Fight Club

David Fincher’s Fight Club has examples of postmodern thinking, such as consumerism, schizophrenia, waning of affect, weakening of historicity, depthlessness, as well as, the use of pop culture references and the breaking of the conventions of Classical Hollywood Cinema.

The film has several references to the consumer society. A great example of this is the “IKEA-nesting instict” that he describes. He spends his time looking through IKEA catalogs to find housewares that “define (him) as a person.” He also talks about corporations, and the way that they would begin naming planets and galaxies after name brands, like IBM, Starbucks, and Microsoft. He also talks about the simulacra created by these image-commodities, and says that everything is “a copy of a copy of a copy.”

Schizophrenia is represented by the split personality between Jack and Tyler. Jack representing the person he is within society, while Tyler represents the person Jack wishes he could be.

The waning of affect plays a major role in the film. In the beginning of the film, Jack finds himself going to different support groups in an effort to cure his insomnia, caused by postmodernity. The fight clubs work in the same way as the support groups. The members fight each other in an attempt to feel something again. This would be like the intensities Jameson describes because the crying at the support groups has the same therapeutic value as the extreme anger and violence experienced at fight club.

The weakening of historicity is evidenced in the lack of a great, lived historical moment that Tyler describes. At one of the fight club meetings, Tyler says: “(We are) an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables: slaves with white collars. Advertising has our taste in cars and clothes; working jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need – we’re the middle-children of history… with no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our war is a spiritual war, our great depression: our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’ll become millionaires, movie gods, or rock stars. But we’re not, and we’re slowly finding that out and we’re pissed off.”

Depthlessness is another postmodern idea that is referenced throughout the film. In one scene, Tyler describes this when he’s talking to Jack after his condo blew up. He says: “we are consumers. We are a byproduct of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty: these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear, rogaine, Viagra, Olestra… Martha Stewart is polishing the brass on the Titanic, so fuck off with your sofa units and spring green stripe patterns.”

There are several references to pop-culture. When Jack and Tyler are talking about whom they would like to fight, Jack says he would fight William Shatner. Right after this, they see a Gucci underwear ad; Jack then asks; “is that what a real man looks like?” In another scene, Jack describes one of the women at a support group, saying: “Chloe looked the way Meryl Streep’s skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody.”

The breaking of conventions is apparent at many points throughout the film. In the movie projection scene, Jack and Tyler break the fourth wall and directly address the camera. At this point, Jack explains how Tyler splices single frames of pornography into children’s movies. As Jack talks about the cigarette burns, where the changeover happens, we are shown a cigarette burn, which Tyler then points to, bringing attention the artifice of the film.