fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5898 ]

[ SECRET POST #5898 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5898 ⌋

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I love Fight Club (both the movie and the book), but I have to admit the changes from the book definitely make it much less of a critique of modern masculinity, male insecurity, the drive for hierarchical structures, and the nihilistic impulse. I think you can argue that it glorifies those things instead, or I think you can argue that the message is complicated, muddy, and often contradictory. But the movie definitely hews a lot closer to glorification than the book does, that's for sure.

Insofar as the movie version of Fight Club has a message, I wouldn't say I agree with, or like, what that message is.

Still a hell of a movie, though.

Anyone who looks at the movie as a whole and thinks that it agrees with or glorifies Tyler Durden is analyzing the movie badly. Flat-out. They're just wrong about the movie. The movie is not contradictory about this.

The only reason that the movie appears to glorify Durden more is because it's easier to strip scenes from the movie out of context. People can completely ignore what they're actually saying and just look at them in isolation. And they very much do that, and they're compelling scenes in isolation. But it's still a misreading.

I disagree. I would agree with you if we were speaking about the book but when it comes to the movie, yeah, no, sorry. And since we're making arrogant and overly simplistic statements here, I would say that anyone who doesn't acknowledge that the movie's message is at the very least muddled and often self-contradictory is analyzing the movie badly. Flat out.

eeeeeh, this is a case where i do actually think it's on the audience/cultural reputation and not so much the material itself?? like, i know that personal yardsticks aren't the best measure of this kind of thing, but if i could figure out that tyler isn't really being glorified when i was like 15 then i expect most adults to have a basic understanding of character point of view and the fact that the narrator thinks this guy is the best thing to ever happen to him right up until he doesn't.

I don't see how it's muddled or self-contradictory.

The end of the movie is that Tyler's the villain, his methods don't work, they're a dead end, and the narrator conclusively rejects that viewpoint and that persona. Instead he holds hands with a girl.

Not to mention all the heinous shit that Tyler does before that point.

I just don't know how you look at that and say that the movie is anything but clear in ultimately condemning male insecurity / drive for hierarchy / Nietzschean nihilism.

The fact that conversations like this exist makes me weep for dead media literacy.

The fact that the author of Fight Club himself praised the Chinese version of the book because it was changed *DUE TO CENSORSHIP LAWS* (you know, the same laws that make the authors of gay romance novels have to post them online and hide their identities) to be much more handholdy about its message and he was in turn praised by "leftists" for his praise of censorship makes me weep for the future of literature.

I mean, if he didn't like the interpretation of his work that the adaptation did, and felt it missed the point, then - well.

the problem is always going to be that it's simply not what happens on screen that involves interpretation, it's what it looks like. sure the narrators holds hands with a girl...in front of what is basically a fireworks display. that reads triumphant in a very real way, and your audience who is already prone to valorization of certain types of characters, isn't going to necessarily feel that's an irony. part of movie creation is understanding your audience.

also fincher sorta admires assholes and imo that comes through his work.

Yeah but those people - people who ignore the specific details of what is happening in the ending, who don't notice the irony, who get drawn into the spectacle, who fall back on their default habit of valorizing certain types of characters - someone who does those things is absolutely doing a bad job of analyzing the movie and is wrong about the movie.

If the argument is that it's irresponsible to have a movie do that because general audiences are incapable of grasping things that operate on that level, I mean, I guess you can make that argument. I'd certainly like to think that audiences are capable of engaging with works in that way. Maybe they aren't.

But either way, I still stand by saying that the movie doesn't really leave any room for reasonable doubt about what it's saying. It doesn't leave anything unclear. And people who take away the message that Tyler is right or good are just wrong about the movie - the movie provides no excuse for them coming away with that interpretation. They should do a better job of analyzing the movie, because it's really not ambiguous.

I feel like I rec this a lot, but I simply disagree that that is all on the audience, especially since, as a director, it's clear Fincher just likes being in assholes' heads.

I don't fully agree with either Maggie take, but both her and Broey Deschanel get to what I'm saying about a director muddling what should be clear meaning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjLOFLE4JRw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xberkcLfqmw

The plot is doing that, but a movie is not a simple telling of the plot. You have to look at what the camera is doing, the framing, the costuming, the make up, everything happening visually.

If your plot says "this guy is the villain" but almost everyone watching the movie comes out thinking "this guy is really cool", it's everything else that makes up the movie doing that. The movie glorifies Tyler Durden, not with the plot, but with the visuals.

Of course Tyler Durden looks awesome! Also he is played by Brad Pitt, who is really sexy and hot and handsome and cool and charming.

But just because a movie makes a villain looks cool, it doesn't mean that the movie agrees with the villain or with the philosophical points the villain represents. And I fundamentally don't think that the fault lies with the movie if people take it that way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5898 ]

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

da

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

DA

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Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like

Re: Good movies with messages you don't like