Auteur theory : the method of analysing films through the creative imprint of an author
( auteur ).This is usually the director.
LINK to good overview
Creative imprint = distinctive visual style
( use of cinematography ,editing , colour and lighting , framing etc.)
distinctive use of other technical elements such as sound
repetition of narrative themes and motifs
distinctive ideological /moral/social vision of the world
Video essay about David Fincher's work
Video essay 2
Video essay 3
Can auteur theory be applied to David Ficher and Fight Club in particular ? Does it add to your understanding and enjoyment of the film and it's themes ?
Other relevant films by David Fincher
Seven ( 1995)
Zodiac ( 2007 )
The Social Network ( 2010)
Saturday, 31 March 2018
Thursday, 22 March 2018
CRITICAL APPROACHES 3 : Freud on the ego and id
Perhaps Freud's single most enduring and important idea was that the human psyche (personality) has more than one aspect. Freud (1923) saw the psyche structured into three parts (i.e., tripartite), the id, ego and superego, all developing at different stages in our lives.
LINK TO FULL SUMMARY
According to Freud's model of the psyche, the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.
Although each part of the personality comprises unique features, they interact to form a whole, and each part makes a relative contribution to an individual's behavior.
ID
The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. It consists of all the inherited (i.e., biological) components of personality present at birth, including the sex (life) instinct – Eros (which contains the libido), and the aggressive (death) instinct - Thanatos.
The id is the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to the instincts. The personality of the newborn child is all id and only later does it develop an ego and super-ego.
The id remains infantile in its function throughout a persons life and does not change with time or experience, as it is not in touch with the external world. The id is not affected by reality, logic or the everyday world, as it operates within the unconscious part of the mind.
The id operates on the pleasure principle (Freud, 1920) which is the idea that every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences. When the id achieves its demands, we experience pleasure when it is denied we experience ‘unpleasure’ or tension.
The id engages in primary process thinking, which is primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented. This form of process thinking has no comprehension of objective reality, and is selfish and wishful in nature.
EGO
The ego develops to mediate between the unrealistic id and the external real world. It is the decision-making component of personality. Ideally, the ego works by reason, whereas the id is chaotic and unreasonable.
The ego operates according to the reality principle, working out realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands, often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative consequences of society. The ego considers social realities and norms, etiquette and rules in deciding how to behave.
Like the id, the ego seeks pleasure (i.e., tension reduction) and avoids pain, but unlike the id, the ego is concerned with devising a realistic strategy to obtain pleasure. The ego has no concept of right or wrong; something is good simply if it achieves its end of satisfying without causing harm to itself or the id.
Often the ego is weak relative to the headstrong id, and the best the ego can do is stay on, pointing the id in the right direction and claiming some credit at the end as if the action were its own.
Freud made the analogy of the id being a horse while the ego is the rider. The ego is 'like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.'
If the ego fails in its attempt to use the reality principle, and anxiety is experienced, unconscious defense mechanisms are employed, to help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e., anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.
The ego engages in secondary process thinking, which is rational, realistic, and orientated towards problem-solving. If a plan of action does not work, then it is thought through again until a solution is found. This is known as reality testing and enables the person to control their impulses and demonstrate self-control, via mastery of the ego.
OTHER LINKS
BLOG linking Freud and Fight Club
article summarising how Freud's theories of ego/id/superego ( and other ideas) can be applied to Fight Club
Generally these concepts can help provide a structure and language to help explain the split in the narrator's mind in the film.
Freud's structure can be used in any exam question asking for how critical approaches or theories have helped you understand the film.
REVIEWS : Various links
Robert Ebert review
Negative review , focusing on the use of violence .
" "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again. "
Kenneth Turan : LA Times review
Extremely negative review , focusing on the use of violence and machismo in the film and its lack of intelligence or humanity.
"Fight Club," a film about men who like to fight, is an unsettling experience, but not the way anyone intended. What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance. That is a scary notion indeed."
Alexander Walker : Evening Standard review
Extremely negative review , accusing the film of supporting fascism na doffending basic human values.
Janet Maslin New York Times review
Positive review, focusing on its themes of alienation and masculinity in crisis.
"If watched sufficiently mindlessly, it might be mistaken for a dangerous endorsement of totalitarian tactics and super-violent nihilism in an all-out assault on society. But this is a much less gruesome film than ''Seven'' and a notably more serious one. It means to explore the lure of violence in an even more dangerously regimented, dehumanized culture. "
In a film as strange and single-mindedly conceived as ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' Mr. Fincher's angry, diffidently witty ideas about contemporary manhood unfold. As based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (and deftly written by Jim Uhls), it builds a huge, phantasmagorical structure around the search for lost masculine authority, and attempts to psychoanalyze an entire society in the process. "
Peter Travers - Rolling Stone review
Positive review , focusing on Fincher's uncompromising and non-judgemental attitudes and the film's intelligence .
METACRITIC SUMMARY
Negative review , focusing on the use of violence .
" "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again. "
Kenneth Turan : LA Times review
Extremely negative review , focusing on the use of violence and machismo in the film and its lack of intelligence or humanity.
"Fight Club," a film about men who like to fight, is an unsettling experience, but not the way anyone intended. What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance. That is a scary notion indeed."
Alexander Walker : Evening Standard review
Extremely negative review , accusing the film of supporting fascism na doffending basic human values.
|
Janet Maslin New York Times review
Positive review, focusing on its themes of alienation and masculinity in crisis.
"If watched sufficiently mindlessly, it might be mistaken for a dangerous endorsement of totalitarian tactics and super-violent nihilism in an all-out assault on society. But this is a much less gruesome film than ''Seven'' and a notably more serious one. It means to explore the lure of violence in an even more dangerously regimented, dehumanized culture. "
In a film as strange and single-mindedly conceived as ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' Mr. Fincher's angry, diffidently witty ideas about contemporary manhood unfold. As based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (and deftly written by Jim Uhls), it builds a huge, phantasmagorical structure around the search for lost masculine authority, and attempts to psychoanalyze an entire society in the process. "
Peter Travers - Rolling Stone review
Positive review , focusing on Fincher's uncompromising and non-judgemental attitudes and the film's intelligence .
"Fincher is a visionary who keeps Fight Club firing on all cylinders, raising hallucinatory hell in ways too satisfying to spoil here. As for the dissenters, "I Am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise". Fincher's refusal to moralize and reassure has pissed off the watchdogs of virtue. Let 'em bark. They think anything alive is dangerous. Fight Club pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It's alive, all right. It's also an uncompromising American classic "
METACRITIC SUMMARY
Thursday, 8 March 2018
CRITICAL APPROACHES 2 : Gender Issues ( Bly /Giroux/ Lyn M Ta )
MASCULINITY AND CRITICAL RESPONSES
Fight Club's explicit theme is the crisis in "masculinity" in the face of "feminised " consumerist culture.
Robert Bly, and American poet , stated that modern masculinity was in crisis in his book " Iron John"and this article. ( What do men really want ? )
The concepts of traditional stereotypical "male "( domination, ambition, aggression etc.)
and "female" ( passivity, empathy, domesticity ) attributes runs through much of the critical response to Fight Club and can be criticised in turn as limited and overly binary in nature.
Giroux feels Fight Club is limited and problematic in its representation of masculinity in Fight Club and the solutions it provides . Representations of masculinity in the film are limited in terms of class, ethnicity and the solutions provided to masculine "crisis" are simply violent , individualistic and unsustainable,
However Lyn Ma Ta claims that Fight Club explicitly deals with this issue in her article
"Hurts so good : Fight Club, masculine violence and the crisis of capitalism" and is in fact satirising and mocking these limited responses and is in fact encouraging further debate about the nature of masculinity and society.
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSE AND DISCUSSION POINTS
Q : Is the representation of men in the film limited to and reliant upon traditional stereotypes of masculinity or does it challenge and subvert these stereotypes ?
Jack : " Is that what a man looks like ? "
The film has also been described as a battle between male archetypes : the traditional hypermasculine "Alpha " male (Tyler) and the more feminine and sensitive 1990s "New Man"
( Jack) .
Q : How does Fight Club use its mis-en-scene , cinematography , editing and narrative to explore this battle ? Whose side , if any, is it on ?
FEMININE
Alienating consumerist culture ( and the self-help groups Jack uses to try to save himself) has been described as feminine in Fight Club and something for our character to escape to save his masculinity.
Literal representations of women in Fight Club are limited as the film is very much concerned with masculinity and male bonding. The character of Marla as the central female character in the film is clearly vitally important.
What are Marla'a personal qualities and narrative agency in the film ?
How do the other characters in the film interact with , describe and view her ?
Does she conform to or subvert traditional stereotypes and cinematic representations about women and femininity ?
How is the audience positioned to respond to Marla , and do we ever see the events and themes in the film from her perspective ?
Film noir femme fatale ?
Hysterical and unstable ? Love interest ? Muse to male hero?
Or independent and strong-willed woman ?
Other references to women in the text are also negative and Tyler Durden explicitly states
" I'm wondering if another woman is what we need " .
Does the film's narrative support this message ?
OTHER RESOURCES
Simple video essay on masculinity in Fight Club
Thursday, 1 March 2018
CRITICAL APPROACHES 1 : Giroux ( anti-capitalism, gender)
We will be discussing the following article on Fight Club's response to in our lesson on Friday. Make sure you have looked at it and summarise your own response.
Giroux full article
We will be exploring the following questions .
Do you think Fight Club can be classed as a radical or anti-capitalist film ?
If not, why not ?
Does Fight Club provide coherent and inclusive longterm solutions to the problems caused by capitalism ? ( inequality, lack of workers rights, individualism, social breakdown, alienation)
Do you think Fight Club is simply an entertaining mainstream film which just pretends to deal with major themes such as masculinity in crisis , consumer culture and global capitalism or a subversive message which managed to be released to a wide audience ?
Does Fight Club's use of cinematography , editing and sound support serious discussion of its themes and any messages the film has, or prevent it from being taken seriously ?
Do you agree with all or any of Giroux's main points ?
GIROUX : Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders:
MAIN CRITICISMS
The ascendancy of neoliberalism and corporate culture into every aspect of American life not only consolidates economic power in the hands of the few, it also aggressively attempts to break the power of unions, decouple income from productivity, subordinate the needs of society to the market, and deem public services and amenities an unconscionable luxury. But it does more. It thrives on a culture of cynicism, boredom, and despair. Americans are now convinced that they have little to hope for--and gain from--the government, non-profit public spheres, democratic associations, or other non-governmental social forces.
It is against this ongoing assault on the public, and the growing preponderance of a free market economy and corporate culture that turns everything it touches into an object of consumption that David Fincher’s film, Fight Club, must be critically engaged. Ostensibly, Fight Club appears to offer a critique of late capitalist society and the misfortunes it generates out of its obsessive concern with profits, consumption, and the commercial values that underline its market driven ethos. But Fight Club is less interested in attacking the broader material relations of power and strategies of domination and exploitation associated with neoliberal capitalism than it is in rebelling against a consumerist culture that dissolves the bonds of male sociality and puts into place an enervating notion of male identity and agency.
Contrary to the onslaught of reviews accompany the film’s premier that celebrated it as a daring social critique,Fight Club has nothing to say about the structural violence of unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending, and the destruction of institutions capable of defending social provisions and the public good. On the contrary, Fight Clubdefines the violence of capitalism almost exclusively in terms of an attack on traditional (if not to say regressive) notions of masculinity, and in doing so reinscribes white, heterosexuality within a dominant logic of stylized brutality and male bonding that appears predicated on the need to denigrate and wage war against all that is feminine. In this instance, the crisis of capitalism is reduced to the crisis of masculinity, and the nature of the crisis lies less in the economic, political, and social conditions of capitalism itself than in the rise of a culture of consumption in which men are allegedly domesticated, rendered passive, soft and emasculated.
Rather than turning a critical light on crucial social problems, such films often trivialize them within a stylized aesthetics that revels in irony, cynicism, and excessive violence. Violence in these films is reduced to acts of senseless brutality, pathology, and an indifference to human suffering.
TYLER DURDEN
Tyler represents the magnetism of the isolated, dauntless anti-hero whose public appeal is based on the attractions of the cult-personality rather than on the strengths of an articulated, democratic notion of political reform. Politics for Tyler is about doing, not thinking. As the embodiment of authoritarian masculinity and hyper individualism, Tyler cannot imagine a politics that connects to democratic movements, and is less a symbol of vision and leadership for the next millennium than a holdover of early-twentieth century fascism.
REPRESENTATIONS OF CLASS
Fight Club largely ignores issues surrounding the break up of labor unions, the slashing of the U.S. workforce, extensive plant closings, downsizing, outsourcing, the elimination of the welfare state, the attack on people of color, and the growing disparities between the rich and the poor. All of these issues get factored out of Fight Club’s analysis of consumerism and capitalist exploitation. Hence, it comes as no surprise that class as a critical category is non-existent in this film. When working class people do appear, they are represented primarily as brown shirts, part of the non-thinking herd looking for an opportunity to release their tensions and repressed masculine rage through forms of terrorist violence and self-abuse.
CAPITALISM , ETHNICITY AND CHOICE
CAPITALISM AND GENDER
Consumerism in Fight Club is criticized primarily as an ideological force and existential experience that weakens and domesticates men, robbing them of their primary role as producers whose bodies affirm and legitimate their sense of agency and control. The importance of agency is not lost on director David Fincher, but it is restricted to a narrowly defined notion of masculinity that is as self-absorbed as it is patriarchal.21 Fincher is less interested in fighting oppressive forms of power than he is in exploring the ways in which men yield to it.
Giroux full article
We will be exploring the following questions .
Do you think Fight Club can be classed as a radical or anti-capitalist film ?
If not, why not ?
Does Fight Club provide coherent and inclusive longterm solutions to the problems caused by capitalism ? ( inequality, lack of workers rights, individualism, social breakdown, alienation)
Do you think Fight Club is simply an entertaining mainstream film which just pretends to deal with major themes such as masculinity in crisis , consumer culture and global capitalism or a subversive message which managed to be released to a wide audience ?
Does Fight Club's use of cinematography , editing and sound support serious discussion of its themes and any messages the film has, or prevent it from being taken seriously ?
Do you agree with all or any of Giroux's main points ?
GIROUX : Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders:
Fight Club, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence
MAIN CRITICISMS
The ascendancy of neoliberalism and corporate culture into every aspect of American life not only consolidates economic power in the hands of the few, it also aggressively attempts to break the power of unions, decouple income from productivity, subordinate the needs of society to the market, and deem public services and amenities an unconscionable luxury. But it does more. It thrives on a culture of cynicism, boredom, and despair. Americans are now convinced that they have little to hope for--and gain from--the government, non-profit public spheres, democratic associations, or other non-governmental social forces.
It is against this ongoing assault on the public, and the growing preponderance of a free market economy and corporate culture that turns everything it touches into an object of consumption that David Fincher’s film, Fight Club, must be critically engaged. Ostensibly, Fight Club appears to offer a critique of late capitalist society and the misfortunes it generates out of its obsessive concern with profits, consumption, and the commercial values that underline its market driven ethos. But Fight Club is less interested in attacking the broader material relations of power and strategies of domination and exploitation associated with neoliberal capitalism than it is in rebelling against a consumerist culture that dissolves the bonds of male sociality and puts into place an enervating notion of male identity and agency.
Contrary to the onslaught of reviews accompany the film’s premier that celebrated it as a daring social critique,Fight Club has nothing to say about the structural violence of unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending, and the destruction of institutions capable of defending social provisions and the public good. On the contrary, Fight Clubdefines the violence of capitalism almost exclusively in terms of an attack on traditional (if not to say regressive) notions of masculinity, and in doing so reinscribes white, heterosexuality within a dominant logic of stylized brutality and male bonding that appears predicated on the need to denigrate and wage war against all that is feminine. In this instance, the crisis of capitalism is reduced to the crisis of masculinity, and the nature of the crisis lies less in the economic, political, and social conditions of capitalism itself than in the rise of a culture of consumption in which men are allegedly domesticated, rendered passive, soft and emasculated.
Rather than turning a critical light on crucial social problems, such films often trivialize them within a stylized aesthetics that revels in irony, cynicism, and excessive violence. Violence in these films is reduced to acts of senseless brutality, pathology, and an indifference to human suffering.
TYLER DURDEN
Tyler represents the magnetism of the isolated, dauntless anti-hero whose public appeal is based on the attractions of the cult-personality rather than on the strengths of an articulated, democratic notion of political reform. Politics for Tyler is about doing, not thinking. As the embodiment of authoritarian masculinity and hyper individualism, Tyler cannot imagine a politics that connects to democratic movements, and is less a symbol of vision and leadership for the next millennium than a holdover of early-twentieth century fascism.
REPRESENTATIONS OF CLASS
Fight Club largely ignores issues surrounding the break up of labor unions, the slashing of the U.S. workforce, extensive plant closings, downsizing, outsourcing, the elimination of the welfare state, the attack on people of color, and the growing disparities between the rich and the poor. All of these issues get factored out of Fight Club’s analysis of consumerism and capitalist exploitation. Hence, it comes as no surprise that class as a critical category is non-existent in this film. When working class people do appear, they are represented primarily as brown shirts, part of the non-thinking herd looking for an opportunity to release their tensions and repressed masculine rage through forms of terrorist violence and self-abuse.
CAPITALISM , ETHNICITY AND CHOICE
There is one particularly revealing scene in Fight Club that brings this message home while simultaneously signaling a crucial element of the film’s politics. At one point in the story, Tyler takes Jack into a convenience store. He pulls out a gun and forces the young Indian clerk to get on his knees. Putting the gun to the clerk’s head, Tyler tells him he is going to die. As a kind of parting gesture, he then asks Raymond, the clerk, what he really wanted to be in life. A vetinarian, Raymond replies, but he had to drop out of school for lack of money. Tyler tells him that if he isn’t on his way to becoming a vetinarian in six weeks he is going to come back and kill him. He then lets Raymond go and tells Jack that tomorrow morning will be the most important day in Raymond’s life because he will have to address what it means to do something about his future. Choice for Tyler appears to be an exclusively individual act, a simple matter of personal will that functions outside of existing relations of power, resources, and social formations. As Homi Bhabha points out, this notion of agency "suggests that ‘free choice’ is inherent in the individual [and]...is based on an unquestioned ‘egalitarianism’ and a utopian notion of individualism that bears no relation to the history of the marginalized, the minoritized, the oppressed."19
CAPITALISM AND GENDER
Consumerism in Fight Club is criticized primarily as an ideological force and existential experience that weakens and domesticates men, robbing them of their primary role as producers whose bodies affirm and legitimate their sense of agency and control. The importance of agency is not lost on director David Fincher, but it is restricted to a narrowly defined notion of masculinity that is as self-absorbed as it is patriarchal.21 Fincher is less interested in fighting oppressive forms of power than he is in exploring the ways in which men yield to it.
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