Why I Hate Fight Club

This is my Opinions article about violence that just appeared in our school's newspaper:

I have a serious problem with Fight Club. Before you start writing a furious e-mail about how culturally unaware I am, I’ll acknowledge that it was well written. Not only that, but it has all of the right stylistic touches to make sure it’s regarded as hip, edgy and important for a very long time. The acting in the movie is brilliant, the plot twists are completely unexpected, and it even has some good social commentary.

My real beef with the film has nothing to do with the aesthetic values by which we judge movies. My problem with Fight Club is its premise. A bunch of men get together and start a club to release male aggression, and they channel their aggression not only into beating each other up but into social rebellion. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all about sticking it to the Man, but think about it. The issue they address in the movie is (generally) that American capitalism is problematic. They’re pointing their finger at economic injustice in the movie.

So here’s the deal. Injustice and violence are one and the same. Violence is usually understood as physical violence, but really, whether someone’s getting punched in the nose or being evicted from an apartment, they’re getting hurt, right? In addition to the victims getting hurt, the aggressors are being numbed to the dignity of human life. There’s a fundamental problem with eschewing violence on one level and embracing it on another. It may substitute one form of violence for another, but it’s still violence.

This is essentially what Tyler Durden advocates in Fight Club. He and his followers are infuriated that so many people’s lives are so miserable, they attribute it (at least in part) to American capitalism and the credit system, and then they start making dynamite.

Does the idea of violently rebelling against a violent system strike anyone else as stupid?

It doesn’t seem dumb enough to nearly enough people, by the looks of things. There’s a present-day parallel here. There’s a lot of violence going on in Iraq right now. Some of it is physical, plenty of it is economic, and plenty more is religious and social – and, coincidentally, American capitalism is at the root of a good deal of the violence there. And our best idea about how to fix it is to throw a little more violence into the equation.

At the end of Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character realizes his movement has spiraled completely out of control, and that violence-driven anarchy isn’t quite as romantic as his alter-ego would have him believe. Things in Iraq are getting tragically closer to violence-driven anarchy by the day. Is there any chance one of the higher-ups in the Bush administration will have an epiphany similar to the one Fight Club’s narrator (Norton) has any time soon?

The obvious alternative to violence is peace; if you can’t fight violence with violence, then perhaps you can unravel it with peace. The trouble is that it’s much, much harder to transform a situation from violent to peaceful than it is to simply inject more violence. Choosing to practice peace is difficult, and it doesn’t win elections. This means any issue with violence as the underlying problem isn’t going to get much constructive attention. What we’re left with is a violent economic system that’s motivating violence in Iraq – and neither of them is about to get a peaceful answer from politicians.

That’ll have to come from us.