rewatching FIGHT CLUB this week i was very struck by how a movie that is very plainly a critique of this vision of masculinity was taken up as a valorization of it
Reposted from
mtsw
It's grim thinking about how many men and women in society have mental models of valorous male behavior that primarily consist of being abusive and violent.
Comments
I kind of wish the people critiquing them understood that.
(Tim Robbins didn't want a soundtrack album for "Bob Roberts" -- he got it)
(I _hope_ Fincher is smarter than that?)
Its like idolizing the Joker. Its creepy and cringey.
Born in the USA is an anthem because Springsteen sings it like an anthem.
The mere words, the literal meaning of the verses doesn't undo the anthem of the chorus.
Regarding Fight Club....
Songs are poetry - both the form (structure and singing/instrumentation) and the words matter.
Yeah Henry Hill ends up paranoid and drug addicted and his friends are going to kill him, but look at the great seats he gets at the Copa.
The music matters. The singing matters
Why does born in the USA, that chorus sing that way? Why does that hit on such deep stadium singing level.
Self destructive characters too? This is a half thought.
If I'm on a plane, I want wifi, my Switch, some tiny bottles of bourbon, and a Xanax.
I'm on a fucking airplane, it's boring as shit, I'm not going to sit there staring at the seat in front of me like a dumb asshole.
"Chain'd on the burning Lake, nor ever thence
Had ris'n or heav'd his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation..."
Mickey Spillane writes really misogynistic characters. So does Charles Bukowski. They're quite miserable, sad characters, and men should not ever try to be like them. Great writers, but lousy men.
Chuck Palahniuk pushed back against this, but people don't see it.
But it has the same thing where it’s like “these guys may seem important but they suck” and some audiences are like “they may suck but they seem important”.
It's this guy, over and over again.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-pay-any-amount-to-not-pay-my-taxes
Bunkers are preferable to democracy for a certain kind of person.
https://bsky.app/profile/cityatlas.bsky.social/post/3lfuqhvzugk2x
https://andrewblackman.net/2024/05/the-future-by-naomi-alderman/
That said, The Expanse did a little bit of this. It wasn't all fake, but the rich did retreat.
(Alderman also wrote The Power, which became a Prime mini-series with Toni Collette)
https://andrewblackman.net/2024/05/the-future-by-naomi-alderman/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Td88z08a_4c&pp=ygUYZm9sZGluZyBpZGVhcyBmaWdodCBjbHVi
Kinda sad to reflect on this nearly ten year old video addressing the then fringe gamergate/alt-right toxicity, and how those ideas have only become more mainstream since.
it says: don’t you have anything else better to do than watch this? don’t mindlessly obey. think for yourself. stop shopping. get laid. touch grass.
alas, the incels….
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435
Reminds me that the first Matrix film originally intended to have a one-gender-in-Matrix/different-gender-in-reality character. (Cc: @brbennett.bsky.social - who told me that tidbit.)
Giving me more to think about, thank you 🙏🏻
[waves hands around]
this
They missed the movie completely.
I think there’s a parallel in how it’s pretty much impossible to make an anti-war movie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See
I wish I could remember where I read about how difficult it is to make an effective anti-war film. It was a whole article or podcast about it. It may have been https://citationspod.bsky.social
... and we've had a culture confused since Michael Douglas was making bank as the template aggrieved white male.
Podcast, IndoctriNation with Dr. Badera
It’s like they don’t understand that everyone is dead at the end of the movie.
Satire is lost on more minds than I'd like...
Did we watch the same movie?
These are people who need someone to turn to the screen at the end and give them a speech detailing “what it was all about.”
thinking makes you use your brain, and that burns a lot of calories. they don’t want a woman President (or a black one); they don’t want to learn transgender biology or understand gay marriage. those don’t fit in their stereotypes; they make them THINK.
1) i was young and had no media literacy
2) Brad pit was hot in a way that i was comfortable being atracted too when i felt ashamed of being gay.
3) im a NB with pretty antifascist politics now
Took them like, 4 seasons and 2 standalone specials, but they got there eventually.
You really gotta write it in crayon sometimes.
Now about Trump…
- D-FENS in Falling Down.
unusual to sustain that sort of misunderstanding at movie length
Aesthetic completely at odds with message.
"He's the one..."
But very much, yes. The paradigms between right and wrong are laid bare, and you can either see and understand it, or remain ignorant
https://www.vulture.com/2013/05/michael-douglas-on-liberace.html
i did not realize this was also a reference to MICHAEL DOUGLAS (also in Wall Street) hating bros who loved Gordon Gekko…
Fight Club : masculinity :: Starship Troopers : patriotism
We were too stupid to not take that as a happy ending simply because it was from Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxYWk-8ZdKk
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lad5sS9_kqE
Fincher: “Erm, seven or eight.”
“And which once did you use?“
(beat) “The first.”
I still think those are great
yeah it's sort of like how truffaut apparently wrote that there is no such thing as an anti-war film, as cinema inevitably glamorizes violence
Has the same problem as like Breaking Bad, making the bad guys too cool.
Unfortunately the artist he did them with got "Me Too"'d, so that kinda sours the work.
looking at an underwear model "is that what a man looks like" Brad it is exactly what you look like
"they told us we would be movie stars, but we won't" but you are though
And that's the layer: all the men in Mayhem in the film imagine themselves to be Durden there as well, against all the evidence.
Maggie Mae Fish was good on that one
It hit me so hard when I saw it I almost had a panic attack! (I was 19 what can I say)
I do think it would be interesting to see people rewatch & imagine the protagonist's name is Luigi Mangione and see if that changes their view on it.
(NB: I love that show, not meant as a criticism against it.)
also you couldn't make a show about corrupt police like that today.
Starship Troopers is NOT like this. Verhoeven dressed his Nazis like Nazis and you cannot miss it.
I don't think Fincher did this successfully.
there are mass-murdering kids who literally got their machine guns from their parents as presents.
Would you like to know more?
‘Where’s Our Place in Society?’: 12 Men Who Backed Trump Grapple With America https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/16/opinion/men-trump-voters-focus-group.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
Hopefully in the hands of an English teacher it's a call to arms... ? lol
But on *THAT* frame.
Props to Tyler for emulating Bergman 📽️🎞️✂️🍆😳🫣
You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing- 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows
My favorite movies ever are Shaw Brothers kung fu films. It's atavistic, but makes no bones about it.
sadly, our species is good at copying behavior. “(Space) Monkey see, (Space) Monkey do.” The Jedi Mind Trick of “Copy Behavior” only works on the weak-minded… but there’s a whole lot of weak-minded monkeys out there.
Huge agreement that it’s a good movie
And let's not even talk about the final chapter of the book which isn't even in the film....
scene, Fincher basically says "Look at these braying idiots! How the fuck did anyone think I was on their side?"
Anyway, thanks for correcting me.
His fascism isn't based around religion or race, it's around reclaiming masculinity and destroying capitalism. It's not the kind you'd actually see IRL.
Trump had a wrestler rip off his shirt at the RNC. Mark Zuckerberg is literally in a Fight Club. The consensus is that Trump will wreck the economy. Boom. Cue The Pixies.
Also capitalism isn't "globalism", globalism is just a dog whistle for Jews that nazis use.
the economics are complicated but Trump wants to replace free-market capitalism with crony capitalism.
Fight Club: “I felt like destroying something beautiful.”
MAGA: “[They] will smash whatever is precious to you…. They will crush beauty….”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/29/donald-trump-greatest-feat-ordinary-americans-capitalism-republican
Fight Club writ large. Here is your free chemical burn
Like I knew he was crazy but he looked like he was doing a net good in an unhinged sorta way. I was very angry and naive back then.
action movies with this in mind: Two men fight over who is "in charge" for the last half of the movie while everyone else does all of the work & saves themselves. Neither man saves anyone or helps.
But watching it now: WTF?
Perhaps it’s the masterful use of ‘where is my mind’ and the critique of masculinity under late stage capitalism.
This "men and women" crap has to stop immediately.