Tyler And Jack example essay topic

"Fight club"; directed by David Fincher (1999), is a movie that holds many themes. One main theme that is consistent throughout the entire film is that of masculinity (web), linking into the theme of anti-feminism, however this theme is not presented to the viewer in a way which is insulting to females. This film demonstrates to the viewer how the modern men of today feel their power and purposes are fading and highlights the extreme men will go to in order for them to regain their important masculinity. It returns to the well-known caveman days where men like to perceive themselves as the hunter, or gatherer, the more dominant of the sexes. This idea is overpowering in this movie and one thing this film aims to do is make it's point as clear as possible about the modern day men in society. This theme of masculinity is highlighted in the movie through two main areas; these are character and symbolism.

Fight Club is basically about men who are employed to serve others, men who hold jobs such as waiters, men who feel that they have lost a certain degree of their masculinity, who come together and unite by forming Fight Club (web). This club is a place where they can fight each other and feel like real men again. The film itself is very in your face and gritty, with extreme violence. I believe that Fincher, although not entirely dis cluding the female audience, but by making "Fight Club extremely gritty and violent was attempting to overwhelm and bring out the masculinity of the audience in the two and a half hours while they are viewing the movie. The theme of anti-feminism is clear to us at many points throughout the movie, particularly in the fact that the women characters in the movie meet bad ends. The two women characters in the film are Marla Singer and Chloe.

Marla is a rather tragic character. She steals, smokes and is completely used by Jack, although she is clearly in love with him. Marla calls Jack when she has attempted suicide, and her other cry to help is made to Jack when she thinks she has breast cancer. Marla is weak. She allows herself to be used and she also tries to commit suicide, and she even fails at that. Her opinion of herself is very low (web), when Tyler rescues Marla from the hands of death she is about to fall into due to her overdose of pills she tells the ambulance workers "the girl who lives there used to be a lovely charming girl", meaning she no longer believes that she is.

Also the camera zooms into a close-up of two or three remaining pills which could lead to the argument that Marla was not fully committed to the idea of killing herself if she did not finish the bottle of pills. If you look closely enough, she could even be the one who represents Jack's true self, not the ideal he creates in Tyler Durden. She is not truly a representation of a modern woman, or even of the women in Jack's life. He actually despises her, in one scene, Jack tells the viewers that "If I had a tumour, I'd name it Marla". He sees her as an intruder. This can be for a number of reasons.

Marla invades his support group, forcing him to find a new release method. Secondly, she is a representation of Jack's life itself- from the inability to connect emotionally and form real relationships to a growing hatred of life. In the end, Jack realises that he is a flawed individual who wishes to move away from his Tyler Durden ideal and who finally embraces his real self, symbolized by Marla. In the end, it is realised that the complete absence of women and the feminine leads to chaos, just as in his bland life before, the absence of masculinity led to an incomplete life as well. The other female character, Chloe, is also a tragic character with a pitiful life. Having been told she only has a short time to live she confesses her last wish to have sex with a man before she dies, at one of her support groups (web).

This can imply that without any form of masculinity one could just fade away and die. However this last wish can be looked at the opposite way, where Chloe is a female looking to use a man for sex, giving her the power and making men seem rather helpless, making Chloe seem rather vicious in a way despite the fact she is clearly a victim. Similarly, Robert Paulson, or Bob is just one of the male characters in the movie that represents femininity (web). Another cancer victim, this time testicular, who as a result of his hormone therapy, has grown breasts. Due to this he has been abandoned by his wife and family leaving him an extremely lonely character that the viewer will feel a great deal of sympathy for. This character with his, as Jack refers to, "bitch tits" is the director taking his points and theme to the extremes, as Bob bares no other female qualities besides his breasts.

Robert, being the most similar to the female sex ends up dead. This was in a way inevitable for the viewers to predict as there has been a distinct pattern throughout the movie where the female characters have died, or been damaged in someway. Similarly, another male character, known as Angel face, is also a member of Fight Club. He processes a very feminine look, as he can be considered as beautiful.

He ends up getting beaten to a pulp by Jack as Jack despises him due to his feminine beauty. Another part of the movie that is extremely symbolic is infact the symbolism. The single serving items that Jack constantly refers to, including anything from in-flight meals to shampoo, Single serving items are considered rather lonely and can be linked to the loneliness of many men in modern society. Tyler's soap serves as another symbol. He produces a briefcase full of pink neatly wrapped soap (web) that can be thought to represent the femininity that modern day men are being constantly bombarded with, as pink is considered to be an extremely feminine colour. One of the things Jack buys from Ikea is a yin-yang coffee table.

The yin-yang is a Chinese symbol that represents balance using equal parts of light and dark. When Jack's apartment blows up, he sees the yin-yang table on the ground, damaged but intact. It represents the balance between Jack's old, unfulfilled life and his regained sense of self-worth and manliness that he gets with Fight Club. Fincher's use of visuals when introducing this table is extremely original (web), as he makes Jack's apartment resemble an Ikea catalogue, with prices and descriptions of each item of furniture.

Home shopping catalogues are mostly associated with women so this shows the viewers that although Jack is doing his best to deny it, it is more than likely that he too has a feminine side. The Fight Club itself, although glaringly obvious, is a symbol of masculinity as it appears that fighting has become somewhat of a remedy to the troubles in these mens lives (web). All the scenes in the film that take place in fight club are extremely violent; violence being more associated with masculinity than femininity. These men don't fight because they have been wrongly done, or because they hold grudges (web), they fight for the direct masculine experience, an experience of a few minutes of real pain and solid authentic emotion. The Fight Club is liberation, an escape for the members. They forget their normal weekend jobs and responsibilities and during Fight Club, all men are equals.

It is an escape into masculinity in its purest form, adrenaline, intensity and pain. The club is also strictly men only, we can see this by the fact that the basement is always packed with the members of the single male sex, and also when Jack mentions it to Marla, he clearly states to her that this new found release he has found to replace the old support groups is only for men, totally excluding women. This is an important point as it gives the idea that the characters believe the male species to be of a higher importance than females. It is clear that the men are completely isolating themselves from the women in their lives, even if it is just for the hours that they attend Fight Club. Finally, one extremely important symbol of masculinity is infact Tyler Durden. This is a character created by Jack, although Jack is not aware of this for the majority of the movie.

The "real" Tyler Durden is Jack. Towards the end of the movie the viewer finally discovers that Tyler is not a real human and just another side to Jack, a twist similar to the twist at the end of "The Sixth Sense" however "Fight Club is dealing with insanity and split personality, much like lead actor Edward Norton's earlier film "Primal Fear" (web). Tyler is the ideal "real" man, he is a very testosterone driven male (web) He is everything Jack wishes to be, Tyler is strong, fearless, brave, dangerous and a sex symbol. Tyler is a leader, and is extremely well respected. We see just how fearless and brave he is in the scene where Lou, the owner of the bar that's above the basement where Fight Club is being held, comes down, armed with a gun to confront Tyler for using the basement without permission. Tyler takes a beating from Lou until he is covered in his own blood, however he does not back down as a result of the pain, instead he mocks Lou by laughing then attacks Lou.

This is extremely brave of Tyler, as it would be assumed that Lou would hold all the power, as he is the character holding the loaded weapon. In conclusion, there is absolutely no doubt that one main theme in "Fight Club" is the theme of masculinity, as there is hardly a scene in the movie that does not at least hint at either the demonization of females or the importance of being what the two main characters refer to as "a real man". In the scene where Tyler and Jack go onto the bus and look at a Gucci underwear advertisement, Jack looks at the advert of the male model in a pair of tight boxer shorts with the typical male model body, fake looking tan and steroid made muscles, smirks then asks Tyler "is that how a real man looks?" This idea of masculinity and the whole caveman idealism of "a real man" is extremely consistent throughout the entire movie. "Fight Club" makes no attempts to portray women in any form of a positive light, and fails to make any stab at gender equality, always leaving the viewer seeing men as the more dominant, in control sex. It sticks to it's very own set of rules and by doing this David Fincher has very much successfully portrayed his themes of masculinity and anti-feminism without any doubts.