Body, Gender, and Power: Reading the Illusion of a Subversive Potential in Fight Club

Abstract

In David Finchers 1999 film Fight Club, destructive totalitarian violence and vexing gender issues are intertwined with each other. Men in Fight Club and Project Mayhem, quasi-anarchist organizations that use violence and terrorism in the film, resist the late-capitalist society. Their radical actions are based on a firm belief that they can recover their (lost) masculinity, as the film represents through Jack and Tyler, the protagonists equating the late-capitalist society to something feminine. In Finchers film, the restoration of masculinity as resistance against society is paradoxical as it depicts men as victims of the feminized society, while making them subject to their own violence based on the idea of masculinity. In particular, through Marla Singer, the only major female character, Fight Clubs representation of mens homosocial bonding unwittingly highlights and strengthens stereotypes of heterosexuality.