the world. The opion of Tyler, about people living in a society, is like matrix when we call matrix to a constant subject. The social system is the matrix in ‘Fight Club’ when the matrix is the social rules, norms and all the things constructed like that in the film ‘Matrix’.
The
aim of Tyler is to change the system that everybody is in. Why did he choose
to create a Fight Club to realize his aim? What is the relationship of fighting
with the life which’s going on? The Fight Club is an organisation which makes
people disstressed. The film also implies the notion of stress. When we pay
attention to people who come to fight club, we see that they come there with
the partner they want to fight with and this partner is a friend, a patron,
or neighbour. It’s obvious that they have discussed with each other, become
stressed , come to Fight Club and all the stress goes away. This is also related
to capitalist system which causes stress on people with its anti-individualistic
relationships.
Another important point is the presentation of Tyler in the film. Tyler is the other part of E.Norton but we can see both of them in the same scene. Only in the scene Norton starts to fight alone, beating the air. He sees Tyler figthing with him. We can understand that Tyler is a dream there and we can say that Tyler is exactly the other part of him. The problem is that other members of Fight Club also see Tyler and believe in his ideas. This couldn’t happen if Tyler is the other part of Norton. There the film generalizes Tyler and implies that everybody has a repressed part like Tyler in such a social system.
There
are also some symbols which increase the depth of the scenario. For example
the ‘soap’. The soap has two parts like E.Norton in the film. Its real meaning
of usage is to clean the body and the other meaning is to clean people which
means killing. So they use the soap to do explosive materials. Tyler and Norton
also do the soap with the body oil of fat women who want to be thin and choose
the liposuction method. They gain the soap from women and they sell it to them.
This also explains the place of women in the system, people’s ideas about women
and can be related to fascisme. When we come to Marla, (H.B.Carter) the women
in the film, she is a path for E.Norton to find the happiness in this world
but she is also repressed by him.
Finally, I can say that Fight Club does not impose its messages to the spectator. In this film you can find many emotions from yourself and many things from your life.
Aren PERDECI
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