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Description
Fight Club is a cult classic that covers many different themes of society in a way few films have done before it, but in my opinion, the most under-analyzed theme by viewers is how it portrays men and their connection to their own masculinity. Like many of it's other themes, fight club covers masculinity in our society in a way that both brings up many points while not leaving a blatant moral or message to take away from it on the subject, leaving it up for interpretation. While some see Fight Club as toxic in it's portrayal of masculinity and how it has been affected by society, I couldn't disagree more. I see the film as looking at male insecurities from a male point of view that aligns with feminist ideology. While feminism does address many issues that affect men as well, it is, by it's name, a primarily by women, about women, for women movement, leaving it very gynocentric and leaving it hard for the more moderate male feminist to find a place to analyze their own identity from a feminist perspective when they are heterosexual and/or cisgendered, making it hard for them to truly look at what it means to be a man from a point of view outside that of a society with archaic, patriarchal, Judaeo-Christian ideologues at it's very foundation.

In the fact that this film takes a point of a blank slate in the narrator, we are put into the shoes of a void, an avatar for ourselves, and Tyler Durden, being the narrators Id, becomes our own view into our primal psyche and into what true, pure, primal masculinity is, without any cultural bias to warp our view. However, there is a wall between the narrator and Tyler, and that the 'id' appears as how we want him to be, and the void narrator projects his cultural indoctrination onto how he sees the world, and especially Tyler Durden. He is what he thinks a man should be, and is arguably reflecting his own disdain of a culture that commercializes, and his view, emasculated him, creating an unrealistic view of his own id. Tyler is the golden boy, the man men want to be and girls want to be with, in the narrator's mind, to even a homoerotic level where he becomes jealous of others who he sees receiving Tyler's attention. This is where it cements for me that the underlying message beneath is one that counters both the warped view the narrator, as well as society. This counter culture he has created in his vision of Tyler is not as much feminist, but something else entirely, his own idea of masculinity, which has homosexual undertones while being very stereo-typically masculine. It is a view that is, while flawed, opens up a door for independent evaluation of what his gender identity means to him. We find that through the ego of the narrator contrasting with the id of Tyler Durden, we see a love-hate relationship than constantly throws us positive and negative messages about society. It is the story of a man learning to be secure in his masculinity without the eyes of a woman guiding him (though it is his own care and empathy for Marla that helps save him, she does not provide him a guiding eye as much as being a living catalyst for his revelations).

In short, I feel a point coming in a way that is neither a misguided 'mens rights' view, nor societal, nor exactly feminist, despite their alignment. It is an independent breakaway from gender norms by an archaic society. Chuck Palanuik said himself, when writing the book often looked at books by women about finding their identity as women such as "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "Ya Ya Sisterhood' and wondered why there weren't any of these books helping finding male identity like there were female. This is where he found himself making the basis of a male group, saying it could have been based around any old male hobby, but for him, it was Fight Club, their place to 'feel like men.' It seems to me it was a revolutionary take on breaking away from archaic societal hierarchies and the complexities they present while not making it 'pro-man' or 'anti-man', but instead for finding truth and security in one's self where men often struggled in an era where feminism speaking about itself being a movement for everyone and not just women was not nearly as common. Breaking away and finding oneself as an average male in our western society is one of the most difficult, mind boggling things to accomplish because we did not lose our identity to gender norms inflicted on us by another group like women have from patriarchal societies where men ruled, but from ourselves while being either unaware, or simply trying to disregard the surrender of our autonomy from gender roles altogether. We have to rebuild bridges we've burnt on our own, and Fight Club helps put up support beams for us to build our bridge how we will, leaving a guide without preaching down to us, and to me, that is one of the greatest gifts one can receive in finding their own identity.

Description
Fight Club is a cult classic that covers many different themes of society in a way few films have done before it, but in my opinion, the most under-analyzed theme by viewers is how it portrays men and their connection to their own masculinity. Like many of it's other themes, fight club covers masculinity in our society in a way that both brings up many points while not leaving a blatant moral or message to take away from it on the subject, leaving it up for interpretation. While some see Fight Club as toxic in it's portrayal of masculinity and how it has been affected by society, I couldn't disagree more. I see the film as looking at male insecurities from a male point of view that aligns with feminist ideology. While feminism does address many issues that affect men as well, it is, by it's name, a primarily by women, about women, for women movement, leaving it very gynocentric and leaving it hard for the more moderate male feminist to find a place to analyze their own identity from a feminist perspective when they are heterosexual and/or cisgendered, making it hard for them to truly look at what it means to be a man from a point of view outside that of a society with archaic, patriarchal, Judaeo-Christian ideologues at it's very foundation.

In the fact that this film takes a point of a blank slate in the narrator, we are put into the shoes of a void, an avatar for ourselves, and Tyler Durden, being the narrators Id, becomes our own view into our primal psyche and into what true, pure, primal masculinity is, without any cultural bias to warp our view. However, there is a wall between the narrator and Tyler, and that the 'id' appears as how we want him to be, and the void narrator projects his cultural indoctrination onto how he sees the world, and especially Tyler Durden. He is what he thinks a man should be, and is arguably reflecting his own disdain of a culture that commercializes, and his view, emasculated him, creating an unrealistic view of his own id. Tyler is the golden boy, the man men want to be and girls want to be with, in the narrator's mind, to even a homoerotic level where he becomes jealous of others who he sees receiving Tyler's attention. This is where it cements for me that the underlying message beneath is one that counters both the warped view the narrator, as well as society. This counter culture he has created in his vision of Tyler is not as much feminist, but something else entirely, his own idea of masculinity, which has homosexual undertones while being very stereo-typically masculine. It is a view that is, while flawed, opens up a door for independent evaluation of what his gender identity means to him. We find that through the ego of the narrator contrasting with the id of Tyler Durden, we see a love-hate relationship than constantly throws us positive and negative messages about society. It is the story of a man learning to be secure in his masculinity without the eyes of a woman guiding him (though it is his own care and empathy for Marla that helps save him, she does not provide him a guiding eye as much as being a living catalyst for his revelations).

In short, I feel a point coming in a way that is neither a misguided 'mens rights' view, nor societal, nor exactly feminist, despite their alignment. It is an independent breakaway from gender norms by an archaic society. Chuck Palanuik said himself, when writing the book often looked at books by women about finding their identity as women such as "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "Ya Ya Sisterhood' and wondered why there weren't any of these books helping finding male identity like there were female. This is where he found himself making the basis of a male group, saying it could have been based around any old male hobby, but for him, it was Fight Club, their place to 'feel like men.' It seems to me it was a revolutionary take on breaking away from archaic societal hierarchies and the complexities they present while not making it 'pro-man' or 'anti-man', but instead for finding truth and security in one's self where men often struggled in an era where feminism speaking about itself being a movement for everyone and not just women was not nearly as common. Breaking away and finding oneself as an average male in our western society is one of the most difficult, mind boggling things to accomplish because we did not lose our identity to gender norms inflicted on us by another group like women have from patriarchal societies where men ruled, but from ourselves while being either unaware, or simply trying to disregard the surrender of our autonomy from gender roles altogether. We have to rebuild bridges we've burnt on our own, and Fight Club helps put up support beams for us to build our bridge how we will, leaving a guide without preaching down to us, and to me, that is one of the greatest gifts one can receive in finding their own identity.