I did like it and found it incredibly funny and smart and bluntly honest about how attractive fascism can be, especially to people who feel adrift, bereft of meaning. (Tricky to show the attractive side without also celebrating it, but I thought the director, David Fincher, did a good job. People who think the movie's a celebration are scary.)
I'd heard about the movie over the years, so there weren't many surprises except one huge one:
How come nobody ever told me it has The Best Shatner Reference ever?
Narrator (Ed Norton): If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt): Alive or dead?
Narrator: Doesn't matter. Who'd be tough?
Tyler: Hemingway. You?
Narrator: Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner.
I howled.
I'm surprised I've found little online linking Star Trek and Fight Club.
Do you think it's because they have different fan bases? Still, it's not such a stretch. Fight Club is a variation on the episodes "The Enemy Within" and "Naked Time," which ask, What's your inner secret self?
And Kirk loves getting beat up.
So, I set Fight Club's rules to Star Trek screencaps (from Trekcore). I put a little Spock in for fun too.
Can you name the episodes?
_________
Curious connection: David Fincher directed both Fight Club and The Social Network (2010).
If they two movies met, would one say to the other, "we're the same person?"
Fincher said of The Social Network in an interview:
"I wanted to make the 'Citizen Kane' of John Hughes movies. That’s not to say we’re making 'Citizen Kane.' But specifically, the 'Citizen Kane' of John Hughes movies. So, yes, it is a coming of age movie. They are kind of dorky teens figuring this shit out between them. And there’s no real intervention on behalf of adult society, you know? It’s kind of like they’re forced to figure it out for themselves."
from Fight Club screencaps
Too early a.m., but I sneeked a peek anyway! Hmmmm....and Hah!...and Hmmmm...again.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Stefalala
Stef: Exactly.
ReplyDeleteI cannot name the first two episodes, the rest is quite obvious. I love Fight Club, saw it some years ago. The line about Shatner makes it even better. :)
ReplyDeleteEdward Norton hasn't made a memorable movie in a while, has he?
Nice slides, but I thought you'd make a movie...
ReplyDeleteand where's the Gorn?
Kirk wasn't really fighting the Gorn;
ReplyDeleteit was foreplay.
TINTO: I changed the first macro, so it's obvious too, now (Mirror, Mirror), and the 2nd is "Obsession."
ReplyDeleteBINK: Maybe I should have made this only with Kirk fighting non-humans (besides Spock)... The more I think about it, the more similarities I see between ST & FC.
MARZ: Well, and then there's that... (and all the "inventive loving/obscene" things Kirk does, as Jenn said in her comment on the last post).
Um, Fight Club has nothing to do with fascism, despite what your T.A. might have told you.
ReplyDeleteANON: Well, we needn't call it "fascism," we can just say
ReplyDelete"groups that require unquestioning obedience on the part of its members and that they sublimate their will for the so-called greater good, which is usually the will of the hero-leader".
The fight club in "Fight Club" doesn't start out that way, but it morps into it by the end.
Reading these comments again, nine years later (because stats show this post got a bunch of hits), I'd forgotten ANON had made that quip about "what your T.A. might have told you."
ReplyDelete(I'd half-forgotten I even made this, in fact.)
Anyway, it seems so quaint and even sort of a compliment that someone would assume I was a college student, even if one overly influenced by their TA.
(I was fifty.)
Anyway--I just looked up Chuck Palahniuk--found an interesting article from 2018 in "The Guardian".
He doesn't directly address fascism but does say he likes that people argue about what his work means, so I'll add it here:
"Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk on his book becoming a bible for the incel ['involuntary celibate men'] movement"
"If I write something that people can really argue about, that thing is going to be in the culture for ever.
For example: is Fight Club good or bad? It’s consensual, but it’s violence.
"I’m trying to create this dazzling spectacle that’s not meant to perpetuate or generate anything, but to be a sorbet that allows you to taste the next thing. To be a little more present in the next thing.
. . .Especially in creative work, resolution is death.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/20/chuck-palahniuk-interview-adjustment-day-black-ethno-state-gay-parenting-incel-movement