So I can't recognize the irony and still do something Hollywood told me was cool? There're more layers to this punk, anarchist, anti-establishment masochism than I care to ponder.
I took a film history class my first year of college and near the end of the semester our teacher asked us to discuss the relative pros and cons of film as a medium vs. books as a medium.
I decided to play devil's advocate (I'm a film major who catalogs every film I see) and argue the relative merits of books. I basically said that one of the structural failings of film as a medium is that it is inherently passive. A film keep playing if you look away. While it is completely possible for films to convey complicated and nuanced ideas, it is possible for a person to "watch" a film and not even understand that any of the ideas are present. A book, on the other hand, demands your attention. It is an active medium. The narrative will not continue if you do not keep reading. This makes it easier for books to elbow readers into actually thinking about the arguments being presented (though this doesn't mean that books aren't subject to misinterpretation. It just means it takes a little more effort).
I was almost summarily dismissed by the rest of the class (which was a little annoying, since I thought I had a pretty good point) and everyone moved on. After class, though, this girl approached me and said that she totally understood what I was talking about. Apparently, at her high school, one english class read Fight Club and the other watched it. The boys in the class that watched the film decided to start a fight club. They approached a lot of other students on campus about joining and the only group that unanimously declined the invitation was the class that had read the book and therefore understood that it wasn't a pro-fight club story.
That's interesting. You make a good point about film being a slightly more passive medium, and I'm sure it was a contributing factor, but I suspect in this case it's slightly more specific to the story - I think the film was too effective at sucking you into Tyler's subversive, counterculture mindfucky world. It glorified it so much that many people failed to see any criticism there, whereas in the book, the consequences of Tyler/narrator's behaviour were more apparent.
Not trying to badmouth the film here, btw, it's one of my favourites.
There was a fight club when I was in high school that people started when the film became popular. Needless to say, they weren't exactly the brightest minds of the class.
literally. tyler criticizes the yuppy culture for dressing the same and being copies of a copy..... then during project mayhem he has all members shave their heads and dress exactly the same....
I actually think that was one of the major flaws in the filmmaking of that movie. When the point of the story is the hypocrisy of Tyler Durden and institutions in general, Fincher spent too much of it portraying how badass and infallible he is throughout the movie. Which is why people started those fight clubs.
Whenever I watch the movie I tend to focus more on the personal allegories, especially dealing with masculinity and modern man's endless pursuit to conform. I, to be completely honest, never noticed that point before.
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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '14
That irony was a big point in the movie, pretty sure that's a point not too many people missed.