The film and the novel reminded me of White Noise in their focus on death. This time, the characters were not afraid of it, like Jack and Babette, but need to come close to it by fighting until they can barely cry out for it to stop. By testing their bodies to that extreme, they feel more alive and more prepared for death. The narrator claims he is dying when he cannot sleep, to attempt to have his doctor to take him seriously. His doctor does not give him the attention he needs, so he adopts the persona of someone who is dying by attending the support groups. There, his life is ephemeral and therefore more valuable; he is not taken for granted. The narrator could go to a plethora of support groups for people who are not dying (AA, gamblers anonymous, etc.) but he chooses to connect with people under these false pretences for two years. Even when Tyler has a gun in the narrator’s mouth, he assures him that they “won’t really die,” but will become immortal, become “legend” (1). Marla is obsessed with death too, attempting to kill herself, thinking she may have tumors, and declaring her affection for Tyler in terms of death, by saying she wants to have his abortion. Death is Marla’s way of getting attention, however fleeting, but it will not bring her the same power that it would narrator/Tyler.
Going along with the death aspect of Fight Club is the treatment of religion. God is a father figure in Western culture, and this God has given up on the middle children of history, according to Tyler, because of their troubled relationships with their fathers: “If you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God” (177). Tyler then becomes a god to the fight club and project mayhem members and therefore thinks of himself and immortal, because he now has the power of all of the fathers of the men. At the end of the novel, God is a doctor in a mental institution, and the narrator has a realistic way of seeing humanity, as not crap, and not special, but just being. He finds the happy medium between the extremes. God doesn’t like his answer, but the narrator does not give this male authority figure ultimate power; instead he concludes, “you can’t teach God anything” (198).
Death and violence in both the novel and film seemed to cloud a good deal of meaning that I was able to take from either medium. I agree that in Fight Club, characters are obsessed with pain, violence, and death as perhaps an antidote to the boredom and oppression they feel as subjects in a capitalist system. In another blog entry, someone mentioned that Fight Club endorses a number of corporate products, like Starbucks, and that this may in fact be pointing to the predominance of products in American life. Although I don’t recall the film or novel noting this, I think much of American apathy that is caused by a product saturated lifestyle also stems from the loss that many individuals and small groups have suffered as corporations do away with mom-and-pop businesses. Middle class people who don’t feel as apt for working via an intangible means, such as in a white collar job coding programs or working figures, but who do feel comfortable and willing to run a shop or service have less and less a chance to survive and compete with large, lower cost corporations. Fight Club, both film and novel, seem to attempt to include these kind of characters, who in their frustration and desperation reach for anything to get away from the apathy which stems from their circumstances.
Violence, blood, and the male Fight Club, are the ways these characters get attention and escape apathy; and while I agree with Giroux that it creates a potentially dangerous pedogogy for the viewer/student, there is a long tradition of organizations which operate from a base of violence to control and define its participants, namely the military. Project Mayhem, which is written as a critique of fascism in the novel, is portrayed as something similar to a military or terrorist group, giving these angry and probably depressed male characters something to believe in, something to channel into, even if we as viewers can see how destructive and more damaging it actually is.