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Anaylsis of the Film: Fight Club

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Anaylsis of the Film: Fight Club
For years David Fincher has directed some of the most stylish and inventive thrillers in American cinema. His credits include: Aliens 3, Seven, The Game and Fight Club. Each of these films has been not only aesthetically pleasing and fun to watch but each has commented on society, making the viewers think outside norms and analyze their world. Fight Club is no exception; it is a multi-layered film with many subplots and themes, but the primarily it a surrealistically description of the status of the American male at the end of the 20th century. David Flincher's movie, Fight Club, depicts how consumerism has caused the emasculatization of the modern male and tells a tale of liberation from a corporate controlled society.

In the movie Brad Pitt comments on the new way of life, "We are products of lifestyle obsession; murder, crime, poverty do not concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with five hundred cannels and a designer name on my underwear." The film, Fight Club illustrates the consumer culture in which the 20th century male lives in and how it's deconstruction of individuality. The film gives numerous examples of this; the main character of the film (Ed Norton) asks when looking through an IKEA catalog, "What kind of plates define me as a person." He not asking what personal characteristics and attributes define him but what possession most accurately does. Furthermore, Ed Norton's character has no name; he is only referred to as the 90's everyman, the IKEA man. The film demonstrates the extensive emphases the consumer based culture of the 20th century on individualism and values associated with being a man. Corporations have replaced personal qualities with corporate logos; the modern male cannot be anything unless he has certain products in his possession. No longer does one own things, his things own him. The contemporary male is a slave of the IKEA nesting instinct. The main character absence of a name only

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