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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
By Frankie Dintino
Commentary
Rahul Sharma
Frankie Dintino's essay analyzes a popular film using controversial academic theories. In the end, he illuminates the condition of (certain) people as we rush into the 21 st century, and for that, his essay is an outstanding achievement. However, he does make a few questionable conclusions, which I would like to discuss.
The parenthetical modifier in the previous paragraph touches on the major problematic conclusion, which is that Fight Club is relevant to contemporary society because of its Deleuzian aspects. For whom are these times Deleuzian, though? Of course, Deleuze's idea is Eurocentric; much of the world is not part of the "post-modern information society" that has helped bring about a "society of control," in which digital checks have substituted visibly enclosed spaces as a primary mechanism for gaining and retaining power. In developed nations, however, everyone is presumably in a Deleuzian culture. But Fight Club slights major segments of society, and so does not have as much relevance as Mr. Dintino thinks. Also, due to the film's narrow, chauvinistic depiction of society, and a possible misreading of its final scene, Mr. Dintino's conclusion that "fascism can be overcome internally" is suspect.
Neither Fight Club nor Mr. Dintino seriously entertains the notion that most people happily enter into a "society of control" because they at least feel secure and powerful within the supposedly oppressive structure. The author writes: "I will draw upon parallels between Fight Club and contemporary society in general to demonstrate the reasons that the latter merits the appellation "the Deleuzian century." Later, he goes a step further and calls Fight Club the "quintessential Deleuzian film." Mr. Dintino is probably correct, but he never mentions that Fight Club only gives a voice to people like Jack, who is at first victimized by, and who later oozes hatred at, this kind of society. In the scant time the movie does give to people who do not feel as alienated and controlled as Jack - his boss, the women buying luxury soap at a department store- it adopts a mocking tone because those people do not feel controlled. Jack is in the minority, but the film seems to think otherwise. As Mr. Dintino writes, his name is utterly commonplace, which is usually a sign that a character is representative of the majority of society. Jack is a single, white, male, middle class insurance worker whose apartment is like an Ikea catalog; he is wholly unremarkable, but the film absurdly expects the viewer to believe that he will rapidly rise above his materialism and meekness, transforming from caterpillar to butterfly - and a social one at that.
In focusing solely on aspects of the film that are Deleuzian, Mr. Dintino does not adequately critique how the film dishonors Deleuzian theory in its tendentious portrayal of the "society of control." Even its depiction of the "rebel" niche is very limited, because Jack is a caricature, and he is practically the only major (real) character in the film. There are no major characters that are minorities, blue collar, or upper class, and the movie's one female character, Marla, has almost no bearing on how the plot develops. Thus, Fight Club 's view of both the zeitgeist and the actual members of society is so narrow that it cannot be as socially relevant as Mr. Dintino claims. Considering how materialistic American society is, a more appropriate social commentary may come from movies in which gangs, fulfilling a similar "need" to reassert masculinity that Mr. Dintino observes is present in Fight Club , vie for social power through anti-social means. Turf wars, both on the street level and the international level, are still far more common than the nihilistic "culture jamming" Fight Club illustrates. Maybe things have not changed so much, after all.