Study Guide: Fight Club

This page presents background information and study questions for Fight Club, dir. David Fincher, Twentieth Century Fox, 1999. References to the film and its supplementary materials refer to the 2-disk DVD released in 2000 by Twentieth Century Fox. References to the novel refer to Chuck Palahnuik, Fight Club, New York: Henry Holt, 1999.

The chapter numbers and titles below are taken from the DVD. The time code in parenthesis indicates the beginning of the chapter. Further details about the film's cast and characters are available on the Internet Movie Database.

The comments and questions below are intended to focus on your reading on the themes that are most important for our course, including what I call "Tyler's philosophy." Author Chuck Palahniuk has suggested that this philosophy is also central to the story's larger meaning: "My hope was that the film would demonstrate the themes of the story to a larger audience. It would offer more people the idea that they could create their own lives outside the existing blueprint for happiness offered by society" (DVD pamphlet). One central question raised by the film as a whole: Should we accept Tyler's philosophy as our own?

1. Fear Center [Main Titles] (00:00:00)

The opening presents a (fanciful) tour that begins in the "fear center" of Jack's brain and then exits through one of his sweat glands. (NOTE: Although the character played by Edward Norton is generally called Jack, his name is never mentioned in either the film or the novel.)

2. Ground Zero (00:02:07)

This scene at the top of the "Parker-Morris building" actually ends the story; the scene is repeated at both the beginning and end of the film, functioning as a frame for the other events, which are related in flashback. However, these flashbacks are complicated by the fact that the characters often speak to the camera and otherwise disrupt the time sequence.

3. Insomnia (00:03:53)

The insistently emphasized Starbuck's coffee cup begins a recurring motif in the film; the characters live in cultural wasteland dominated by product branding and corporate control. Perhaps surprisingly, given the film's criticism of consumer society, major corporations including Starbucks and Pepsi Co. paid the filmmakers millions of dollars for product placements like this one. (See Campbell 264-65.)

4. Nesting Instinct (00:04:45)

This scene presents the film's most overt critique of Jack's shallow, commodity-filled existence. Visually, director David Fincher here plays with the conventions of catalog advertising and television commercials. The scene suggests that Jack is attempting to literally live in the "enchanted palace" John Berger discusses in Ways of Seeing (145). Jack equates catalog shopping with pornography, suggesting the pathetic quality of his attempts to buy a life.

5. Remaining Men Together (00:06:21)

The "Ikea nesting instinct" portrayed in the previous chapter is here equated with literal castration. This scene opens another persistent motif: the crisis of masculinity. Bob is the largest example of this crisis. He is a bodybuilder who took steroids in order to conform to a hyper-masculine ideal. Instead, the drugs resulted in the loss of his testicles and the growth of breasts. Like Bob and Jack, all of the men in the film are searching for something that can give their lives meaning. Fight club will become their answer, and it is prefigured here by the "subliminal Tyler" who appears for a split second behind the support group's leader.

6. Power Animal (00:10:20)

In one of the DVD's alternate audio tracks, Palahnuik mentions that a penguin actually came to him in a similar meditation as his power animal.

7. Marla (00:11:33)

8. Single Serving Jack (00:19:11)

The idea of a "single-serving friend" equates Jack's isolation and alienation with the disposable products of consumer culture.

9. Tyler (00:21:39)

Dreaming of a plane wreck that will end his miserable existence, Jack wakes suddenly. Tyler is sitting next to him, and they meet for the first time. How does their discussion of the emergency procedures cards fit into Tyler's overall philosophy? What do we later learn about the sports car Tyler drives off in here?

10. Jack's Nice Neat Flaming Shit (00:25:45)

11. Lament for a Sofa (00:29:06)

Here Jack first hears Tyler's philosophy: "We are consumers. We are byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty: these things don't concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear, Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra....Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man....The things you own end up owning you."

12. Odd Jobs (00:32:24)

13. Hit Me (00:34:07)

14. Paper Street (00:35:54)

After starting Fight Club and moving into the Paper Street house, Jack tells us that "By the end of the first month, I didn't even miss TV." Have you ever gone a month without watching television? Do you think that you ever will? Do you think that you might think or feel differently at the end of a month without television? At the end of a year without it?

In addition to giving up television, Jack also stops going to support groups. What does Fight Club offer Jack that replaces these things?

15. Welcome to Fight Club (00:41:34)

16. Infectious Human Waste (00:47:15)

17. Sport Fucking (00:48:34)

In one of the DVD's alternate audio tracks, we learn that the rubber glove was Brad Pitt's idea. We also learn that Marla's breasts are actually those of a body double, not actress Helena Bonham Carter's. Why do you think a body double's breasts are necessary in a film that purports to eschew capitalist objectification? (Hint: It's not the actress's refusal to undress before the camera; Bonham Carter has appeared nude in other films.)

18. Tyler's Secret Formula Soap (01:00:13)

19. Chemical Burn (01:01:51)

Jack threatens his boss by imagining (himself as) a "button-down psycho" going on a murderous rampage in the office. This reference to real-life events probably shouldn't be funny, but it is. Does this demonstrate the truth of the old equation, "Tragedy + Time = Comedy"?

In the following scene, Marla asks Jack to help her do a breast exam. Jack finds nothing in the film. In the book, however, Marla does have two lumps. She decides that she would rather die than put herself through the misery of Medicaid-sponsored "healthcare." Why did Palahnuik choose to give his character cancer? (In other words, how does it relate to the story's major themes?) Why did the filmmakers decide to "cure" Marla?

20. The Middle Children of History (01:09:43)

A crucial chapter. Here Tyler offers more of his philosophy: "Our Great War is a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives."

21. Homework (01:14:51)

22. Jack's Smirking Revenge (01:15:41)

23. Project Mayhem (01:19:29)

24. Human Sacrifice (01:21:23)

After the human sacrifice, Jack's voice-over bridges into the next, crucial scene. His words demonstrate that Jack is beginning to accept Tyler's brand of sense: "No fear, no distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter, truly slide." Tyler is then shown pacing around the basement of the Paper Street house. More philosophy: "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis." As he delivers this speech, the camera zooms in for a closeup, and the image mimics a film jumping off its sprocket. "You're the all singing, all dancing crap of the world." How does this visual contribute to the meaning of Tyler's words?

25. Space Monkeys (01:27:31)

26. Psycho Boy (01:35:30)

27. A Near-Life Experience (01:37:40)

28. Tyler Says Goodbye (01:41:18)

A crucial chapter. Here Tyler offers his vision of culture reborn amid the ruins of the old: "In the world I see, you're stalking elk...around the ruins of Rockefeller Center."

29. Operation Latté Thunder (01:44:59)

30. Déjà Vu (01:47:50)

31. Changeover (01:50:26)

32. Mea Culpa (01:56:45)

33. Castrating Cops (02:00:28)

34. Kicking and Screaming (02:05:46)

35. Walls of Jericho (02:09:29)

How does the demolition of the World Trade Center affect our viewing of this scene? Do you think this movie would have been released if it had been finished after September 11? Should this movie have been released after September 11?

What role does Marla play in the film's vision of Tyler's philosophy?