25.3.24
It’s hard for most people to say anything remotely interesting about one of the most important films of the 1990s, but I’ll try anyway with two key points.
- As stupid as it sounds, Fight Club honestly got me into reading books properly. After seeing it at 15 years old, I remember telling my older stepbrother how much I loved this film. It opened me up to other works by the writer Chuck Palahniuk, such as Lullaby, Choke, and Survivor. Some of these books he bought for me as gifts, alongside many Nine Inch Nails CDs and Spawn McFarlane action figures. From there, it introduced me to similar transgressive writers that I still love to read from time to time, like Bret Easton Ellis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Irvine Welsh. There’s no doubt Fight Club was the catalyst that ignited a respect for literature, which undoubtedly helped in my academic life.
- Fight Club transformed me from a casual moviegoer into a genuine film lover. When I was 16, my micro-analysis of the film’s themes, such as late modernism, consumerism, and neo-Marxism, led to my first proper piece of writing on film. This project was part of my AS Film Studies course, and it marked the beginning of my journey into a deeper appreciation and understanding of cinema. Fight Club challenged me to look beyond the obvious and explore the profound ideas and concepts that great films can convey. Ultimately, the film is a critique of capitalism, although the surface-level themes of masculine identity, fetishism, and violent protest somewhat obscure this.
I could also say I wouldn’t have a career as a sociology teacher without this film, but that might be pushing it too far. Nonetheless, Fight Club’s impact on my personal and intellectual growth as a teenager cannot be overstated. It’s a film which encourages rule-breaking, at least in terms of breaking away from conventional, consensus thinking on a societal level. Because of that, I’m also happy to disregard the first rule of Fight Club.