The document discusses the theme of masculinity in the film Fight Club. It describes how the narrator attends a support group for men with testicular cancer called "Remaining Men Together," whose members represent a crisis of masculinity in America. One member, Bob, is a former fitness guru who has lost his testicles. The creation of the underground fight club is meant to provide an escape from emasculated consumerist lifestyles through violence and danger. In a key scene, the narrator fights Angel and takes things too far, showing fight club spinning out of control. By the end, the narrator realizes the limits of using violence to achieve masculinity and must take responsibility for his own identity.

1. Masculinity in Fight Club
By Dan Makin

2. The support group
The issue of masculinity is a prevalent concern right from the
start in Fight Club. The narrator attends a support group
meeting for men with testicular cancer, aptly named
"Remaining Men Together." It is here that he listens to a man
lament the fact that his ex-wife just had a baby with her
new husband. The population of this support group illustrates
a crisis signifies the crisis of masculinity in America. In the
following scene, the soft lighting in foreground of the
support group contrasts to the hard lighting focused on the
America flag hanging ominously in the back of the room.
This gives the impression that the image of the men crying
has declined into being that the symbol of the modern
American man is weak and helpless.

3. The men of the support group
The men the narrator meets at the "Remaining Men
Together" support group are a representation of a cultural
loss of masculinity. One of the group's members, Bob, is a
former fitness guru whose steroid use has caused him to lose
his testicles and in their place develop "bitch-tits”
as a result of hormone replacement therapy.
While the narrator feels emasculated because
of his consumer driven and IKEA furnished life,
the men in the support group represent the
physical manifestation of emasculation.

4. Fight club
The creation of the fight club plays an essential role in freeing
the narrator from his crisis of masculinity. In Fight Club the
"group hug" mentality of the early 1990's men's movement is
replaced by raw and uncensored violence. The male in Fight
Club turns to violence in an attempt to reawaken the senses
that have been dulled by their quotidian existence, corporate
jobs and consumerist lives . Fight club is a place where men
can experience a true sense of "being." "You weren't alive
anywhere like you were alive here," the narrator tells us
because, "who you were in fight club is not who you were in
the rest of the world." The basement arena of the fight club
provides a space in which the men in the film can transcend
the reality of their lifestyle, their jobs,
and their bodies. The narrator demonstrates
his understanding of rebirth through
violence by describing how after a fight
"we all felt saved."

5. Fight club
In one scene we see the narrator in fight club fighting Angel
(played by Jared Leto.) The narrator's flippant explanation for
his explosion of rage is nothing more than "I wanted to destroy
something beautiful." This statement captures the irony that is
fight club; the men are destroying the very bodies that they
must inhabit and cannot escape. In this scene, however, the
narrator has taken things too far; he breaks the very rules he
established for fight club by continuing to beat Angel Face
once he is down on the ground.
Fight club is spinning out of control.

6. Conclusion
In Fight Club the white male has lost faith in his role as a consumer and
wants to experience a "real" sense of being that can only be achieved
through pain. The narrator, whose body has been bloodied and broken by
Tyler (aka, himself) in the final scene of the film, portrays himself as the
victim who wants to reverse the damage of Project Mayhem when he tells
Tyler "this is too much!”. On the one hand, Fight Club could suggest that
the only way the white male can truly experience a masculine self, is
through wounding. On the other hand, however, Fight Club appears to be
more of a critique of violence than anything else by stressing the brief
nature of salvation through violence and pain. In the postmodern world,
violence becomes just another hackneyed affectation, and by this
formulation the men in fight club are just perpetuating their banality. By
accepting responsibility for his actions and by acknowledging that he and
Tyler are the same person, the narrator matures and recognizes the limits of
Tyler's nihilism. While the film acknowledges the frustration felt by men in
today's society, Fight Club seems to be telling them that it is time to grow
up and take charge of their individuality instead of blaming society for
making them feel like they have lost it.