3. • ‘…It pushes the concepts of subjectivity and
identification to extremes to suggest a male
identity that’s not only fragile but frangible.
Jack is so filled with self-loathing and
repressed rage he’s desperate to get out of
his own skin and into someone else’s.”
– Sight and Sound (Amy Taubin – 1999)
4. Title:
‘Fight Club’ –
Ritualistic Violence
Thursday 23rd
April 2015
FM4:
Varieties of Film Experience – Issues and Debates
Section C:
Single Film – Close Critical Study
(30 Marks)
5. Why?
Aims & Objectives
• YOU WILL establish HOW an
ideology and critical approach you
need to know for the exam
applies to the text.
• YOU WILL develop an
understanding of the ‘Ritualistic
Violence’ represented in the text
and HOW the male gender is
perceived as a result.
• Review the learning.
AO1
Demonstrate knowledge and
understanding of film as an
audio-visual form of creative
expression together and
AO2
Apply knowledge and
understanding, including
some of the common critical
approaches that characterise
the subject, when exploring
and analysing films.
6. Tyler Durden -
“You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own. All the
ways you wish you could be – that’s me”.
•WHAT did ‘Fight Club’ do for Jack in light of the points raised above?
Four subliminal Tylers appear at times of stress and pain
7. • WHAT is Jack emotionally incapable of?
• WHAT does ‘Fight Club’ offer him and the men the chance to do?
8. “They discover they are exhilarated by this brute interaction” –
Sight and Sound (Amy Taubin – 1999)
Jack - “Repressed rage”
9. “It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue!”
YOU MUST watch the following 2 scenes:
1.‘Fight Club’ rules
2.Burning of the hand
Consider the messages and values to come out
of these scenes, especially in relation to:
•Delayed adolescence
•The male genders ‘need to belong’
•The move towards Luddite Utopianism (Page
79 of study guide)
11. Main Body
“The central character is torn between tedium and
torture”
(John McCullough – 2004)
Psycho-analysis (Sigmund Freud)
“He recognizes that his freedom is somehow connected to the end of
capitalism”
(John McCullough – 2004)
Ebert (1999) states “The whole movie is about guys afraid of losing their cojones”
“the woman is the hunter and the males are the hunted”
(Chia & Wei – 2009)
“’The Narrators’ real comfort in a world of white middle class male
alienation”
(John McCullough – 2004)
Fight Club “reasserts a masculine identity threatened by the
feminization of American culture” (Suzanne Clark – 2003)
Oedipus complex (Sigmund Freud)
Coupland (1991) –
‘I just want to show society what people born after 1960 think about
things... We're sick of stupid labels, we're sick of being marginalized
in lousy jobs, and we're tired of hearing about ourselves from
• Choose some critical approaches (x3)
• Write x3 PEA Paragraphs based around
these.
Robert Bly (1992) – ‘Iron John’
Critical Review
