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Eight things that Fight Club taught us about masculinity

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This week the news leaked out that Chuck Palahniuk is working on a sequel to his 1990s novel Fight Club, which will be published as a series of 10 comic books in May 2015. So if Chuck can break the rule that “you do not talk about Fight Club” then so can we. Here’s our list of eight things that the original Fight Club taught us about masculinity.

  1. Men don’t talk about masculinity

Yes you guessed it….the first rule of Masculinity is: Men do not talk about Masculinity. The second rule of Masculinity is: Men do not talk about Masculinity. Well maybe most men don’t and maybe that’s changing, so let’s break a few rules and talk some more about Masculinity……..

  1. Masculinity still doesn’t cry

As a man, Edward Norton’s insomnia-suffering character has no acceptable outlet for his emotional despair. His doctor advises him to visit a support group to see what real suffering looks like. Norton becomes a support group junkie, addicted to the type of emotional release that is socially permissible for women, but only available to men when they have a serious problems like a terminal illness. This catharsis enables him to sleep again until his cover is blown by Marla (Helena Bonham Carter). Without this emotional release he finds himself trapped, once again, inside a notion of masculinity that denies him true expression and his insomnia returns.

  1. Masculinity thinks like Brad Pitt but feels like Edward Norton

Fight Club’s director, David Fincher said: “We’re designed to be hunters and we’re in a society of shopping. There’s nothing to kill anymore, there’s nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman is created.” The average modern man may not feel like a hero, but somewhere in the collective psyche we still expect masculinity to show up looking more like Brad than Ed.

  1. Masculinity is a thing that is not defined by things

One of the key turning points in Fight Club is when Edward Norton’s character discovers his home and all his possessions have been blown up. Norton is a fairly typical nineties “new man” whose masculinity is defined by the things which are external to him—his job, clothes, car, home, possessions, sex life (or lack of). Only when he loses those external trappings—and lets go of his attachment to these thing—does he begin to access and experience the unexpressed masculinity that resides within him.

  1. Masculinity is competitive

The film’s eponymous Fight Club is a raw and brutal expression of the innate, masculine drive to fight and win. According to Tom Fordy, who recenty broke the first rule of Fight Club by talking about it at Telegraph Men: “men have natural instincts that are sexual, competitive and aggressive—power instincts that are impossible to tame”. In a review of the film, Eivind Figenschau Skjellum of the website Masculinity Movies said: “for many men, fighting a friend can be an expression of love, a challenge for them to tap deeper into their power. This is something many women will never understand. When we men engage in such fighting, we are not being violent as much as we are challenging each other to be all we can be.”

  1. Masculinity is in crisis

Fight Club has come to symbolize the concept of a “crisis of masculinity ” that has left men emasculated. Norton’s character experiences this emasculation—even his imaginary “power animal” in the film is not a wolf, a lion or a bear, but a penguin! The most overt example of this masculinity crisis is Meatloaf’s bodybuilding character, Bob Paulson, with his man boobs and lack of testicles, he is the film’s embodiment of a man who has literally lost his physical masculinity. According to the cultural historian, Robert von Dassanowsky, “Bob has become the extreme metaphor for middle-class, male-led panic in the postmodern era”.

  1. Masculinity might not be the problem (or the solution)

According to the cultural critics Henry Giroux and Imre Szeman, Fight Club presents the crisis of capitalism as a crisis of masculinity, with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) representing the “redemption of masculinity repackaged as the promise of violence in the interests of social and political anarchy…..Fight Club’s vision of liberation and politics,” they argue “relies on gendered and sexist hierarchies that flow directly from the consumer culture it claims to be criticizing”.

One of Giroux and Szeman’s key criticisms of Fight Club is that it defends “authoritarian masculinity” and ignores how neoliberal capitalism dominates and exploits society. “Fight Club has nothing substantive to say about the structural violence of unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending, and the destruction of institutions capable of defending social provisions and the public good,” they say.

8. Masculinity is not a special snowflake

Towards the end of the film, Tyler Durden tells his Fight Club army: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake”. According to Eivind Figenschau Skjellum of Masculinity Movies:

“The illusion that we are special is a huge problem in modern, narcissistic society, and keeps us men apart from our true potential. For when we are “special”, we live for recognition. Only when we embrace that we are just another human being is the humility in place to make us truly special. Only when we embrace that we are not special are we ready for true masculine power, true masculine spirituality”.

Tyler Durden would probably not approve of such talk of “masculine spirituality” as one of his famous lines in the film is: “self-improvement is masturbation”! And of course all men know that you don’t talk about Fight Club, you don’t talk about masculinity and you certainly don’t talk about “self-improvement”. 

Tell us what you think. Are you a fan of the film Fight Club and what do you think it has to say about masculinity, manhood and men’s experiences of the modern world?

—Photo Credit: Dark Horse Comics Promotional Image

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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  • http://thepowerofrelationship.com Mark Davenport

    Just a few minutes ago i was trying to explain to an essentially Green postmodern woman friend why I loved my Red warrior. It borders on this topic but was adjusted to include women (who can have warriors inside them too).

    (The color code is Don Beck’s of Spiral Dynamics and I describe people as of a particular color ONLY AS A SHORTHAND for this discussion. People can have traits of a certain color but the are not colors!)

    “The Red warrior is the first human to actually has a sense of self. People in the preceding Purple stage were without individual identity, were noTHING without the tribe, simply did without question what was their role, the role according to the ancestors, could not even conceive of a Self.

    Some Red person was the first to note that he or she was NOT just a member of a community, but someONE in their own right.. It’s a feisty stage (think of a two year old!), it’s the loss of unconscious innocence, a loss of rules, a brutal time in history because the ancestors as seen by the tribe were no longer in charge. Who was in charge? I, Me, My, Mine, was in charge. and there was no “morality” yet. that had to wait for Blue!

    We want to reject Red because it is so immoral, so unruly, so brutal. Think Lucretia Borgia, the Mafia, Hoodlums, Gangsters, might makes right.

    But if you didn’t ever go through your own Red phase, you would be diagnosed with “Borderline Personality Disorder” and very very ill, capable of ruining your children and all important relationships.

    Love your Red, it gave you your sense of self!”

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  • Nigel

    The most resonant quote, some years ago in a piece on depression in MHF, is ” there is a reason men don’t cry, the women in their lives don’t like it”. After over thirty years working in care and health I realise Warren Farrells’ analysis is actually both accurate and ” feminist”. Rather in the mould of the stolid horse in Animal Farm men must work harder and be more self sacrificing. Yet in over 30 years I literally have never met a women , however “progressive” , who has not in her off the cuff comments and behaviour demonstrated the depth of the expectation of utility as a male role. In younger years I used to be shocked. Now I’m resigned. Once I considered ” The Myth of Male Power” rather Californian . Now it looks like inspiration. Replace Christian chivalry with the secular religion of feminism and other isms and not much has changed. It’s just that like in Animal Farm the male role got harder and more invisible. I’m still to meet a woman who unconcernedly takes responsibility for themselves and and a family without a cloud of recrimination. What it has shown me is that people can hold completely contradictory opinions at the same time without even noticing , fascinating. One day a wife will dive in swirling waters to save her husband.