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>goals or tactics; his [Norton's] quarrels with the violence are purely
personal, not
>with their content. And the fact that automatic-redemption is foisted on
>him, that he doesn't have to go through any struggle to receive it,
>ultimately makes fascism a more paltable option than whatever it is Norton
>represents in the end.
Au contraire, after Bob is killed, Norton tells the others that they killed him and he voices the opinion that they've gone to far. Killing is wrong. He has some moral core which was evidenced at the beginning by his impotent disgust at his job - a job which implicates him in the casual cynicism and corruption of corporate America. Also, in the beginning he's attending the therapy group sessions, feeding off of the humanity and solidarity of those looking death in the face, which allows him to overcome his insomnia and sleep. When Helen Bonham Carter starts showing up at the group meetings, she highlights the fact that he's a "tourist" - she's in the same condition as he is, but since she's not a guy she doesn't join the fight club - and the groups sessions lose their anodyne efficacy. At this point, Pitt appears in order to lead him down the dark path.
>Which is not to say that what I expect from art is parable; I don't. But
>any work of art, especially one that is trying to do the things that Fight
>Club is attempting, does require a certain internal morality. (To Yoshie:
>"morality" shouldn't be confused with "moralisitic," a distinction that you
>don't seem able to quite grasp.) The artist should have a clear
>understanding of the world he is creating. Fincher doesn't, and his
>incoherence and confused statements end up glorifying facsism and killing
>his movie.
It would have been much better had he touched on the total fraudulence and cynicism of the political system, on how the citizenry is depoliticized. The only politics shown is an anti-social vandalism. Rage against the machine. Fincher has said they tried to tell the story from the subjective viewpoint of Norton, hence the voiceover narration. Norton's character is obviously screwed up as evidenced by his insomnia and therapy group crashing, among other things.
>Finally, I object to what seems to be the consensus view that this film,
>along with American Beauty, is an accurate depiction of the psychology of
>men today. I'm sure Faludi loves this outlook, seeing as how its themes of
>alienation and confusion dovetail nicely with her new book. But I think
>it's a mistake to assume that because a few bored, white, suburban,
>middle-class men are having a new crisis that the same crisis is effecting
>all men.
Gah! So its themes are alienation and confusion? So did Leni Riefenstahl's fascist hagiography delve into these themes as well? Faludi doesn't examine bored, white, suburban, middle-class men in her book, rather blue-collar workers who've been fired, promise keepers and former wife-batterers who attend group therapy. And Norton's character suffers from more than boredom. Canaries in the coal mine. (Did you even read her Newsweek review?)
>>So you're saying the satire doesn't work. And the frightening statement
is?
>That when Hollywood scans the landscape of fly-over country, from 30,000
>feet, this is what they perceive; or, more scary, that this is what feel
>themselves.
I live in the Midwest and frankly I see a fair amount of macho insanity. I witnessed a former roommates' coworker fight in one of those ultimate fighting contests. It was like Fight Club. Totally insane. Have you ever been to a hockey game? Is it just me or has wrestling experienced a resurgence?
Faludi was trying to get at the question of why there was this supposed rise of the angry, white male and the AM radio talk show hosts like Limbaugh. In Chicago we've got this asshole morning radio guy called Mancow, a real pied piper. Did you hear about Woodstock '99? And Fight Club was number one at the box office last weekend, its opening weekend, whatever that means.
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>Again, the movie only "touches" on these things; it never coalesces into a
>whole, or into a critical evaluation or full representation of them. This
>failure, a sin of omission not commission, lends credibility to the turn
>toward fascism: his creation of a black-clad, skinheaded army hell-bent on
>destroying the banking system (read: Jewish-owned).
Jews own the banking system? That's news to me. I thought they ran Hollywood (see _Bullworth_) I'm not sure how relevant this is but if you look at Norton's and Pitt's previous movie picks, they might provide a little context. Norton of course had a star turn in American History X which was about *actual* neo-nazis. Pitt seems to like the underground insurgent group theme; he portrayed an IRA member in the _Devil's Own_ and a leader of an eco-terrorist group in _12 Monkeys_. He became known by a minor role in _Thelma and Louise_. Fincher's _Alien 3_ takes place in a penal colony of celibate, all-male killers which anticipates Fight Club's "space monkey" cult of violent, obsolete masculinity. "Space monkeys" is how they're referred to in the book according to a review of the film. I'll be interested to see Stuart Klawans' review in the upcoming issue of The Nation magazine.