Examples Of Masculinity In Fight Club

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The Crisis of Masculinity in the novel Fight Club. All societies have cultural accounts of gender, but not all have the concept of ‘masculinity’. Within popular culture, the media have also come across the perceived crisis of masculinity- newspapers, documentaries and talk shows have increasingly pondered over the changing meaning of manhood in our modern age. Research and critical studies into men and masculinity has originated as one of the most emerging areas of sociological investigation. Masculinity is an area of sociology that has, since the mid- 1950s, drawn on many theories, including Structural Functionalism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Critical Structuralism,and most recently, Post-Structuralism and theories of the Post-Modern. The focus…show more content…
A chronological reading of the plot of the novel reveals that the narrator joins a number of support groups as his first effort to confront his buried pain of repressed emotions. The support groups are clubs for the sick and dying in which the narrator fakes to be an invalid so that he can experience the nurturing energy that emerges out of it. The following passage expresses the narrator’s response to the support groups; “I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you” (Palahniuk, p.107). After the support group experiences, the narrator moves on in life to create an all-male institution called fight club, where grown and mature men beat each other with bare knuckles to prove that self-destruction is the answer. The major purpose behind fight club is that its members, who are struggling in a world of emasculation and emotional barrenness, shall feel rejuvenated. As the narrator himself proclaims, “you aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club” (Palahniuk, p.50).Through fight club, the narrator hopes to connect with other members in the club and thereby feel a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment.The Project Mayhem started by the narrator is an attempt to topple the economy by exploding some massive credit card buildings, and thereby…show more content…
Clark, M. Faludi, “Fight Club and phallic masculinity: Exploring the emasculating economies of patriarchy.” Journal of Men’s Studies, 11.1 (2002). Print. 2. Connell, R. W. and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the concept.” Sydney: Sage Publications, 2005. Print. 3. Corber, R. J. Men and Masculinities: A social, cultural and historical encyclopaedia. United States: ABC-CLIO, (2004). 162-165. Print. 4. Craine, James and Stuart C.Aitken. “Street fighting: Placing the crisis of masculinity in David Fincher’s Fight Club.” 59.4 (2004) 289-296. Print. 5. Kaufman, M. “The construction of masculinity and the triad of men’s violence.” United States: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992. Print. 6. Kimmel, M. S. The gender of desire: Essays on masculinity. New York: State University of New York Press, (2005). 25-42. Print. 7. Palahniuk, C. Fight Club. New York: Owl Books, 1999. Print. 8. Rutherford, J. Men’s silences. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Print. 9. Stets, Jan E. and Peter J. Burke. “Feminity/Masculinity.” New York: Macmillan, (2002) 997-1005. Print. 10. Ta, L. M. “Hurt so good: Fight Club, masculine violence, and the crisis of capitalism.” The Journal of American Culture, 29.3 (2006) 265-277.

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