Joe Ondrak on Men and Patriarchy
Why increased suicide rates among men is a feminist issue
Men are taught to bottle up emotions and feelings. To show such things is considered ‘feminine.’ Feelings are ‘girly’ and just for women. Except anger and
happiness (but not so much happiness that you cry, then it’s ‘girly’ again)… so mostly anger. Men are allowed that.
Society teaches that women feel, while men do.
So men feel trapped and unable to express emotion or seek help. When they try confide in friends, the most common response is to ‘man up’ – they are
policed by other men into thinking that not being able to deal with emotions on your own makes you lesser. That they are falling behind in manhood by
having to seek help with whatever issue it may be.
Men are unable to seek help because they are policed and shamed into thinking that ‘real’ men don’t need it. That ‘real’ men do – and anything else is to
be lesser.
So… what does that say about attitudes to women?
When we change the attitude that emotions, ‘feelings,’ and that women are below men - men will be able to open up and seek help without the fear of shame.
~oOo~
I’m writing this for a number of reasons. First of all, I was watching
an interview with comedian Stewart Lee about university funding and The Arts last
night which got me thinking. Second, a friend of mine has been attempting to fight the good fight against the bastion of ‘banter’ (or, more accurately, the
stalwart of sexism) that is the Facebook page ‘LADbible.’ Finally, after enjoying Reddit.com for over a year, I’ve recently become a member of the
subreddit group ‘ShitRedditSays,’ which calls out posters from all over the site on misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic language and general
bigotry. Some of the points I’ve read about the mindset of those who post that kind of hate speech (because, let’s face it, that’s what it is), tie in
nicely with some of the ideas swirling around my head relating to ‘Lad Culture’ and the points raised by Stewart Lee.
In his interview, Lee posits that “the withdrawal of the [university] grant and the implication of student loans necessarily limits people that want
vocational careers, and produces a generation of people who feel that the only purpose of education is to earn money.” [1] Signs of this are already in
place and have been for quite some time now. Think about how often a news report on colleges and universities uses the term ‘Soft Science’ to describe
Psychology and Sociology, or the now well-worn stereotype that those in Liberal Arts courses should get used to serving fries. If you go round a modern
university campus and ask people why they enrolled, the answer will more than likely begin with “Because I wanted to get a career in…” rather than “Because
I wanted to learn more.” The attachment of earning and the ‘value for money’ to courses in university has lead to a clear and well-enforced divide: Pick a
course from a STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and you’ll land a job, study a Liberal Art and you’re as good as flipping burgers or
serving lattés already. This kind of mindset removes any inherent value to a course if it does not give the student any promise of financial gain at the
end. Philosophy is looked down upon by both students and society as being a dense but airy subject where people sit and ineffectually think about ‘life’ –
I recall the famous story in a newspaper where a question on a Philosophy paper was “Why was the chair on top of the table?” and the highest mark in the
class went to a student who said “Because someone put it there.” – Which, for anyone who has seen a Philosophy exam paper, is of course is utter nonsense
and completely made up. Even so, this subject, which was once
the premier battleground of world-shaping ideas, has become the butt of jokes in the
tabloids because of its liberal connotations.
The problem arises because, while there is no doubt that STEM subjects are intellectually challenging, they don’t encourage people to think critically.
There is no way for them to access the mindset of challenging social hierarchies, questioning the culture we live in or to learn about social criticism.
Tragically, this mindset appears to be reserved only for ‘sensitive’ liberal subjects, meaning those attempting to campaign for equality are already at a
disadvantage by being painted as ‘too caring,’ ‘too emotional,’ or for guys, ‘too feminine’ and therefore their opinions aren’t rational (believe me, I’ve
heard these arguments against me
plenty of times). As a result, students entering STEM fields remain enrolled in our patriarchal society, not
questioning it, but more likely enjoying the benefits it provides (because, let’s face it, if you’re complaining about inequality, then you should have
picked a course that would lead to a
real job [2]).
The STEM fields are incredibly male-dominated, with only three in twenty-five graduates in an Engineering course being a woman, only 20% of women who
graduate a STEM course landing a job in a related field, and a woman’s self-esteem and confidence in their ability continually diminishing throughout their
course solely because of their gender [3]. Of course then, male students who are in this system of learning, encouraged to be there by a patriarchal and
capitalist society and afforded all the privileges of said society, are going to embrace such a culture with open arms. This is where ‘Lad Culture’ comes
from.
Rather than a campus of thinkers and readers who enjoy a toke and occasional night out to blow off steam, we have a university system inundated with men
who have little time for intellectual thinking and conversation, who only want to learn to finish their course and get a job. This shifts the vibe of the
campus to one which encourages massive nights of binge drinking and getting ‘rowdy with the lads’ for the want of a better phrase. The disdain with which
the STEM culture looks at the liberal encourages an amplified reaction in the other direction, with sexist and racist viewpoints being excused as ‘banter’
to wind up and bait the ‘loony left’ and ‘sensitive’ liberals. Being the golden boys of a patriarchal capitalist society, they reinforce, exaggerate, but
most importantly perpetuate the oppressive discourse set up by the culture that raised them. They do this while being told it’s right and those who are
offended are wrong and ‘can’t take a joke,’ ensuring they don’t question why their ‘Lad Culture’ pisses some people off (after all, social criticism is for
‘sensitive left-wingers’ who are just bitter because it’s not a real subject that’ll land them a real job [4]). They are further encouraged by the
emergence of ‘Lad’s Mags,’ such as
Nuts orZoo, catering to this culture through the objectification of women, sweeping generalisations about
genders, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. These magazines, with covers that differ little from softcore porn, normalise such behaviour even further –
their uncensored place on our newsagent stands galvanising a ‘Lad’ attitude even further.
But by far the most dangerous enforcer and normaliser of ‘Lad Culture’ is ‘The LADbible’ and similar Facebook pages. Such pages are a perfect and
terrifying example of what happens when a patriarchal and capitalist society dissuades young men away from a liberal, conscientious mindset, essentially
tells them that they will always be right and that their privileges are a birthright, and then leaves them to regulate themselves. Rape culture and
domestic abuse become amplified sources of endless jokes and hilarity, women are objects to be judged no matter what (you treat a woman as a human being,
you’re either ‘whipped’ or ‘gay’), racism okay as long as it’s a ‘hilarious’ stereotype that’s ‘funny ‘cos it’s true,’ so on and so forth. I could go on,
but this is the ugly face of ‘Lad Culture’ that anybody reading this will already be familiar with.
The problem here though is that due to the influx in male STEM students and the universities need to cater to them, ‘Lad Culture’ is becoming the default
setting in UK higher education. Men enrolling in liberal courses which encourage critical thinking are often finding themselves sooner indoctrinated into
the ‘Lad’ mindset, joining in with the ‘banter’ of their friends and regarding what should be a fantastic educational opportunity and chance to expand
one’s own mind as just another hoop to jump through to get a piece of paper that’ll mean a job. I once overheard a fellow Literature student on my course
say “I’ll just make up some bullshit about women not being equal, we all know Feminism is what [the lecturer] wants.” Nowadays, university is just a
holding pen for these young men, encouraged to carry on being misogynistic, told that it’s just another step to a career and that conscientious thinking
isn’t a ‘valuable’ skill; all this because we were told that a career and money matter more than an academic mind. And you know what the scary part is?
Because the STEM ‘Lads’ are deemed more employable, soon we’ll have ‘Lads’ making laws, leading and being in control.
Misogyny breeds misogyny, bigotry breeds bigotry.
RIP thinkers.
(Also, good on
qu and her boyfriend for attempting to educate LADbible on why ‘smashing’ a woman
probably isn’t a good idea.)
[1] www.
domchristie.co.uk/posts/25
[2] Obvious sarcasm
[3]
www.women2.com/in-a-room-of-25-engineers-only-3-will-be-women
[4] More obvious sarcasm.
~oOo~
One of Tyler Durden’s repeated catchphrases throughout Fight Club is “it is only after you’ve lost everything… that you’re free to do anything.”1 It is one
of many refrains that hammer home the anti-consumerist theme within the text which, with Tyler’s charismatic delivery, becomes an attractive prospect to
both the book’s characters and readers alike. However, there are many cues that call aspects of this freedom into question. For example, how free can one
be while having to adhere to the now iconic rules of fight club, and the somewhat more sinister rules of Project Mayhem? Also, women are conspicuous in
their absence throughout the novel. With fight clubs - the gateway to this promised freedom - being exclusively men-only, are women allowed freedom in
Tyler’s vision too? Because of Fight Club’s strict gender division, any hope of freedom is effectively denied from the very beginning, at least through the
avenues explicitly given to the books unnamed Narrator. It is only through an endeavour to bridge this gap that any freedom or redemption is achievable.
This gender division is established quite early on in the novel through the use of spaces that our Narrator inhabits in order to cure his insomnia. The
support groups for the terminally ill are meant to be read as a feminised solution to his problem in contrast to the masculine fight clubs2: one being a
passive form of relief through self-destruction (pretending to be terminally ill) and the other a far more literal direct approach. This is exemplified by
his attendance to the testicular cancer support group, “Remaining Men Together.”3 The name alone suggests a masculine struggle, since testicular cancer
means potentially losing what is regarded as a universal symbol of masculinity: Remaining Men Together can be read as what remains of them is still men,
although because of the use of testicles as a signifier throughout history and culture, they are men sans masculinity. It is here where we first encounter
Robert Paulson, or ‘Bob’ as he is informally known.
Bob lost his testicles to cancer and due to a hormone imbalance of too many testosterone supplements grew breasts “that hang enormous, the way we think of
God’s as big.”4 It is between these huge breasts that our Narrator finds his first respite from insomnia. Jesse Kavadlo sees this as an indication of Bob
as a mother figure as he “uses his enormous breasts, hugs, and love to give the Narrator his release, allowing him first to cry, and then to sleep, both
infantile needs.”5 However, it is interesting to note that Palahniuk chose to equate Bob’s breasts with God, as it fits with Kavaldo’s interpretation of
Bob as a provider for man but twists our notion of a western masculine God, turning both Bob and God into mother figures. This reading then ties in with
another prevalent theme within the text, the lack of a model of masculinity in postmodern society. In this society, men such as Bob, who uphold an ‘ideal’
for the masculine form can be viewed as divine avatars in the sense that God created Man in His image. But the pageantry and feminine performance of Bob’s
lifestyle are inherently emasculating, highlighted more so by the hormone abuse that cost him his testicles and caused him to grow breasts. Both Bob the
former bodybuilder who men looked up to as he “practically invented… the whole how-to-program about expanding your chest,”6 and God are stripped of their
masculinity, causing a “generation of men [to be] raised by women.”7 However, while Bob at Men Remaining Together was a shy, constantly crying “big
moosie,”8 once he substitutes the gentle and sensitive therapy of the support group with the frenzied and zealous therapy of fight club, “Bob’s breasts
move from mothering to smothering”9 as the explicitly masculine surroundings change Bob’s performance from remaining a man to reclaiming his masculinity.
However, the fight clubs, Tyler or the events of the book would not have happened if it were not for Marla Singer. Palahniuk is quite explicit about this
in the very first chapter, stating though the Narrator “I know all of this… is really about Marla Singer.”10 This quotation, on first reading, seems almost
throwaway. We, as readers, soon forget about it once we are swept up in the Narrator and Tyler’s high-octane hi-jinks. But it is Marla’s first appearance
that is the catalyst for the events that follow. We first encounter her at the same time we encounter Bob. Just as our Narrator fakes terminal illness at
the support groups, so too does Marla who after working so long at a funeral parlour finds a catharsis in being so close to “a real experience of death”11
compared to a funeral’s “abstract ceremony.”12 Unfortunately for our Narrator, her being there holds a mirror up to his own immorality in being a ‘faker’
too, rendering him unable to sleep again. However, we later find out that this bout of insomnia is when Tyler chooses to take control and run amok, meaning
we can attribute the Narrator’s creation of Tyler with the appearance of Marla. This makes sense if we consider Paul Kennett’s reading that “Her
appearance, especially in the testicular cancer group, produced the Narrator’s pre-existing doubts of the “manliness” of group therapy.”13 In the film
adaptation, she bluntly questions this “manliness” while arguing with the Narrator over who should attend the group: “technically, I have more of a right
to be there than you. You still have your balls.”14 The irony being that compared to Bob at Men Remaining Together, Marla is arguably more masculine, both
emotionally by being cold and not crying, and physically by having smaller breasts and unkempt hair (as opposed to Bob’s “so thick and blond and the part
is so straight”15 mane). This may well be the moment that plants the seed in the Narrator’s mind that becomes his alter-ego, Tyler Durden.
The Narrator states “I love everything about Tyler Durden… Tyler is funny and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change
their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.”16 On face value he is - if we take into account why he came into existence –ideally ‘manly,’ the
opposite of those men at their support group. But beneath that, he is ideally patriarchal.
As Tyler is a construct of the Narrator’s psyche, he is reactive
against elements of the Narrator’s life which he sees as passive and unmasculine. This primarily manifests itself through Tyler’s anti-consumerist beliefs
that “advertising has these people… working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.”17 echoing the Narrator’s observation that
he “wasn’t the only one slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, they now sit in the bathroom with
the IKEA furniture catalogue.”18 The idea that masturbation with pornography (a stereotypically male activity) has been infiltrated by not just consumerism
- but furniture (home furnishing and decorating being seen as typically feminine) - highlights Tyler’s concerns over the ‘feminising’ of men in a
postmodern consumer culture. With Tyler being reactive compared to the Narrator’s passivity, he establishes the first fight club as a group therapy for men
struggling with the capitalist and consumerist world. It is a way for them to reclaim masculinity rather than remain men.
In the fight between Tyler and the Narrator which lead to the creation of fight club, a number of readings are apparent. For starters, the fight itself is
essentially one man beating himself up. The fight can be seen as an act of self-flagellation, a masochistic way for the Narrator to pay penance for the
lifestyle he was beginning to hate and the beginning of his new life with Tyler. This bleeds over into fight club, with the rules stating a dress code, and
as Kennett observes; “The Narrator is careful to illustrate how the men standing in the bar basemen in the dim pool of light are identically clothed
without shirts and shoes, how they assume the same habits of grooming, with short hair and nails, all mirror images of each other. Each fight is therefore
an occasion of fighting one’s self.”19 More important though is the conversation between the two after the fight:
Instead of [fighting] Tyler, I finally felt I could get my hands on everything in the world that didn’t work… the bank… my job… my boss… And Marla Singer,
who stole the support groups from me… Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered… I asked Tyler what he’d been fighting. Tyler said,
his father.20
The fight enabled the Narrator and Tyler to confront failed masculinity and patriarchy. The former is able to fight the monotony of his previous lifestyle
which led him to become the passive man he was up until this point, as well as Marla who usurped his position at the support groups and forced him to
question his masculinity. The latter is fighting his non-existent father (what with Tyler himself being non-existent), claiming he never knew him. On the
surface, this is a lashing out at the absence of a masculine role-model and traditional patriarch, and when the Narrator reveals that he knew his father
“for about six years, but I don’t remember a thing,”21 we can view Tyler’s disdain as an extension of his own. However, the Narrator then goes on to say
“My dad, he starts a new family in a new town every six years. This isn’t so much like a family as it’s like he sets up a franchise.”22 From this, it seems
as though the Narrator is not only criticising his father’s actions, but the attitudes of the entire “Baby Boomer” generation who left him “foot[ing] the
bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before [he] was born.”23 But it is not the environmentally
destructive aspect of capitalism that he is criticising, it is the effect it had on the established pillars of patriarchy and the knock-on effect that had
on masculinity through the avenues of corporatism and consumer culture. Just as the Narrator’s father set up a ‘franchise’ family in each town, leaving him
without a patriarchal father figure and masculine role model, the rich male businessmen who established free-market capitalism used consumerism as a new
way to establish patriarchal control, essentially ‘franchising’ it and leaving men without clearly defined masculine roles. This is manifested in his
observation that “the gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director
says.”24 The role models for masculinity in this consumer society are signifiers for marketing, made more explicit in the film adaptation with the Narrator
recalling this line while standing in front of a Calvin Klein underwear advert, leading to bodybuilders like Bob whose muscles have no real function – a
lifestyle that symbolically cost him his testicles.
This displacement of patriarchy from focalised ‘traditional’ points, such as fathers, to signifiers and products in a patriarchal consumer culture, allow
us to read Tyler’s attitudes as somewhat Oedipal. Kennett applies Jaques Lacan’s “Name-of-the-Father” model to Fight Club, enabling a complex
Oedipal/patriarchal subtext to be examined.
Jaques Lacan’s theories consider the role of the father in the Oedipal complex as a linguistic signifier…not limited to the presence of a particular father
in body… but is present and exerts its influence from the symbolic fabric of reality via historical, cultural, media and commercial narratives… Lacan quips
that since the identity of one’s father is never certain, culture has inherited, via religion, the ideological construct of a father… In reality this
function is so intimately central the customs, rituals, institutions of our reality that the father will prevent the narcissistic enjoyment of the infant
and establish the law necessary for socialization. 25
If we consider the comparisons made by the Narrator between attending fight clubs and church, how “There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church,
and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved,”26 we can see how fight clubs are a mode for men to reconnect to this ideological construct of
father: not through God at church, but through the other participants of fight club, the idea of ‘men worshipping men’ still remains. This sentiment is
illustrated perfectly by the Narrator when he talks about how a kid working at a copy centre became “a god for ten minutes when you saw him kick the air
out of an account representative.”27 However, while fight club is seen as a temporary release and a way to reclaim their masculinity for the participants,
where “Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered28,” for Tyler it is the beginning of fulfilling his Oedipal goal of asserting
himself as a new patriarchal father figure.
As fight club becomes Project Mayhem, the Narrator begins to view Tyler as the father figure his life was lacking. The initial fight, as well as
self-flagellation, is an act of Tyler as father imposing his anti-consumer law on the Narrator for the first time. He also acts a masculine, patriarchal
role-model, the Narrator observing that “men look up to him,”29 including himself. But while Tyler gains followers through promises to “Deliver [them]…
from Swedish furniture… from clever art… from being perfect and complete”30 with a lifestyle which appears to celebrate male equality from capitalist
patriarchal controllers, he in turn takes their freedoms while establishing himself as their new controller. They, Kennett writes, “become the sons of the
Father who make possible Tyler’s status as lawgiver, lord and punisher.”31 This Oedipal desire of Tyler’s followers, who once in Project Mayhem are
referred to as space monkeys, calls into question the prospect of any freedom that might be gained through their actions as the name itself is based on the
first animals sent into space. Early in the book while on top of the world’s tallest building, the Narrator says “It’s so quiet this high up, the feeling
you get is that you’re one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you’re trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don’t understand any of it,
and then you die.”32 He first equates the space monkey mindset to cubicle jobs similar to the one he used to do, the idea of being a ‘cog in the machine.’
However, once it gets applied to Tyler’s followers – as a permanent name, no less – we can see that they have been shifted from one system of patriarchal
control to another, while still being kept in the dark (the first and last rules of Project Mayhem are to not ask questions and to trust Tyler).
Tyler’s goals in Project Mayhem extend far beyond the initial ambitions of fight club, which successfully established a way for men of a consumer culture
to reclaim their masculinity. Tyler, by way of Project Mayhem, instead seeks to not only punish the current patriarchal consumer culture through vandalism,
but to ultimately destroy the history creating that culture and regress to a primitive state of clearly masculine ‘hunter-gatherer’ roles: “to return
“civilization” to a point where the narratives of privileged masculine dominance are still intact, where the God still walks among His people and
recognizes them with his gaze.”33 In order to do this, he takes control of the Narrator’s body, travelling the country to set up new fight clubs and
establish a web of Project Mayhem cells.
By doing this, to the Narrator, it appeared as though he has left to ‘set up franchises,’ just as both his own
father and patriarchy had done. There is an obvious hypocrisy in Tyler’s actions, and his desired outcome, while at first appearing to directly oppose the
current system of patriarchy, only restructures it. To fund Project Mayhem, Tyler makes incredibly expensive soap from human fat, becoming part of the
consumer culture. In fact, he doesn’t make the soap himself, but instead has the space monkeys do it, effectively enslaving them with his promise of
freedom from consumer culture – a culture they are now, under him, feeding into and no longer benefitting from.
Tyler effectively establishes himself as an oppressive god/father figure for the space monkeys. They recite his words as mantra; one space monkey,
distinguished as ‘the mechanic’ informs the Narrator “I see the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived… and these men are pumping gas and waiting
tables”34 without a hint of irony to the fact that he is travelling to steal fat to make soap for no pay. Once he ‘leaves,’ they also enforce his law and
perform his punishment, which is a fittingly Oedipal castration for anyone who interferes with Project Mayhem’s plans, although we as readers only ever
hear of threats of castration (stripping the victim and tying an elastic band round their testicles, only to snip the band off and let them go35). Even
when the Narrator tries order the space monkeys to stop, his words as Tyler are more assertive than his own mouth (but Tyler’s image) ordering the
opposite. The Mechanic, reciting Tyler’s teachings, makes explicit his logic to the Narrator when he states:
All a gun does is focus an explosion in one direction. You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something.
Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need… We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage
by frightening them.36
Here, Tyler equates his rule as a gun. By enslaving and frightening those under his rule, the explosion of their anxieties will be Project Mayhem’s acts of
vandalism and violence against consumer culture, which reads more like a new patriarchy removing the old than an act of liberation. Interestingly, this is
the only time Tyler mentions women in his goals, his misogynist streak is highlighted if we read the last line of this quotation against his suggestion to
“put these men in training camps and finish raising them”37 only nine lines beforehand. The implications behind this are alarming to say the least, as
enslaving the women and training the men seems to be nothing more than a revenge fantasy for his belief that we have a “generation of men raised by
women.”38
However, ultimately it is women, or mother figures, that hold the most power. For the Oedipal reading to function properly, a mother is required. In Fight
Club, the mother switches between two characters who, when we first encounter them, appear to be complete contrasts: Bob and Marla. As mentioned at the
start of this chapter, Bob is the Narrator’s initial mother figure. He is able to give him the release required to fend off his narcolepsy and enables him
to cry to find release. This is blocked by Marla who, at the time, represents a troubling masculine foil to Bob’s mother. Once the Narrator finds Tyler to
be his father figure, and Bob’s participation in fight club strips him of his qualities as mother, Marla begins to fill the role. She is, on the surface,
not a fitting candidate as mother at all, explicitly eschewing maternal duties by telling Tyler she “wanted to have [his] abortion,”39 as a way of
initiating sex. This linking of sex and death places her more in the femme fatale camp, as Cynthia Kuhn notes “Marla has unmistakable femme fatale traits;
she is urban, alluring, threatening, nonmaternal, and antidomestic – even her last name is sirenesque.”40 Though Marla only fulfils this role for Tyler.
Due to the fact that she sees the Narrator and Tyler as one person – more importantly, just as Tyler – she is unwittingly flirtatious with both; the
Narrator spurning or ignoring her and Tyler having sex with her whenever the Narrator is asleep. Because of this, the Narrator begins to view Tyler and
Marla as a couple who “Except for their humping… are never in the same room,”41 crucially making the connection that “This is exactly how my parents were
invisible to each other.”42 As well as adding to the Oedipal subtext, this scene may also tell us something about the Narrator’s attitude to sex; Tyler
only capable of seeing Marla as a sex object and the Narrator only capable of seeing her as otherwise. The Narrator/Tyler’s dual personality is what
enables him to deal with Marla’s sexuality. In being two people, he is able to view her as the two patriarchal roles for a woman; both mother and whore.
However, at this point, the Narrator rejects Marla as mother. This may be due to her outwardly nonmaternal qualities, appearing as almost a second father.
She mirrors his goals and Tyler’s attitudes towards self-destruction such as employing her own self-deprecating mantras43 and rejecting traditional
consumerism in favour of thrift-store clothing. Tyler even shows begrudging admiration by remarking “At least Marla’s trying to hit bottom;”44 a barbed
comment to the Narrator who feels he is being usurped by her. This impression of her changes at what can be considered a turning point in the narrative:
Bob’s death.
When Bob is shot on a ‘homework assignment’ for Project Mayhem, for the Narrator, it is Tyler as father/god figure causing the death of his original mother
figure (further backed up by the space monkeys’ refusal to listen to him, but obey Tyler’s orders). This causes him to go to Marla for guidance and accept
her as the mother figure in her relationship with Tyler. However, the Narrator has to come to terms with the repercussions of him and Tyler sharing a body
– that he, technically, had sex with Marla. At this point, the Oedipal and femme fatale narratives of Marla work together: the son she had sex with
becoming the agent by which the father is murdered. This happens during the climactic scene at the top of the Parker Morris building where the Narrator is
held hostage by Tyler. Marla interprets the scene as a suicide attempt, forcing her to admit “I think I like you,”45 which the Narrator sees as a cue to
kill Tyler with a gunshot through his own cheek, resulting in a “jagged smile from ear to ear”46 – a horrific image of happiness due to the destruction of
the damaging patriarch. Unfortunately, precisely because of this, the Narrator ends up punished by the law of the father, living out his days in a mental
institution where the orderlies are all enforcers who refer to him as “Mr. Durden”47 and inform him that “everything is going to plan.”48
What we have at the end is an illustration of the pervasiveness and danger of a patriarchal order. In Project Mayhem, Tyler succeeded only in removing the
consumerist element of today’s patriarchy, increasing its harm and oppression in the process. The pursuit of father figures and patriarchs is shown to be a
destructive alternative to passive equality which is, ultimately, far less successful in bringing any sense of freedom. Marla, as the lone woman, is shown
to be just as strong as Tyler, succeeding in living outside consumerism and finding her own freedom and relief in its society. Eventually she enables the
destruction of Project Mayhem’s mastermind and becomes the conduit through which the Narrator is able to free himself from a patriarchal oppression.
Finally, as Kuhn observes, “not only is Marla the catalyst for the narrator’s split into Tyler, but she is also the catalyst for his split from Tyler,”49,”
meaning our Narrator’s statement that this is “really about Marla Singer”50 is truer than even he realises.
References:
1 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, (London: Vintage, 1997) pp. 70
2 Cynthia Kuhn, ‘I Am Marla’s Monstrous Wound: Fight Club and The Gothic’, Reading Chuck Palahniuk: American Monsters and Literary Mayhem, ed. Cynthia Kuhn
and Lance Rubin (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), 36 – 48, (pp. 37)
3 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 18
4 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 16
5 Jesse Kavadlo, ‘The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist’, Stirrings Still Volume 2, ed. Erik M. Grayson (Chicago: Bingham UP,
2005), 3 – 24, (pp. 9) <http://www.stirrings-still.org/ss22.pdf> Accessed 8th March 2012
6 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 21
7 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 50
8 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp.21
9 Jesse Kavadlo, ‘The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist’pp. 9
10 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 14
11 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 38
12 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 38
13 Paul Kennett, ‘Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession’, Stirrings Still Volume 2, ed. Erik M. Grayson (Chicago: Bingham UP, 2005), 48 – 64,
(pp. 58) <http://www.stirrings-still.org/ss22.pdf> Accessed 8th March 2012
14 Jim Uhls, Fight Club – based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (1998) <http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Fight-Club.html> Accessed 8th March 2012
15 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 16
16 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 174
17 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 149
18 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 43
19 Paul Kennett, ‘Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession’ pp. 54
20 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 53
21 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 50
22 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 50
23 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 124
24 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 50
25 Paul Kennett, ‘Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession’ pp. 49
26 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 51
27 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 49
28 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 53
29 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 174
30 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 46
31 Paul Kennett, ‘Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession’ pp. 57
32 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 12
33 Paul Kennett, ‘Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession’pp. 56
34 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 149
35 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 164 - 166
36 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 149
37 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 149
38 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 50
39 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 51
40 Cynthia Kuhn, ‘I Am Marla’s Monstrous Wound: Fight Club and The Gothic’ pp. 42
41 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 65
42 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 66
43 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 65
44 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 61
45 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 188
46 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 198
47 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 208
48 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 208
49 Cynthia Kuhn, ‘I Am Marla’s Monstrous Wound: Fight Club and The Gothic’pp. 44
50 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club pp. 14
