I was surprised how they completely missed how class played out in the movie. Like the fact that Norton was a white collar worker but recruited all working class men as his soldiers. He was far more educated and eloquent than the men he was able to convert.
A satire that proved to be as accurate as it was prophetic, insecure men losing their minds because of capitalism/consumerism, freaking out and directing it towards a crazy cult.
The “original intention” of a work is not THE necessary binding interpretation. Especially nowadays. I promise those who disagree with your reading of Fight Club aren’t just infinitely stupider than you or something. Maybe they just understand concepts like death of the author.
@@rdeal8912 Considering it's fiction and art, I'm okay with the variable that even I could be wrong about interpreting Fight Club. It's always been my 2nd most favorite movie, but mostly because of David Fincher, the cast, and the production style of the film, rather than anything to do with the message of the story. But the simplest narrative always seemed to be an unreliable narrator who wants more out of life but isn't capable of dealing with it in a healthy way and confuses his narcissistic nihilism with something salient and heroic. Jack, the protagonist, should not be lionized for his actions because of his unreliable and sociopathic nature, and sinister attitude towards a healthy life (both mentally and physically). Like early incel-nature and immature far-right pseudo-intellectualism, he tries mocking post-modern consumerism but can't do it effectively because he just comes across bitter and jealous of a healthier happier life.
@@cedarandsound I have no doubt that Fincher most likely agrees with your more materialistic, Freudian analysis. He is a Hollywood elite after all. But for the millions of men who resonate with the comments about a “spiritual” war there’s something more going on here. For us, it’s a critique of the state of the male spirits and what we might do to reignite it.
@@rdeal8912 I think you're out of sync with the topic here. I'm talking storytelling and metaphor, and you're talking QAnon-level message decoding, re-interpreting near-sci-fi-level fiction for real-world mantras, and strange tactics of othering/disregarding people using undefined labels (hollywood elite). I don't know where you're getting confused but it's certainly doesn't seem to comport with reality. So...have fun re-writing a 25 year old script into manifesto or whatever it is you're doing.
Two things: there actually was a sequel to Fight Club, it's a graphic novel set ten years after the original story took place. And, I find it incredibly sad that in a discussion about Gen-X men there's actually no one on this panel that can properly speak for them or represent them and accurately present an opinion from that perspective.
Progressive lefty here. Grew up in the 80's and 90's. Fight club was in incredibly formative for me and understanding the direction capitalism was heading
Mixed black female lefty here and loved the movie. But I can see how the deeper message of anti-capitalism in the movie would be lost on those on the right who just see this as a bunch of white dudes causing mayhem.
A great video essayist TH-camr named FD Signifier just made a brilliant video on this topic, titled “I finally understand edgelords”. He talks about how no matter how obviously directors of various work that deals with toxic masculinity try to make their commentary (American Psycho, Joker, the Boys, etc), simply by continuing these tropes and making them look badass, they perpetuate its fashionability. There IS a crisis of media literacy, alongside & related to the crisis of masculinity, but because they are interrelated, “holding up a mirror” doesn’t really seem to work. And the more obvious those producing try to make the commentary, the media’s quality worsens. He points out that even when the toxic character is unlikeable and obviously a loser, idolization still occurs. Highly recommend!
You so missed the Gen X rant on the VW. The rant is a response to being dominated by the Boomers, as a generation, forever. You want to more look at the VW rant from the position of Gen X being ignored and forgotten. The VW Beetle relaunch was the Boomers imposing their nostalgia on Gen X, again. Gen X has been dealing with Boomers reducing our chances and opportunities since we entered the job market, while how seeing well they did for themselves. The later generations have it worse, but we watched the ladders being pulled up in our faces.
One thing that stands out to me that I don’t see discussed often is how this is a movie about a cult of personality, and more specifically how that person who promises they can fix all your grievances becomes the thing the people who follow them started railing against in the first place. The leader that Tyler becomes is exactly the person he is trying to convince people is a problem, a disconnected and abusive father. He becomes a father figure by bringing all of these “sons” into his home, but then he does not give a shit about them. He uses the men who follow him and discards them. He goes around the country setting up “families.” He becomes a leader who cannot be questioned without consequences. Tyler frees those who follow him but then effectively traps them again using the techniques that he railed against to get them to join up. And those people are so into it that they can’t even see they put themselves back in a cage.
Watched it for the first time a few years ago. Tyler was a walking red pill (in the tate sense of the word) and ed norton completed his character development by shooting tyler out of his head. To me it was explicitly feminist and anti-capitalist
I think Maggie Mae Fish's treatment of Fight Club adds an interesting reading where Ed Norton's character is created for the audience's benefit to bring us along on Tyler's violent campaign rather than the other way around.
Woah fight club is a take down of capitalism it’s more anarchist classic coke then really anything you can blame on modern trends. This is a 90s movie about 90s anxiety
anarchy is the state we are arriving at when enough ppl want to trash the system with no clue what comes next. The reason why is secondary. That said, the films critique revolves mostly around materialism, authority and self determination. You can clearly see the throughline, oppression is the glue
Your description of Gen Xers described my fellow elder millennial spouse so well that it prompted me to delve into how generations differ between countries. Turns out that the country he is from has a “burnt generation” for those born between 1966-88, with similarities to Gen X, plus repression of PTSD from growing up in war.
This is such an interesting line. On its face it sounds like a line blaming women for having done the raising. But that omits acknowledging the vacuum in which women raise children alone - a vacuum left when men abandon fatherhood. That is such a powerful analogy for real life, where women are disparaged for being single mothers, but they are the ones who took responsibility for the children. The real source of pain in these young men is the absence of their fathers. But their anger is directed at their mothers.
@thesilvernymph When I saw it the first time, I understood it to be a shot at absentee Dad's, the ones who live under the same and different roofs. I think this movie is full of kudos to moms. Secretly has several feminist messages just floating under the service
As a trans woman, this movie reads as an accidental trans allegory about killing your mask or freeing yourself from the mask you create in order to survive. The mask serves a purpose for a time when you’re giving up hope but then can take over permanently if you’re not careful. Whenever I watch it, I view it through the lens that Jack is actually Marla. She’s assigned male at birth (Jack) and is forced to live a life that is a lie like in The Matrix and is slowly suffocating and dying like in I Saw the TV Glow. She creates the mask (Tyler) to survive so she doesn’t suffocate and Tyler starts ripping apart all of the constructs that keep Marla trapped inside Jack. Tyler only doing it though to give Jack purpose so he doesn’t die or worse yet, wake up and become his true self. Sometimes we have to die in order to become ourselves though and so Tyler is an inevitable symptom of being forced to live as someone you’re not. Tyler was always going to self destruct at some point taking Marla with him or not. In the end when you see Jack standing next to Marla, you’re really just seeing Marla standing alone and finally in her entirety. She’s fully realized and Jack is actually the shadow at that point. What comes next after the credit roll for me, is a story about Marla now letting go of Jack while being careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because at that point in her journey , Jack is still a big part of her. So the viewer sees them both because we’re on that journey with them. And in that world, people no longer see Tyler or Jack.
The Fight Club as a feminist POV really hits for me- ive been thinking about this movie alot in the wake of the discussion of how 'the left needs a new joe rogan'. No, the left needs to make anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism sexy again.
Either learn to stop sh1tting on young men at every turn, or prepare to lose more social ground/elections. Now amount of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, etc. will cause men to move left. Cut it out with this champagne socialist crap
This movie is so prophetic, it helped fulfill its own prophecy. Insecure men, losing their minds because of capitalism and freaking out. At least the protagonist directs his frustrations at the banks, the real ones votes for the bank representatives.
The interesting thing about this movie is that as a man, you kinda view it differently at different times in your life. when I was 16 watching this movie I wanted to join it, in my 30s I kinda saw how full of shit Tyler Durden really is. At 40 Im thinking whats so bad about that great apartment and well paying job Ed Norton has. He should just see more of Marla and he'll be fine.
It might be useful to point out that Gen X -men especially- went through a moment of cultural realignment,in the mid-80s, that was certainly a precursor to where we 're at now. It was a partial rejection of the patriarchy and a cleansing of language and behaviours around racism and misogyny. The difference was that Gen X men largely went along with it, even drove it; but it still shattered an old model of masculinity without really consolidating a new one. The patriarchy survived, for sure, thanks to some clever marketing that basically sold the same sexuality back to women but now redefined as "empowerment". But it was still a changed landscape from what had come before.
A dvd-watched-on-ps2 classic. To me this film was always about alienation. Alienation driven by capitalism through a patriarchal society which (preferences but) doesn’t benefit men. Strangely it’s about the answerless lost soul Dads of today’s lost soul Andrew Tate viewer. It’s the same alienation that still exists it just plays out differently today
At 56:20: "Rants about Starbucks... who cares?!" Also, "Gens Xers caring about symbols. It's not what matters!" Hm, here's what you younger intellectuals are missing: the "Right-Wing MAGA vs Left-Wing Elites" political divide didn't emerge suddenly out of nowhere. Marketing/propaganda as a field was evolving for decades, but really locked in when Gen X came of age in the 1990s. Cultural markers as a means of expressing identity were always there, but the ability of commercial brands to explicitly manipulate individual identity and sense of community ratcheted up at this point. IKEA, Pottery Barn, Starbucks, etc...the average Gen Xer could see that we were being manipulated and we ranted about interactions with it (even as we actively consumed) because we intuited something was happening that we couldn't grasp yet. Of course it doesn't matter if you drink Starbucks or Dunkin! But, your preference sure was superficially (falsely?) interpreted by people around you as a class- and values identifier. By the 2000 election, these cultural markers were being expertly employed by political parties. You mock Gen X for ranting in 1999 about this, but it came to pass. How many self-identified Republicans heard phrases like "Latte Liberal" and immediately, irrevocably voted for Trump against their own best interests? As consumers, we slowly woke up in the 1990s to see that brand was no longer about product, but the consumer (God, terrabytes have been written on this topic!) I suspect you are underplaying this aspect of the movie because, like fish in water, it seems so apparent to Millennials. By 2001, it was already fait accompli: you didn't experience the moment when the manipulation was finally dawning on the masses. But, in 1999, a Starbucks latte was not yet a Starbucks latte (apologies to Magritte).
Archaeological evidence shows that women, in fact, likely foraged and farmed most of the subsistence for early settlements. Also, recent evidence shows that producing pottery in which to store plants and grains was mainly women’s work. That’s a lot of power.
The growing emphasis on hypersexualized male body ideals and the pursuit of "ideal male beauty" has been supported by multiple studies and societal observations. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and TH-cam promote an increasing number of fitness influencers and images of muscular, aesthetic male bodies, contributing to body image insecurities among young men. This trend reflects a shift from historical norms where male success was measured by financial stability and societal roles rather than physical attractiveness. A 2024 report highlights that adolescent boys are often bombarded with content promoting unattainable body standards, such as CGI-enhanced superhero physiques and aggressive workout regimens. About 30% of boys report that social media negatively impacts their body image. Despite a broader focus on female body image issues, male body dissatisfaction is often overlooked, leaving many young men feeling uncertain or pressured to meet these unrealistic standards. Additionally, societal changes in gender roles have led to a reinterpretation of masculinity. While traditional male roles emphasized functionality (work, provision, family), the modern media landscape increasingly ties masculinity to appearance. This transition often isolates young men, who may lack role models promoting diverse definitions of masculinity. These gaps can lead some to gravitate toward extreme ideologies or hypermasculine portrayals for identity and community. This trend also aligns with the broader cultural phenomenon of "hypermasculinity," where physical strength and aesthetics are seen as compensatory traits in a world where traditional male power structures are increasingly questioned or reshaped. Addressing this requires open conversations about body image for boys and redefining masculine ideals to include emotional well-being and diversity.
As a GenX person, I say "whatever, man." Seriously, though, this is a great discussion - also not all of us lick Trump's boots daily (just a depressingly high number of us do).
I had this same thought. We are listening here to a thoughtful interpretation from Millennials who didn't directly experience the cultural conversations of the 1990s. Fincher's movie didn't invent or expose anything. He was echoing conversations about disaffected 20-30something Gen Xers-the first "latchkey" kids. This was discussed at the time as being a result of divorce and rising single parenthood, the massive loss of farming, manufacturing, and extraction jobs, and the rise of tech and media culture.
I really recommend you guys watch The Killer. I feel like it's a very meta commentary by Fincher on every single guy who took Fight Club waaay too seriously.
The film didn't get the 'find the servers' thing wrong (40:00). The destruction of the buildings was yet another example of Tyler Durden's ultimate ineffectiveness.
Gen-X guy here, loved the movie. Watched a bunch of times in the first 10 years after it came out, also read the book (some stuff in there not in the movie, but overall the movie does the story better - Palahniuk has said the same himself). Moment I related to the most was flying for work and just hoping something would happen to break the monotony. I'd think about that all the time, and when that happened in the move, was like Ah! I'm not alone!
Many men will also use interpersonal violence as a mode of self harm. Normally Jack beating himself up in a parking lot would be a cry for help, but the people walking up to him instead of offering help further enabled his self harm.
I have to comment again…my boyfriend, an adult homeowner has one curtain in his house…he has curtain. He’s very sweet and I love him, not a great decorator.
The first time I saw FC it was aight. But when I watched it again, I realized that the best way to watch it was as a comedy and let me tell you, Fight Club is AMAZING as a comedy movie. "You are now firing your gun at your imaginary friend NEAR 400 GALLONS OF NITROGLYCERIN"
6:30. Honestly, Office Space is similar in this regard. It is about “lost” men(at least two), doesn’t blame women for men’s problems but does point the finger at a part of capitalist culture.
"What I see in "masculinity" right now is a "vacuum of power/identity"; traditional structures of power, like gender social constructs, have been dismantled for the sake of globalization (a good thing), yet society worldwide is still held by a large percentage of conservative boomers, who are digging their claws in until their last breath. This creates a dynamic where large masses of unemployed Millennials and Gen Z are pushed toward alternative occupations and discard education and meritocracy, as they perceive nepotism and elitist networking to be the real dealmakers. In this context, gender has shifted from being a means to assume specific roles (which no longer exist) to a way of expressing inner perceptions; at the same time, Millennials and Gen Z have the highest percentage of father absence in history. This subconscious need for identity and belonging drives many to reclaim conservative ideas in their search for purpose; as a result, a significant portion of young people is leaning toward extremist ideologies, such as racism and xenophobia, drawn by voices that promise them an identity and a sense of belonging: "Vote for me, and I will give you purpose."
I grew up in the 90s. I was deeply influenced by cultural touchstones like Fight Club, the artist Tool, and all the grungy anti-establishment counter culture. I grew up angry. And i really took to Fight Club from a young age. And yet, i never thought of it as a movie about masculinity, i never wanted to model myself after the "man's man" Tyler Durden, and i never saw it as a serious story. Granted, it took me many years of maturing and further education before i fully wrapped my head around the movie. But even without the deeper appreciation that i have of it now, i still recognized in a light different than many of my friends and other guys at my college. I like that its an argument against capitalism even though i feel entirely alone in hating capitalism. I was 100% on board with Kamala Harris but wow was it disappointing to hear her go on and on about how much of a capitalist she is. But maybe im an outlier. I grew up without my older brother and without my father. I was raised by two older sisters, my mom, and my grandma. All through high school my friends were almost exclusively girls, and i had even less male friends in college. Ive always been on the side of women so perhaps my perspective is irrelevant because too few other men have had an upbringing like mine.
I never did understand why Americans were so mad about the cheap crap IKEA sells until this episode right here - because it never occurred to me that it had been sold as a white-collar vaguely snooty thing in the US. In Sweden and most of the rest of the world it's sold as cheap crap that targets students on a budget, poor people, that kind of thing. This explains a LOT. Seriously, the main reason IKEA even still exists in Sweden is because of the cheap decent food. Not great. Just decent.
@roymc1866 tbf it's about a lot of things. Toxic masculinity doesn't and hasn't existed in a vacuum. Heck it's basically become it's own multimillion dollar scam/crime ring in modern times
@@roymc1866 The reason why they don't grasp it is because Fincher absolutely nails its seductive nature, and makes it look completely stylish and cool, because that is just how he makes movies. Kind of how the Flight of the Valkyries scene from Apocalypse Now is an obvious comment on the madness and chaos of war, yet looks so impressively awesome that US troops used to watch it to get pumped up for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
@karsten11553 Unfortunately satire can have that effect to the media illiterate. Reminds me of how audiences didnt understand Starship Troopers was an Fascism-Parody film when it came out in the 90s.
Fight Club was an amazing experience the first time I watched it as a teenager. But the more I watched it (and the older I got), the less I connected to it.
I'm in my seventies, don't really know what Gen Z is, hated the movie, only watched it because I think Edward Norton is God. But I could listen to you guys talk about it all night.
Generation Time Frame Age Now The Silent Generation 1928-1945 79-96 years old Baby Boomers 1946-1964 60-78 years old Gen X 1965-1980 44-59 years old Millennials 1981-1996 28-43 years old Gen Z 1997-2012 12-27 years old Gen Alpha Early 2010s-2025
It was very interesting to hear your takes on aspects of the movie. I think I agree with more of the things you said than not. I also appreciate that you're wearing your cultural surroundings on your sleeve, whether you meant to be or not. I grew up and work in a very conservative (for Canada, which I suppose is actually pretty centrist in the US spectrum of things) environment and I think you might be quite surprised if you spoke to some men from the center of the continent about the why of things.
Always find it amazing when people vilify or victimize GenX… We’ve never asked for any of it… And, yet… Here it is again… 37:00ish… Makes me feel defeated & frustrated… Not a great way to influence voters… And, I’m a GenX lady who started voting Dem in the late 80s & also changed her party… But, I should just shut the fuck up I guess. 😞 🤷🏻♀️
I don’t think it’s all the loss of entitlement. Some of that disconnect comes from there just not being as much out there showing cis / hetero boys how to be good feminist men. So unless they grow up around good examples, they are stuck between having to figure out for themselves from the negative examples of what not to be, and the manosphere BS telling them it’s all someone else’s fault. The latter will always have an appeal to some, but the former being so hard even when approached with the best of intentions, pushes even more too it than would cling to that way of thinking if presented an alternative that showed them how to be a feminist while also engaging in the kind of dumb guy stuff that people go to bro-podcasts for.
Amen…pixies ending with the buildings falling…amazing! Fight club is the only movie I have liked more than the book. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton alter egos, planet Starbucks, project mayhem…everything about Helena bonham Carter! Yay!
erin, ive seen chuck p speak at harvard for what was supposed to be a q and a night and was so sad when he acted like a big egotistical mysogynistic buffoon. really defeminised my take on fight club. something to consider. i had to walk out halfway through due to being grossed out.
I would like to see a gender-bent version of Fight club with a meek cis female Narrator, in terms of exploring the implications of a woman birthing to a traditionally confident masculine version of themselves. Or a cis male creating a female Tyler. I feel like there's so much potential in exploring gender roles and personal issues with these kinds of non-traditional pairings.
American beauty is the same. It's just a groomer movie of course, white guys are the real victim. People that watch these that aren't from the era are not going to be very kind to these films
Never have I heard a woman with a deeper voice than mine. Edit: You don't need to watch this to know their opinions of the film. They're the same opinions you hear on their other shows. Or, Google 'bog standard, left-wing, progressive opinions'. It'll be much quicker than slogging you way through this podcast.
Democrat. (n.) One who imposes their personal "tastes" on other people as mandatory. "Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every Americans god given right." Mayor Lenny- Ghostbusters 2.
I was surprised how they completely missed how class played out in the movie. Like the fact that Norton was a white collar worker but recruited all working class men as his soldiers. He was far more educated and eloquent than the men he was able to convert.
@@heathermoreland6015 The majority of the Bulwark and Crooked are too tied up in what some focus told them they think.
I can't stand how often Fight Club was misinterpreted as supportive of hyper masculinity when it was a SATIRE of such a topic.
A satire that proved to be as accurate as it was prophetic, insecure men losing their minds because of capitalism/consumerism, freaking out and directing it towards a crazy cult.
The “original intention” of a work is not THE necessary binding interpretation. Especially nowadays. I promise those who disagree with your reading of Fight Club aren’t just infinitely stupider than you or something. Maybe they just understand concepts like death of the author.
@@rdeal8912 Considering it's fiction and art, I'm okay with the variable that even I could be wrong about interpreting Fight Club. It's always been my 2nd most favorite movie, but mostly because of David Fincher, the cast, and the production style of the film, rather than anything to do with the message of the story. But the simplest narrative always seemed to be an unreliable narrator who wants more out of life but isn't capable of dealing with it in a healthy way and confuses his narcissistic nihilism with something salient and heroic. Jack, the protagonist, should not be lionized for his actions because of his unreliable and sociopathic nature, and sinister attitude towards a healthy life (both mentally and physically). Like early incel-nature and immature far-right pseudo-intellectualism, he tries mocking post-modern consumerism but can't do it effectively because he just comes across bitter and jealous of a healthier happier life.
@@cedarandsound I have no doubt that Fincher most likely agrees with your more materialistic, Freudian analysis. He is a Hollywood elite after all. But for the millions of men who resonate with the comments about a “spiritual” war there’s something more going on here. For us, it’s a critique of the state of the male spirits and what we might do to reignite it.
@@rdeal8912 I think you're out of sync with the topic here. I'm talking storytelling and metaphor, and you're talking QAnon-level message decoding, re-interpreting near-sci-fi-level fiction for real-world mantras, and strange tactics of othering/disregarding people using undefined labels (hollywood elite). I don't know where you're getting confused but it's certainly doesn't seem to comport with reality. So...have fun re-writing a 25 year old script into manifesto or whatever it is you're doing.
Two things: there actually was a sequel to Fight Club, it's a graphic novel set ten years after the original story took place. And, I find it incredibly sad that in a discussion about Gen-X men there's actually no one on this panel that can properly speak for them or represent them and accurately present an opinion from that perspective.
Progressive lefty here. Grew up in the 80's and 90's. Fight club was in incredibly formative for me and understanding the direction capitalism was heading
Mixed black female lefty here and loved the movie. But I can see how the deeper message of anti-capitalism in the movie would be lost on those on the right who just see this as a bunch of white dudes causing mayhem.
@chococat746 I love the single serving analogy used in the beginning of the moving. Pretty much set the tone
A great video essayist TH-camr named FD Signifier just made a brilliant video on this topic, titled “I finally understand edgelords”. He talks about how no matter how obviously directors of various work that deals with toxic masculinity try to make their commentary (American Psycho, Joker, the Boys, etc), simply by continuing these tropes and making them look badass, they perpetuate its fashionability. There IS a crisis of media literacy, alongside & related to the crisis of masculinity, but because they are interrelated, “holding up a mirror” doesn’t really seem to work. And the more obvious those producing try to make the commentary, the media’s quality worsens. He points out that even when the toxic character is unlikeable and obviously a loser, idolization still occurs. Highly recommend!
just watched that yesterday! very good
You so missed the Gen X rant on the VW.
The rant is a response to being dominated by the Boomers, as a generation, forever.
You want to more look at the VW rant from the position of Gen X being ignored and forgotten. The VW Beetle relaunch was the Boomers imposing their nostalgia on Gen X, again.
Gen X has been dealing with Boomers reducing our chances and opportunities since we entered the job market, while how seeing well they did for themselves.
The later generations have it worse, but we watched the ladders being pulled up in our faces.
Gen X is the middle child.
One thing that stands out to me that I don’t see discussed often is how this is a movie about a cult of personality, and more specifically how that person who promises they can fix all your grievances becomes the thing the people who follow them started railing against in the first place.
The leader that Tyler becomes is exactly the person he is trying to convince people is a problem, a disconnected and abusive father. He becomes a father figure by bringing all of these “sons” into his home, but then he does not give a shit about them. He uses the men who follow him and discards them. He goes around the country setting up “families.” He becomes a leader who cannot be questioned without consequences.
Tyler frees those who follow him but then effectively traps them again using the techniques that he railed against to get them to join up. And those people are so into it that they can’t even see they put themselves back in a cage.
Watched it for the first time a few years ago. Tyler was a walking red pill (in the tate sense of the word) and ed norton completed his character development by shooting tyler out of his head. To me it was explicitly feminist and anti-capitalist
I think Maggie Mae Fish's treatment of Fight Club adds an interesting reading where Ed Norton's character is created for the audience's benefit to bring us along on Tyler's violent campaign rather than the other way around.
Woah fight club is a take down of capitalism it’s more anarchist classic coke then really anything you can blame on modern trends. This is a 90s movie about 90s anxiety
anarchy is the state we are arriving at when enough ppl want to trash the system with no clue what comes next. The reason why is secondary.
That said, the films critique revolves mostly around materialism, authority and self determination.
You can clearly see the throughline, oppression is the glue
Your description of Gen Xers described my fellow elder millennial spouse so well that it prompted me to delve into how generations differ between countries. Turns out that the country he is from has a “burnt generation” for those born between 1966-88, with similarities to Gen X, plus repression of PTSD from growing up in war.
@@leilap2495 that's really interesting. Now I'm off to Google "burnt generation"
I wonder if some on the right will be bummed to learn Chuck Palahniuk is gay . . .
"We are a generation 0f men raised by women"
The most important line in the movie..
This is such an interesting line. On its face it sounds like a line blaming women for having done the raising. But that omits acknowledging the vacuum in which women raise children alone - a vacuum left when men abandon fatherhood.
That is such a powerful analogy for real life, where women are disparaged for being single mothers, but they are the ones who took responsibility for the children. The real source of pain in these young men is the absence of their fathers. But their anger is directed at their mothers.
@thesilvernymph When I saw it the first time, I understood it to be a shot at absentee Dad's, the ones who live under the same and different roofs.
I think this movie is full of kudos to moms. Secretly has several feminist messages just floating under the service
@@thesilvernymphwomen have no agency in a feminist worldview I swear 😭
kinda like wendy raising the lost boys
As a trans woman, this movie reads as an accidental trans allegory about killing your mask or freeing yourself from the mask you create in order to survive. The mask serves a purpose for a time when you’re giving up hope but then can take over permanently if you’re not careful. Whenever I watch it, I view it through the lens that Jack is actually Marla. She’s assigned male at birth (Jack) and is forced to live a life that is a lie like in The Matrix and is slowly suffocating and dying like in I Saw the TV Glow. She creates the mask (Tyler) to survive so she doesn’t suffocate and Tyler starts ripping apart all of the constructs that keep Marla trapped inside Jack. Tyler only doing it though to give Jack purpose so he doesn’t die or worse yet, wake up and become his true self. Sometimes we have to die in order to become ourselves though and so Tyler is an inevitable symptom of being forced to live as someone you’re not. Tyler was always going to self destruct at some point taking Marla with him or not. In the end when you see Jack standing next to Marla, you’re really just seeing Marla standing alone and finally in her entirety. She’s fully realized and Jack is actually the shadow at that point. What comes next after the credit roll for me, is a story about Marla now letting go of Jack while being careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because at that point in her journey , Jack is still a big part of her. So the viewer sees them both because we’re on that journey with them. And in that world, people no longer see Tyler or Jack.
The Fight Club as a feminist POV really hits for me- ive been thinking about this movie alot in the wake of the discussion of how 'the left needs a new joe rogan'. No, the left needs to make anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism sexy again.
Either learn to stop sh1tting on young men at every turn, or prepare to lose more social ground/elections. Now amount of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, etc. will cause men to move left. Cut it out with this champagne socialist crap
Well the biggest consumerism in usa is from women , beauty product and fashion industryis billiondollars company.
Well the biggest consumerism in usa is from women , beauty product and fashion industryis billiondollars company.
@azriel29-yl5xf I don't know. You can buy a ton of shoes for the price of 1 Richard Millie watch. Or a 3 inch platinum chain
@@azriel29-yl5xf another load of BS.
This movie is so prophetic, it helped fulfill its own prophecy.
Insecure men, losing their minds because of capitalism and freaking out. At least the protagonist directs his frustrations at the banks, the real ones votes for the bank representatives.
It is feminist; Marla was Jack, too. There are many clues that Marla and Tyler and Jack are the same person.
The interesting thing about this movie is that as a man, you kinda view it differently at different times in your life. when I was 16 watching this movie I wanted to join it, in my 30s I kinda saw how full of shit Tyler Durden really is. At 40 Im thinking whats so bad about that great apartment and well paying job Ed Norton has. He should just see more of Marla and he'll be fine.
It might be useful to point out that Gen X -men especially- went through a moment of cultural realignment,in the mid-80s, that was certainly a precursor to where we 're at now. It was a partial rejection of the patriarchy and a cleansing of language and behaviours around racism and misogyny. The difference was that Gen X men largely went along with it, even drove it; but it still shattered an old model of masculinity without really consolidating a new one. The patriarchy survived, for sure, thanks to some clever marketing that basically sold the same sexuality back to women but now redefined as "empowerment". But it was still a changed landscape from what had come before.
@@anthonyneilson4404 man you can drop some buzzwords.
Good conversation but might have been good to have a gen xer in the discussion in order to understand the film in the context of its time.
Aren’t they all borderline gen x’ers? If not, they’re barely millennials
Emily is born 82
A dvd-watched-on-ps2 classic.
To me this film was always about alienation. Alienation driven by capitalism through a patriarchal society which (preferences but) doesn’t benefit men.
Strangely it’s about the answerless lost soul Dads of today’s lost soul Andrew Tate viewer. It’s the same alienation that still exists it just plays out differently today
Surprised it took so long for Mr Robot to be brought up. It essentially is the follow-up to the idea of Fight Club.
A very well thought out one at that.
Always read Fight Club as a cummulation of Punk/Grunge culture
At 56:20: "Rants about Starbucks... who cares?!" Also, "Gens Xers caring about symbols. It's not what matters!" Hm, here's what you younger intellectuals are missing: the "Right-Wing MAGA vs Left-Wing Elites" political divide didn't emerge suddenly out of nowhere. Marketing/propaganda as a field was evolving for decades, but really locked in when Gen X came of age in the 1990s. Cultural markers as a means of expressing identity were always there, but the ability of commercial brands to explicitly manipulate individual identity and sense of community ratcheted up at this point. IKEA, Pottery Barn, Starbucks, etc...the average Gen Xer could see that we were being manipulated and we ranted about interactions with it (even as we actively consumed) because we intuited something was happening that we couldn't grasp yet. Of course it doesn't matter if you drink Starbucks or Dunkin! But, your preference sure was superficially (falsely?) interpreted by people around you as a class- and values identifier. By the 2000 election, these cultural markers were being expertly employed by political parties. You mock Gen X for ranting in 1999 about this, but it came to pass. How many self-identified Republicans heard phrases like "Latte Liberal" and immediately, irrevocably voted for Trump against their own best interests? As consumers, we slowly woke up in the 1990s to see that brand was no longer about product, but the consumer (God, terrabytes have been written on this topic!) I suspect you are underplaying this aspect of the movie because, like fish in water, it seems so apparent to Millennials. By 2001, it was already fait accompli: you didn't experience the moment when the manipulation was finally dawning on the masses. But, in 1999, a Starbucks latte was not yet a Starbucks latte (apologies to Magritte).
Archaeological evidence shows that women, in fact, likely foraged and farmed most of the subsistence for early settlements. Also, recent evidence shows that producing pottery in which to store plants and grains was mainly women’s work. That’s a lot of power.
This panel is the one I’d turned too to explain masculine decline
They do make some fine points, yes.
The growing emphasis on hypersexualized male body ideals and the pursuit of "ideal male beauty" has been supported by multiple studies and societal observations. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and TH-cam promote an increasing number of fitness influencers and images of muscular, aesthetic male bodies, contributing to body image insecurities among young men. This trend reflects a shift from historical norms where male success was measured by financial stability and societal roles rather than physical attractiveness.
A 2024 report highlights that adolescent boys are often bombarded with content promoting unattainable body standards, such as CGI-enhanced superhero physiques and aggressive workout regimens. About 30% of boys report that social media negatively impacts their body image. Despite a broader focus on female body image issues, male body dissatisfaction is often overlooked, leaving many young men feeling uncertain or pressured to meet these unrealistic standards.
Additionally, societal changes in gender roles have led to a reinterpretation of masculinity. While traditional male roles emphasized functionality (work, provision, family), the modern media landscape increasingly ties masculinity to appearance. This transition often isolates young men, who may lack role models promoting diverse definitions of masculinity. These gaps can lead some to gravitate toward extreme ideologies or hypermasculine portrayals for identity and community.
This trend also aligns with the broader cultural phenomenon of "hypermasculinity," where physical strength and aesthetics are seen as compensatory traits in a world where traditional male power structures are increasingly questioned or reshaped. Addressing this requires open conversations about body image for boys and redefining masculine ideals to include emotional well-being and diversity.
As a GenX person, I say "whatever, man." Seriously, though, this is a great discussion - also not all of us lick Trump's boots daily (just a depressingly high number of us do).
Gen X checking in. They needed a GEN x voice in the room. When words like patriarchy are used a lot of people check out.
See this is why nobody likes you. (Not *you* specifically, but GenX)
I had this same thought. We are listening here to a thoughtful interpretation from Millennials who didn't directly experience the cultural conversations of the 1990s. Fincher's movie didn't invent or expose anything. He was echoing conversations about disaffected 20-30something Gen Xers-the first "latchkey" kids. This was discussed at the time as being a result of divorce and rising single parenthood, the massive loss of farming, manufacturing, and extraction jobs, and the rise of tech and media culture.
@Dee-x9f a way better explanation thanks..
I really recommend you guys watch The Killer. I feel like it's a very meta commentary by Fincher on every single guy who took Fight Club waaay too seriously.
The film didn't get the 'find the servers' thing wrong (40:00). The destruction of the buildings was yet another example of Tyler Durden's ultimate ineffectiveness.
Gen-X guy here, loved the movie. Watched a bunch of times in the first 10 years after it came out, also read the book (some stuff in there not in the movie, but overall the movie does the story better - Palahniuk has said the same himself). Moment I related to the most was flying for work and just hoping something would happen to break the monotony. I'd think about that all the time, and when that happened in the move, was like Ah! I'm not alone!
Many men will also use interpersonal violence as a mode of self harm. Normally Jack beating himself up in a parking lot would be a cry for help, but the people walking up to him instead of offering help further enabled his self harm.
I have to comment again…my boyfriend, an adult homeowner has one curtain in his house…he has curtain. He’s very sweet and I love him, not a great decorator.
The first time I saw FC it was aight. But when I watched it again, I realized that the best way to watch it was as a comedy and let me tell you, Fight Club is AMAZING as a comedy movie.
"You are now firing your gun at your imaginary friend NEAR 400 GALLONS OF NITROGLYCERIN"
"The best sex I've ever had was in houses with no curtains." Truer words were never said, Erin.
6:30. Honestly, Office Space is similar in this regard. It is about “lost” men(at least two), doesn’t blame women for men’s problems but does point the finger at a part of capitalist culture.
Boondock Saints came out this same year and had a similar impact on men I think.
"What I see in "masculinity" right now is a "vacuum of power/identity"; traditional structures of power, like gender social constructs, have been dismantled for the sake of globalization (a good thing), yet society worldwide is still held by a large percentage of conservative boomers, who are digging their claws in until their last breath. This creates a dynamic where large masses of unemployed Millennials and Gen Z are pushed toward alternative occupations and discard education and meritocracy, as they perceive nepotism and elitist networking to be the real dealmakers.
In this context, gender has shifted from being a means to assume specific roles (which no longer exist) to a way of expressing inner perceptions; at the same time, Millennials and Gen Z have the highest percentage of father absence in history. This subconscious need for identity and belonging drives many to reclaim conservative ideas in their search for purpose; as a result, a significant portion of young people is leaning toward extremist ideologies, such as racism and xenophobia, drawn by voices that promise them an identity and a sense of belonging: "Vote for me, and I will give you purpose."
So the deal Fincher made about that line was that if he changed it, he wouldn't change it back. They wanted him to change it back 😂
This series rules and the best episodes are the ones with a diversity of voices, not just the bros. Would have loved a woman or non-cis man on "Her".
I think you should observe how Mr Robot was massively inspired by fight club and how it took the DID turn and the capitalist description
I grew up in the 90s. I was deeply influenced by cultural touchstones like Fight Club, the artist Tool, and all the grungy anti-establishment counter culture. I grew up angry. And i really took to Fight Club from a young age. And yet, i never thought of it as a movie about masculinity, i never wanted to model myself after the "man's man" Tyler Durden, and i never saw it as a serious story. Granted, it took me many years of maturing and further education before i fully wrapped my head around the movie. But even without the deeper appreciation that i have of it now, i still recognized in a light different than many of my friends and other guys at my college. I like that its an argument against capitalism even though i feel entirely alone in hating capitalism. I was 100% on board with Kamala Harris but wow was it disappointing to hear her go on and on about how much of a capitalist she is. But maybe im an outlier. I grew up without my older brother and without my father. I was raised by two older sisters, my mom, and my grandma. All through high school my friends were almost exclusively girls, and i had even less male friends in college. Ive always been on the side of women so perhaps my perspective is irrelevant because too few other men have had an upbringing like mine.
People weren't disaffected in the late 90's they were bored. Most of the madness since then has come about from that.
I never did understand why Americans were so mad about the cheap crap IKEA sells until this episode right here - because it never occurred to me that it had been sold as a white-collar vaguely snooty thing in the US. In Sweden and most of the rest of the world it's sold as cheap crap that targets students on a budget, poor people, that kind of thing. This explains a LOT. Seriously, the main reason IKEA even still exists in Sweden is because of the cheap decent food. Not great. Just decent.
I've been waiting for someone to finally bring up goatse. I'm glad I wasn't wrong that it would eventually happen.
I LOVE this series and LOVED this episode! Was waiting for you all to discuss Fight Club! ❤
Pitt seems to be the macho ‘ideal’. Norton kills the macho ‘ideal’ in the end and holds hands with his feminie side, Marla.
Folding ideas made the most important fight club video ever. So long ago it had to be imported from blip
And Dan has the perfect take, which max & crew dont fully grasp:
This is a movie about Toxic Masculinity, and how it is self-destructive for men.
@roymc1866 tbf it's about a lot of things. Toxic masculinity doesn't and hasn't existed in a vacuum. Heck it's basically become it's own multimillion dollar scam/crime ring in modern times
@@roymc1866 The reason why they don't grasp it is because Fincher absolutely nails its seductive nature, and makes it look completely stylish and cool, because that is just how he makes movies. Kind of how the Flight of the Valkyries scene from Apocalypse Now is an obvious comment on the madness and chaos of war, yet looks so impressively awesome that US troops used to watch it to get pumped up for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
@karsten11553 Unfortunately satire can have that effect to the media illiterate. Reminds me of how audiences didnt understand Starship Troopers was an Fascism-Parody film when it came out in the 90s.
Fight Club was an amazing experience the first time I watched it as a teenager. But the more I watched it (and the older I got), the less I connected to it.
I'm in my seventies, don't really know what Gen Z is, hated the movie, only watched it because I think Edward Norton is God. But I could listen to you guys talk about it all night.
Generation
Time Frame
Age Now
The Silent Generation
1928-1945
79-96 years old
Baby Boomers
1946-1964
60-78 years old
Gen X
1965-1980
44-59 years old
Millennials
1981-1996
28-43 years old
Gen Z
1997-2012
12-27 years old
Gen Alpha
Early 2010s-2025
the "fight club" remake you're after is called Glass Onion.
It was very interesting to hear your takes on aspects of the movie. I think I agree with more of the things you said than not. I also appreciate that you're wearing your cultural surroundings on your sleeve, whether you meant to be or not. I grew up and work in a very conservative (for Canada, which I suppose is actually pretty centrist in the US spectrum of things) environment and I think you might be quite surprised if you spoke to some men from the center of the continent about the why of things.
Another movie that blames capitalism rather than women on men's issues is Glenbarry Glen Ross
Always find it amazing when people vilify or victimize GenX… We’ve never asked for any of it… And, yet… Here it is again… 37:00ish… Makes me feel defeated & frustrated… Not a great way to influence voters… And, I’m a GenX lady who started voting Dem in the late 80s & also changed her party… But, I should just shut the fuck up I guess. 😞 🤷🏻♀️
The dream of "dicks" or fights with violence could be interpreted like far right claims.
I have to say this, in 30 years , this last 10 days is the most seen I’ve ever felt. - signed A Gen Xer
😂
I don't think we're supposed to be taking about this...
This is the first time I've heard people use 'the social web' like it's a thing. Did I miss that being born? 😂
I don’t think it’s all the loss of entitlement. Some of that disconnect comes from there just not being as much out there showing cis / hetero boys how to be good feminist men.
So unless they grow up around good examples, they are stuck between having to figure out for themselves from the negative examples of what not to be, and the manosphere BS telling them it’s all someone else’s fault.
The latter will always have an appeal to some, but the former being so hard even when approached with the best of intentions, pushes even more too it than would cling to that way of thinking if presented an alternative that showed them how to be a feminist while also engaging in the kind of dumb guy stuff that people go to bro-podcasts for.
Where's the link to the lost book?
Lost? It was a bestseller.
@thesilvernymph I believe that, I'm just used to seeing books mentioned by visiting authors being linked in the description of podcast/TH-cam shows.
Poe's law is a hell of a drug.
This lineup for Offline is everything. Keep this going!
Did they mention that it was based on a book even once?
Thank you for shitting on Forrest Gump. I never felt more foreign than when American kids told me about that movie lol
Amen…pixies ending with the buildings falling…amazing! Fight club is the only movie I have liked more than the book. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton alter egos, planet Starbucks, project mayhem…everything about Helena bonham Carter! Yay!
It doesn’t have the Pixies needle drop but I did like the ending of the book better
Also need a gen z kid in there to balance the millennial overload
50:20 how do you not understand? Then Brad Pitt was for sure for both men and women. Other things are for either or
38:45 symbols have power dumdum
Funny enough, there is a comic that serves as the sequel... it made some choices.
I mean Gen X. See, I don't know what it is.
This was a pleasure to look in on, thanks.
Xennial here...... watch it🧐
Not one word about its Impact on UFC? CMON YA'LL
erin, ive seen chuck p speak at harvard for what was supposed to be a q and a night and was so sad when he acted like a big egotistical mysogynistic buffoon. really defeminised my take on fight club. something to consider. i had to walk out halfway through due to being grossed out.
I don't believe autogynephilia has been discredited.
sounds like my childhood!!!
I would like to see a gender-bent version of Fight club with a meek cis female Narrator, in terms of exploring the implications of a woman birthing to a traditionally confident masculine version of themselves. Or a cis male creating a female Tyler. I feel like there's so much potential in exploring gender roles and personal issues with these kinds of non-traditional pairings.
That’s literally every major block buster since gamer gate
Meh. It came out I was already 30. It came off like a gay sadomasocism kungfu movie.
American beauty is the same. It's just a groomer movie of course, white guys are the real victim.
People that watch these that aren't from the era are not going to be very kind to these films
Fight Club was a bad movie
These interpretation of fight club is very wrong and gay
Your analysis is worth ten of these “podcasts” put together. Stay based 🫡
The Left: "We have an image problem with young men."
Also the Left: *this panel talking about Fight Club*
Is the women in pink trans ?
Who cares?
After trying to listen to this conversation I almost get why some intelligent people vote for Trump. Insufferable.
Could help but think about Deuce Bigalow Male Jigalow, "that's a huge bitch"
WTF is that in the red dress?! 🤨
is that a man?
Never have I heard a woman with a deeper voice than mine.
Edit: You don't need to watch this to know their opinions of the film. They're the same opinions you hear on their other shows. Or, Google 'bog standard, left-wing, progressive opinions'. It'll be much quicker than slogging you way through this podcast.
Nobody made you watch.
Democrat. (n.) One who imposes their personal "tastes" on other people as mandatory. "Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every Americans god given right." Mayor Lenny- Ghostbusters 2.
@@jackasslawyer yet here you are with MAGA nonsense talking points