Sociological Analysis of "Fight Club"

The transcription discusses the sociological analysis of the film Fight Club, exploring themes such as Generation X's angst, societal frustrations, materialism, violence, and consumerism. The film highlights the struggle to find individual success and happiness in a society that values material possessions. It also touches on Merton's strain theory, which suggests that crime occurs when there aren't enough legitimate opportunities for success. The film criticizes the consumeristic nature of modern America and questions the notion that possessions define one's worth. It emphasizes the need to break societal boundaries and experience life fully. The film's themes are connected to sociological concepts such as violence, groups, consumerism, commercialism, and fascism. Overall, Fight Club challenges societal expectations and encourages individuals to find true freedom and fulfillment. For my sociological analysis and podcast, I have chosen to analyze the 1999 film, Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Initially transcribed as a novel, authored by Chuck Palahniuk, the film adopts a first-person narrative that remains nameless throughout the screenplay, which is designed to be intentional. The narrator, Edward Norton, adopts various names and aliases throughout the film. Suffering from insomnia and a chronic depressive state, he attends various supportive groups for conditions he does not have, such as AA and cancer support groups, as a substitute for therapy. Disappointed with his white-collar job and lack of material wealth, the narrator, Edward Norton, meets a soap salesman, Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. From the cultivation of this acquaintance, a friendship and codependency emerge between Tyler and the narrator, which flourishes into a fight club that establishes itself in the basement of bars. Several sociological themes are found throughout the film, which has been the overall motivation for my choice of this content. The film explores the angst of Generation X's middle children-of-history persona. In an interview with Mr. Showbiz, Edward Norton portrays the film as a scrutinization of the conflicting values of Generation X, stating the generation has its value system largely dictated to it by advertising culture. The film explores the sociological context of needing to push through the boundaries of materialistic happiness to feel the pain fully. Paralleling to another film, Rebel Without a Cause, Fight Club also digs into the societal frustrations of individuals within the system. As individuals of societal emasculation, the characterizers within the film are diminished into a generation of spectators. The continued perspective-value conflict increases the materialistic cultural perspective through the artistic lens of an advertised society, happiness is identified in external faucets. Throughout the film, Fight Club, five sociological concepts are represented and addressed-violence, groups, consumerism, commercialism, and fascism. Within each of these perceptions, there is a heavy interrelation among the concepts. The aspect of violence is not presented as a promotion of fighting and disorder, but rather a channel for participants to break outside their societal boundaries and experience things they were ordinarily numb to. Hobson suggests the aspect of violence in fighting is portrayed as a resistance to the impulse of being confined by societal expectations. Edward Norton suggests that fighting is a representation of fear being stripped away, and the material signifiers of happiness and self-worth, which results in the individual being a representation of something more valuable, an experience. The revolutionary violence that is adopted as the film progresses assumes the perspective that individuals are not defined by success, failure, gender, or simply social integration. From a personal perspective, the film Fight Club is a mockery of contemporary American pursuit. American culture is defined by how we look, the cars we drive, our annual income, where we live, what school we go to, and many other materialistic factors of success. The film's title Fight Club insinuates an adaption of a boxing club or underground MMA group. However, this is far from the truth. The film's fundamental purpose is to define the factors of societal expectation that interpret individual success and grossly elaborate on the consumeristic nature of modern America. The film suggests that the individual perspective of success is defined by our material possessions, our soap and units, and strying green stripe patterns. From a personal assumption, it is difficult to swallow the idea that my car or the intricacy of my house defines who I am and what I am capable of. Moreover, I hold some bias to the assumption that the ideology of societal expectation has designated my freedom. Despite these biases and assumptions, the work of Chuck Palahniuk and David Venture has illustrated our societal confines and relinquished the walls of constraint and expectations, which may empower individuals to fight and lose to feel the pain, love, and freedom of life. Durden stated in the film, it is only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything. Palahniuk assumes that without a house, a car, brand name clothing, or other material possessions, we are nothing. As Tyler Durden stated, the things you own end up owning you. Materialism has surfaced as a fundamental concern in consumer research. In research findings, one of the most prominent findings conscribes from extant literature which observed the materialistic lifestyles are correlated with unhappy and unsatisfied individuals. Consumer researchers, intrigued by the relationship between consumer and object, have produced a substantial volume of work that suggests that particular sequences of consumption may be dysfunctional to the individual and society. A wide variety of this dysfunction is centered around materialism, which is defined as a set of centrally held beliefs about the importance of possessions in one's life. Despite this research, society still assumes that individuals who are the most successful are happy, and individuals with minimalistic perceptions on life are struggling for success, happiness, and overall fulfillment. Our society is built around the assumption that individual freedom, individual happiness, and individual success are commodities of wealth and power, which places unsettling biases on the lower income and impoverished communities. Psycho is not about violence. It's about consumerism and the necessity to measure an individual based on their material possessions. To recap on Merton's strain theory, it was argued that the cultural system of the USA is built on the American dream. It encouraged individuals to seek a goal of success, which was largely measured through a language of procurement and material possessions. Fight Club is the knowledge that crime is a liberation of our hindrance to society, promoting freedom and the understanding that only after a disaster can we be resurrected. Merton argued that the gap is present in individual goals and current status. A strain is produced. He further suggested that when individuals are faced with strain, they adapt in one of five ways, conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. The theme of violence and nihilism is not present as a promotion of fighting and disorder, but rather as a channel for participants to break outside their societal boundaries and experience things, again, that they were ordinarily numb to. Hobson suggests that the aspect of violence in fighting is portrayed as a resistance to the impulse of being confined by societal expectations, which we also covered previously. The functionalist perspective views crime as beneficial to society. Hobson assumes that crime increases social integration and regulation, as well as being vital for social change. The functionalist perspective analyzes crime based on the nature of society rather than individuals. It begins with society as a whole. Robert Merton developed the strain theory of deviance in the 1940s. Strain theory argues that crime occurs when there aren't enough legitimate opportunities for people to achieve the normal success goals of a society. The theory suggests that there is a notable strain in societal goals and the means to achieving those goals, which results in individuals turning to crime to achieve success. Success has been further addressed and characterized by the aspect of material possessions by dividing American culture into socioeconomic subcultures, the lower class, the working class, the middle class, the upper middle class, and the high upper class. Again, Merton argued that when a gap is present in individual goals and current status, a strain is produced. The application of Merton's strain theory accentuates the statistical significance of high crime rates among the working class. It was developed from a well-grounded observation of official statistics that illustrated a higher portion of rapacious crime was committed by individuals of unskilled backgrounds and lower social classes. The sociological nature of rebellion and retreatism is demonstrated through the composition of Fight Club. The underground society was built on the fundamentals of working class citizens who were fed up with their humdrum secular behaviors. The cadres were searching for a fresh perception and an outlet to renounce their societal constraints. It was heavily notated that the members were consumers of objects in need of a new perspective and awakening to society's middle children of history. Emily Durkheim, one of sociology's major classical theorists, suggested that consumerism was a contributor to the misery in capitalist society, as Durkheim's most distinctive and notable theories were centered around the suicide rate in capitalist societies. With first-hand experience in France during the transition from agrarian dominance to industrial specialization, Durkheim bore witness to the extreme increases in suicides. Durkheim conclusively linked the suicide rate to consumer capitalism and subsequent individualism. Durkheim stated that consumerism influenced the individual to continue to expand and desire material possessions, referring to it as hopefulness. The connection between desire and consumerism is substantially correlated to capitalism, which he further correlated to an increase in suicide rates. In the film, Tyler Durden's belief revolved around the perspective, you are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. In the postmodern analysis of consumption, the focus is centered on the escalating significance of materialistic way of life. Karl Marx regarded consumption in a negative context, as it results in alienation among societies. Detailed in his discussion of commodity fetishism, capitalist societies are built on consumption. Consumers sell their industrial capabilities and produce a reserve, of which they have no control for exchange. Individual compensation is determined by how much power people have, which translates into how much of their monetary value they can exchange for the goods they produced. As a result, the relationships between people are determined by the price of the commodities. Relationships between people, the flesh and blood that created the commodities, are presented as relationships between things. In the film Fight Club, Tyler Durden relates Marxism's classification of consumerism through the quotation, We are consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, televisions with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Critics believe that an austere life is recommended for the revolutionary, who is to be both lean and mean, sort of an aesthetic Rambo. Like Karl Marx, Tyler Durden encourages society to reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions. The functionalist perspective views consumerism as a benefit to society because it creates conflict. Conflict is produced from the societal strain induced by the division of classes based on materialistic valuation. The strain results in society adapting through conformity, innovation, retreatism, ritualism, and rebellion. In Fight Club, Tyler Durden's structure of violence induced rebellion and retreatism, which further escalated into a domestic terrorism group, Project Mayhem. From the latter perspective, Marxism suggests that consumerism is a disgusting byproduct of capitalism. Consumerism divides society into classifications of a large exchange system. The exchange system prospers based on a transaction of monetary value for service. However, the monetary transaction ultimately dictates the power an individual has in society, as it dictates the weight of success based on the ability to afford the products produced. In this sense, consumerism supports a degree of ritualism and conformity, rather than the creation of conflict to instill change through retreatism and rebellion. Consumerism is a sociological and economic expectation that strongly impedes the continuous acquisition of goods and services beyond the needs of the individual. The concept of consumerism began post-World War II, and then it snowballed following the Industrial Revolution. In essence, consumerism is an ideology that defines the effects of paralleling individual happiness with materialistic possessions and consumptions. Many researchers argue that consumerism divides the beneficial connection between nature and the human spirit, whereas others view consumerism as a concept that lifts people from the drudgery. It gives people a purpose in life and connects crowds using a common consumer culture. Although consumerism has a large impact on economic growth, it has altered human interaction. Relaying back to Marx's commodity of fetishism, human interaction is underrated in the presence of the pursuit of consumption. In the film Fight Club, consumerism is challenged through the postmodern theory and functionalist perspective of Marx and Merton. The narrator's alter ego states, we are consumers, we are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Throughout the film, the members of Fight Club and Project Mayhem are challenged to disregard their assumptions of society, to disregard the idea that goods define individuality, success, status, and power. In relation to contemporary society, Marx's commodity of fetishism has come to define consumerism as it relates to Western culture. Our goals and ambitions are correlated to the level of consumption needed to define the status of wealth, success, and prestige. Sociological theory allows individuals to see the reality behind capitalism, consumerism, fascism, and more. It can be used to understand the history of dictatorships, wars, and other fluctuations in society's way of life. As society is ever-changing, sociological theory allows the individual to challenge the societal standards and sanctions used to define success, power, socioeconomic status, etc. Sociological theory has provided answers to some of the most mind-boggling historical contexts such as Hitler and the Nazis. It has provided understanding as to why an individual would follow someone with such a vile agenda. It gives individuals the tools to instill change by providing a need for contact, conflict, and a war worth waging. As I have an interest in the psychological perspective of this particular topic, the symbolic interactionist perspective would associate well with my educational and career development in criminology and forensic psychology. In particular, the relationship of deviance to symbolic interactionism suggests that crime and deviant behavior are attributed to an individual's social interactions and the attachment of meaning to behavior. In the film Fight Club, for example, the narrator's life has found meaning upon meeting the strong female lead, Marla. Marla's philosophy of life is that she might die at any moment. The tragedy, she said, was she didn't. Marla held a significant influence on Tyler and the narrator's psychological influence, and she was a prominent social interaction for the narrator alongside Tyler Durden, the antagonist and alter ego. As I have an interest in criminal behavior, the foundations of sociology will allow me to understand the human experience because I have a clearer understanding of the world's structures and establish a more current perspective on cultural awareness. Sociology is more than society. It is our psychology, also known as our base, infrastructures, superstructures, and much more. What we look at, when we look at society, we are looking internally. Sociology illuminates the societal influence on individuality that allows us to identify the complex issues and ask complex questions. Sociology, for example, can be used to identify and illustrate the inequality in education and how it correlates to low-income communities. Sociology provides statistical research that brings to public life uncomfortable but necessary topics. Throughout the process of this analysis, I became more aware of how sociology can improve and benefit my future career aspirations in criminology and forensic psychology. Psychology assumes that behavior is 50% genetics and 50% environmental. The environment of a criminal does not only exist within the immediate household, but the social interactions within one's individual group and community. Sociology's infrastructures assume predispositions of schools, gangs, sports teams, club affiliations, and friend groups. Sociology will allow me to assume the connection of criminal behavior to the societal limitations and opportunities within the individual's community. It will be useful in not only profiling, but assessing potential motives for a crime. On the basis of consumerism, Marxism is most closely associated with my perception of society and the role of consumerism and capitalism. In Northwestern culture, social status is associated with economic status. An individual's economic status is exploited through consumerism. It is accentuated through an individual's material possessions. Who has the biggest house? The most land? The newest cars? Luxurious vacations? And more. Individuals who have a higher economic or social status are generally associated with a higher level of power. As such, relationships within the community are established through a relationship with objects or possessions. Our society is dictated by capitalism and consumerism. We are in a constant state of exchange for power and prestige. Fight Club challenges the understanding of American culture. It challenges the ideas of consumerism and the ideology of defining oneself by the shadows of our lifestyle. Consumerism suggests that individual relationships between people are determined by the prices of commodities. Relationships between people, the flesh and blood that created the commodities, are presented as a relationship between things. Tyler Jordan suggests that consumerism has established the ideology that individuals are only surmounted to their material possessions. Individuality doesn't matter. The understanding behind Fight Club is that individuals are only as successful as their lifestyle suggests. In essence, the minimalistic way of life suggests a lack of drive, ambition, and success. The film Fight Club, if previewed through the perspective of symbolic interactionism, positively affects society as it defines the power consumeristic behavior holds on the symbols of society. Symbolic interactionism manifests consumer behavior through symbolic purchasing behavior, meaning that individuals acquire or purchase a specific good or service on the basis of what it symbols in society. For example, individuals buy a bigger house or a newer car because it symbolizes success and money within the community. Through this distinction, it allows society to understand that despite the symbols associated with material possessions, success is measured by individual determination, not a societal standard. Thank you for deep diving into the sociology behind Fight Club and the consumeristic culture of contemporary society. I really appreciate your crowd and I thank you again for your time. Bye for now.