Fight Club

Fight Club is a critical account of consumerism, yet paradoxically, as soon as it left the cinema it became commodification as DVDs and memorabilia. This lies in accordance to Jameson’s views on postmodernism, entailing the collapse of high culture into popular or mass culture and the entry of popular culture into high culture.

Fight Club presents many forms of postmodernism throughout the film which was directed by David Fincher in 1999 and the novel by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. Baudrillard discusses simulation and everything being a copy of a copy, which is represented in Fight Club by characters having a mundane, regimented life and not resisting it. The men therefore release their social aggression at Fight Clubs; the men's only exclusive club. It can also be discussed that this text contains pastiche as the fight scenes are not taken seriously and looked upon as the norm and as entertainment rather than violent and unnecessary.

Baudrillard Sign Values is where Baudrillard states that ‘things’ are brought for there sign value rather than there ‘use’ value. People are not buying a product they are buying a brand. Ikea is portrayed as this brand and is portrayed significantly through out the text.

In Poz Hulls article he describes ‘In Fight Club unnamed narrator Norton eventually discovers Brad Pitt is a fragment of his own imagination and that he himself is the anti-capitalist guerrilla Tyler Durden.’ Another interesting this Hulls mentions is that ‘Rather like the first rule of fight club, The first rule about of twists in cinemas is that you don't talk about the twist.’ This is interesting as Fight Club became commodification by leaving the cinema but an unwritten rule is you don't tell people the twist of a film. Fight Club is a very clever text and is an excellent example of postmodernism.



Links that are worth a look at:
http://www.talkingpix.xo.uk/article_twists.html
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id1152/pg1/index.html