Fight Club Marxism (political critical approach)

1. FIGHT CLUB
A Marxist Analysis

2. Marxism in a Nutshell
• Marxism is a movement that grew up around
the philosophy of Karl Marx
• It is a reaction against Capitalism
• It seeks a fairer distribution of wealth among
the under classes
• It believes in the ultimate dissolution of
centralised government
• It is different from Anarchism, though they
share many of the same beliefs

3. Key ideas of Marxism
1. Individuals have lost their ability to make money for
themselves – they help others to make money by working in a
job. This is an unfair relationship as their employers make
more money from it than they do.
2. The people in power seek to maintain this relationship because
it means they have a way of controlling everyone (they can
always refuse to pay you).
3. If only we woke up and realised this was the case, and changed
things in our favour, the world would be a better place
entirely.
Marxism says: SMASH THE
SYSTEM!

4. Therefore the major tenet is...
• To create, we have to destroy (you can’t
criticise anything unless you first adopt the
arguments of the thing you want to criticise)

6. Fight Club is the gun to the head of
consumerist America. The pistol's cocked.
Say what you will about the explicit nature
of the fight scenes, or director Fincher's
tendency to trip up his storytelling with his
fixation on stylism -- he wants us to stop
reading the J. Crew catalogue, turn off
"Must See TV," and ask what the hell our
lives really mean.
- Robert Zimmer

7. Fight Club and Marxism
The narrator is a card-carrying member of
capitalist society, until he rejects the
aspirational ideals of his way of life and
chooses their binary opposite.
Before, his home was a perfect replica of a
catalogue. After, he squatted in a derelict
house in a run-down area of town.
Before, he cared about his appearance and
wore designer clothes; he fitted in. After, he
took care to disfigure himself; he stood out.
Before, he was a nameless individual. After, he
had invented multiple personalities for himself.

8. The World of the Film
• ‘Jack’ works in a regular
job, lives in an
apartment and buys Ikea
furniture
• Fincher sets him up as an
everyman – someone
everyone can relate to
• He is shown as being a
slave to a system where
everything has a price
“I flipped through catalogs and wondered: What
kind of dining set defines me as a person?”

9. The World of the Film
• In this world, people are commodities like anything
else:
• “A new car built by my company leaves somewhere
traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The
car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside.
Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of
vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of
failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court
settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less
than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.”

10. The World of the Film
• He is a drone: an unmotivated worker going
through the daily routine of life
• His life is consumed by ‘shit we don’t need’

11. The World of the Film
• This state of affairs is
– according to Jack –
the fault of the
corporations (like
Starbucks)
• “When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll
be the corporations that name everything,
the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy,
Planet Starbucks.”

12. The World of the Film
• Fincher puts forward a cynical view of the world in
which people are at the mercy of big corporations and
have no individual power
• We are taught to consume from an early age to keep
the wheels of capitalism moving
• We are so desperate to keep the things that we have
that we mindlessly conform to this paradigm without
ever challenging it

13. Enter Tyler Durden
• “Fuck off with your sofa units and
strine green stripe patterns, I say
never be complete, I say stop being
perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the
chips fall where they may.”
“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and
I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white
collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't
need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No
Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been
raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.
But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

14. Enter Tyler Durden
•Tyler is Jack’s alter-ego. Tyler is
Jack as he wishes he could be
“All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna
look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most
importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”
“If you wake up at a different time in a
different place, could you wake up as a
different person?”

15. In Tyler We Trust
• Tyler is presented as emancipated: free from normal social
conventions
• He pays no taxes as he has no legitimate earnings
• He is committed to bringing the old order institutions (like
banks) down
• He wants all men to be free from normal social conventions –
like him:
– “It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do
anything.”
• He wants anarchy - maybe not that Marxism!

16. In Tyler We Trust
• “In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp
canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll
wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life.
You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears
Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures
pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car
pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”
• In this speech notice the ruins of great financial centres:
Rockerfeller, Sears, etc and notice the intrusion of the
natural world (elk, forests, vines)

17. A Socialist State
• “You're not your job. You're not how
much money you have in the bank.
You're not the car you drive. You're
not the contents of your wallet.
You're not your fucking khakis. You're
the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the
world.”
• The ‘all-singing, all-dancing crap of
the world’ is a reference to the
working class, the proletariat, the
normal people who bring revolutions
about...

18. What Tyler Wants
• Corporations to be torn down
• For man to get in touch with his primitive
(animal) side
• No more advertising, consumerism or money
• An end to the established order of rich and
poor
• All men to be truly equal

19. What Tyler Wants
• “It's getting exciting now, two and one-half.
Think of everything we've accomplished, man.
Out these windows, we will view the collapse
of financial history. One step closer to
economic equilibrium.”

20. Is Fight Club a Marxist Film
• Yes
• It presents a cynical view of
capitalism
• It champions the working
man
• We follow a group of
people who want to destroy
financial institutions and are
invited to share their point
of view
• In the end: the terrorists
succeed
No
• Jack fights against Project
Mayhem – he is the
character we are invited to
empathise with the most
• We are shown the abuses of
power by Tyler – will his
world be any better?
• Although the terrorists
succeed, Jack/Tyler end up
dead (fair enough – they’re
terrorists), but also Marla
(who is an innocent
bystander)

21. The Final Word
• Fight Club has Marxist elements to it and we
can certainly use Marxist criticism to analyse it
• The film criticizes the capitalist world in which
we live, but the alternative it offers is not seen
to succeed
• Tyler is more of an anarchist than a Marxist, as
he does not believe in the social state
• But what do you think?

22. 22
Extra Resources
• http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000018/fight-club-and-m
• http://voices.yahoo.com/selected-scenes-fight-club-10306.h
• http://taftese.tripod.com/other/fightclub.html
• http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-
1093524/content_39741394564?sb=1
• http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/08/11/ive-been-
having-trouble-writing-lately/

23. Extra Resources
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=e3rI7Nnh3xE
• http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws/2000/flightc
lub60.html
• http://prezi.com/xkskww6frewc/marxism-in-
fight-club/
• http://prezi.com/gsifsaq3q81v/fight-club-
marxism/
• http://mypotatofamine.wordpress.com/fight-
club-literay-analysis/americas-proletariat-fight-
club-through-a-marxist-lens/ 23

24. Essay Question
• Explore some of the ways in which placing your
chosen film within a broader critical
framework has helped to develop your
appreciation and understanding of specific
sequences.
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25. Your Notes (and don’t forget to email this to yourself)
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