Book Report - Fight Club and reclaiming masculinity.

Brad Pitt - Photo still from Fight Club

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk - 1996

The rules of Fight Club.

1. You don't talk about fight club.
2. You don't talk about fight club.
3. When someone says stop, or goes limp, the fight is over.
4. Only two guys to a fight.
5. One fight at a time.
6. They fight without shirts or shoes.
7. The fights go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.  – Fight Club, pages 48–50

What has humanity  (especially men) lost in identity and purpose in our postmodern world?  Men have become worker drones with no purpose beyond keeping the system afloat and then death in anonymity without being remembered.  These are some of the male angst issues addressed in Chuck Palahniuk's novel, Fight Club.

I admit I am late to the club.  I never saw the 1999 movie version starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.  I just read the book for the first time last month.  Nothing I will write here will be really new in the study of this book, but is just my thoughts on the book.


Reclaiming the masculine identity -

What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.

No theme in this book is pushed further than men trying to reclaim their masculinity.  There are other themes of decay/entropy, destruction of the controlling systems, and anarchy, but the first and largest theme is this message of recapturing the male identity.

In the afterword of the book, Palahniuk shared a bit about what inspired him to write Fight Club.

...bookstores were full of books like The Joy Luck Club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt. These were all novels that presented a social model for women to be together. But there was no novel that presented a new social model for men to share their lives.

So many men live day-to-day without living.  We put in our time, make our money, watch our shows, and slowly die.  Many men want more yet so few men live out loud.  As the character Tyler Durden said when he shared his desire of "... not wanting to die without any scars."

So many men try to make up for this lack of meaning and life by buying the best toys, having the best home, and trying to satisfy their existence with things.

It used to be enough that when I came home angry and knowing that my life wasn't toeing my five-year plan, I could clean my condominium or detail my car.  Someday I'd be dead without a scar and there3 would be a really nice condo and car.  Really, really nice, until the dust settled or the next owner.  Nothing is static.  Even the Mona Lisa  is falling apart.  Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw.  

Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.
Tyler never knew his father.
Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

As the main character (never named in the book) and his alter ego Tyler Durden start fight club, they notice the types of guys who need to live a life that breaks the social restraints put on them.

Most guys are at fight club because of something they're too scared to fight.  After a few nights, you're afraid a lot less.  After you've been to fight club, watching football on a television is watching pornography when you could be having great sex."

You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club... ... Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights.  Fight club isn't about words.  You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread.  You see the same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood.  This guy trusts himself to handle anything.  There's hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and you when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved.

Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.

Tyler attributes this lack of father role models to why these men are seeking out this violent salvation and freedom that comes from giving up control and becoming primal fighters.

The mechanic says, "If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God.  And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?
"What you end up doing," the mechanic says, "is the possibility that God doesn't like you.  Could be, God hates us.  This is not the worst thing that can happen."
"Burn the Louvre," the mechanic says, "and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa.  This way at least, God would know our names." 

I was twenty-seven when this book came out.  I was the same age as the main characters.  I didn't realize it at the time, but I was going through the same worthless spin cycle of life.  I was married, finishing another college degree, and starting professional life.  I felt that as long as I played by the rules and did my tasks, I would be content.  That is far from the truth.  I've played that game for twenty years and while having material comforts I am not satisfied with my life.

This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead.

Alcohol and drug addiction specialists emphasize the need of the addict to hit rock bottom to realize how fucked up their life is by addiction.  For the main character to become free, he had to hit rock bottom.  He had to lose all the trappings that made his life comfortably empty.  He had to lose his mind, conscience, and identity and slowly build all of it up to achieve some sense of recovery.  He is both physically and emotionally scarred by the journey.  In the end he is recovering but will never be whole again.

The postmodern man is in tough place that is bursting apart.  Fight Club is an example of the rebellion against the postmodern social constraints put on us.  We have been relegated by many as the evil of all society and can only be worker bees and remain silent.  This goes against our primal urges and needs to be men.  Men  can be violent,  forceful, primal, and protective.  In our history we have used these aggressive traits to commit murder, rape, genocide and racism.  By trying to become enlightened, we also try to repress these base instincts.  We deny their existence and are shocked that by repressing them, they explode in other directions.  I do not support the violence portrayed in this book as a healthy manifestation of restoring masculinity, but I understand the motivations of the characters.

One of the key lessons I learned from this book is that this is my world, right now.  I didn't exist one hundred years ago and will be dead and forgotten one hundred years from now.   I don't need to live the life my forefathers and mothers lived or expect of me.  I am anxious of my future playing out like a worn out cassette tape - ending with silence and thunk.  My life does not need to be meaningful to others, just me.   I am free to live how I want not what is prescribed to me by history, culture, gender, or other limiting factions.

Who gets past the feminist bouncers?

Hear Me Roar (HMR) focuses on men, masculinity, masculism, and the role, identity, rights, and perception of men in society.  This focus on the masculine gender is fine, but HMR must also take time to look at feminism and the role, identity, rights, and perception of women in society.

Recently resigned Alaska gov Sarah Palin publicly proclaimed her feminism.  Many in the political world wondered what that meant.  Can someone as conservative as Palin be a feminist?

This question of who gets to self-proclaim as feminist was posed to a number of feminist writers and theorists at Slate.com.  The responses are interesting.  Some agree that Palin can claim the identity, others argue against it for various reasons.  The first argument against is that while Palin is a product of feminism, she has done nothing to promote feminist causes.  The second draws an even harder line in the sand, Palin's hard pro-life/anti-choice/anti-abortion stand absolutely keeps her out of the group.  I highly recommend you read the article. 

So, what is HMR's stand on a feminist litmus test?  Undecided.  HMR has concerns about exclusive clubs that openly discriminate, even to those sympathetic to the group's causes but with differing ideas or backgrounds.  On the other hand, no group should allow someone in who will actively and purposefully damage the group and the cause.  My questions for any group are:

• How do you handle differing opinions from group members?  
• Do you listen to them, but do nothing about them?  
• Do you placate or cave in to them?  
• Do you toss them out of the group?
• Which individuals or groups are definitely persona non grata?

As for Palin's desire to take on the identity of feminist - check her motives.   HMR believes she intends to mock, damage, belittle, and reduce the importance of the movement.  The feminist movement is in a mine field with this one.  If they accept her, how do they control her?  If they refute her, how will the group's identity change after rejecting a woman of power from membership?  Good luck.

On a side note, HMR supports the core feminist values and causes.  As with all groups, fringe interests arise that test support both within and outside of the group.  That is worth many more blog posts.

Getting your ass kicked

Every fuckin’ beatin’ I’m grateful for. Every fuckin’ one of them. Get all the trust beat outta you. And you know what the fuckin’ world is.- Al Swearengen Deadwood (played by Ian McShane)

Have you ever been in the losing end of a fight?  Have you ever been punched in the face?  I don't approve of fighting for useless reasons, but I do believe it is both an unavoidable and important rite of passage in a man's life, similar to losing a parent.

I wrote a bit about my fighting history over at The Photo Fermata.  You can read the full account here.  
In the post about when I had to be on the losing side of fights.

My first memories of fighting violence are from the early 70's. I was in preschool- kindergarten. My dad worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an engineer on irrigation systems. We were living in Lower Brule, South Dakota on an Indian reservation during the same time the American Indian Movement (AIM) was flaring up at the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Wounded Knee. Being the white kids of a government employee during this time was not easy. I am not going to write about the politics and the different sides of the issues. At four years old, my only side was keeping from getting beat up, and that was it.

On a regular basis, my brother and I were cornered and forced to fight or take a beating from a classmate or two. My brother is five years older than me. I learned a hard lesson. If I won the fight, I had to fight my opponents older brother or sister. At one point I had to learn when to take the beating over winning the fight. My brother had the same problems. He would jump in and protect me if I was way over-matched, but he had his own back to watch.

I learned a few things from taking a beating and getting punched in the face, the gut, and the balls.  The fear of these hits are in ways worse than the actual hit.  Before getting hit the first time, I feared I would break apart into pieces like glass.  After the hit, the kick, the punch, I learned that it hurt like hell, but I could still fight back and win.  I also learned that I would heal over time.  I learned who to fear, when to fear and when to give up.

I really wish some hard lessons in life weren't so hard, but unfortunately bad shit happens in life.  We fight, we hurt each other, we lose family members, and we eventually lose ourselves.

Below is a fight scene from Deadwood between Swearengen (Ian McShane) and Sheriff Bollock (Timothy Olymphant).  While it is very graphic, it shows how most fights end with both sides really hurting.  The makers of Deadwood were the best at showing the pummeling, bludgeoning, deep trauma of physical fights.  After watching one, you don't want to be in it.  The fight ends with both sides having secret weapons, a knife and a boy.