Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Fight Club’

Is?this?supposed to be therapeutic? I’m just asking.?I suppose?it’s cheaper than therapy, although I don’t recall seeing it on the ENG377 syllabus.

THE LIST

posts:
2007.09.02??Modern or Postmodern? That is the Question.
2007.09.06??So, What?s the Difference?
2007.09.07??Written WITH the Body
2007.09.09??‘I’ – Thinking
2007.09.14??Where the Story Starts
2007.09.17??Post Modo Condition
2007.09.19??Fight Club – The Movie
2007.09.20? Futurism in Fight Club?(add-on to previous post)
2007.09.25 ?Why Jameson?s Piece is Postmodern
2007.09.29? Life in Dying
2007.10.02 ?Fight Club Environmentalism
2007.10.05? Making Sense (???)
2007.10.08? Cindy Sherman
2007.10.10??Linda Hutcheon?(expertise project)
2007.10.15? Nikki Lee

comments:
2007.09.01? To Esther on Post/Modern Stance
2007.09.01? To Misty on Post/Modern Stance
2007.09.07? To Kim H. on Winterson
2007.09.07? To Alex on Winterson
2007.09.17? To Michael on Winterson
2007.09.17? To Christine on Winterson
2007.09.23? To Marina on Fight Club, the film
2007.09.23? To the Class Experts on Lyotard
2007.09.29? To Hannah on Fight Club, the book
2007.09.29? To Esther on Jameson
2007.10.04??To Zena on Fight Club, the book
2007.10.04??To Tammy on Fight Club, the book
2007.10.15??To Aliya on Cindy Sherman
2007.10.15? To Melissa on Hutcheon

ANALYSIS PART I: I am the One Trick Pony

As I wrestle with what postmodernism means and how it functions, I’ve discovered that I am absolutely obsessed with limits. Reading through my blog I see frustration with and examination of:?

• language as limitation on thought
• the subject’s limited ability to represent
• limits on history as merely one version of truth
• limits on context within postmodern fiction
• and limits of form?when representing the real.

Postmodernism has revealed the ways in which?I’m?confined?within the ideological?prison of my own thought,?AND it has?simultaneously?slipped me the key to freedom. Now that I?understand how?postmodernism functions, I see?it in fiction, film, magazines?and photography. It has become?relevant in my other classes and has even?jumped out at me while watching television. I love that ideology is being exploited all over the place, but still, I have one question burning deep within my soul. It’s the one?that everyone in class either fully?understands or isn’t asking.

When Lyotard says:?

“The artist and the writer , then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done” (Lyotard, 81)

I still?need to?know… What the Hell does this mean?!?!

Moving on, the following?passage from “‘I’-Thinking” shows my concern for the limits of language and subject:

I found what Winterson hasn?t written is most important. Where power?exists and determines what is ?acceptable,? or at least ?attributable,? lies in our perception of how?the masculine and feminine are defined by language. (Hello Saussure, my old friend.)?Winterson?s brilliance?demonstrates the subversive by using that very device.?The notion of the free-?thinking I??is exposed for?all its cultural baggage.

Here I refer to?Cixous’ idea that?language shapes our thoughts along problematic dichotomies such a masculine/feminine, strong/weak, etc. Winterson challenges?the reader’s?need to assign?a male or female identity?to her genderless narrator, pointing out the limitation of “thought?dichotomies”?in practice. Rereading this passage surprises me after just having just?presented on Hutcheon. While my language here isn’t quite right, the idea of the self-reflexive operation?is interesting. Both the power of language to?define, and?the limitations?as?it confines are revealed simultaneously.?Perhaps we?discussed this idea in class that day, but prior to reading Hutcheon (my hero) I didn’t think I understood. Apparently I did. Go me.

Don’t you worry. I’m not getting all high and mighty over this one small victory. I continually struggle?with other issues, particularly the end result of?mixing fact and fiction in historeographic metafiction. All?accross my?blog and strewn about comments to classmates are references to the movie The Last King of Scotland. Apologies “for bringing it up once again” generally accompany the post because I can’t seem to let it go. In “Why Jameson?s Piece is?Postmodern” it appears for the third time:

This movie is … about a very real Ugandan dictator, but his life is revealed through the perception of a fictional doctor… the main character with significant influence on very disturbing events within the film… Then, in the DVD special features, Ugandan extras said they are glad children can watch this film and finally learn about Ugandan history. (BIG) PROBLEM! This isn?t history!… Will Ugandan children know? I think not.

Here is where I get stuck between Jameson and Hutcheon. Like Jameson, I have this?engrained notion that context is important.?As I say later in the same post, I attribute my discomfort with this specific?historical fiction?to the fact that?this film will likely be?the only access?Ugandan children?have to their country’s history. Since?they have no?background?in postmodern analysis, they will surely mistake this representation?(one?portrayed through the lens of white culture) for the?real. This is?the result of Third World, culture consuming capitalism that Jameson talks about.

On the other hand, when it comes to my personal consumption of the postmodern, I want?the veil lifted?from the powerful ideology?that orders?my world. To understand that there is no one absolute truth, as far as I can see, is the only way to open the door to new ideas… without limitation (ha!). Hutcheon,?with her positive spin on the postmodern and its power to reveal, is – quite frankly- my hero, as I’ve already stated above. I’m not sure if I will ever resolve this internal conflict. I fully believe there is value?to?both sides of this coin.

From the argument above, my question becomes, what is real or contextual anyway? Hutcheon says that?”history” has?only ever?been a representation and access to?”reality” has only ever been an assumption. To follow this thought into the realm of photography, as I understate?when summing up?my “Cindy Sherman” post:

Interestingly,?using a doll as an unrealistic representation of a human being, although it seems to be a drastic difference of subject/object?from the first [human] pictured above, is no different in concept.?Sherman brilliantly exposes photographic “realism” as equally flawed in all.?

Sherman offers a quick and dirty example of Hutcheon’s self-reflexive form. Her photography is used to?demonstrate?the power of historic photo documentation and realism as it influences our perception of reality,?to?subvert?it using the very form we trust to be real, and to reveal the ways in which photography fails to grant acces to the real at all.?By subverting or turning the medium in on itself,?the limitations of ideology implode.?Sherman is at once artist/actress, subject/object,?woman/clich?.?When I see this mental back flip in action, it?makes my heart soar. I?want to scream?”THAT’S A PERFECT TEN!”

And yet… there is still The Last King of Scotland playing to children in Ugandan theaters. Thanks to Hutcheon and Sherman I’m left to wonder?whether concepts are more or less important?than the events that actually?happened. Is the insertion of a fictional narrator within an historical setting really any different than the history written by a textbook author with an eye toward patriotism? The more I grasp how little we’ve learned from a history we’ve assumed was real, perhaps this fictionalized account of a real dictator?bears less?negative impact?than the lessons learned from such a story.?I suppose the best we can do is handle?postmodernism?with care, limiting its political and capitalist consumption of culture?in the Third World… whatever that means.

PART II: Old Tricks, New Tricks

And the award for best posts to date goes to:

• “Life in Dying”
  I felt I made a new connection in Fight Club between body, as the limited modern form striving?to achieve a?real experience,?and the soul or idea of legend as postmodern form struggling to break free from the limitations of form. I spent FAR more time on this than any other post, engaging with?the narrative?as well as narrative- through- the- lens- of- theory, and?organizing these thoughts into essay form. Yeah, I was home alone for two days.
• “Making Sense (???)”
  Here I was able to follow several significant threads discussed in class, applying one aspect of a particular theory to every text. Addressing issues from?the complication of all our?narrators, to the problematic concept of gender, I was able to beat these topics into submission, taming my unruly, jumbled thoughts.

The award for best?comment to date:

• “To Zena on Butt- Wipe”
  This comment engaged with Zena’s question, recounted a class comment, brought in textual evidence, and also taught me a thing or two in writing it.?

The award for best classmate post goes to:

• Esther’s “I Can Spell Jameson, So It’s Not a Bad Start”
  This post came along right when I needed it, particularly since Esther posts early?if not on time. She summarizes the highlights of Jameson’s theory, adds visuals to demonstrate her argument of lacking historical reference in architecture against Jameson’s need for context, and poses a few questions for comment. You just can’t ask for more.

Based on my previous accomplishments, these next three goals?are what I plan to?strive?toward?for the remainder of?my blogging career:

• Increased engagement?with?comments
• I should get over my need to be original and address some class topics already. I’m always pushing so hard to move beyond what has already been discussed. The alternative would be to “go deep.” Wait, I do that.
• More humor. I used to be funny.
• More silly?pictures. That used to be fun too.
• Oddly, perhaps I need to spend LESS time banging out?these marathon?posts and more time on other class work – or just living life.

How to acheive these things? I could just relax. The problem is that I find this class so darn interesting.?Yeah. I happen to like?taking?our shiny, new information?out for a spin?through the?informal blog, particularly?where a?little misjudgment and hitting the guard rail is allowed. Sue me.

Available on Amazon*

HUTCHEON ON POSTMODERNISM: A Summary

by Michael Bastian & Kim Clune

Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Theorist Linda Hutcheon?finally offers?a clear?definition of?postmodernism?as compared to the somewhat slippery and?”indefineable” definitions offered thus far. “Postmodern representation is self consciously all of these – image, narrative, product of (and producer of) ideology” (28).? She combines several concepts which all work together in the following way:

Mimesis:
For our purposes, mimesis?is?the assumption that representation is, in some way, a duplication of “the real” and also that there is a “real” to represent.?(To trace the morphing?philosophy of mimesis since the time of ancient Greece, visit the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, University of Virginia.)

Using?this definition of mimesis, Hutcheon?then says, “Postmodernism challenges our mimetic assumptions about representation” (30). This is called dedoxification.

De-doxification:
Ideology constructs and naturalizes the way a culture presents itself to itself. To de-doxify this representation is to denaturalize the contrived reality that ideology assumes as truth. Postmodernism simultaneously inscribes and subverts the convention of narrative to this end.

An Example:
Hutcheon uses Angela Carter’s The Loves of Lady Purple?to exemplify the dedoxification of femininity.??A marionette is made to represent the image of the woman prostitute in the construct of male erotic fantasy.? We are left to question, “Had the marionette all the time parodied the living or was she, now living, to parody her own performance as a marionette?”? and, “to what extent are all representations of women the ‘simulacra of the living’?”(31).???

Historiographic Metafiction:
Ultimately, the job of postmodernism is to question?”reality” and how we come to know it.?It forces us to examine the ways in which we?ve chosen (or have been made to choose) to represent ourselves. Historiographic metafiction?dedoxifies assumptions of ideology by consciously?and self-reflexively working to?accomplish?two things:

1. bringing?historical context into the text in recognition of?history’s authority?and power, and
2. simultaneously calls into question?historical limitations

By?inserting elements of?fiction?within historical context,?”fact” is exposed as an author’s assigned meaning?or subjective interpretation of an event. Historical representation is revealed?to be?inconclusive,?one more narrative employing the same devices used?in fiction.?As we understand it,?this functions the same way through all mediums of postmodern expression whether fiction, photography or painting.

For more on Hutcheon’s?historiographic metafiction,?visit Victoria Orlowski’s explanation (last entry at the bottom)?at Emory.edu.?

THEORY IN PRACTICE

• Michaels’ Observation: Photographic Discourse as Evident in the Work of Cindy Sherman

What is happening in this photo? Let?s create a narrative. We see?this?woman’s?bathing suit floating next to her. We can assume she doesn?t have a spare. She?s naked, nude, in the skinny. The only articles of clothing she?s wearing are the goggles (spy goggles) and a mask (a spy?s mask). Sherman is mimicking the actions of a spy approaching an enemy?s territory.?This?woman?doesn?t want to be seen. The pool is lit up. At the same time she is a naked woman swimming in a pool that someone could be spying on. She?s acting the part of a spy and sexually promiscuous woman. Those are antique goggles; they help to represent the historical representation of a spy. Although this spy does not represent one historical event we can narrate one. Mixing the story of the naked woman and the spy together does not work. Who is she looking at? What is she looking at? These are all questions in creating the narrative. The black and white photograph makes it seem like this photograph is representative of a historical ?real?. The move to de-doxify the reflex we have to link black and white to old is uncovered because of the use of fiction (the naked spy-woman). Uncovering this not only brings to question the power that black and white photography has over us, but reifies the power it does because of the reflexes its bringing out of us. This is called historiographic metafiction; examining the history of representing history through the use of fiction to pivot it against.

Adendum
Male erotic fantasy led me to believe that Sherman was swimming naked; her bathing suit swimming next to her. Kim pointed out, after sharing my analysis with her, that Sherman isn?t actually naked at all. The bathing suit is just distorted by the water. I created a narrative based on an ideology that I subscribe to. I assigned her femininity, false femininity, based on the image presented. The history, male erotic fantastical history, associates woman in pool with sexually promiscuous woman. We now have three fictions with which to work from, that all work to subvert the control of the form and emphasize its control over our reflexes as cattle grazing on the fields of ideologies. – Michael

(Well, Michael’s cattle reflex anyway. – Kim, who finds this all very amusing.)

• Kim’s Observation: Fiction and History as Demonstrated?in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club

Fight Club demonstrates Hutcheon’s theory well. Historical assumptions about the?subject?are called into question?alongside those of historical representation, and each are de-doxified through self-reflexive construction of this historiographic metafiction. Although one human body acts out the events of the novel,?that body is complicated by the presence of?two identities or subjects housed within it. Each has a?very different perspective and thus?drastically different representation of the same chronological events. Tyler collects?his?events and assigns meaning via his conscious state while the narrator, when he?is awake and occupying the body, assigns different meaning to the same events. In this way, perpective is limited and skewed depending upon who is in charge at the time. Additionally, because the narrator is the reader’s only source of information?about Tyler,?his?limited scope of understanding filters out?aspects of?his alter-ego.?In this way, the narrator unknowingly skews the telling of his?own history until the end when he?fully realizes that he?has become a split identity and thus the bigger picture is finally revealed to the?reader. Our ideological notions about how naturally subjectivity represents history are challenged once we realize the power the narrator has over representation as well as his limitations in revealing all sides.

Palahniuk also explores society’s historical context through capitalism. By placing ficticious characters within a backdrop specific to the 90′s, we are better able to examine various concepts and perceptions of capitalism from two perspectives than we are from one. Interestingly, neither is verifyiable truth, nor are they together, but…

(I had a train of thought to explore here,?but Michael just stole my copy of?Hutcheon and left campus.)

COLLECTIVE?THOUGHTS

We find that Hutcehon offers a logical answer to?several theoretical questions. Disputing negative generalizations of postmodern disorder, incoherence, and Jameson’s accusation of “depthlessness,”?Hutcheon says postmodernism has the specific function to?reflexively question?history by employing it’s own narrative in order to reveal the holes in such perceived truth. This specificity is new?from what we’ve seen this semester. She argues that Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, representation as a copy of a copy, and media’s neutralization of the “real” assumes that there was a “real” to begin with. She counters that??there is nothing natural about the ?real? and there never was ? even before the existence of mass media? (31).?According to?Hutcheon, we have not slipped into?a false world because we have postmodernism.

Rather than postmodernism being a departure from contextualized history, or what?Jameson calls “a ‘revolutionary’ break with the repressive ideology of?storytelling generally,” (47)?the postmodern?relies upon that very device to decenter the?ideological?notions of authenticity and subjectivity. In the moment in which the center is questioned through narrative, postmodern stories of the oppressed “other” rise to the surface, no longer surpressed by ideology and past historical influence.? Postmodernism contradicts this notion of the real and accepts that everything has always been culturally represented.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• Hutcheon says events have no meaning until certain facts are selected and meaning is assigned. Do you agree? Why?
• Since history can be fictional and fiction can reveal certain truths,?is there?a line of distinction between history and fiction at present?

OUTSIDE SOURCES
From the scholar-sphere:

• Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Hutcheon: On Postmodernity.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. November 23, 2003. Purdue U.
• Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Hutcheon: On Parody.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. November 23, 2003. Purdue U.

From the blog-o-sphere:?

Two posts from the Derivative Blog: Thoughts on Hutcheon?by a graduate student of English literature and culture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

• ?An Enthusiasm for Postmodernism?
• Understanding the Question of Postmodern Meaning

*Brain Drain is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

So far this?semester, our class?has covered:

• John Barth’s short story, “Lost in the Fun House”
• Jeannette Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body
• and Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club.?

To help define what postmodern means we have explored excerpts from:

• Simon Malpas’ book, The Postmodern (2005)
• H?l?ne Cixous? critique “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays” (1975)
• Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979)
• Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991).
• and Linda Hutcheon’s Poetics of Postmodernism (1988)

How?do I cohesively make sense of all this????Having drank fully from the fire hose for weeks on end, I wonder… Will I digest or?blow??This post?is where?I just vomit in my mouth a little.

As Malpas explains, “at the heart of identity there is a ?thinking I? that experiences, conceptualizes and interacts with the world” (Malpas, 57). Consequently, running rampant throughout postmodern fiction is the question of this subject’s reliability as an authority?representing truth.

• Barth’s narrator, Ambrose,?is at once a child and an adult, interweaving the blind?experience of?”living in the moment”?with 20/20 hindsight?and calling attention, through various narrative devices, to the limitations of the narrating subject both as child and adult, in other words, as narrator looking in at the main character and main character being himself.
• Winterson complicates her narrator by creating a nongender-specific bisexual who objectifies?the beloved, Louise, pitting the power of subject?vs. object, one against the other, both creating and destroying the linguistic barrier to?fully realizing true love.
• Palahniuk splits?his narrator’s identity into two dueling?subjects within the same body who both objectify not only Marla, but each other, creating a power triangle rather than a single identifiable?power source.

By complicating?the subject, these authors use fiction?to turn?the subject?in on itself and reveal it’s limitations. The point for the reader is that perspective and?representation are not natural ways of reaching some sort of truth, but are cultural devices?that, until postmodernism hit the stage, were accepted?as natural. The most we can hope for, as Stephen Colbert often points out, is mere “truthiness” (or “falsiness” as the following parody explains), which is called into question each time subjectivity becomes decentered by an alternate?version of the?traditional subject. (Hello, Derrida!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHqX27hlz8]

Sexuality is also addressed in each piece, not just in terms of masculinity or femininity, but where the two overlap. According to theorist H?l?ne Cixous:

Traditionally, the question of sexual difference is treated by coupling it with the opposition ? a culture?s values are premised on an organisation of thought in which descriptions of the feminine are determined by masculine categories of order, opposition and hierarchy. (Malpas, 72)

Lyotard says that metanarratives order the world for a particular culture and not all cultures order the world in the same way. Because of this he believes reality is not real, that it is rather ?simplicity, communicability? (75) in the name of the ?unity of experience? (72) and that the postmodern ?puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself? (81).

• Barth calls masculinity into question by addressing the subservience of women in the ’50s and how that defines the angered narrator’s role as he matures socially in contrast with what he feels differently internally.?
• Winterson’s non-specifically gendered and bisexual narrator?draws attention to the?dysfunction of defining through opposition, creating a world of confusion for the reader while, at the same time, pointing out the problem.
• Palahniuk’s split identity, one masculinized and one feminized, are?embodied within one male person which shows that neither masculinity nor femininity encompass fully what comprises the essence of a human being.

These narrators struggle with the idea?that identity is formed through the constriction of language and social mapping?according to opposing?genders. Each illustrates that society provides no useful language or ordering of our world to address these grey areas. Postmodern work obviously strives to draw attention to the gap between the grand narrative and what actually exists.

And, although there are many more threads to follow, the HUGE question of history (revered by Jameson as fact of lived experience) versus historicity (truthiness and the closest we can get to truth) is the last item I have time to duscuss. Jameson argues that the democratization of art subjects it?to the corruption of marketing and capitalism. They are inseparable?to the detriment of?world cultures and history through?depthless representation and pastiche unless we map how the depthless came to be, “in which we may again begin to grasp our new positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spacial as well as our social confusion” (54). SOOO, the question of historical validity appears repeatedly in our fiction selections.

• Barth criticizes history by describing the role of generations of copulation in constructing social understanding of sexuality.
• Winterson explores the narrator’s serial monogamy and only in breaking the tradition does he/she find love.
• Palahniuk creates Tyler Durden who desperately wants to break free from history to redefine it from his point of view.

According to Malpas, Hutcheon?argues that parody is not dead, it is now focused to use form?to reveal a failure of form. She also finds great value studying?the unrepresentable in fiction, as?much as that?which has been represented as “history,” because both employ the same narrative devices (Malpas, 25-26). In the fiction we have read, we can see this parody in action, where our authors provide recognition of the power forms hold, and turn around to employ these forms to point out the flaws within them. We’ll talk more about this next week when we read more of Hutcheon.

Other pan drippings, grey in color, that deserve to make it into the gravy bowl are

• body/soul connections
• bodily parts in gender definition,
• disease: death in life and life in death
• and many, many more.

Sadly, the repair man is here and I have to supervise the fixing of shit.

Forget?about driving a?Prius and putting solar panels on?the roof. After a looming history of Earthly abuse,?destroying something beautiful?at?Fight Club?becomes the?impetus?for Project Mayhem’s recycling program.

Pounding that kid, I wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every?endangered panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species and every?whale or dolphin that gave up and?ran itself aground. … Don’t think of this as extinction. Think of this as downsizing. … For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet and now the world expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every used drop of motor oil. … And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was?born. (115)

Do you think this was Al Gore’s motivation?

Tyler has a plan that solves the whole darn mess. He calls it Project Mayhem. If killing is part of capitalism, which he so honestly embraces (unlike?real-life?CEOs of globalization), why not use?dead bodies to fertilize the herbs that add?fragrance to lyposuctioned collagen which, once turned into soap, not only becomes an ironic tool for cleanup, it also becomes the commodification of wealthy desires sold right back?to the rich. Further, by recycling the basic tenets of capitalism, the added “Tyler Durden Bonus” is that?profit isn’t lining corporate pockets. Instead, it is?directly distributed among?Project Mayhem’s labor force. They are?no longer an underclass but recycled and heralded by Tyler as a society free from traditionally infused marketing desires. Death, life, and finance are all redistributed and reused.

If that’s not recycling, what is?

An obvious theme throughout Fight Club is the partnering perceptions of death between the narrator and his alter ego, Tyler Durden. Obvious though it may be, the intricacies challenge our own perceptions, making us ask which is right. Either? Elements of both? None? And how does this relate to the?shift from the modern?to the?postmodern?

In response to the narrator’s living death, his doctor rejects the plea for chemical escape from the emptiness of the waking dream. He says, “Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what’s actually wrong. Listen to your body” (9).?From this advice?comes?the equation of the narrator’s empty soul with his ailing physical form. (Consider the connection of?modern?form and function.) The narrator recognizes this in himself when he says “the bruised, old fruit way my face had collapsed, you would’ve thought I was dead” (9). This idea of the body and soul as inextricably connected, the former a symptom of the latter, is echoed in the support groups for the diseased. The narrator finds it “easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will either reject you or die.” Crying cures his insomnia because, for him, “losing all hope [is] freedom” (12). For the narrator, dying bodies, if only in part, are a release from the?meaningless?empty space between birth and death. Through oblivion and destruction the ultimate end becomes the beautiful freedom of escape from society and all its rules.

Tyler sees things differently. For him, death is not the end. In chapter 1, the opening scene, a gun is jammed in the mouth of the one body that makes his conscious self?possible, and the Parker Morris building he stands on is about to slam down on the national museum. Flanked by death on all sides, Tyler says, “We really won’t die … This isn’t really death. We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old” (1). For Tyler, death is a merely the transition of being. He is enamored with becoming legend. To eradicate previous history, that which is trapped in statistic data, financial?records, and even old literature?and art is not the true essence of what makes life worth living. He wants to replace the old and dead with the realization of his own legend, “This is our world, now, our world … and those ancient people are dead” (4). The ancient dead he refers to are the living museum legends he is about to obliterate, destroying all?historical record of old ways of thinking. For Tyler, oblivion and destruction?are not the ultimate end, but a way for him to live forever. In fact, through Fight Club, he endeavors to destroy his own body or form, to?find the true meaning of?what he is made of, a notion unacheivable through the material world.

Recognizing the insanity within Fight Club, there are obviously deep seated issues with both approaches. The narrator, by using other people’s dark, dying bodies in order to recognize the sweetness of life, is cheating and he feels it most when Marla enters the support group scene. “Marla’s lie reflects my lie, and all I can see are lies … and all of a sudden even death and dying rank right down there with plastic flowers on a video as a non-event” (12). His death and rebirth are copies of a non-event. He experienced neither as something tangible or real. He avoids connecting deeply with his own mortality and must return for a nightly fix of something he has yet to internalize himself. This offers no escape from the emotionally barren life he continues to fill with material goods. Without?making fundamental life changes (abandoning the goods, living in the moment and relenquishing the desire of dying to escape) he cannot fully escape his nightmare.

Tyler, while fascinated with the idea of legacy and legend, is simultaneously repulsed by it. He finds himself in a catch 22. As with his log arrangement, creating a shadow hand at the beach where “for one perfect minute Tyler had seated himself in the palm of perfection he’d created himself,” he goes on to say, “a person has to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection [is] worth the effort” (22). The question one must ask is would sitting in the palm of perfection have been so sweet had the narrator not marked the moment by bearing witness to it? Moving forward to the high rise scene, how will Tyler survive death without tracking his new chaotic moment in an historical context the very likes which he wants to destroy? History is the very vehicle that transcends death, giving people life long after their bodies fail. (C’mon, Esther. This is where your first chapter Jesus reference enters in.)

We’re left with the utopic idea that one must give up both history and the material while embracing death to appreciate life. This is the path to living freely in the perfection of the moment. But what is perfection exactly? According to the second law of thermodynamics, all systems tend toward a state of disorder. Tyler is stuck between believing that disorder is the natural, perfect state and yet he is lost as to how to create meaning within that chaotic state. According to his actions, perfection is not natural but something to work toward, a human creation subject to individual perspective and impossible to recognize without context. He is at once modern and postmodern.

Wrestling with what death means, whether as an end or a new beginning, challenges us to think about how we order meaning in this world. I turn to the theoretical debate between Lyotard and Jameson on what the postmodern can do after the death of the modern period, in the temporal sense. Lyotard says in Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?:

Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement [of postmodern experimentation], we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage war on totality; let us be witness to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name. (82)

This sounds much like Tyler’s symbolic eradication of a capital institution (the narrator’s disdain for the body) imprisoning and terrorizing the old meanings of the past (the narrator’s waking nightmare). It is the recognition of and attempt to break free from the modern idea that perfection is a form inextricable from function. Tyler wants a new form, or no form, or maybe just reference to old forms to create new meaning. He wants access to the freedom that lies within the grey areas, the presentation of the unrepresentable. Whatever form this takes in the end, he first and formost requires?a (the)?narrator.

Jameson, although he finds himself plagued by the postmodern, also feels that we must do it justice. In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism he says:

This is not then, clearly, a call to some older and more transparent national space, or some more traditional and reassuring perspectival or mimetic enclave: the new political art (if it is possible at all) will have to hold to the truth of postmodernism, that is to say, to its fundamental object – the world space of multinational capital – at the same time at which it achieves a breakthrough to some as yet unimaginable new mode of representing this last, in which we may again begin to grasp our new positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spacial as well as our social confusion. (54)

Jameson’s conclusion is what Tyler butts up against in his execution of chaos and mayhem. Once you destroy what exists, what do you replace it with? Even when beginning anew, one desires to contextualize experience. For Jameson, cognitive mapping is the answer, tracing how we get to the new even as we eradicate the old beyond recognition. If you destroy the body to free the soul, the soul loses context, unless, of course, the path of destruction from “what was” to “what is” can be traced.

Having already given my raw reaction to the postmodern?Fight Club in?a previous post, I wanted to share?some bonus material?in reference to the car accident scene. I had mentioned?the Futurist connection?in class but the original text is far more revealing.

The frame of mind?surrounding the events of this 1908 car accident?is similar to what Pitt’s character was striving for when he let go of the wheel and hit the gas. Connections can be?drawn between?Fight Club’s Project Mayhem?and the?modern Manifesto?of Futurism by F. T. Marinetti:

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM (1909)

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
   The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
2. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
3. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
4. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
5. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
6. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
7. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
8. We want to glorify war – the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
9. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
10. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

(For the first and last bits, click here.?I have deleted them from?my original?post for?their excruciating length.)

While I haven’t done formal research, the?parallels with Fight Club are astounding. Much of this?philosophy is?as disturbing as the film with?numbers 8?&?9 taking the cake: Machine + War - Woman = Futurism.?More unnerving, I might add, is that Futurism moved swiftly in the direction of fascism, with Marinetti?personally supporting Mussolini.

Anyway, just some fat to chew on… or sell… or blow up…

Watching movies for class rocks.?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HstQaobp4Jw]?

From the opening credits, Fight Club alludes to the unrepresentable. As the names spin off into gaseous clouds, what appears to be the universe swirls within the biologic make-up of Edward Norton’s character, yet one would think that the character would exist somewhere within the Universe. So, where does the Universe begin or end? Does it start with human perception or is human perception a byproduct of the Universe? Ooooh, the questions stew already.

In the opening scene, perspective shifts from within Norton?s character?s body, through the gun, and into Pitt?s character?s point of view. Perspective then leaves both characters (or halves of one character) and the camera travels out of body altogether. Now the point of view becomes that of the movie viewers? as we get a voyeuristic view of the explosives below the city. Throughout the morphing POV, we never fully know where one begins and another ends.

Cut to Bob?s boobs. Is he still a man with no balls and full breasts? What essentially makes a man ?manly? if not the biological pieces and parts? Can comfort be derived from any breasts but a mother?s or lover?s? Norton says yes.

Then we back up. The beginning of the movie isn?t the beginning as we traditionally know it. ?Nothing is real? Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.? And here, Baudrillard. Really, need I say more? Norton is a copy of himself on many levels. Stuck in the marketing galaxy, ?What kind of dining set defines me as a person?? What else does?

Playing Cornelius and other ?characters? so he can cry and sleep like a baby, where does Norton?s character end and his others begin? He dies and is reborn with each new meeting. But who dies and who is reborn? Cornelius, Tyler Durden?

Pitt’s image flashes in several scenes, spliced into a single frame at the hospital, the testicular cancer meeting, when Marla walks off supposedly forever. Later, we learn that Tyler splices frames between reels at the theater. Does he create himself then? Has Norton’s character created him?

Do events shape us or do we shape them? Do we own things or do they own us? Half asleep, half awake? Reality enters dreams, dream enters reality? Half alive, half dead? Not quite whole but not fully cleaved in half? Somewhere between life and death lies meaning.

?It was on the tip of everyone?s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.?
?First rule of Fight Club? You do not talk about Fight Club.?
Coincidentally, that’s the second rule too.
?It wasn?t about words.?

We’re back to the failure of language again. Instead, the sublime is the pleasure derived from the pain of pummeling and being pummeled.

?Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.?
?This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.?

The car wreck: All I could think of were the Futurists. Historically, not just in the movie, a car launches into a ditch and?gives birth to four survivors who create a Modern movement infatuated with technology, speed and chaos.

“Let go of everything you?think you know?about life…”

You can?t explain the unexplainable, sublime. Familiar themes?akin to?Wnnterson’s Written on the Body… Marla: Love as invasive. Love as pure desire. Love as a bridesmaid dress loved for only one day and then thrown aside. Narrating organs in books?left by a recluse. Cancer of the prostrate will kill. Combination of form: Movie – documentary – porn – and back again. Characters talk to themselves on screen, then they turn to the audience and talk to … ME! I have just become the object of two subjects. How beautifully postmodern.

Capitalism: The democratization of art?becomes public taste governed by money. To?free our identity from?being defined by our stuff and our menial jobs that make us slaves?to purchasing?more stuff, Capitalism must be destroyed.

Then the biggie: Dualing subjects. One fights the other for power. Can there ever be two, particularly when they share one body? According to the smoking gun, the answer is no.

I could continue with the play-by-play but we?re all watching the same thing. Suffice it to say, I loved this movie the first two times I saw it. I have a renewed appreciation this third time. Now excuse me while I retire the keyboard and get back to the milk and cookies.