Fight Club is a 1999 film version of Chuck Palahniuk's satirical novel, “Fight Club” starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Written by Jim Uhls and directed by David Fincher, this film depicts the life of a young white man who recounts in hindsight how he ended up on top of a skyscraper with a gun in his mouth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay He worked as an insurance consultant for a large automobile company in the United States. Although it seemed like an interesting and important job, he was deeply depressed, dissatisfied and unhappy with his monotonous and cyclical life. He replaces his emotional needs and lack of attention with IKEA furniture and material possessions. His permanent discomfort triggered sleep disturbances and the feeling that "nothing is real, everything is far away, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy." (Fincher, 1999) He claims to be in pain and asks for prescribed medical supplies to sleep, but the doctor says he should visit support groups for patients with terminal illnesses and see what real pain is. The narrator became addicted to therapy and ended up involved in all seven groups; One for each day of the week. The narrator met Bob the first time he attended the "Testicular Cancer" support group. People had to find a partner to hug and they both ended up together. After Bob's testicles were removed, due to hormones, women's breasts developed. The narrator determines that this is where he fits in, “Between those huge sweaty tits” (Fincher, 1999) and describes how something has never felt so right. He could sleep for a while until Marla Singer started attending the same support groups as the narrator. He soon realizes that Marla is an impostor just like him. He had no disease and he complains that his lie reflected his own lie (Fincher, 1999). Because of her, the narrator felt inhibited in channeling his sadness and could no longer cry, so, once again, he had insomnia plaguing his nights. During the same days, he took many business trips, but he was more confused and out of place than ever. The narrator falls asleep and wakes up each time in a different place, never knowing where he is. Lose an hour, gain an hour, the narrator says it's his life, and he's finishing one minute at a time (Fincher, 1999). He was so tired of living that he wished the plane would crash during takeoff or landing. During one of her flights, she met Tyler Durden, a soap salesman who also works as a movie projectionist and waiter. He has a particular way of interpreting life and the narrator wishes he could be someone as carefree as Tyler. When he finally stops traveling and returns home, not only has he lost the suitcase with everything he liked to carry, but he also discovers that a gas leak has set fire to his apartment and there is nothing left of him but ashes on the ground next to the 'building. The narrator finds the introduction card Tyler gave him on the plane and calls him looking for help and a friendly voice. They meet in a bar and reflect on what just happened. Once they're done talking, after a couple of beers, they head out the back door and decide he'll stay at Tyler's house. While they are still talking, they get into a spontaneous fight in the alley. Their casual fights suddenly turned into a habit. The men became more interested in them each time they fought, and quickly, many began to join them. When they least expected it, their little routine turned into an organized group of men ready to confront each other every single timeNight. Fight Club. If you do a little research on the movie, you notice that everyone classifies it in a different genre. You might find options like an action film, a psychological thriller, a dark comedy, and a drama, but never a satire. Even if the novel is considered such, we won't see people referring to the film as a satire, and I couldn't agree less. Both the writer and the director have tried to capture multiple aspects of contemporary society to highlight its flaws. A satire is considered a written text that mocks an individual or a society to highlight its flaws (Satire, Cambridge Dictionary), so by definition the film could perfectly be considered such. To the naked eye, it appears that the film has a simple plot, but in reality it is much more complex than that. The film is highly symbolic and touches on numerous controversial topics criticizing society and judging people's priorities in these last centuries. It is difficult to explain and identify all the analogies included, but based on the summary written above, it is possible to describe the most essential ones. You may have noticed that we always refer to the narrator as "he," and you may wonder why we don't call him by his name instead? The truth is that neither the writer nor the director ever revealed or assigned a real name to the character. The aim was for readers or viewers to identify him as an average person and easily relate to him. They wanted each of us to fit into the role of the narrator and connect even more with the story. Anyway, as far as editorial goes, I'll call him Ted sometimes from now on. (No particular reason for the name.) One of the first symbols or comparisons we notice at the beginning of the film is Ted's identity crisis. He no longer has goals to live by and prefers to browse catalogs and wonder what kind of dining set defines him as a person (Fincher, 1999). In the film, they never strictly explain why Ted felt that way, but we can assume that this is also done on purpose. Nowadays, people in society feel extremely empty and lonely without really knowing why. In most cases it is a generalized symptom. Once he started attending support groups regularly, his anxiety improved for a while. Being there and listening to people's life testimonies helped him cry away his pain and finally sleep at night. Watching people dying every day made him feel better about his life. This reveals the common need of human beings to be accepted by others, to feel like they belong somewhere special and to be appreciated. This is exactly what gave him a new will to live. We could also see how Ted finds enormous comfort in Bob's hugs. In this scene he represents a maternal and paternal figure at the same time. This may be due to two reasons. The first could be that the narrator has no one to turn to as he has no family and Bob could represent the missing role models at home as Ted was growing up. The second could be to attack the stereotypes about masculinity and the male figure presented by society. As grotesque as it may sound, we've always heard that "big balls" are what define real men. Males in the support group no longer have testicles and continually tell themselves that they are still men (Fincher, 1999) no matter how much society claims otherwise. One of the most iconic characters would definitely be Marla. From the first time we see her in the film, she is introduced to us as the antagonist of the story that Ted tells. He refers to Marla as “the big tourist” not because she's a foreigner, but because she goes about life without a care.It represents and reflects the narrator's remorse for lying to everyone. From the moment he appears, Ted's voice and tone change completely throughout the narrative. He hates her so much because his self-consciousness and guilt have come back to him in the form of Marla. It reminds us that anxiety is extremely real and that it doesn't simply go away when surrounded by people. At the plane scene, during his business travels, Ted once again faces his identity crisis and wonders "If you woke up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?" (Fincher, 1999). The narrator is tired of who he is but does nothing to change the miserable life he thinks he has. In the same scene it is also possible to identify individualism as one of the major problems of today's societies. Everywhere he went, he found “single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, a knob of butter. The Cordon bleu microwave hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap” (Fincher, 1999). He even referred to the people he met on each flight as single-serving friends. This shows how things have to be disposable now. Their sole purpose is to cover an occasional need and then forget about it. When he refers to another person as a single servant, we can see how the concept applies to people as well. Currently we only seek our own well-being without thinking about the consequences. We want success only for ourselves and we only turn to people when we need something from them. Later, we get rid of it. Ted had many "single-serving" friends, but once he met Tyler, he became the most interesting of them all. This may be the first time the narrator officially meets Tyler, but didn't you notice? Unlike Ted, this isn't the first time we've seen him. From the beginning of the film, the director slowly introduced him to us through multiple scenes. His presence became more visible and explicit a few scenes before their meeting, but David Fincher wanted to play with our subconscious and show us that he has always been there. In fact, a couple of scenes later, when the narrator explains the many things Tyler has done for a living, they reveal an important secret. Tyler inserts inappropriate images into children's films, the same way the director inserted an image of Tyler every now and then, for a split second. We didn't know we saw it, but it was always there. Tyler Durden represents everything the narrator ever wanted to be and never will unless he changes his mindset. Ted has always been worried about fitting into stereotypical social standards of a perfect life, but because such a thing doesn't exist, he's never been completely satisfied. The moment he returned home and realized that he had nothing left and that everything he had worked for was gone, he called the only person who had ever offered him a different vision of life. Tyler.When they meet to have a beer at the bar, the narrator describes everything he had and how it was about to be completed. Now that it's all over, Tyler wants to show him how they are all consumers because of capitalism and how that lifestyle will never provide him with true happiness. This is one of the most repetitive concepts in the entire film; Consumerism. Throughout the story, both in the book and in the movie, there are some quotes mentioned by Tyler as he expresses his philosophy of life and tries to teach Ted a lesson: “It is only after losing everything that we are free to do anything. " (Palahniuk, 1996)“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 ." (Fincher, 1999) “We buy things we don't need with, 1999)