What movies or novels would you describe as precursors? Clockwork Orange? Starship Troopers? Were you thinking of Oliver Stone's horrible movie with Woody Harrelson and whats-her-name? Is it the militarism that bothers you? There's a score of movies that glorify militarism but are they fascistic? Is Rambo?
A fascist movie in my mind would scapegoat some "parasitic" *other* and appeal to a sense of belonging to some imagined homogeneous group or community - a "we." For me, fascism conjures up images of Hitler or Mussolini or Pat Buchanan or Le Pen or Jorg Haider's demagoguery in Austria.
>I saw this awful movie today, and I must disagree with you, Peter--I think
>it *is* fascistic. To the extreme. Probably this can be attributed more to
>utterly incompetent filmmaking than to any real affinity for brown shirts,
>but it still makes a rather frightening statement--and not in the way it
>intends to.
[clip]
>When we meet the Brad Pitt character he lets us in on
>the secret of what is causing the crisis of manhood: it's sissification.
>This generation--Ed Norton's character is 30--of menschen was raised by
>sissies to be sissies, and the consumer culture is just an extension of
>this: how effete, Pitt is saying, is it to let yourself be defined by
>furniture and nonfat yogurt? You'd think this would be the perfect place
>for the satire to heighten, but instead it drops from sight. It's here we
>discover the true sympathies of the film; you can almost see Fincher
>nodding along with Pitt's bile.
So you're saying the satire doesn't work. And the frightening statement is? Men are somehow being "sissified" by modern society and should get violent in order to prevent "sissification"? I don't see how the movie is arguing that. Yes, Pitt's character is charismatic, but the movie is exploring the appeal of violence (and demagoguery) to men who've gotten the short end of the stick and who've been socialized/interpolated by a bombardment of totally unrealistic advertising and a weird celebrity-focused culture. And the movie touches on the dehumanizing effects of corporate culture when Norton's character describes his job. If I remember correctly, he performs cost/benefit analysis on automobile defects, calculating whether the number of lives lost are worth a recall. Granted, the movie doesn't provide any answers, but it points at some of what's wrong and how what's wrong could lead to worse. Cultural conservatives cry for a need to return to "family values." Socialists would argue for something else. Maybe some would suggest that alienation is part of the problem. Pitt's character has some weird nihilistic, Nietzcheanesque ideas about rebelling, bottoming-out and self-destructing in order "to be alive." "Self-improvement is masturbation, self-annihilation's the way." He says he'd fight Hemingway, when asked which historical figure he'd like to take a go at. (was Hemingway a fascist?)
>Pitt's character, it must be said, is tres kool: he's, like, totally
>independent of the business world and doesn't have any material
>possessions; he rails against the system and wants to lead a coup d'etat;
does this make him a fascist?
>he looks so spectacular when he smokes, and boy is he an animal in the
>sack. In sum, he's everything Norton is not, including a fascist. And this
>isn't being used just as an empty, automatic epithet; I can't describe
>exactly how without giving away the movie, but it's true that he is
>literally a fascist.
I don't see how you would be giving away the movie by describing why you think he's a fascist.
>And yet we still love him. Oh sure, Norton, after emulating him, realizes
>he's evil, and fights and eventually succeeds in banishing Pitt. But Norton
>doesn't earn it; it's just a gift bestowed upon him by the filmmaker.
I don't see how you can argue he doesn't earn it. And yet we still love him [Pitt]? Maybe if Pitt wasn't so appealing, you wouldn't find it a fascistic movie? I think it just makes it a little more true to life. Goebbels was supposedly a charmer. I mean, it's rated R and we're adults, right?
You do raise a good point about satire and how the audience can get off on what's being satirized - sort of like having your cake and eating it too. One reviewer said Pitt's group's anti-corporate vandalism would "have been a howl if performed by, say, the troupe of artsy German nihilists in Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998)." It would have made it more satirical, but I think they still came off as a group of morons. Remember when they're all chanting recently-deceased Bob's name?