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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Two
Spring 2003
"I Want You to Hit Me as Hard
as You Can!":
Screen Violence as a Reflection of Mass Reality - Page 3
by James Nelson
The behaviors seen in Fight Club represent both what we display and what we connect with. The film, released in the fall of 1999, was a screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's best selling novel about two men who seek to completely reject material possessions and societal conformity. They are in a search for the true self, not a version of it sold by mainstream advertisements. The characters find their vehicle in this search to be the release of built up, hostile aggressions. In plain English, they beat the hell out of each other until one of them either calls the fight to an end or is knocked unconscious. Others quickly join in and a phenomenon is born, a meeting of men who seek the same objective and form a club that gives the story its title. The fight scenes are carefully choreographed and as close to real as possible, filled with bloody victims and the brawls that created them. The group also goes around performing vulgar acts such as urinating into restaurant food that is about to be served, splicing pornography into family films, and intentionally setting off car alarms. Bork would argue that a film like Fight Club is dragging us closer to the societal collapse he prophesies. While the meaning behind the film may be difficult for the 70-year old republican to comprehend, it is understood by my generation as a story about the struggle to find the self. This generation looks through the violence and is more heavily affected by what lies beyond it. A reviewer for a popular online database stated about Fight Club , "Physical violence may give the initial sting, but it's the film's psychological violence that leaves the lasting impression" (Mr. Brown). Film violence is warranted by this generation in three ways: it connects to innate psychological urges, it speaks to us as a reflection of societal behaviors, and acts as a pacifier of our own belligerence.
The film taps into our internal psychological struggles that we rarely allow to be externalized in such a fashion. As Edward Norton's character states in the film, "Fight Club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal church. When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered. Afterwards, we all felt saved." ( Fight Club ). According to Freudian theory, there is an innate desire for the destruction of the self. A primal need to challenge our identity and existence by attempting to destroy it. By surviving this attempt at identity annihilation we are brought closer to our own psyches. We can then accept that we truly exist as an individual because we have survived a self-inflicted assassination attempt, giving each man the power to be his own spiritual savior. The men in Fight Club are finding their identities by recognizing and addressing this universal psychological urge. The fights create a feeling of enlightenment, smiling and hugging when the fight is over. They find themselves by releasing this primal urge and testing the boundaries of their identity (" Fight Club and the Search for Self"). The men in Fight Club are not entirely aware that what they are really doing is fighting themselves and searching to fill a psychological urge, just as the audience is not fully aware of it either. Yet, a connection is made. The depictions of violence create realistic scenes that are just as real as the urges the characters are acting out. The violence grabs our attention, locking our eyes to the screen, and is then used as a psychological tool to offer the deeper meanings behind the fights. They are battles of being and consciousness, not of mere competitive or macho aggression. Bork argues that "What America increasingly produces and distributes is now propaganda for every perversion and obscenity imaginable" (Bork 139). Fight Club is not propaganda for violence, it is an open expression of the darker yet vibrant side of the human psyche, the side Bork is unwilling to acknowledge. We are drawn to such a film and accept its violence because of the psychological comment that we connect with; the search for identity through a destruction of the self.
The film and its violence not only appeal to audiences on a psychological level but also because much of Palahniuk's story is taken from everyday life. In addition to pounding on each other, the characters are also infatuated with vulgar acts such as soiling restaurant food, splicing pornography into cartoons, and setting off car alarms. Both Palahniuk and Fight Club director David Fincher received criticism for portraying these activities because some believed these acts would find their way into common practice. Palahniuk fired back at these allegations in a recent article for Gear magazine, confirming that what appalled many reviewers actually occurs in every day life. He writes, "I knew a movie projectionist who collected single frames from porno movies and made them into slides.. Later, when they were shooting the Fight Club movie, some Hollywood big names told me the book hit home because they, themselves, had spliced porno into movies as angry teenage projectionists" (Palahniuk 110). Another ex-waiter told Palahniuk that tainting food was an everyday occurrence and that he, himself, had ejaculated into Margaret Thatcher's food "at least five times" (Palahniuk 110). Disgusting and sickening, especially if you're Margaret Thatcher, yet true.