Essay Ally

“His Name Was Robert Paulson”: Violence and Masculinity in Fight Club

“You always hurt the one you love,” the narrator (Edward Norton) tells us in the beginning of the movie. The implication is that violence and disappointment are a natural and inevitable part of life. Thus begins Fight Club, a two-hour cult classic about angry white men who rally around their leader, the fearless and violent, Tyler Durden. (Brad Pitt) He is the founder of underground boxing clubs and Project Mayhem: a series of violent acts of vandalism and urban terrorism. The majority of the movie is a flashback explaining the moments up to the first scene. But before the audience is allowed to take a look into the narrator’s past, the blame must be appropriately placed; “all of this: the guns, the bombs, the revolutions, had something to do with a girl named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter)” the narrator tells us in all frankness. The audience knows now, that the movie describes a life with verity; a life where men are powerful, sexual, and violent, and women are the bearers (and bringers) of original sin. Fight Club disguises itself as an anti-consumerism, anti-capitalist, film, but is in fact a perpetuator of the violent, white, masculine hegemony, where gender determines power, and rebels are subjugated by force. There is no question that violence is pervasive in society. One critic insists that “violence is one of the most pervasive and serious problems we face in the United States” (Katz 133). This violence is overwhelming a product of men as one statistic that states that “90% of violent crime is committed by males” and it is no surprise that in response works of popular culture reflect this reality (Katz). But as one scholar suggests “violent crimes continue to fascinate the public and are both attributable to and an attribute of the media,” meaning that popular culture not only depicts the ideologies of a culture, it helps to create and maintain these ideologies (Stanko 35). Popular culture perpetuates values through an “expression of relative male and female power” (Kaufman 8).

Cinema is no exception. With a large audience, a movie like Fight Club has the power to challenge dominant ideologies or maintain the status quo. Why cinema is so alluring could possibly be explained by “scopophilia (pleasure in looking)” but there is undoubtedly power represented within a cultural text such as film (Mulvey 2181). For the dominant social group: white men, a movie that portrays violence and few/weak women offers an opportunity to maintain their position. ” ‘Mythology’ performs its vital function of naturalization and normalization;” a cultural critic suggests that mass culture in all it’s forms acts as a tool to normalize dominant behaviors (Hebdige 2455). Despite the “arbitrary nature of cultural phenomena,” (Hebdige 2450), “certain social groups can exert ‘total social authority’ over other subordinate groups” by maintaining the illusion that cultural phenomena not arbitrary at all, but rather a biological fact (Hebdige 2455). Fight Club functions in this manner, preserving “active/passive heterosexual division of labor” and catering to the narcissistic nature of male viewers (Mulvey 2184).

The movie’s narrator is also the main character in the film. While he remains unnamed throughout the narrative, he is central to the issue of masculinity and violence. His trials illustrate a version of masculinity that seems in need of reform. At first, the narrator works a passive desk job, lives in a house filled with expensive furniture, and is admittedly consumed by what he feels to be a feminine quality. He states that he is “slave to the Ikea nesting instinct,” and is forced to live his life out of a consumer catalogue where possessions equal happiness and fulfillment. The consequences for his un-manly existence are at first, depression and insomnia. He finds temporary solace in support groups for various terminal illnesses, he could be a “warm little center that the life of this world crowded around.” He explains, “being ready to cry was my vacation” and many scholars would say that this is the first step toward reducing male violence because “denial and blocking of a whole range of human emotions and capacities are compounded by the blocking of avenues of discharge” and crying provides a release of internal tensions (Kaufman 12). But Fight Club is not satisfied with this resolution, crying is a false escape for the narrator. He finds it is ruined once another “faker,” Marla Singer, begins showing up at the support groups. He begins to break down more and eventually his personality splits unbeknownst to the audience and Tyler Durden, the epitome of masculinity, is born.

For the rest of the movie, the narrator lives his life with and as Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden is the antithesis of the narrator. He is funny, smart, aggressive, and sexually proficient. Marla Singer, an obstacle for the narrator, becomes a sexual plaything for Durden. Durden represents an escape from consumerism and a return to violent, primitive, man. He blows up the narrator’s apartment releasing him from worldly things and setting him on a supposed path to enlightenment. Durden tells the narrator with all frankness “stop being complete, stop being perfect, let’s evolve” as if returning to a simple life without possessions represents a step forward. Project Mayhem is the culmination of this violence and primitive masculinity. The final goal of Mayhem is to destroy the world’s financial infrastructure, which at the final moments of the movie, is seemingly achieved. It is only minutes before Marla and the narrator watch financial institutions being blown up, that the narrator realizes Tyler Durden is his alter-ego. The narrator confronts Durden and is told “I’m everything that you’re not.” Durden represents the primitive, violent, and ideal picture of masculinity. He helps the narrator escape from his things, his job, and the strangle hold of women. The narrator finally destroys Durden by self-inflicting violence with a gun rather than a fist. The narrator finally learns to play at Durden’s game and outsmarts him by being first to pull a trigger. It may seem to the casual viewer that the narrator is finally rejecting Durden’s vision of ideal masculinity, but in reality, he is embracing it by accepting the violent message that has been cried by Durden and his followers. He survives the self-inflicted wound, receives Marla’s hand, and watches the results of his elaborate Project Mayhem. His reward for violence is ultimate dominion and a pretty lady to boot.

Fight Club suggests ideals for men’s bodies as well as their occupations. One man who finds relief in the clubs is Robert Paulson (Meat Loaf). The narrator meets character in a testicular cancer support group and his only description is that the man has “bitch tits” as if this is his defining quality. Paulson finds the fight clubs to be an outlet for his anger at the world and his condition. Where the support group was a continuous outlet with no positive results, the club seems to represent an immediate escape from his condition and physical deformity. His tits make no difference when he is in the ring. His ability to fight vastly outweighs his deformity in the social hierarchy. This message of supremecy and validation through violence is further complicated with his death on a mission of vandalism. The men rally around his death chanting “His name was Robert Paulson” making him an icon for their cause. Durden responds to his death with the trite expression “you wanna make an omelet, you’ve got to break some eggs,” downplaying the severity of death and marginalizing Paulson as a man. For Durden, the violence and destruction of consumerism are more important than the individual.

The creators of Fight Club seem to be well aware of the opportunities that cinema affords. But while in some moments they seem to embrace such notions that cinema is a tool to break ideologies, like when they attack consumerism, they also seem to be unable to distance themselves from the subjects of the film. The movie; funded, directed, and written, by white men, works non-stop to promote and excuse male violence. The director also seldom misses a chance to poke jabs at women, who are unable to represent themselves or defend themselves through the one dysfunctional woman seen in the movie. Durden again blames women for their troubles “we’re a generation of man raised by women, I’m wondering if another woman is really what we need” insisting that a return to violence represents a solution to the damage caused by the feminist movement. The writers seem to know that “phallocentrism in all its manifestations [. . .] depends on the image of the castrated women to give order and meaning to its world” and continuously cut-down women, blaming them for all that ails men (Mulvey 2181).

Fight Club is proof that “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” (Mulvey 2182). Like many cultural works, it uses popular myth that “relies upon individually attributed explanations for men’s individual behavior,” making women and possessions the cause of men’s behavior (Stanko 44). The movie represents little progress for women’s rights and even encourages men to move backwards. Whether men fully appreciate the message is unascertainable, but it is certain to have some effect in contributing toward the mass of media that perpetuate “a society grounded in structures of domination and control” (Kaufman 6). The movie illustrates “institutionalization of violence in the operation of most aspects of social, economic, and political life” maintaining the myth that men are dependent on violence for happiness and fulfillment (Kaufman 4). While watching the movie may not be a pleasant viewing experience for women, it represents a good opportunity for men to take a long hard look at their gender and see what they ought not to be.

Works Cited:

Hebdige, Dick “The Meaning of Style” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leitch et al. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 2448

Katz, Jackson. “Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity.” Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader. Ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995. 133-141

Kaufman, Michael. “The Construction of Masculinity and the Traid of Men’s Violence.” Men’s Lives. Eds. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner. 5th Ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. 4-16

Mulvey, Laura “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leitch et al. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 2181-2190

Stanko, Elizabeth A. “Challenging the Problem of Men’s Individual Violence,” Just Boys doing Business?: Men Masculinities, and Crime. T. Newburn NY: Routledge, 2004. 32-45