OPPapers.com

Fight Club, The Reflection Of Materialism

Fight Club is directed by David Fincher, written for the screen by Jim Uhls, and based on a novel by Chuck Plahniuk. It was released to Americans recovering from the Columbine school shootings in the fall of 1999. Fight Club tells the story of a nameless, malcontent young corporate clone (Edward Norton) who hooks up with a magnetic, near-psychopathic loner and rebel (Brad Pitt) and descends with him into a quasi-fascist nightmare.1
Norton's character, Jack, narrates the movie, and his ironic, slashing commentary sets the tone for the plunge into madness -- which begins when, in a desperate attempt to cure his chronic insomnia, he takes a failed odyssey through a variety of self-help and touchy-feely support groups. Then he meets Pitt's smiling, arrogant Tyler Durden, right before his own apartment is mysteriously blown to smithereens, and moves in with Tyler, in an abandoned house on the dirty "toxic waste" edge of the city. Tyler goads Jack into a knockdown street fistfight.2 Soon the two are fighting regularly and recruiting others for their bloody free-for-alls. Eventually a whole organized army of young urban misfits gathers under Tyler's leadership -- Tyler is the rock 'n roll nihilist king; Jack, his increasingly disturbed right hand man. And the fight clubs blossom into a national covert fascist movement: a secret network that begins to extend the violence out into society, beating up strangers, vandalizing or bombing public buildings. Their agenda: mass chaos and disorder.
Above is the main content of this film, which is talking about materialism, represented by Jack, and anti-materialism, represented by Tyler. Well then, what is materialism?
Materialism can refer either to the simple preoccupation with the material world, as opposed to intellectual or spiritual concepts, or to the theory that physical matter is all there is. This theory is far more than a simple focus on material possessions. It states that everything in the universe is matter,...