Identifying Masculinity In Fight Club

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Brandon Rooney Patrick A. Terry FMS 100 6 October 2011 Identifying Masculinity In Fight Club In present-day culture, men struggle to maintain a high standard for their own social image of masculinity. This is exemplified by Edward Norton’s character in David Fincher’s film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. “Edward Norton plays “Jack”, a nameless insomniac and unfulfilled cog in the wheel of bureaucratized America who cannot seem to escape the (feminized) trappings of corporate oppression and Swedish home furnishings” (Ta 265). Jack works for an automotive insurance company investigating claims. He also lives the ideal “condo-life” with all the perfect IKEA home furnishings. Despite this, he is a depressed, emotionless insomniac deprived of self-happiness due to his repressed masculine insecurities. These masculine insecurities, obtained through a feminine consumer-materialistic culture and lack of a father figure when growing up, are compensated by Jack’s creation of his alter-ego Tyler Durden. Before the creation of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), Jack finds a way to cure his insomnia, caused by his suppressed emotions of masculinity, via self-help groups. It is here at these groups that he fakes having deadly diseases in order to cry and releases his emotions. One of the groups he finds particularly helpful is the testicular cancer support group “Remaining Men Together”. Here, Jack finds comfort among other men who have also experienced a sense of masculine loss, but for the men in the group, their emasculation is a physiological one while Jack’s is psychological. Thus, Jack’s mental feelings of castration are alleviated by the presence of men who have undergone actual castration. One of the men whom Jack is alleviated by is Robert Paulson. Robert Paulson has developed “bitch tits” due to hormone therapy after his testicles were removed.
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