Film Discussion Entry - Week 3

Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, was released in 1999, but still proves to be an extremely relevant film if compared to our modern day society 15 years later. Starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, this film [if completely understood] can change a person's mindset and the way they view life. The beginning of the film helps the audience understand more about the protagonist (and narrator), who remains unnamed throughout the movie. He despises his job, has difficulty sleeping, and seems to be extremely unhappy.
He attempts to get prescribed medication to aid his insomnia, however his doctor refuses to do so, and tells the narrator that if he wants to see real pain to attend a support group for testicular cancer victims. The narrator follows suit, and actually develops an addiction to posing as an impostor at various support groups, even though his physical health is not suffering like the other members.
Meanwhile, the narrator takes a business trip and on his returning flight meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden. After he returns to his apartment to see that it has been completely destroyed in a fire, the narrator calls up Tyler and soon asks if he can stay with him, which Tyler agrees to. We then find out about how awful the living conditions are, as the power must be cut once it rains, water drips throughout the house, and rusty nails are everywhere.
Soon after, we learn a bit more about Tyler, and how he works as a part-time film projectionist; Tyler manages to sneak a one-frame picture of a penis in between two movie reels which makes the film audience feel uncomfortable even though they only saw it for a fraction of a second. An interesting point, the narrator says that "Tyler is a night person, when the rest of us were sleeping, he worked".
Later, Tyler asks the narrator to hit him as hard as he can due to the fact that they both were never in a fight. They ensue in trading punches and end up beating the crap of one another, and they both love it. Soon after, people from the bar begin watching the 1 on 1 fights and actually volunteer to participate.
The owner of the bar that Tyler and the narrator first fought at is one of the people who decides to join. He allows them to use the basement of his bar as a fighting ring. Tyler lays down the rules of fight club.
Fight club begins to gain traction nationwide, because the narrator begins to take business trips and actually starts fight club in the various cities he visits. Fight club continues to get larger and larger, but nonetheless remains a secret. Things get out of control after Tyler starts Project Mayhem, which is a codename for members of fight club living in Tyler's house and causing utter demolition throughout the city. Tyler then disappears, and the narrator looks everywhere to find him. Then while on the phone with Marla, she calls the narrator by the name Tyler Durden, helping the audience understand that all along, Tyler WAS the narrator. The narrator had a condition called multiple personality disorder, and created the persona of Tyler in his mind.
Go all the way back to the first 5 minutes of the film, the narrator says: 'i know this because tyler knows this'. This sentence, is seemingly a complete giveaway that they are the same person. However, it wasn't really a clear way of understanding that so early in the film. If one couldn't pick it up in that opening scene, they wouldn't really understand that Tyler and the narrator are the same person until way later in the film, in the scene in the hotel room. All along, everything was done by the narrator. Fight club, project mayhem, and the relationship with Marla, all started by the narrator himself, not the fake personality that the narrator created.
Tyler helps explain that he is just a figment of the narrator's imagination. Tyler was everything that the narrator wished he could be. "I look like you wana look, I fuck like you wana fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not". This sentence changed the audience's mindset, as now we see Tyler (the real Tyler, not the fake personality) in the way he really is. We are showed how he fought himself which is what led to fight club being started. One last point, the reason Tyler (the narrator) couldn't sleep in the beginning of the film was because he was too busy being Tyler Durden (the fake one) and staying up late to do his part-time film work and make soap. He also burned his own hand with the chemical powder, which was a crazy thing to imagine in itself.
Towards the end of the film, we understand that fake Tyler put a plan into motion to blow up multiple credit card record buildings which would effectively bring everybody's debt down to 0. The narrator attempts to foil Tyler's plot, but even though they are the same person fails to do so. The film ends with Marla and real Tyler holding hands watching the destruction.

In the article Totalitarian Technocracies, the author says: "There is much to be said about scientific thinking and its potential to elevate civilization. But dystopian writers remind us that most people are ultimately driven by their feelings rather than their intellect, even when their passions cause them to act against their own self-interest". In my opinion, this statement helps put the first few weeks of our course into perspective. Starting with the films Fahrenheit 451 and Soylent Green, both Montag and Detective Thorne, respectively, follow their feelings in both their situations. One to become a part of what he was so against all his life (Montag and the book people), and the other to uncover what their diminished food supply is really made from (Thorne and the Soylent Green factory). In both these scenarios, their passions conflicted their self-interest greatly and even got them into dangerous situations. With the films 1984 and THX 1138 as well, both Winston and THX 1138 decided to stop what everyone else in society was unfortunately conforming to, which also got them into dangerous scenarios. But by following their feelings rather than their intellect, the lives of these characters were dramatically changed.

Throughout the film The Handmaid's Tale, we see a significant theme which is the importance of women in the Republic of Gilead. Some women, the ones dressed in red with a red veil, have two main purposes; To reproduce and to buy groceries. The ones dressed in blue are wives, who administer homes in the neighborhoods. Once the handmaid's give birth, the offspring is overturned to the wives, which is one of the many reasons the handmaid's are severely oppressed.
One interesting point of the movie begins with the title: The Handmaid's Tale.
in order to understand the essence of the significance of the film, one must come to a general understanding of the term handmaid. The definition of a handmaid is: A personal maid or female servant.
Throughout this film, the term handmaid takes on sort of a different meaning; they are responsible for keeping the population from ceasing to exist. Although this movie does not specifically exemplify the conventional sense of the term handmaid, it can be understood that a gruesome reality in this theoretical nation is shockingly prevalent. The severity in which the desire to reproduce in Republic of Gilead went so far that it forbade anyone from leaving the country, which is why our protagonist, Kate, was taken captive as a handmaid, after her husband was shot by the border patrol, and daughter left abandoned. The emotional severity our protagonist must be experiencing is extremely unfortunate, and I'm sure many viewers of this film can relate, personally, in some type of way.
A point in which i feel must be addressed is the lashing of the women's feet when this women refused to follow orders in reference to bearing children. This society, I feel, is very different from the ones we have studied throughout the first few weeks of our DMS course. We have seen many different types of oppressive, dystopian societies, such as one run by fighting and violence, one where technology rules over humans, one where free thought is banned, and even one where reading is strictly forbidden. However, The Handmaid's Tale strikes me a bit differently as the others do, mainly because in this film, the oppression is only targeted to a specific class. Almost all women are sterile, and the few who aren't are treated unfairly and captivated until they go crazy. Men play a small role throughout the movie, which is uncommon, but to be honest, I like the change. I enjoyed seeing how life in its entirety depends on the women whose ability to reproduce has not been taken away from pollution.