I AM JACKS SCENE ANALYSIS

 

FIGHT CLUB & PROJECT MAYHEM

Fight Club was born after Jack and Tyler first meet at a local Tavern after Jacks apartment burns down. Tyler tells Jack to hit him because 'how much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?' (DVD TIME CUE: 34:18). The violence of Fight Club was not about winning or losing, but was a means used to find out more about oneself which ultimately lead to self discovery and self empowerment (BOON). After being hit, Jack comments on how much it hurts. Then asks to be hit again because he finds a 'therapeutic release' in the expression of violence and pain that he feels. [Fight Club] provides a temporary 'physical and emotional release' for men. As the film continues, however, it enacts an 'increasingly violent quest for self redemption' as Jack struggles to awaken his numbed sense of self, his half hearted humanity, and his deadened masculinity (LEE). Jack found that after he fought, he could dismiss his everyday frustrations regarding his mindless job and the consumer driven propaganda, or in other words … let it slide. In fighting, he had found his 'cave' again and being able to let go of things that truly don't matter, as his power animal told him to do … he found relief. Tyler Durdens success in recruiting men for Fight Club and later for Project Mayhem demonstrates this dissatisfaction, implying an innate desire in men to regain their lost heritage. The rigid standards of traditional masculine behaviors are ironically liberating. They enable men to distinguish themselves, to exhibit valor, to prove their manhood, to salvage their birthright (BOON).

Another highly masculine characteristic, that of mischief, is manifested in Fight Club and it's evolved form, Project Mayhem. Fight Club involves weekly home work assignments, one being for example to start a fight with a complete stranger … and lose (DVD TIME CUE 1:14:31), thus encouraging the re-awakening of that inherent masculine trait in all members of Fight Club. Project Mayhem takes mischief to a higher degree with regimented operations of social anarchy, such as 'Operation Latte Thunder' which set out to destroy a piece of corporate art and a franchise coffee store (DVD TIME CUE 1:45:25). The extreme expression of these highly masculine behaviors through Fight Club and its members finds its origins in the need and desire of its founders, Jack and Tyler, who are the same person. Jacks alter ego, Tyler, is everything society tells men not to be and everything that every man wants to be. He is unencumbered by society's norms and values, in other words free, he openly expresses violence and aggression, is mischievous and treats women as objects (although a majority of men may respect women, pornography and using sex to sell products encourages this objectification). Tyler steals human body fat from behind liposuction clinics to resell to the elite cliental from which it came (DVD TIME CUE 1:00:14), taints the food of the upper class with his own bodily fluids and treats Marla as nothing more than an object in the bedroom and a danger to himself outside of it (DVD TIME CUE 53:08).

Project Mayhem is an evolution of Fight Club whose goal is to address what Tyler identifies as the source of masculine suppression and loss of identity in men … civilization itself. In order to preserve manhood, Tyler must destroy the culture that threatens it (BOON). Through the use of 'missions' or military inspired 'operations' of social anarchy, it's member's combat the lies and deceptions of corporations and the socially 'acceptable' norms and values adopted by society in general. Their efforts lead them to post information companies don't want you to know on billboards, demagnetizing rental videos thus wiping them clean, and a symbolic destruction of a tool through which social control is exercised, the T.V., leading up to the penultimate mission. Blowing up the headquarters of all the major credit card companies and thus erasing the debt record. Everybody goes back to zero. And everybody is an equal. It's only when we've hit bottom, that we can truly be free (DVD TIME CUE 1:03:54) … and start over. Resurrection.