‘Fight Club’ - social, political and cultural contexts

The fight against commercialisation
Jack is a character that represents a heavily domesticated male. He himself fears that has become commercialised, asking himself “what kind of dining set defines me as a person?” - personality is something not be assessed when looking at Jack. Instead, we make our judgments on his surrounding objects. There is no emotion, he is a product on the conveyer belt. He is manufactured. However, it appears that he is not the only one.
Jack and Tyler form the Fight Club in order to deal with this outrage. They form it to claim male individuality back - as Tyler puts it himself “How much do you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”
This, ultimately, is why Project Mayhem is introduced - it’s aim is to destroy commercialisation through mass chaos. The men who take part all feel the same way. They are sick of being plain, sick of being ‘textbook’. Now that they have re-gained their masculine identities with the help of Fight Club, they are prepared to show this to the commercialised world by destroying everything that they felt had pushed their purpose and existence out of the way. While the press may have argued that a ‘good idea about male insecurity’ became lost with ‘right-wing nutters’, it is also possible that this insecurity was just a stepping stone on the path to extremism. It provides a source, a reason for their actions.

Identity and masculinity
From the early stages of the film, it is clear that the masculine identity is something that Jack is trying to re-gain. It has become buried and alluded by capitalism. What capitalism has done to this generation of men is taken away their place in the world, and the intentions of Project Mayhem is to destroy capitalism, so that these men can have a purpose once more. They can feel useful for doing what they do.
This could explain why Jack is able to view Tyler in such a fascinated way - he is everything that he wants his life to be like. This also could be why so many other men were eager to be part of Fight Club - through violence, they have the chance to cling on to whatever is left of masculinity. It is a place where they can feel like ‘men’ again.
Identity crises is also suggested at an early stage in the film - during an encounter with Robert Paulson, a member of the testicular cancer support group who has grown breasts because of his treatment. Jack tells him that ‘we’re still men’. As Robert has gained breasts, he probably feels less like a man, so this is simply an a attempt at a comforting sentence. For Jack, however, it applies that his depressed, domesticated lifestyle has drained away all masculinity from him. He wants to cling on to what he can.

How has this affected culture?
“Two schoolboys grapple with each other as bystanders look on and shout encouragement…pupils have set up their own Fight Club, based on the ultra-violent film of the same name starring Brad Pitt. In the film, disaffected young men fight each other in illegal bare-knuckle bouts.” - Daily Mail, February 2008 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-522110/Pupils-set-lunch-break-Fight-Club-post-shocking-videos-YouTube.html)

“Inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, underground bare-knuckle brawling clubs have sprung up across the country as a way for desk jockeys and disgruntled youths to vent their frustrations and prove themselves.” - USA Today, 2000, May 2006 (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-29-fight-club_x.htm)

“A 17-year-old mimicking Brad Pitt’s “Fight Club” character, who plans attacks on corporate America, was arrested on suspicion of masterminding a pre-dawn blast outside a Starbucks Coffee shop” - The Washington Times, July 2009 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/16/starbucks-bombing-blamed-on-fight-club-fancy/?page=1)


Critical reception
‘Fight Club is a dumbed-down extremism, Extremism Lite, no-brainer extremism for the Rush Limbaugh generation, an audience that thinks the "diceman" is a really challenging philosophy’ - The Guardian

"This monstrous film brutalises men everywhere" - Daily Mail

"Fincher started out with a good idea about male insecurity, but somehow got this snarled up with a daft story about right-wing nutters. It's hard to think of another movie this year that has begun so promisingly and ended so poorly" - The Independent

“Shot in a convulsive, stream-of-unconsciousness style... Fight Club does everything short of rattling your seat to get a reaction. You can call that irresponsible. Or you can call it the only essential Hollywood film of the year" - Time Out

“It means to explore the lure of violence in an even more dangerously regimented, dehumanized culture. That's a hard thing to illustrate this powerfully without, so to speak, stepping on a few toes” - New York Times

Critical approches to 'Fight Club'

Auteur
If a wide knowledge of Fincher's other films is obtained, than a good answer will stem from a question like this. However, if not, it will probably be something to avoid.

Gender
Links with social, political and cultural context. Useful for studying masculinity and its questionability in the film.

Institution
Information gained today is more trivial than critical. Unsure if this would form a strong exam answer.

Star/performer
The speech delivered by Pitt "Movie Gods and Rockstars" poses a potential argument to spring, based on irony and weather it was deliberate or not. Another argument that could spring is the studio's original cast desires and how they ended up with the choices that they did. What changed? Why did they consider who they did?

Technology
Again, subjects raised from this area appear more trivial, and I would be unsure about creating a strong argument from this source

Social, Cultural and Political context
Interesting to see what news articles and press responses arise from watching the film. Issues of the character's place in society can be assessed, as well as subjects such as capitalism, commercialisation and extremism.

Genre
Not a good subject to form an essay or an argument on. It is difficult to make a judgment on the genre of the film.

Ethnicity
'Project Mayhem' is an organisation comparable to other extremist movements. However, this is more of a case of morality, rather than ethnicity, so this topic is probably best left ignored.

'Fight Club' reveiws

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/11/14/fight_club_1999_review.shtml
Review from the BBC's Almar Haflidason, commenting on why 'Fight Club' will appear threatening and offensive to some viewers. Reasons for this involve political incorrectness and attacks on world stability and safety. However, the Reviewer also notes that viewers will enjoy the film if they thought that this review was over-pretentious and only knit-picked.

http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/fight-club
Total film review of 'Fight Club', noting that so much can actually be said about the film, and this is the reason for it's controversy - 'there's an endless list of subtexts and viewpoints which will fuel student pub debates for years'. Nevertheless, it praises the cinematography and stresses that whatever you think of it, it is a film that simply has to been seen a somepoint in your lifetime.

Comments on 'Retrespo'

Fly-on-the-wall documentary, named after one of the medical soldiers who died in the Kornagal Vally in Afghanistan. A piece of continuallity editing shows that how dangerous the war zone really is, when a jeep is blow from the ground, dirt rising, and all sound disappears. The choice to keep filming at this time is extremely brave of the filmmaker and presents us with how far they are willing to go to the present the everyday of soldiers in Afghanistan. They cannot predict the action that will take place in the land, and the decision to keep filming shows that they are aiming to make no cuts of reality. They just want to present the landscape and people as they are. The constant use of continuallity is significant in presenting how the soldiers behave - we really get the sense that reality could never be more real. Besides the small portion at the beginning of the film, no factual information is presented in the film, it is entirely observational of what is taking place. This makes it appear that the filmmakers do not want to include anything in the film that would encourage the viewer to take a pro-democracry or anti-war side of argument. They only want to present what is actually happening, and nothing that would cause an argument to develop.

We hear or see little from the filmmakers themselves, and this enhance the anti-argument nature of the documentary that I have interpreted. Interviews of the soldiers are featured, so elements of the expository are still included, but not prominent. They share their accounts of being in Afghanistan, and I wouldn't be surprised if some viewers thought that the filmmakers have included this to gain our sympathy. Because we are only hearing what they have to say, it can be argued that the film takes a biased stance on their side. However, I think that this is not what the filmmakers are intending to do, and this makes it clear that this is not a film about war, but a film about people involved in war. They draw from their experiences of it and interperate it as they would. The spectator can argue that some of their words may be over-exaggerated, but if they were involved in war and asked to talk about it, I'm sure that another spectator, somewhere, would say the same thing about them and what they have to say.

The film also enables the viewers to understand what the lives of the soldiers are like. I was surprised to discover that the cocky, jokey, foul-mouthed behavior of U.S. soldiers exists in the everyday, and are not over-exaggerations created by the Hollywood industry, but it appears that fictional personalities do exist in the real world. It is the the reality of the soldiers. That is what they are like and how they behave. Compared to war films, however, we are only seeing the perspective of the American soldiers, and not of the Taliban. In war films, such as 'Saving Private Ryan' camera angles are placed so that we see as many different angles and perspectives of a scene as possible. However, here, we are following the Americans. This is what they see, we only have their perspective to see things from and this is key moment of reality as the camera acts as a point-of-view shot. If we were where they were, that would be the only perspective that we see from, our own. We are trusting the camera to visualize for us, and fortunately, it shows us nothing but the now.

I will leave my comments at this point, as I have noticed that throughout this post, I have been repeating myself. Because this is a fly-on-the-wall documentary, which intends to do nothing but present a reality as it is, with no political, cultural or moral twists and turns, there are less resources to form an opinion from. I am, more or less, struggling to form an opinion on the everyday, and can only draw attention to fact that the only aim of 'Retrespo' is show the life of the soldiers exactly as it is.

Comments on 'The Real King's Speech'

Largely, ''The Real King's Speech' was an expository documentary. It aims to educate the viewer on the life King of George VI, his struggle with public speaking, the technological developments of the historical period and of the speech therapist Lionel Lougue. Broadcasted shortly after the Oscar-winning motion picture 'The King's Speech', I wonder if this is simply being used as a marketing tool for the film. While the film made heavy use of archive footage and interviews with royal biographers and former patients of Logue, the re-visualizations of the rooms in which Lougue set up his practice (with no figures on-screen) appear strikingly similar to the sets that can been seen in the actual film. Also, there are moments in the film where I swear I can hear audio extracts from the actual motion picture, those of Lougue's training methods with the King. However, had I not seen the actual motion picture a few days previously, I may not have been provoked to make these accusations, and I wonder if my re-action the the documentary would have been different.

In terms of historical facts, I am confident that the documentary was accurate. the interviews with Dr. Lionel Lougue's former patients confirm that he was a man with unconventional methods, as present in the actual motion picture. With this in mind, along with the historical facts released with the voice-over, I found myself making comparisons to the actual film which I had seen a few days previously, instead of absorbing the information for my own academic purposes. Another key feature of the film that struck me was the director's decision to combine archive footage, which was in black and white, with present-day footage in colour, of the outdoors and possible re-creation of the set from the motion picture, as mentioned above. I was initially dazzled by this, and the only conclusion that I could come to as a way of explaining the director's choice was to easily distinguish the historical footage of the past with today's reality, and this included a flag of the Union Jack - a image repeated in closing half of the documentary. I couldn't understand why this was necessary, and see it only as a form of patriotic bragging. The filmmaker is trying to enforce the britishness of both the history and success of the recently successful motion picture.

Another message which I think the filmmaker is trying to present is the reality of the situation that King George VI faced public with speaking. In the archive footage of him, it is clear that he is struggling in front of the microphone, and at this point i sympathize with the King - I fear of the embarrassment and nervousness that he is feeling and the footage becomes saddening to watch. He was a figure that was forced to have a strong public duty, and he simply couldn't manage it on his own. the extreme close-up shots, in colour, of the microphones that he would have spoken into at the time, are the filmmaker's attempt, I think, to re-create to the viewer how patronized and intimated the King would have felt in front of them. This is a motive which certainly had the potential present this feeling strongly, but falls short of the inclusion of the large BBC letters imprinted on it. Again, I see this another attempt of patriotic bragging - with the camera focus on something uniquely British.

We can easily learn something about British history by watching 'The Real King's Speech'. We are presented with the troubles that King George VI faced and historical footage to back this. However, with a release date so close to the film, which is still in high popularity over the world, I wonder weather holding off the broadcasting date would have calmed my earlier speculations. Undoubtedly, this is a good lesson in history, but maybe an even better way of promoting a film.

Comments on 'Grizzly Man'

A word that comes into mind when watching this documentary is delusion. On-screen, we see elements of the poetic, personal, reflexive and expository documentary - from Timothy Treadwell's political and cultural rant against the nature preservation organisation (personal) his comments on the beauty of the bears in their natural habitat (poetic, in the sense that it is his art) and his appearence in front of the camera itself makes it reflexive. In fact, for a large portion of the film, I forget that this Werner Herzog's film - it seems so much more like Treadwell's. It is only when Herzog's voice-over steps in to narrate that I remember that this is largely a expository documentary - Herzog wants to educate us about Treadwell's life and the nature that he loved so much, with the use of recorded interviews that support his discoveries. Only then am I reminded that all of the footage of Treadwell is archive footage, and that is what makes me first instinct towards this film as delusional.

Herzog, however, is not afraid to introduce elements of the reflexive documentary, and does so when telling Treadwell's ex-girlfriend, Jewel Palovak, not to listen to the audio footage of Treadwell's death. He tells her to burn the tape as he listens to it (appearing in the film), and therefore is influencing his opinion onto her, but is it his right to do so? This women apparently knew Treadwell better than Herzog ever would have, so surely, the fate of the tape is in her decision. Towards the film's end, I was beginning to feel an unnerving anticipation, and was wondering if we as spectators would get to hear the actual audio of his murder. However, the film does not end on a downer, but more of a reflection of Treadwell's life and the positives - maybe Herzog simply wanted to stick to his word and be respectful to Jewel. It would have been hypocritical, after all, to release this footage to the world after telling one individual never to listen to it.

Interviews with Treadwell's 'friends', however, appear scripted and unsympathetic. Warren, in particular, noted as an actor and Treadwell's best friend, along with Sam Elgi, appear to express that Treadwell deserved the fate that was eventually delivered to him. Whilst I agree with the fact that he was upsetting the flow of the Bear's natural habitat by invading and recording their land, I understand that he was simply expressing his interest into sharing his love of the bears, and his case, his art. One interviewer, a doctor, expressed that Treadwell would have wanted to mutate into a bear, and another said that his work would have been more memorable if he were dead. In this sense, Treadwell has accomplished his dreams. After all, why did he need a camera in the bear habitat?

Comments on 'Man on Wire'

Prior to watching this documentary, I had heard controversy surrounding it that it appeared as more as a heist movie, rather than a documentary. After watching it, I can completely understand why this controversy has been brought about. 'Man on Wire' certainly has a large, obvious cinematic style - from the opening zoom-in of one of the Twin Towers and the close-up of the hammer hitting the nail, to the re-creations of Philliepe's (the wirewalker) wirewalking across the world. I fear that this type of footage has been put in place in an attempt to re-construct reality. However, I leave the viewing space questioning it - Is this archive footage? or a visual re-enactment? If it is the latter, then the visual aspect of the story, sadly, appears hard to believe on-screen. It is only the interview footage from those who were involved, Phillepe and his peers, that remind me that this is an event that actually happened, which make wonder weather if the story would have been more effective as an autobiography, in the sense that there is no imagery on the page to twist their words or over-exaggerate their language. What happened is exactly what happened on the page.

Phillepe makes it clear to the spectator that he wants to share a story, and I adore his enthusiasm - three or four separate frames of him have been used, which probably meant that he had a lot to say to the audience, as if he wants them to understand every single detail of his journey. He shares with us where his inspiration to walk across the Twin Towers came from - a newspaper article, where we learnt that they have not yet been built. He has a dream, but in order for it to be lived, he has to wait for reality to be constructed first. Even more believable are the trails that surround him and his peers as the event drew nearer and nearer - friends dropped out and security and stability issues were raised and drawn upon. We are reminded that no dream is simple, and of course we will be met with obstacles, and in this sense, Phillepe is just any other person with a dream. It is shame, though, that his storytelling is diluted by these possible re-enactments. The decision to film this footage in black and white also separates it from believability as a story - As a spectator, this has alienated me from entering the storyteller's perspective, and has made me aware the 'Man on Wire' is only something to observe.