The Movie Fight club is popular among young people who are known for their reluctance to read. It retells the story from its original source of adaptation, a novel called Fight Club. The movie is full of violence, suspense and people who are disgruntled with modern social, political and economic systems.
There is a general suggestion in the movie that the answer to all these problems cannot be found through self improvement but through self destruction. It turns out that the protagonist has been inflicting self damage as the person he is fighting is no other than himself. The movie portrays the illogical overindulgence of men’s movement and the degrading effects of consumer culture.
In fight Club, Druden is symbolic of rebellious force dedicated to tearing down the unreliable and middling way of modern life. The violence shown in the movie depicts fabricated realities, materialism and consumerism that is often sold to the public through media commercials (Fincher, 1999).
Druden observes that he is part of what he calls middle children of history who have been raised by television to believe that they will at some point in their lives become rich and famous people, something that will never happen.
The movie rails against consumerism. When the protagonist discovers that his followers have discovered his true identity, he resolves to put an end to project mayhem (Fincher, 1999). Tyler is eventually isolated by this move and is left powerless both economically and politically.
His indifference towards suffering is symbolic of capitalism that ends’ being oppressive towards common workers by reducing them to objects whose sole purpose is to facilitate financial transactions. The family is not an exception in this absurd treatment of human beings by the capitalist system.
The protagonist notes that his own father managed family like a business entity by serially divorcing and starting up a new family at the end of every six years. He also notes that his father disappeared at some point in his lifetime; this is symbolic of removal of God from western civilization. The protagonist’s confusion leads him to be sexually attracted to Druden.
The movie uses political themes to show the future of contemporary politics. Like zeitgeist, the movie shows that authoritarian institutions evolved from revolutionary left-wing movements.
This suggests that people should not blindly follow today’s upcoming movements such as gay liberation, feminism, anti-globalization etc that purport to be a cure against postmodern political oppression. The proposed radical solution can turn out to be a permanent social and political problem should the cure fail to work (Fincher, 1999).
The final part of the movie ends where the protagonist realizes that Druden was his hallucination and that his total disappearance is conditional. He should not try to take any sleep inducing pills to solve his sleep problems. Any attempts to cure his alleged illness will only aggravate his sleep disorder which will only mean more schizophrenic hallucinations for him.
This is symbolic of solutions suggested by contemporary movements as to how the society should cure its political, social, economic and personal problems through unconventional means. The movie reflects zeitgeist by being able to highlight the decline of western culture and masculine crisis. It cautions people against overdependence on things and consumerism by extension.
Works Cited
Fincher, David, dir. Fight Club. Perf. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham-Carter. 20th Century Fox: 1999. Film.