Journal articles on the topic 'Chuck Palahniuk'

Chuck Palahniuk is the recent American novelist, journalist and essayist. He is known for his transgression fiction. Chuck Palahniuk’s ideas have been described as nihilistic but he has declined this identity and he labeling himself as a romantic writer. His books often focused on temporal end and also include some similar plot twists. His writings mainly focused on the struggles which we faced nowadays due to this growth of techno culture. Palahniuk’s concepts and themes are too strange to believe. He is the man of argument in which he argues the struggles between money and agony. There are some postmodern techniques and odd theories used by him. This article focused Palahniuk’s writing style, techniques, and as well as thematical study of his novels.

The goal of this research is determination of specificity of the image of the heroine in the novel by a contemporary American writer Chuck Palahniuk “Cursed”. The article analyzes such aspects as the inner world of the character, relationship with parents, agemates and society in the two contrasting words: real world, during the lifetime of the heroine, and surreal, in hell, after her death. Detailed description of the character allows seeing two different guises of the heroine, while application of literary analysis allows analyzing the traits of the protagonist and place within the system of artistic world of Chuck Palahniuk’s prose. The paper presents a review of scientific pursuits of the Russian and foreign scholars dealing with the works of Chuck Palahniuk. The novelty of this research consists in determination of dual nature of the image of a teenager reflected in the two-world realm created by C. Palahniuk. The analysis demonstrated that in to contrasting worlds, the image of a teenager transforms and manifests differently. In the real world, it is a modest girl, with multiple feelings of inferiority, who has complicated relationships with parents and surrounding people. In the surreal world, she attains new traits, such as authoritativeness, courage, ability to maintain friendships. The conclusion is made that that Chuck Palahniuk creates two images of the heroine. Paradox lies in the fact that an unsuccessful individual in a real world becomes successful in the afterlife. Practical value of this article is defined by its contribution into the theory of literary image, particularly, future development of the methodology for studying the image of the character in transgressive prose.

O romance Condenada: a vida é curta: a morte é eterna (2013), de Chuck Palahniuk, mantém referências explícitas a diversas produções cinematográficas, em especial com o filme O clube dos cinco (1985), de John Hughes. A protagonista de Palahniuk, Madison Spencer, uma adolescente rica, gorda e mimada, encontra-se no inferno, presa em uma cela imunda. Percebendo que está cercada de outras quatro pessoas também condenadas, cada uma com aptidões e características físicas bem distintas (uma líder de torcida, um jogador de futebol americano, um nerd e um punk), Madison decide que o grupo deve explorar o inferno em busca de uma saída; ao invés de aceitar passivamente a danação eterna. Já a narrativa de Hughes apresenta uma metáfora do inferno. Cinco alunos provenientes de realidades diversas estão de castigo e têm como punição passar o sábado presos na biblioteca escrevendo, cada um, o inventário de suas vidas e, de forma semelhante ao grupo de Madison, também buscam uma escapatória desta funesta realidade. Este estudo comparativo entre essas narrativas está apoiado nas teorias do grotesco de Geoffrey Harpham e Margaret Miles que defendem os seguintes recursos pictóricos: caricatura, inversão e hibridização. Sob essa óptica, pode-se inferir que a narrativa de Palahniuk se espelha na versão fílmica de Hughes. Enquanto um enfoca uma representação do inferno, na qual a figura do demônio chefe é desempenhada pelo diretor da escola, o outro apresenta o inferno per se, chefiado por um Satã que, como o diretor da escola, quase nunca está presente.

<p><em>Abstract - </em><strong>This research entitled “Middle Class Rebellion through the Main Characters in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club” analyses the portrayal of the Middle Classes which is depicted through the main characters. These characters are undertaking a Rebellion towards the system of Capitalism that is depicted in the novel Fight Club. The theory used in this research is the theory of the intrinsic element of Characterization by M.H. Abrams and the theory Capitalism by Karl Marx which includes the theory of Alienation and the Struggle of Social Classes. This research focuses on the portrayal of how Middle Classes undertake their Rebellion which is depicted through the main characters in the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. This research has found that the two main characters are a depiction of the Middle Class and the Working Class. They rebel against Capitalism by doing small acts of vandalism which escalates into blackmail. The findings are that the real characteristics of modern society of the middle class can be seen such as consumerism, restless life towards insomnia and workers who identify themselves as not workers.</strong></p><p><strong><em>Keywords - </em></strong><em>Middle Class, Rebellion, Social Class, Marxism, Capitalism</em></p>

The 1996 novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk demonstrates a strong basis in psychoanalytical theory. The analysis of this novel shows that Freudian concepts of human nature and the basic instincts of Ero and Thanatos explain the reason behind the struggle of nature and nurture. This representation is evident in the setting, in the plot, and in the major characters of the novel. Within this framework for the discussion, I argue that the narrator's initial attempt to rebel against consumer culture force his natural instincts to resist nurture. The narrator escapes from the social orders and chooses violence as the best practice to break the chains of the nurture of civilized society. He starts living a life in the freedom offered by the real nature led by his instincts and desires. The attempt of nature to dominate nurture and vice versa ends up further escalating the struggle rather than eliminating it

The article examines the variability of translation of the text of fiction as performed by different translators. The purpose of the work is to study and identify the diversity of the translation strategies and features of their application in the translation of a literary text. The method of comparative analysis proved to be effective in the scientific investigation. The subject of the research is a literary text, its original and translation. The postulates of translation theorists on linguistic variability and multiplicity of translations have been outlined. The subjective-objective activity of the translator as a mediator in bilingual communication was highlighted. The peculiarities of Chuck Palahniuk's writing style have been determined and the preservation of the author's individual style in Ukrainian translations has been analyzed. A comparative analysis of fragments of the translation of the literary text made by Ukrainian translators has been carried out. It was discovered that in the process of translation the translator relies not only on his knowledge of the languages, but also on the general knowledge of other areas of human life. It has been established that the perception and understanding of the text by the recipients depends on how the translator interprets the text of the original and how adequately s/he conveys its context and whether s/he is able to preserve the author's style. The study was based on the novel "Fight Club" by the contemporary American writer Chuck Palahniuk and its translations into Ukrainian by Illia Strongovskyi and Oleh Lesko. It has been proved that translations made into the same language by different translators can differ significantly from each other.

Este estudo analisa a construção alegórica do inferno na obra Condenada, de Chuck Palahniuk, com o objetivo de apontar a vertente corrosiva do escritor ao descrever a política, a cultura e a economia estadunidenses contemporâneas. Centrando-se no olhar da personagem Madison, uma menina de 13 anos de idade recém-chegada ao inferno, a investigação coloca em relevância as críticas palahniukianas ao padrão estético-corpóreo, à cultura midiática da inação, ao regime semiescravo sustentado por multinacionais, à retroalimentação da política de débito econômico-social disfarçada em alargamento de crédito para as minorias e ao preenchimento de parâmetros de justiça por meio da ordem do consumo. Para tanto, serão articulados a esta comunicação alguns pesquisadores que comentam a condução hegemônica do mundo corporativo no agenciamento de valores contemporâneos, como Zygmunt Bauman e Joel Bakan, alguns polemistas que divulgam o agigantamento do débito socioeconômico das nações pelo sistema do mercado bancário de reserva fracionada, como William T. Still e Peter Joseph, e alguns ideólogos que sustentam a radicalidade como instrumento necessário para o enfrentamento político, como Russel Jacoby e Hakim Bey. Ao avaliar como Madison retoma uma fala sobre a sua identidade e a função da imagem do inferno no mundo contemporâneo, verificar-se-á o paralelismo de como a personagem pode modificar seu condicionamento identitário no próprio inferno e de como o inferno pode ser interpretado como força internalizada que falsifica a vontade e que precisa ser denunciada e combatida.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la novela de Chuck Palahniuk El Club de la Lucha (1996) desde un punto de vista diferente, el de las teorías comunitarias. Para enriquecer dicho estudio, este campo se combinará con los estudios de género, específicamente en los estudios de masculinidades. La novela describe la formación de una comunidad simbólicamente saturada, la del “club de la lucha”, cuyos miembros están obsesionados con una figura paternal ausente, incluido el protagonista. Sin embargo, su crisis existencial se resolverá gracias a su encuentro con Marla Singer, en el que Tyler Durden tendrá un papel fundamental: actuará como figura catalizadora, filtrando los simbolismos saturados que limitan la identidad esencialista del personaje principal. Como resultado, el protagonista podrá conectar con el personaje femenino principal, Marla Singer, de forma inorgánica, donde serán capaces de mostrar su individualidad de forma significativa.

The subject of this research is the behavior model of the characters in modern American literature. The goal lies in examination of the key attributes of &ldquo;toxicity&rdquo; as an element of artistic world resembled in modern American literature. The object of this research is the prose of Chuck Palahniuk. It is established that &ldquo;toxicity&rdquo; is one of the plotline components for building the characters of the heroes in modern American literature. The conducted analysis of the images of heroes and the components of artistic world of C. Palahniuk&rsquo;s prose allows concluding that &ldquo;toxicity&rdquo; is not only the binding element in the artistic world of American literature, but also a construct that forms the dynamic development of the heroes. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that this article is first to analyze &ldquo;toxicity&rdquo; as an artistic element of modern American literary texts. Prior to that, &ldquo;toxicity&rdquo; as a phenomenon was viewed from the perspective of psychological, sociological, and philosophical research. Therefore, the study of the phenomenon of toxicity in literature is of particular relevance due to its interdisciplinarity. The author believes that the types ad peculiarities of &ldquo;toxicity&rdquo; as an element of the artistic world in modern American literature, as well as interaction of other structural elements should be also viewed on the example of other works of modern American literature. The characteristic features that unite the works as a transgressive prose should be determined and compared.

A partir das narrativas Clube da luta (1996) de Chuck Palahniuk e A praia(1996) de Alex Garland, o presente artigo investiga as configurações comunitáriasque essas ficções propõem na virada do milênio. Os dois livros sãoo ponto de partida para analisar uma dialética da ruptura e da fundação, dolugar e do território, mas também entre arte e vida, já que a narrativa comunitáriaassombra a própria paixão pelo real (Alain Badiou, O século). É diantedessa contradição que as leituras de Giorgio Agamben (A comunidade que vem),Jean-Luc Nancy (A comunidade inoperante) e Massimo Cacciari (Nomes de lugar:confim) nos permitem discutir o paradoxo da relação sujeito e comunidade. Asduas narrativas analisadas propõem um deslocamento diante do mundo emnome de um outro lugar. Tornados território, configuram-se a partir de identidades,Clube, ou de restrições geográficas, Praia, e passam então a encenarexatamente as contradições que pretendiam romper. É para esse fracasso, quenão é mais o universalista, que o presente trabalho atenta.

In design readings, the relationship between place and the user of place is quite strong. In the Fight Club story, the main character Narrator, and the places are presented with a critical point of view and based on consumer culture. Although there are differences between the film and the book, both are based on the same text and fiction. This study aims to make a reading of the relations of the Narrative character with places and the relations. In this sense, two separate productions will be considered as a whole and the book and the film will be used as a common reading tool in this study. In the whole of the study, both common and different places in the book and the film will be discussed together. In this sense, in two different art branches; through literature and cinema; an integrated analysis will be conducted. Keywords: Chuck Palahniuk; Consumer Culture; Fight Club; Modernism; Place.

This research paper analyzed the ego defense mechanism by Sigmund Freud that are found in the main character of “Fight Club“ novel. The author of novel is Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. This research applied qualitative study, and the data are derived from the novel. The researcher focuses on causes of defense mechanism, the ego defense mechanism that the main character experienced and the effect that the main character got. The researcher found that anxiety is the cause why defense mechanism of the main character can active. The main character also applied ego defense mechanism namely displacement and reaction formation. And the effect for the main character is he becomes more bravely and easier to accept the reality. The ego defense mechanism is an unconscious psychological process that helps a person overcome anxiety due to a stressful internal or external environment. The defense mechanism finds its origin in Freud's structural theory of mind, which divides the human mind into three parts: id, ego, and superego. The interaction of the ego and superego gives rise to morality, guilty, and a conscience.

Ozet Dovus klubu hikayesinde, tuketim kulturunun icinde hapsolmus bir karakterin, bu kulture karsi anarsi ruhlu bir karakter ile tanismasiyla baslayan degisimi anlatmaktadir. Hikayede yaraticinin gozunde modern zaman insaninin yansimasinin, uclarda bir yasam deneyimi ve yasadiklari anlatilmaktadir. Hikaye Anlatici karakterinin okuyucu ve izleyiciye aktardiklari uzerine ilerleyen bir kurguya sahiptir. Hikayede bas kahraman anlatici ve icinde bulundugu mekanlar, tuketim kulturu temeline dayali ve elestirel bakis acisi ile sunulur. Bu elestiri baslarda mensubu oldugu kulture Anlaticinin tanistigi ve bu kulture oldukca aykiri kisilige sahip Tyler Durden’dan sonra uzaklasmasi ile olmaktadir. Hikaye Anlatici uzerinden Tyler Durden oncesi ve sonrasi olarak bakis acilari degistirmektedir. Film ve kitap arasinda farkliliklar bulunsa da temelinde ayni metin ve kurguda islenmekte, Film yazar tarafindan film hikayenin gelistirilmis bir versiyonu olarak yorumlanmistir. Bu anlamda iki ayri uretimin ortak bir butun olarak bakilmasi ve calisma da kitap ve film ortak birer okuma araci olarak kullanilacaktir. Bu calismada kitap ya da film okuma analizi, film kitap arasi karsilastirma gibi olmanin otesinde, mekanlar ve mekanlari okumak uzerine bir calismadir. Calimanin butununde hem kitap, hem de filmde gecen ortak yada farkli mekanlar bir arada ele alınacaktır. Bu anlamda 2 ayri sanat dalinda; edebiyat ve sinema uzerinden; butunlesik bir analiz yapilacaktir. Bu ele alista Mekanlar ve anlatici karakterinin mekanlar ile iliskileri hedefli bir okuma yapilmasi amaclanmaktadir. Anahatar Kelimeler: Chuck Palahniuk, Dovus Klubu, sinema, Edebiyat, Tasarim, Tuketim kulturu, Modernizm, Mekan. Abstract In design readings, the relationship between place and the user of place is quite strong. Feelings that the user has against the place are considered as subheading not only in philosophy of place but also in other philosophies. It is much more powerful to establish this relationship especially on the basis of material-based philosophies, such as consumption culture. Fight Club was written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996, and was filmed by David Fincher in 1999. The fact that the fighting club has two different interpretations creates a coherence produced in two different branches of art, supported by the author as opposed to creating a situation of inconsistencies and negativity between them. The story of Fight Club tells of the change of a character trapped in the consumption culture that began when he was introduced to a character with an anarchy spirit against this culture. In this story, the main character narrator and its places are presented with a critical point of view based on consumer culture. The Fight Club book and film tell the story of modern times man’s reflection, life experiences at the end and lives trapped within the culture of consumption in the eye of the creator of the story. The story is based on what the narrator character conveys to the reader and the viewer. In the story, the main character narrator and the places are presented with a critical point of view and based on consumer culture. This criticism is done while the narrator goes away from the culture which he is a member of after meeting Tyler Durden, who is quite contrary to this culture. The story changes through the narrator, with the perspective of before and after Tyler Durden. Although there are differences between the film and the book, both are based on the same text and fiction and the film was interpreted by the author as an improved version of the story. In this sense, two separate productions will be considered as a whole and the book and the film will be used as a common reading tool in this study. This is not a study on reading analysis of a book or a film or comparison between a film and a book, but a study on reading places and spaces. In the whole study, both common and different places in the book and the film will be discussed together. In this sense, in two different art branches; through literature and cinema; an integrated analysis will be conducted. With this approach, it is aimed to make a targeted reading of the places and the relationships. The aim of this study is to make a reading of the relationships of the Narrative character with places. Keywords: Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, cinema, literature, design, consumer culture, modernism, place

The article focuses on the prose works of several modern writers (Paola Capriolo, Chuck Palahniuk, Olga Tokarchuk, Andrei Lyubka, Goran Tribuson, Roman Kofman). All these works are united by the image of the musician and the motive of listening to the music. Thus, the music in the article is considered as an universal.First of all - problems of life and death, the main values of life, the opposition “sacred - infernal”. The purpose of the article is to investigate how the era of postmodern influenced the author's concept of music. In each of the works the form of the narrative is subjective. As a rule, the reader gets acquainted with the act of self-reflection of the personage who is looking for a way out of the mazes of everyday life. Therefore, the impression of an author's absence is created. However, the picture of the personage’s inner life at the moment of experiencing his encounter with music helps to understand what the author's conception of the world is like. In each of the works - the tragic idea of the world as chaos, the unpredictability of reality dominates, so death is perceived as liberation. And on the boundary between “here” and “there”, “life” and “death” the person is accompanied by music. The authors of the article draw on such categories of narratology as the “point of view”, the “subject plan”, “elf-reflection”, as well as on analysis of the structure of the discourse and the structure of the narrative in it.

Kada govorimo o kulturološkom fenomenu supkulture, možemo reći da ona nastaje kao reakcija izvesne grupe ljudi na dominantnu kulturu u jednom istorijskom momentu. Ona uključuje prisvajanje dobara kojima dominantna kultura raspolaže i oblikovanje tih dobara tako da odgovaraju potrebama supkulture koja nastaje. Međutim, onda kada pojedine odlike neke supkulture budu dovedene do ekstrema, može se govoriti o njenom razvoju u hegemoniju. Ovaj rad prati upravo proces pretvaranja jedne supkulture u sistem koji ima gotovo sve odlike hegemonije na primeru romana Borilački klub Čaka Palahnjuka. U romanu, omanja zajednica muškaraca postaje poslušna militantna grupa kojom zapoveda diktator u nastanku oličen u alter egu glavnog junaka i naratora, Tajleru Dardenu.

Psychoanalysis has been used for decades to explore the hidden motives and explanation of violent behavior of the characters in a novel. This paper analyses Chuck Palahniuk’s famous novel Fight Club using Freudian psychoanalysis. It explores the Freudian concepts of Id, Ego, and Super-ego as portrayed in the character of Tyler, the narrator, and the society in the novel. The research show how the characters of Tyler Durden with his violent behavior and the narrator with his passive lifestyle are a suitable representation of Freudian Id and Ego, respectively. The paper also throws light upon the role of society with its intricate web of rules and its influence on the behavior of the narrator and the violence of Tyler Durden

This research explores the ways cannibalism in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Haunted (2005) and Nicolas Winding Refn’s film The Neon Demon (2016) are a consequence, and reflective, of the consuming nature of creative industries. The research draws from this exploration that the consumptive characteristics of cannibalism often allegorise the processes and careers of artists. Specifically, the sacrificial nature of putting oneself into one’s work, the notion of the tortured artist, and the competitive nature of creative industries, where the hierarchy is ascended through others’ losses. In the framing narrative of Haunted, seventeen writers are trapped within an isolated writing retreat under the illusion of re-enacting the Villa Diodati and writing their individual masterpieces. When inspiration fails them, they sabotage their food supply in order to enhance their suffering, and thus their eventual memoirs. The writers turn to cannibalism, not only to survive but to remove the competition. By consuming each other, they attempt to manufacture themselves as ‘tortured artists’, competing to create the most painful story of the ‘writing retreat from hell’. In The Neon Demon, the protagonist, Jesse, begins as an innocent young woman who becomes embroiled in the cutthroat modelling industry. Favoured for her natural beauty, Jesse antagonises her fellow models, developing narcissistic tendencies in the process. At the film’s end she is cannibalised by these rivals, indicating the industrial consumption of her purity, the restoration of individual beauty by leeching off of the young, and the retaining of the hierarchy by removing the competition. Employing close readings of both literary and cinematic primary source material, this interdisciplinary study investigates a satirical trend within cultural representations of cannibalism against consumptive and competitive creative industries. In each text, cannibalism manifests as a consequence of these industrial pressures, as the desire for fame forces people to commit unsavoury deeds. In this regard, cannibalism acts as an extreme extrapolation of the dehumanising consequences of working within this capitalist confine.

The paper analyses the concept of perversion in Chuck Palahniuk’s famous novel Choke. Flowing from the theory of Sigmund Freud who defined perversion as any sexual activity deviating from a hetero-normative sexual relation with a procreative aim, Chokeencompasses such types of sexual perversions as fetishism, voyeurism, sadism, homoeroticism, rape or promiscuity. As the major character, Victor Mancini, is a sexual addict who also performs a masturbatory act defined as auto-asphyxia, his sexual encounters could definitely be called perverse. However, the various examples of perversions by which the novel is entwined seem to be eschewed by Palahniuk’s readers who praise the novel greatly, leaving positive responses on online resources dedicated to the novel’s reception. By these means, one could state that perverse literature is perceived as ‘cool’ nowadays, having the power not only to normalize perversion, but even to make it aesthetic.Key words: Perversion, Palahniuk, Choke, Freud, ReceptionPalabras claves: Perversión, Palahniuk, Choke, Freud, Recepción

En 1999 los debates sobre la masculinidad en crisis produjeron en Estados Unidos un volumen importante de literatura crítica y posicionó en bandos contrarios a los estudiosos que provenían de las proclamas feministas y los que fundaron el movimiento mitopoético de los hombres, enfrentados a las máximas de los Estudios de Género. El estreno de <em>Fight Club</em> provocó una especie de catarsis en ese escenario de confrontación y abordó la regeneración de la masculinidad hegemónica, localizándola en la vuelta a la violencia primitiva como esencia masculina. Entroncando así la narración entretejida con esos discursos, la apuesta de David Fincher, y de Chuk Palahniuk en la novela homónima de la que parte la película, aboga por detectar los peligros de entender lo masculino como esencialmente vinculado al dolor físico y a la agresividad del combate, provocando la identificación de este proceso con la conformación de los cuerpos políticos del fascismo

The release of the film Fight Club (Dir. David Fincher, 1999) was met with an outpouring of contradictory reviews. From David Ansen’s [Newsweek] claim that “Fight Club is the most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time” (Fight Club DVD insert) to LA Times’s Kenneth Turan who proclaimed Fight Club to be “…a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophising and bone-crushing violence that actually thinks it’s saying something of significance” (Fight Club DVD insert), everyone, it seemed, needed to weigh in with their views. Whether you think the film is a piece of witless and excessive trash, or believe, as Fight Club novelist Chuck Palahniuk hopes “it would offer more people the idea that they could create their own lives outside the existing blueprint for happiness offered by society,” this is a film that people react strongly to (Fight Club DVD insert). Whether or not the film is successful in the new ‘blueprint’ area is debatable and one focus of this essay. It isn’t difficult to spot the focus of the film Fight Club. The title and the graphic, edgy trailers for the film leave no doubt in the viewer’s mind that this film is about fighting. But fighting what and why are the questions that unveil the deeper edge to the film, an edge that skirts the abyss of deep psychological schism: man’s alienation from man, society and self, and the position of the late twentieth century male whose gendered potentialities have become muted thanks to corporate cookie-cutter culture and the loss of a ‘hunter-gatherer’ role for men. In a nutshell, the film explores the psychic rift of the main character, unnamed for the film, but conventionally referred to as “Jack” (played by Ed Norton). Jack leads a life many late twentieth century males can identify with, a life without real grounding, focus or passion. It is the kind of life that has become a by-product of the “me” generation and corporate/consumer culture. Aside from Jack’s inability to find real satisfaction in his love life, friendships, job, or sense of self, he also suffers from an identity disorder. While there are few people who are unaware of the mind-numbing (and in some cases, audience-alienating) “twist” offered near the end of the film, it bears repeating that the compelling character of Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) who shapes and influences the changes in Jack’s life is actually revealed near the end of the film as a manifestation of Jack’s alter ego. Jack and Tyler are the same person. The two conspire to start ‘Fight Club’, where men hit other men. Hard. The Club becomes an underground sensation, expanding to other communities and cities and eventually spawns the offshoot Project Mayhem whose goal it is to ultimately erase individual debt so everyone (all consumers) can start at zero. In order to manage this affair, several large buildings are slated for destruction by the Mayhem team. Of course no people will be in the buildings at the time, but all the records will be destroyed. This is the core of the film, but there are several other interesting sidelights that will become important to this discussion, including the lone female character Marla who becomes the love interest of Jack/Tyler, and the friend Bob, whom Jack meets during his insomniac foray into the seedy underworld of the self help meeting. The film itself seems to cry out for a psychoanalytic reading. Its thinly veiled references to Freudian concepts and subliminal tricks aside, it also makes the inner world of the protagonist its landscape and backdrop. In a film dominated by a psychological and psychical problem, psychoanalysis seems an excellent tool for delving more deeply into the symbols and attitudes of the piece. I have chosen both Kleinian object relations and Julia Kristeva’s understanding of abjection to help illuminate some issues in the film. Object relations helps to make clear both the divergence of personality and the emergence of a ‘repaired’ protagonist at the end of the film as Jack first creates and then destroys his alter ego. Kristeva initially explored abjection theory via literature in Powers of Horror (1982), but Barbara Creed’s Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1993) opened wide the door for applications of the theory to film studies. Creed uses abjection to explore issues of gender in the horror film, focusing on the role and depiction of women as abject. Here, I have adapted some of her ideas and intend to explore the role of abjection in the male identification process. In this film fighting operates as both reality and metaphor, on both the physical and psychical levels, encompassing the internal and external fight within the mind and body of the protagonist. Jack’s main problem is a lack of concrete identity and self-realization. Numbed by his willing and eager participation in consumer culture and his tacit compliance with the gritty underworld of his job as an automotive ‘recall coordinator’, his life’s work is estimating the cost effectiveness of saving lives by calculating the cost of death. In Jack’s world, meaning is derived solely through the external—external products he consumes and collects. Jack’s consumer-based emasculation is expressed when he states, “Like so many others I had become a slave to the Ikea nesting instinct.” In this sentence he clarifies his disempowerment and feminisation in one swoop. Having few, if any, relationships with human beings, meaningful or otherwise, Jack never reaches a level of social maturity. His only solace comes from visiting anonymous help groups for the terminally ill. Although Jack is physically fine (aside from his insomnia) a part of him is clearly dying, as his sense of who he is in a postmodern culture is hopelessly mediated by advertisements that tell him what to be. In the absence of a father, Jack appears to have had no real role models. Made ‘soft’ by his mother, Jack exhibits a not so subtle misogyny that is illustrated through his relationship with fellow ‘tourist’ in the self-help circles, Marla Singer. Jack’s identity issues unfold via various conflicts, each of which is enmeshed in the club he starts that revolves around the physical pain of hand-to-hand, man-on-man combat. Jack’s conflicts with himself, others and society at large are all compressed within the theme and practice of fighting and the fight clubs he institutes. Fighting for Jack (and the others who join) seems the answer to life’s immediate problems. This essay looks deeply into Jack’s identity conflict, viewing it as a moment of psychic crisis in which Jack creates an alternate personality deeply steeped in and connected to the ‘abject’ in almost every way. Thus, Jack forces himself to confront the abject in himself and the world around him, dealing with abjection on several levels all with a view to expelling it to restore the ‘clean and proper’ boundaries necessary in the ‘whole’ self. Viewed though the lens of psychoanalysis, particularly Klein’s work on object relations and Kristeva’s work with abjection, allows a reading in which the film expresses the need for and accomplishment of a self-activated encounter with the abject in order to redraw ‘clean and proper’ boundaries of self. This film’s tag lines, ‘Mischief, Mayhem and Soap’—illustrate both the presence (Mischief, Mayhem) and function (Soap) of the abject—the interaction with the abject will lead to a ‘clean’ subject—a proper subject, a restored subject. Before continuing, a brief discussion of abjection and object relations and the ways in which they are utilized in this essay is essential here. One of Klein’s major propositions is that “the neonate brings into the world two main conflicting impulses: love and hate” (Mitchell 19). Each of these conflicting impulses must be dealt with, usually by either “bringing them together in order to modify the death drive along with the life drive or expelling the death drive into the outside world” (19). Along with this conflict arises the conflict of a primary relationship with the mother, which is seen as both satisfying and frustrating, and then later complicated with the addition of the father. The main conflicting love/hate binary is reflective of a number of ‘sets’ of dualities that surface when looking into the mother/child relationship. Besides love and hate, there is the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mother, the mother as symbolic of both life and death, the symbolic (paternal) and semiotic (maternal), total oneness and total autonomy. The curious ‘split’ nature of the infant’s perception of the maternal figure recalls a kind of doppelganger, a doubling of the maternal (in positive and negative incarnations), that can be seen as abject. In the film, this informs the relationship between both Jack and Marla and Jack and Tyler, as I argue Tyler and Marla serve as parental substitutes at one part in the film. This is clarified in Jack’s statements about his relationship with the two of them: “My parents pulled this exact same act for years” and “I am six years old again, passing messages between parents.” This imaginary relationship allows Jack to re-experience some of his early identification processes, while effectively trading out the gender responsibilities to the point where Tyler symbolically takes the place of the ‘mother’ and Marla the place of the ‘father’. The result of this action is an excess of male gendered experiences in which Jack in crisis (emasculated) is surrounded by phalluses. Kristeva’s work with abjection is also important here. I am especially interested in her understanding of the mother/child relationship as connected with abjection, particularly the threat the mother represents to the child as wanting to return to a state of oneness. The abject functions in Fight Club as a means for the protagonist to re-configure his own autonomy. For Kristeva, the abject is that which is cast out in order that “I” may exist. It exists at the borders of the self and continually draws the subject into it. As the subject revolts and pulls away, its resistance cues the process of defining itself as separate, proper and autonomous. When the narrative of Jack’s life refuses to make sense to him, and his experiences seem like “a copy of a copy of a copy,” Jack turns inward for help. Kristeva says that the abject is “experienced at the peak of its strength when that subject, weary of fruitless attempts to identify with something on the outside, finds the impossible within” (5). Thus Jack ‘finds’ Tyler. The abject, [represented by Bob, Tyler and Marla in the film] is that which disturbs “identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (Kristeva 4). As the abject is that which blurs boundaries borders and classification, the film itself is steeped in abject images and ideas. The discrete categories of inside/outside, asleep/awake, male/female, and self/other are continually troubled throughout the narrative. The two most confused binaries are male/female and self/other. As the film is about Jack’s own experience of emasculation it is not until the male/female gender issues are resolved that his self/other issues can be resolved. Through the re-ordering of gender he is able to take his place in society alongside Marla, finally viewed as not his mother or friend but lover. Jack Versus Himself: A Cult Of One Jack is able to re-vamp his personality through exposure to the abject and the replaying of certain key object relations moments in his childhood. He engages with this ‘inner child’ to reconnect with psychically difficult moments in which his ‘self’ emerged. Jack, however, twists the typical plot of maternal and paternal bonding in ways that speak to the underlying misogyny of the film and of late twentieth century society as well. While the story begins with both male and female characters in unnatural roles with unnatural and abject body parts, by the end of the film, these ‘abnormalities’ or abject objects are erased, ejected from the text so Jack is restored to the ‘safety’ of a compulsory heterosexuality. Bob, Tyler and Marla’s characters are three examples of gender twisting expressed in the film. In psychoanalytic literature, the child bonds first to the mother (via feeding from the breast and in-utero existence) and experiences a feeling of total oneness impossible to duplicate. Eventually the child seeks autonomy and breaks from the mother and her clinging ways with the help of the father and the phallus. So in basic terms, the female is abject, representing infantile regression and oneness, and the male represents taking the proper place in the symbolic order. When the female (mother) is denied, the male accepts his natural place in culture and society. However, in this film, Tyler (the male) is the abject presence in the text, that which threatens to consume and subsume the narrator’s personality. It is Marla, the phallic woman, who interposes herself in this dyad and becomes the correct choice for Jack, allowing him to proceed into ‘normal relations.’ Early in the film, Jack is unable to envision a female partner with whom he can open up and share, instead substituting Bob—and his doubly signified ‘bitch-tits’—as a locus of comfort. In Bob’s ample bosom, Jack finds the release he is looking for, though it is unnatural in more ways than one. The feminised Bob [testicular cancer patient] comforts and coddles Jack so much that he feels the same idyllic bliss experienced by the infant at the mother’s breast; Jack feels “lost in oblivion, dark and silent and complete.” That night he is able for the first time in months to sleep: “Babies don’t sleep this well.” This illustrates Jack’s longing for the safety and security of the mother, complicated by his inability to bond with a female, replaced with his deep need for identification with a male. Continuing the twist, it is Marla who foils Jack’s moment of infantile bliss: “She ruined everything” with her presence, Jack sneers. Jack’s regression to this infantile bliss with either man or woman would be perceived as abject, (disrupting system and order) but this particular regression is at least doubly abject because of Bob’s unnatural breasts and lack of testicles. Both Bob, and to some degree Tyler, offer abjection to Jack as a way of dealing with this complexities of autonomous living. While my argument is that Tyler takes the traditional ‘female’ role in the drama, as a figure (like Bob) who lures Jack into an unnatural oneness that must ultimately be rejected, it is true that even in his position as abject ‘female’ (mother), Tyler is overwhelmingly phallic. His ‘jobs’ consist of splicing shots of penises into films, urinating and masturbating into restaurant food and engaging in acrobatic sex with Marla. Since Marla, who occupies the position of father bringing Jack into society away from the influence of Tyler, is also coded phallic, Jack’s world is overwhelmingly symbolically male. This appears to be a response to the overwhelming physical presence of Jack’s mother of which Tyler comments, “We’re a generation of men raised by women. I am wondering if another woman is really the answer we need?” During this same scene, Jack clarifies his regressive dilemma: “I can’t get married, I am a thirty year old boy.” Thus while Tyler campaigns for a world without women, Jack must decide if this is the correct way to go. Immersion in the world of uber-maleness only seems to make his life worse. It is only after he ‘kills’ Tyler and accepts Marla as a partner that he can feel successful. In another help meeting, one of the guided meditations emphasizes his regression by asking him to go to his “cave” and locate his “power animal.” This early in the film, Jack can only envision his power animal as a rather silly penguin, which, although phallic to some extent, is undercut by the fact that it speaks with a child’s voice. In the next visualization of the ‘power animal’, the animal becomes Marla—clarifying her influence over Jack’s subconscious. The threat of Marla’s sexuality is on one level explored with Jack’s counterpart Tyler, the one who dares to go where Jack will not, but their encounters are not shown in a ‘natural’ or fully mature light. They are instead equated with childhood experimentation and regressive fantasies as Marla responds that she “hasn’t been fucked like that since grade school” and Tyler proclaims the relationship is mere “sportfucking.” It is Tyler who discovers Marla’s oversized dildo proudly displayed on a dresser, of which she states “Don’t worry its not a threat to you.” This phallicized Marla refers to herself as “infectious human waste,” clearly abject. Marla’s power must be muted before Jack can truly relate to her. This is illustrated in two separate ‘visions’ of sexual intercourse—one between Marla and Tyler early in the film in which Marla assumes the dominant position, and then later near the end of the film when the same encounter is replayed with Jack taking Tyler’s place, Marla now in the standard missionary position on her back: Proper. Jack’s struggle with self is played out via his relationship with Tyler (and Marla to some degree). Once Jack has been exposed to the various levels of abject behaviour offered by Tyler and Project Mayhem, he chooses to go it alone, no longer needing the double he himself created. After experiencing and rejecting the abject, Jack redraws his boundaries and cleanses his soul. Jack Versus Society—The Personal Is Political Jack’s personal struggle becomes political—and communal. Another attempt at forming identity, Fight Club is bound to fail because it offers not autonomy but a group identity substituted for an individual one. While Jack loathes his ‘single serving life’ before Fight Club, he must come to realize that a group identity brings more problems than solutions in an identity crisis. While the comfort of ‘oneness’ is alluring, it is also abject. As Jack is able to finally refuse the safely and oneness offered by Tyler’s existence, he must also deny the safety in numbers offered by Fight Club itself. The cult he creates swallows members whole, excreting them as the “all singing all dancing crap of the world.” They eat, drink and sleep Fight Club and eventually its ‘evolutionary’ offshoot, Project Mayhem. During his involvement with Fight Club and Project Mayhem, Jack is exposed to three levels of abjection including food loathing, bodily wastes, and the corpse, each of which threaten to draw him to the “place where meaning collapses” (Kristeva 2). Jack’s first experience involves Tyler’s (a)vocation as a waiter who urinates and probably masturbates into patrons’ food. This mingling of bodily wastes and nourishment represents the most elementary form of abjection: food loathing. While Jack appears amused at Tyler’s antics in the beginning, by the end of the film, he illustrates his movement closer to self-identification, by calling for “clean food, please” signalling his alliance with the clean and proper. Bodily wastes, the internal made visible, represent the most extended contact Jack has with the abject. These experiences, when what is properly outside ends up inside and vice versa, begin with bloody hand-to-hand combat, including Tyler’s vomiting of blood into the mouth of an unwilling Fight Club participant “Lou”, causing another witness to vomit as well. The physical aversion to abject images (blood, pus, excrement) is part of the redrawing of self—the abject is ejected –via nausea/vomiting. Kristeva explains: “I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit” (3). The images continue to pile up as Jack describes life in the Paper Street house: “What a shit hole.” The house slowly decomposes around them, leaking and mouldy, releasing its own special smell: the rot of a “warm stale refrigerator” mixed with the “fart smell of steam” from a nearby industrial plant. While at Paper Street, Tyler decides to make soap. Soap in itself is an agent of cleanliness, but in this context it is abject and defiled by being composed of human waste. In a deeply abject moment, Jack is accidentally covered in refuse that spills from a ripped bag full of human fat pilfered from a liposuction clinic. Even at this profoundly disturbing moment, Jack is unwilling to give up his associations with Tyler and Project Mayhem. It is only after his encounter with a corpse that he changes his tune. While Fight Club attempted to blur physical boundaries via hand-to-hand combat and exchange of blood and blows, Project Mayhem threatens the psychic boundaries of self, a deeper danger. While a loud speaker drones “we are all part of the same compost heap” and a fellow occupant reminds Jack “In project mayhem we have no names,” Jack realizes he is truly losing himself, not gaining strength. Mayhem’s goal of ‘oneness’, like the maternal and infant experience, is exposed via slogans like “you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” Tyler finally puts his cards on the table and asks Jack to “stop trying to control everything and just let go.” For Kristeva, “If dung signifies the other side of the border, the place where I am not and which permits me to be, the corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything”(3). The corpse of Bob causes Jack to confront the boundaries of life and death, both spiritual and physical, as he opens his eyes to the damaging effects of the cult-like environment into which he has fallen. Jack’s momentary indecision morphs into action after Bob’s death becomes just one more mantra for the zombie-like Project Mayhemers to chant: “His name was Robert Paulson.” Jack’s internal and external struggles are compressed into one moment when he commits homo(sui)cide. Placing a gun in his mouth, he attempts to rid himself of Tyler forever, his final words to Tyler: “My eyes are open now”. At this point, Jack is psychically ready to take charge of his life and confidently eject the abject from the narrative of his life. He wants no more to do with Project Mayhem gang and is reunited with Marla with whom he finally appears ready to have a fully realized relationship. His masculinity and identity restoration are made blindingly apparent by the final splice in the film—the image of Marla and Jack hand in hand overlooking the new view out of the tower, spliced with the shot of a semi-erect penis—back to shot of Marla and Jack. The message is clear: Jack is a man, he has a woman, and he knows who he is because of it. While Fight Club novelist Palahniuk hopes the film offers options for life “outside the existing blueprint offered by society” (Fight Club DVD insert). On the other hand, it’s unclear how well the film pulls this off. On one hand, its lambasting of the numbing effects of blind and excessive consumerism seems well explored, it’s unclear what options really surface by the end of the film. Although many targeted buildings have been destroyed, through which the viewer can assume some or even most records of individual debt were erased, the building in which Marla and Jack stand (initially slated for destruction) remains. Perhaps this is meant to signify the impossibility of true financial equality in American society. But it seems to me that the more pressing issues are not the ones openly addressed in the film (that of money and consumerism) but rather the more internalised issues of self-actualisation, gender identity and contentment. In a postmodern space ripe for the redrawing and redefinition of gender stereotypes, this film carefully reinscribes not only compulsory heterosexuality but also the rigid boundaries of acceptable male and female behaviour. For this film, the safest route to repairing male identity and self-hood threatened by the emasculating practices of a consumer culture is a route back. Back to infantile and childhood fantasy. While it dances provocatively around the edges of accepting a man with ‘bitch tits’ and a woman with a dick, ultimately Bob is killed and Marla reclaimed by Jack in an ‘I’m ok you’re ok’ final scene: “Look at me Marla, I am really OK”. Jack’s immersion in an all male cult(ure) is eschewed for the comfort of real breasts. Works Cited Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1993. Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. 1999. Fight Club DVD edition. Dir. David Fincher. 2000. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay On Abjection. New York: Columbia Press: 1982. Mitchell, Juliet. The Selected Melanie Klein. New York: The Free Press, 1986. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Caldwell, Tracy M.. "Identity Making from Soap to Nuts" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/10-identitymaking.php>. APA Style Caldwell, T. M., (2003, Feb 26). Identity Making from Soap to Nuts. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/10-identitymaking.html