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Fight Club and the Effects of Anger
by Timothy Cairo
Anger is an emotion that is
particularly difficult to locate upon the moral spectrum. Unlike
greed or happiness, the actions that result from anger are of
such a broad variation that it is equally plausible to characterize
the emotion as positive as it is to determine it negative. In
zeroing in on anger as a catalyst to progressive social change,
Bell Hooks defines the emotion as a positive force, and as a
necessary requirement for leveling societal inequalities. On
the other hand, April A. Gerlock's study of war veterans and
their responses to anger presents the emotion as an inherently
negative force which tends to give rise to de-humanization and
violence. Upon the surface it appears that these divergent views
of anger are irreconcilable, however, if we look outside the
realm of academic discourse to mainstream culture it is possible
to find portrayals of anger that are able to negotiate these,
seemingly, conflicting views of the emotion, suggesting that
these views are indeed compatible. David Fincher's 1999 film
Fight Club provides a representation of anger, over the
course of its narrative that depicts the emotion, both, as a
positive force of social change as well as a stimulus for violence
and de-humanization. By employing Aristotle's definition of anger,
and analyzing the emotion within the context of different stages
of the film's narrative, it will become clear how both Hooks
and Gerlock's opinions can co-exist within a rounded portrayal
of the emotion of anger.
 Aristotle defines anger as, "an
impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a
conspicuous slight directed without justification towards what
concerns oneself or towards what concerns one's friends,"(1). In Fight Club, Ed Norton's character
Cornelius is presented as an angry and disenfranchised office
employee on the verge of a breakdown. Aristotle maintains that
to feel anger one must have been slighted by a specific individual
(2), however, Cornelius like Bell Hooks
in her article "Killing Rage" feels slighted
by society at large, creating an anger that, like Hooks', is
complex in its manifestation and in its direction. Cornelius'
anger is multi-faceted, he feels that society has slighted him
through mass-marketed promises of fame, fortune, and excitement
while, instead, delivering a reality of conformity, personal
commoditification, and occupational slavery. Cornelius' alter-ego
Tyler succinctly defines the source of Cornelius and his cronies'
anger in a monologue later in the film:
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, having us
working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We have
no great war; no great depression… our great depression
is our lives. We're all raised on television to believe we're
gonna be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we
won't, and we're starting to learn that fact, and we're very,
very pissed off."
Cornelius desires to accomplish
something monumental, but even beyond that he longs to take control
of his destiny and to stop fearing death. However, as much as
he is enraged by modern society, and desires change it is the
comforts of this society that inhibit him from taking action.
Bell Hooks suggests that upper class African Americans often
suppress their rage "because their lives are comfortable,"(3) a theme that is reflected in Fight
Club by Cornelius' Ikea furniture and his designer wardrobe
which act as a diversion from his anger and disdain towards modern
commercial culture. By inhibiting his rage, Cornelius eliminates
any possibility of change and takes on a hopeless existence,
illustrated by his acceptance of the role of someone who is terminally
ill; each night attending a different meeting devoted to helping
people cope with their impending death.
Throughout its first act Fight Club makes continual suggestions
that Cornelius' frustration and anger is intrinsically linked
to some sort of crisis of masculinity. It is not by chance that
the first group meeting Cornelius attends is for men who have
had their testicles removed due to cancer. Nor is it coincidence
that Tyler, when consoling Cornelius on the destruction of his
condo says, "It could be worse, a woman could cut off your
penis while you're sleeping and throw it out the window of a
moving car". And most importantly, it is not by co-incidence
that it is the appearance of a woman at Cornelius' group meetings
that causes him to abandon his hopelessness and re-embrace his
anger. In the context of the film Marla Singer's character is
symbolic of the freedom and assertiveness that Cornelius associates
with the male gender and longs for as a result. Where Cornelius
has become dependent on the group meetings in order to function
from day to day, Marla attends merely on a whim, explaining to
him that, "It's cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee".
Marla further asserts her power over the relationship between
her and Cornelius by refusing to cease her attendance of the
meetings despite Cornelius' heartfelt appeals and his confession
that he is unable to swallow his anger so long as she continues
to be present. It is this disregard for Cornelius' needs that
leads him to re-embrace his anger, a natural result according
to Aristotle who writes,
"Thus a sick man is angered by disregard for his illness,
a poor man by disregard for his poverty, a man waging war by
disregard for the war he is raging, a lover by disregard for
his love, and so throughout, any other sort of slight being enough
if special slights are wanting."(4)
However, it is not only due
to Marla's disregard that Cornelius re-discovers his anger, but
also through his envy of Marla as well. Marla gracefully controls
her own destiny without a fear of death, or a dependency on material
things, a freedom Cornelius longs for and resents in her, not
only because she possess these qualities, but more accurately
because she is a woman who possess these qualities. Now feeling
even more ineffective as a man Cornelius creates his alter-ego,
Tyler Durden, in order to cope with his anger, but in doing so
manages to achieve something positive in the process, a result
that is very much in accord with the pro-anger writings of Bell
Hooks.
Granted, most people would not consider the creation of a club
where men congregate to pound the tar out of each other to be
a positive achievement. However, within the, somewhat twisted,
logic of the film the fight clubs created by Cornelius and his
alter-ego Tyler are held out to be both a positive and a monumental
creation. Within the context of the film, the fight clubs are
presented as filling some estranged need of the attendees rather
than functioning as the source of any kind of sadistic pleasure.
They are compared by Cornelius to a "Pentecostal Church",
which is a metaphor for the clubs' role as a sacred ritual of
masculinity, too long absent from civilized society. By putting
the fight clubs into this context the film presents them as a
positive institution; a cathartic need for disenfranchised males,
like Cornelius, to assert their masculinity in the least harmful
manner possible. To Cornelius' surprise, many others share his
sentiments and before he knows it fight club has become a national
phenomenon which satiates his desire to accomplish something
truly monumental, even if it fails to grant him the ability to
overcome his fear of death and grant him the control over his
destiny that he continues to long for.
Bell hooks writes that "Like all profound repression, my
rage unleashed made me afraid. It forced me to turn my back on
forgetfulness, called me out of my denial. It changed my relationship
with home- with the South- made it so I could not return there"(5). These changes that Hooks describes
arising in herself as a by-product of tapping her rage are directly
paralleled by Cornelius' situation in Fight Club. It is
Cornelius' rage, forged by modern society and spurred by Marla
that incites him to undertake the endeavor of creating fight
club. Cornelius too changes his "relationship with home"
so that he "could not return", symbolized in the film
by the destruction of his condo and the creation of Tyler who
becomes the personification of Cornelius' rage and the catalyst
to the creation of fight club. However, although Fight Club
agrees with Hooks regarding the fact that rage can be very
useful as an inciting factor behind social change the film is
cautious to take the argument too far. Where Hooks maintains
that anger is the combustion engine behind social change, Fight
Club limits anger's role to that of a spark plug, essential
to begin the movement, but once initiated, the film maintains,
that driving is best left to more stable and dependable forces.
This is illustrated in the film as Tyler's rage continues to
grow beyond fight club, leading to the initiation of Project
Mayhem.
Gerlock observes that, "Military training is reported (Eisenhart
1975) as equating rage and anger with masculine identity in the
performance of military duty"(6)
. This is certainly paralleled in the third act of Fight Club,
where Cornelius and Tyler, in accordance with Hooks' writings,
allow their rage to govern the evolution of fight club, and in
attempt to further assert their masculinity against the lingering
specter of Marla Singer, give birth to the militaristic endeavor
of Project Mayhem. Project Mayhem attempts to "take fight
club out of the basements" through militia-like guerrilla
tactics, but quickly spins out of control, succeeding only in
violence and de-humanization. Gerlock elaborates on this theme,
explaining that, "In a combat zone the dehumanization of
others can expand beyond just the enemy (Shatan 1978). Horowitz
and Solomon (1978 p. 278) assert that "… problems of
control over violent impulses are complicated whenever real violence
has occurred, whenever human beings are dehumanized or devalued,
and whenever reality and fantasy images are fused","(7). This passage by Gerlock clearly summarizes
the dangers of allowing anger to be the guiding force behind
one's actions as encouraged by Bell Hooks. These concerns are
reflected in Fight Club through the film's negative portrayal
of Project Mayhem. By fusing "reality and fantasy images"
in the form of Tyler Durden and the unrealistic goals of the
Project, Cornelius institutes a regime that instills in its members
the very things that fight club was designed to negate. The blind
faith formerly placed in commodity culture is transformed into
blind faith in Project Mayhem, to which the first rule is "you
do not ask questions". The former rejection of mass-marketing
and big business is contradicted by Project Mayhem's large scale
publicity stunts and nation-wide franchises. Even fight club's
hostility towards the conformity of office culture disappears
within the regime of Project Mayhem which demands uniform military
style haircuts and fatigues. All these factors, born out of anger,
evidence the failure of Project Mayhem on the basis of its own
hypocrisy as well as the dehumanizing effect of the Project's
demand for complete conformity to its militaristic regime.
Gerlock also cites violence as a by-product of anger fuelled
military cultures. This too is presented in Fight Club
as evidence of the ultimate failure of the rage-driven Project
Mayhem. Where the fight clubs employed violence as a ritual enacted
upon those who consent to fight, upon the advent of Project Mayhem
this violence is re-directed, towards society at large. The anger
of Project Mayhem ultimately leads to violence in many forms,
including the threatening of the city's police chief at knife
point, the destruction of ten office towers, the near murder
of Marla Singer, and the death of Bob Paulson. It is Bob's death
that forces Cornelius to re-assess the effectiveness of Project
Mayhem and realize that action driven solely out of rage, as
suggested by Gerlock, can only lead to de-humanization and violence.
This epiphany on Cornelius' part allows him to ultimately form
the conclusion that in order to put an end to Project Mayhem
he must purge his anger, which is personified by Tyler Durden.
To eliminate, both, his anger as well as Tyler, Cornelius reasons
that he must eliminate himself, and in attempt to do so puts
a pistol in his mouth and pulls the trigger. It is this act that
signifies Cornelius' acquisition of that which he has sought
over the entire course of the narrative; that is to no longer
fear death and to gain control of his own destiny. In attempting
to end his own life Cornelius gains propriety of both these things,
but it is only by first deciding to purge his anger that he is
able to achieve this eventual success. Thus, the film maintains
that although anger can be a motivating factor in achieving positive
results (i.e. the monumental success of fight club), if anger
is the only factor driving an action it can only lead to violence
and de-humanization. By purging his anger, Cornelius' gains those
things that have eluded him throughout the film and finally is
able to interact with Marla as an equal, illustrated in the last
shot of the film which portrays Cornelius and Marla for the first
time in an equitable position, holding hands in a caring manner,
centered symmetrically in the center of the frame.
Fight Club affirms Bell Hooks position that anger can
function as a positive force in achieving social change through
its portrayal of Cornelius, whose rage motivates him to create
fight club, a necessary and lacking institution within the logic
of the film. But the film, through its negative portrayal of
Project Mayhem, also affirms Gerlock's position which finds anger
to be a largely violent and de-humanizing force. Thus, the film
is able to synthesize these two seemingly contradictory opinions
upon the nature of anger into one somewhat rounded portrayal
of the emotion. By applying these seemingly contradictory academic
discourses to an artifact of mainstream culture, it can be determined
that these views are not in fact as divergent as they might appear,
and that they are indeed compatible within a holistic presentation
of the emotion of anger.
(1)
Aristotle trans. W. Robert Rhys, The Rhetoric Book II, online:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.2.ii.html at pg. 1
(2) Ibid.
(3) Bell Hooks, "Killing Rage" in Ending Racism (New
York: Henry Holt and Co. 1995) at pg. 13
(4) Aristotle, supra at pg. 2
(5) Hooks, supra at pg. 16
(6) April A. Gerlock, "Veterans Responses to Anger Management
Intervention", Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 15:393-408
(January 1994) pg.393, at pg. 394.
(7) Gerlock, supra at pg. 395
Posted October 26, 2004
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