The Fight Club plays a central role in exploring and critiquing notions of masculinity in the film. Some key points: - It provides an outlet for the repressed rage and frustration felt by modern men over the emasculation they perceive from consumerism and feminism. - The physical violence of fighting allows men to temporarily escape their white collar, materialistic lives and reconnect with a more primal, "raw" sense of masculinity. - However, Fight Club ultimately becomes just another empty role for men to conform to. Though it gives them an identity through pain and endurance, it does not truly resolve their crisis of masculinity. - The film suggests no single solution or stable masculine identity can be found

1. Fight Club Masculinity
“We’re designed to be
hunters and we’re in a
society of shopping”
- Tyler
Objectives:
To analyse the representation of Masculinity in
‘Fight Club’.
To outline and analyse the binary opposites
that exist between the Narrator and Tyler.

2. Starter
Draw this shape & annotate the body
outline with the features, signifiers of
traditional masculinity.
Be as creative as you like

3. Masculinity: Social Context
Feminism
 Traditional male roles: Cowboy; Hunter; Defender; Achiever;
Warrior; Breadwinner
 Exposed as myths by the feminist movement
 Men left without a clear identity after Feminism questioned
the role of man
 Traditional Male roles/unachievable images of strength
ALSO imprisoned men
• Repressed male rage – Frustration about:
• The Feminization of Man and an increase in
‘consumption’
• Repressed ‘Raw’ Masculinity
• The dehumanizing effects of corporate consumer
culture

4. The ‘New Man’
• The ‘new man’ has lost touch with his
masculine ‘core’
• The ‘real man’ has been lost by
consumerism and the media
• Film depicts mens’ frustration at the
media’s ‘feminisation’ of men
• Mans obsession with consumerism has
replaced traditional male symbols:
strength, honour
• Attacks lack of male role models – men
raised by women due to men working
• Fight Club attempts to reassert
supposedly ‘obsolete’ Violent, Mindless
Masculinity

5. The Narrator
 How is the Narrator presented to us a ‘man in
crisis’?
 What does the Narrator’s ‘Power Animal’ say about
the state of contemporary masculinity?

6. Norton (The narrator)
• Introduced by credits hurtling
through his brain
• The ‘Unreliable Narrator’ – gains
audiences trust but is untrustworthy
due to his mental state
• The ‘new man’ character – he is
‘emasculated’
• Consumerist: Job + Possessions +
Clothes + Car = Happiness
• His male status is an illusion –
accumulation of possessions but no
happiness
• Traditional male role is lost – no
male friends, no sexual partner, no
libido, no ‘action’ job
• Fantasises about dying

7. Mise en Scene & The
Narrator
• Mise en scene
depicts the
Narrator in a
constricted,
unsettled world
• Spaces which
constrain him/give
a sense of
confinement; Low
ceilings cluttered
sets; no colour
(chiaroscuro)
• TRAPPED in his
suit

8. The Narrator’s ‘Power
Animal’
• What does the Narrator’s ‘Power
Animal’ say about the state of
contemporary masculinity?
• Power Animals: Lion? Tiger?
Shark? Penguin
• Connotations of the Penguin:
• Small; Incapable of Flight;
Childish; Harmless;
Tuxedo/wears a suit
• Penguin is juxtaposed against
Narrator’s dream of masculine
empowerment

9. Remaining Men Together
 We are introduced to two men that have attempted
to conform to traditional roles of masculinity and
failed.
 In what ways have they both been emasculated?

10. Bob
• Bob’s character is seen
through the eyes of the
‘Unreliable Narrator’ –
• Norton’s unstable perspective:
How he see’s contemporary
man:
• A muscleman with breasts
(Traditional Masculinity V’s the
New Man)
• In trying to attain ideal male
physique gets breasts!
• Gives maternal, feminine care
to Narrator

11. Question
 How does the intro to Fight Club present the ‘new
man’?
 15 minutes – use examples.

12. Starter/Re-cap
 Annotate the features of the new man presented to
us by Fight Club all around the body outline.
 You can be as creative as you like.
Objectives:
To analyse the representation of Masculinity in
‘Fight Club’.
To outline and analyse the binary opposites
that exist between the Narrator and Tyler.

13. Tyler
 What role does Tyler play in the narrative?
 What does he embody & how is he different to the
Narrator?

14. Tyler
 Played by Brad Pitt – the star
most men would want to play
them in a movie of their life
 Male aspiration figure for the
Narrator – his care-free, hot ideal
alter ego: answers to nobody
• Created from frustration and
repressed rage
 Introduced wearing sunglasses,
leather jacket, chiseled jaw,
spiked hair, a colourful
juxtaposition against the ‘grey’
suited Narrator
 Everything the narrator isn’t:
 Charismatic, Sexually Dominant
 Aggressive, Powerful, in charge
of his own destiny
 Tyler rejects consumerism/
materialistic lifestyle

15. Group Task
 Create a list of the binary opposites that exist
between the Narrator and Tyler.
 Choose one of these and write up your notes in full
sentences.

16. Male Binary Opposites
• Occupies corporate spaces:
Offices, Planes, Hotels
• The same as everybody
else – just another grey suit
(‘A copy of a copy of a
copy’)
• Occupies shadowy
underworld
• Outlandish,
Flamboyant, Unique,
Original – link to Anti
Globalization themes

17. Task
 Choose one of the binary opposites we have
discussed and write up your notes in full sentences.

18.  Both the author, Palahniuk and the director have said
that the story of Fight Club reflects and explores real
men’s lives today.
 Palahniuk said he wrote hi book ‘in public’ by talking to
real men in diners, bars, coffee shops and their work
places.
 Fincher said that the unnamed narrator is “an
everyman. Every young man”
Fight Club - confused masculinity
Summary

19. Confused masculinity?
 3 principle examples of the modern man’s confusion
over masculine roles and what being a ‘man’ actually
means:

20. The life of the narrator pre-
Fight Club
Based on an illusion of materialist accumulation and
career hierarchy. But he is in limbo.
 The pursuits of these false goals= no male friends,
no sexual partner in the ‘nest’ apartment, no
physically demanding work or action-based solution
to problems. No libido: “we used to read
pornography; now we read the IKEA catalogue”.
Sees himself through his meaningless possessions-
“a refrigerator full of designer condiments and no
food”.
 He is emasculated by pursuit of consumerism
1

21. The ‘Remaining Men Together:
testicular cancer group’
 This group is compromised of men who have
attempted to conform to traditional roles, but who
have failed. They have been emasculated by
castration
 First speaker- talks of ambition to be a father, a goal
he will never achieve; the ultimate insult is that wife
has abandoned him and procreated with another
man.
 Bob- pathetic and grotesquely breasted. His attempt
to attain a traditional male image, the Muscle Man
has resulted in the exact opposite and becoming
feminised.
2

22. The group of men in Fight
Club
 Supposed to be the ‘solution’ to the problems of
confused masculinity. But it eventually turns into
another form of the same confusion: the neo-fascist-
anarchist ‘Project Mayhem’. This form of ‘male
fundamentalism’ is, ultimately as empty as the other
male roles it reacts against.
3

23. The Fight Club
 The creation of ‘The Fight Club’
plays an essential role in freeing
the narrator from his crisis of
masculinity.
 Mostly filled by white middle class
achievers who feel there material
successes are empty, or working
class men frustrated by their social
status.
 It is almost like a ‘trial by fire’
initiation ritual for the modern man.
 The focus of fighting is endurance –
taking the beating and defining
one’s identity through the pain.
• Scenes of physical displays of
violence in an attempt to find inner
‘man’
• Men resort back to a tribal, raw
masculinity = another empty role

24. Question
 What function does ‘The Fight Club’ play in the
film?