I Love That Film: Loving Fight Club

Saturday, 9 February 2013

Loving Fight Club

It's no secret I love both the film Fight Club and breaking those sacred first and second rules too. Most recently I want to share with you all the piece I wrote for To the Escape Hatch who kindly invited me over to contribute to their regular Favourite Scene Friday. Of course I chose the final scene of Fight Club. If you haven't seen the film then best to give most of what I write about Fight Club a miss but if you have then please head on over to the Hatch to check out why the final scene of Fight Club is my favourite scene.

I'm spending the next nine weeks teaching about this single film to my A2 Film Studies students so this couldn't have been published at a better time. For those interested or intrigued at how we can spend nine weeks, that's nine hour and a half long lessons talking about just this one film, this is how I kind of break it down though there is some overlap:

Jack /Tyler Durden – the meaning and significance of this split person
A progressive film or a deeply reactionary one?
The representation of modern urban and corporate life
The representation of masculinity and its threats
Is Marla as a representative of women an object of scorn? Is it misogynistic?
Managing the spectator’s identification and sympathies
Distinctive stylistic features and the look of the film
Motifs and their function
The social and cultural context of production
Critical and popular responses to the film

I've written plenty more about Fight Club in the past and I've no doubt that I'll be writing plenty more about it in the future so I'm going to compile all my Fight Club related posts in this one post from now on. I've just started reading 'Studying Fight Club' by Mark Ramey and published by Auteur so that should also give me more reasons to break those all-important two first rules.