Jay Doubleyou: stimulating discussion: the politics of...
Jay Doubleyou: discussing issues in the classroom
For example:
Jay Doubleyou: a history of violence part two
There is the subject of violence in film:
Hollywood and movie violence debate: Where do the filmmakers stand? - Movies News - Digital Spy
Gun Violence In U.S. Movies On The Rise; PG-13 Levels Exceed R-Rated Films: Study - Deadline.com
Many have criticised 'Fight Club' (1999) as 'too violent':
Parents need to know that this movie is wayyyy cool in terms of style and flip cynicism, and it's also wayyyy lurid, twisted, and violent. Older teens can hopefully take the over-the-top, R-rated cult hit as a dark-humored novelty act. It derives from a novel by trendy author Chuck Palahniuk. You wouldn't want kids to use either as a blueprint for behavior, which includes hazing-style beatings, vandalism, and bombings.
Fight Club Movie Review
Fight Club Violence Guide!
Fight Club Trailer - HD - YouTube
There have been complaints that the trailer just highlighted the violence to get the film out to audiences:
The violence of the fight clubs serves not to promote or glorify physical combat, but for participants to experience feeling in a society where they are otherwise numb... The director and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967). Fincher intended Fight Club's violence to serve as a metaphor for the conflict between a generation of young people and the value system of advertising.
Marketing executives at 20th Century Fox faced difficulties in marketing Fight Club and at one point considered marketing it as an art film. They considered that the film was primarily geared toward male audiences because of its violence and believed that not even Brad Pitt would attract female filmgoers... Instead, the studio financed a $20 million large-scale campaign to provide posters, billboards, and trailers for TV that highlighted the film's fight scenes. The studio advertised Fight Club on cable during World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, which Fincher protested, believing that the placement created the wrong context for the film.
Another newspaper charged, "Fight Club is shaping up to be the most contentious mainstream Hollywood meditation on violence since Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange."
Fight Club - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But, actually, the film explored the issues around 'masculinity':
Masculinity, Violence, and the Postmodern
Fight Club » Masculinity-Movies.com
Fight Club and Masculinity :: Neutral Magazine
Fight Club: Materialism, Masculinity and Maturity - Unsung Films
What would you say are the issues around 'masculinity'?
Here's a PowerPoint presentation which explores some of the issues:
Masculinity in Fight Club
With some of the themes:
> "We’re designed to be hunters and we’re in a society of shopping”
> Traditional male roles: Cowboy; Hunter; Defender; Achiever; Warrior; Breadwinner Exposed as myths by the feminist movement Men left without a clear identity after Feminism questioned the role of man
> The Feminization of Man and an increase in ‘consumption’ Repressed ‘Raw’ Masculinity The dehumanizing effects of corporate consumer culture
> The ‘New Man’ The ‘new man’ has lost touch with his masculine ‘core’
> Charismatic, Sexually Dominant Aggressive, Powerful, in charge of his own destiny
> Occupies shadowy underworld Outlandish, Flamboyant, Unique, Original – link to Anti Globalization themes
Masculinity in Fight Club
But this seems to be too much from a 'male' perspective...
At this point in the film (41:30 actually) it's rather 'violent':
00:43:40 - OK, now it gets gory. Still good natured fighting, but it's pretty visceral, the sights and the sounds, and in the end one guy is left with a pretty bloodied face (even though he's happy about the experience). This goes on for about 30 seconds.
Fight Club Violence Guide!
But on the double-DVD there is a commentary on this scene from the main female actor, Helena Bonham-Carter - and she says she's not in favour of 'gratuitous violence' gratuitous adjective - definition - Cambridge Dictionaries Online.
That it is not about 'violence for violence's sake' but it's 'more to do with the sensation of being alive'. And that this is a 'desperate statement to say about society' - that people have become so 'dead spiritually', that they have to hit each other 'to feel truly in the moment'...
FIGHT CLUB audio commentary [director and cast] - YouTube (from 38:30)
But others think that 'Fight Club' is all about Hollywood just playing with the issues around 'gender':
Few movies have been analyzed as thoroughly as Fight Club (1999). Chuck Palahniuk's book of the same name has been a staple of college syllabi in gender or postmodern studies since its publication in 1996. Often thought of as a movie about men and masculinity, Fight Club's true meaning as a critique of socioeconomic structure is unfortunately obscured. The movie Fight Club deplores capitalistic consumerism, yet it falls short of truly challenging any assumptions.
At the box office, Fight Club didn't do very well for several reasons, mainly the Columbine shootings earlier that year. But never has a movie so quickly gained cult status in the short amount of time. Campuses across the country had free Fight Club viewing and discussion meetings. Tyler Durden's quotes slipped into free periodicals and onto bathroom stalls. Web sites popped up all over the Internet. The "revolutionary" movie was condemned for its graphic violence while it simultaneously became the focus of numerous term papers.
It's not surprising that people lament that Fight Club is about pounding people's faces in. And certainly, feminist and Freudian analyses of the film abound as well. But all this gender analysis is missing the point. Although Fight Club will be remembered as a film about masculinity, it has nothing of any interest or coherence to say about it. The real focus of its concern is the dehumanizing impact of the three big Cs: consumerism, corporatism and capitalism. Fight Club is a political and philosophical film about human identity, a condemning critique of the way most Americans live meaningless, half-dead lives. Perhaps framing that in a gender context was the only way a) to garnerHollywood interest in the film and b) to make trashing the American way of life palatable to a mass audience.
The Movie Fight Club Uses Aggression and Masculinity as a Vehicle for Class Warfare - Yahoo Voices - voices.yahoo.com.
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