1) The film Fight Club is described as a "Thelma & Louise" for men, addressing the modern male predicament of being lost and lacking purpose in a world stripped of meaningful roles. 2) The main character Jack joins an underground fighting club as a way to reclaim his masculinity, but ultimately realizes that violence leads nowhere and he must find a healthier path to maturity. 3) By the end, Jack rejects violence and chooses to unite with a woman against the hollow consumerism of society, representing a quasi-feminist message that the path to maturity for men lies not in dominating women but in partnership with them.

1. It's 'Thelma
And Louise'
For Guys
In movies, as sometimes in life, the most extreme stories can
crystallize our everyday experience and speak to a common pain. In
1991, "Thelma & Louise" did that for women. Women who had never
been nearly raped or had the desire to blow up a gasoline truck with a
handgun or become a martyr by driving off the Grand Canyon in a
turquoise Thunderbird took the drama of the distaff desperadoes to be
their story and made it an anthem, a consciousness-raising buddy
comedy.
Last week another consciousness-raising buddy movie hit the screen.
It's already provoked post-Columbine outrage for its orgiastic violence,
relentless brutality and bomb recipes. But if it sometimes runs as red
as "Reservoir Dogs," "Fight Club" might be better perceived as a Goth
"Thelma & Louise," and not only because it features a gunplay plot and
Brad Pitt as the stud prince. It's an incisive gender drama.
Men striking back in the gender wars is a theme all through the media
these days--from the leering Maxim magazine to pay-per-view
ultimate-fighting tournaments--but men are rarely elevated by all the
attention. The shows championing men typically champion the right to
act boorish and portray men as farting wankers in a sniggering frat
pack. (Witness Comedy Central's "The Man Show," where flatulence
seems to be the sine qua non of male identity.)
That's where "Fight Club" is an important departure. Men will
recognize that this film is not just about an alienated young flunky
named Jack (Edward Norton) who joins a secret club of guys, all trying
to reclaim their manhood through bare-knuckled mano a mano
fighting. Behind the extremities of his character is the modern male
predicament: he's fatherless, trapped in a cubicle in an anonymous
corporate job, trying to glean an identity from Ikea brochures,
entertainment magazines and self-help gatherings. Jack traverses a
barren landscape familiar to many men who must contend with a
world stripped of socially useful male roles and saturated with

2. commercial images of masculinity. "We are the middle children of
history," his doppelgnger, Tyler Durden (Pitt), says, "with no purpose
or place. We have no great war, no great depression... We have been
raised by television to believe that we'll be millionaires and movie gods
and rock stars--but we won't... And we're very, very pissed off."
This realization is finally striking Hollywood--"Fight Club" could be
seen as a savagely violent reprise of "American Beauty," in which
another corporate male conformist rebels, quitting his job and
thumbing his nose at his image-obsessed wife. But "Fight Club" delves
deeper for a response. That response goes off the rails with the
anarchic "Project Mayhem" plot to blow up credit-card companies and
coffee franchises but rights itself with the revelation that the real battle
for men is a battle within. For men who are offered fewer and fewer
meaningful occupations, beating each other up may seem like the one
thing guys can still do well. But ultimately Jack finds that violence
leads him nowhere. In an image-conscious world, violence becomes
just another celebrated affectation.
Given that, what kind of revolt can
men mount to a culture that has
betrayed them? The film offers an
insightful and, in spite of its gory
phantasmagoria, convincing
proposal, evident in contrast to
"Thelma & Louise." When Thelma
put down her hair dryer and picked
up her handgun, she knew where to
aim. The women wielded their
Project Mayhem against patriarchy, against the clear advancing line of
uniformed men in the film's final showdown. The problem for Jack in
"Fight Club," as for men in real society, is that their revolution is
necessarily intramural. When Jack tries to strike out at his boss, he
hits himself in the face.
Diagnosing that dilemma is "Fight Club's" success. In the long run it
renounces even the violence its lead character is drawn to, and
renounces the adolescent fraternity that so much of men's media
seems unable to escape. When Jack sends the boys away in the final
scene, and throws his lot in with the defiant, if deviant, woman he's
been afraid to court, he seems poised finally to begin life as an adult

3. man. Director David Fincher called his film "a coming-of-age story
about choosing a path to maturity." For men facing an increasingly
hollow, consumerized world, that path lies not in conquering women
but in uniting with them against the hollowness. In that way, for all its
chaotic darkness, "Fight Club" ends up as a quasi-feminist tale, seen
through masculine eyes. In "Thelma & Louise," the one cop who
understands the women's struggle fails in the end to save them, and
the two women holding hands career off the cliff. In "Fight Club," the
man and the woman clasp hands in what could be a mutual
redemption.