Social-Economical or Sexual? Maybe Both

I was very intrigues by the discussion in Tuesday's class about Fight Club. It led me to think about how the social and gender issues in Fight Club relate to today's world. I discussed earlier in a post about the connection of the social and economic sphere in today’s world most notably portrayed in The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi. Throughout human history, the economies that have emerged have always been a subcategory of the social environment in which that culture lives, and have never, until recently, become intertwined or even mask the importance of social wealth Saving the details and redundancy, Polanyi, in 1941, foresaw that consumerism in a capitalist society will eventually breed anarchy as the economy becomes interlinked in society and those unfortunate citizens who are defined socially by their economic characteristics will revolt. This is obviously portrayed vigorously in Fight Club. It is a fact of nature. There are always people who will reject the status quo, some who quietly oppose it, and some who accept the changes. The bottom line is that change takes generations, and very important life lessons are learned as one grows up. The discussion of father and mother roles in development, the Oedipus complex, and the way these theories apply to the way a person thinks and acts when they become mature is strong evidence to support these claims. People who are left behind in a changing socially gender-egalitarian liberal society will often reject the current norms. If a man grows up with a father that portrays women as sexual objects or in any way shape or form inferior to males, that man will probably develop sexist thoughts, and may even act on those thoughts. It is an unfortunate circumstance that our society deals with while we positively deal with highly necessary gender-equality issues.

The opposite of this may even be true. What if a woman grows up without a mother? or a father for that matter. How will this affect her development of thoughts on gender when she is older? These questions are highly prone to interpretation, but important to understand why the family and society in which any human is exposed to can affect their thoughts and decisions in life.

As for the notion that Palahniuk purposefully left out women in his novel, and movie adaptation, I’m not complaining. The books powerful meaning and violence was probably intended to be read more by men. The fact that women are left out for the most part in the fight clubs and projects is just a way the author strengthened his audience’s interest in the book. It is possible that portraying women as “uninvolved” or “unimportant” may have been a way of reaching out to the sexist or testosterone fueled viewers simply because it might have been a more economical way of selling the book or movie; another example about how economics takes precedence over social justification in our society. It is not wrong to choose to write a novel incorporating just one sex. I’m sure there are books out there that do just the opposite. I look at it like this, if you don’t like it, then don’t watch it because the U.S. is still based on freedom or speech and choice.

Another way to look at the role of women in the movie or novel is perhaps this…Palahniuk, in my opinion, displays a strong, yet abbreviated message about women’s role in this changing society of alternative fist therapies. When Marla attends the Testicular cancer groups, she displays the authors feelings about how women are equally in command of the decisions made in this society. It was a notion strengthening gender equality, but as you can see, the narrator was furious that Marla had interfered, or effectively “castrated” him to the one true thing that the narrator had left to identify himself as different; his male reproductive system. When he was alone in this group, he could set himself above the others in the room and feed off of their sorrow because he could officially call himself a “superior” male over the other males, but when Marla joined, she compromised his sexual identity and right to fell like he belonged to an exclusive social class of the operable male phallus. This was a huge message to convey within this novel, and it was essential to relating the narrator’s slipping grip with reality and the reasons he felt he needed to find a new solution in finding his superior male identity. Marla was integral to the movie and its message, as messed up and ethically wrong as it may be, this often how males think in our society.

I like to think of myself a s a realist, instead of denying the status quo or trying to change it, I try to understand the real meaning behind why things are the way they are. I often find myself in the middle of a conversation between men who might not look around to see who is there before speaking. It is socially acceptable, especially among young or uneducated men in our society, to discuss their sexist ideologies with each-other. This is reality, and I have yet to hear any male on the receiving end of this type of language to stop the other and tell them that they are being sexist or demeaning to women. This is just my experience, which may differ from someone else’s, but I’m sure that it is credible. The fact that movies like Fight Club and Crash expose the reality of our society is incredible. It helps people understand both sides of the issue at hand and ACTUAL methods to solve them, instead of demanding instant gratification, especially in Crash, where the movie includes many forms of discrimination along with racism and sexism. If discriminating people can’t see how extreme instances of their mindset can affect others, then they probably wouldn’t consider changing their ways.

In conclusion, I would say that I completely agree with Beckyloo’s post, Fight club is far more about the male struggle with societal changes, and shouldn’t be confused with anything to do with feminism. I also agree that the “constricting” society (which by the way is the worst word to describe it considering that most laws and norms accepted by societies throughout the world has focused on “freedom” from oppression and attempts to satisfy what we call “basic human rights.”) creates problems for both genders where aggression may need to be relieved. On the contrary, the novel did indirectly relate to themes men express in reality about losing their “power position” to women through equality. No person likes to lose their wealth or power to anyone, unless of course they are an egalitarian radical, most uncommon amongst today’s world. The problem with this mindset in males is that they didn’t lose anything! They are only jealous that women have the same rights as them! It is an ignorant and selfish point of view that exists in the modern world. My point is that the narrator and his posse were rejecting the economical norms of their society and wished to make themselves equal to others, throwing in the biased oxymoron belief that men are naturally supposed to be the “equally-superior” sex based only on their physical strength prowess. It would be interesting to see what this novel would have conveyed had it been written by a woman.