Introduction

In this essay I will be applying an analysis with a reflection through using the concepts of Ideology, Textual Poaching and Cross Platform Media through time and space as well as briefly looking at Spreadable Media and the Fandom/Canon that is involved with in this concept. I will apply these concepts with my case study of Fight Club (Fincher, 1999). The Film directed by David Fincher and based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk, follows the unnamed narrator (Edward Norton) who is discontented with his job and forms a fight club with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). This essay will examine the many different ideologies that are presented within the film such as; Anarchism, Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism, Consumerism and Anti-Consumerism, and how they have been interpreted by the consumers through the concept of textual poaching, exploring how over time the opinions and interpretations of the film have drastically changed as well as looking at how over time as these change of views have occurred; Fight Club has turned into a cross platform media.

Cross Platform Media and Fight Club

 

The increase of an active audience can be argued as one of the factors in the emergence of cross platform media with it being a response to the new needs of the audiences. Ibrus & Scolari (2012, p.7) define cross platform as “an intellectual property, service, story or experience that is distributed across multiple media platforms using a variety of media forms” This can be taken to prove that all media is cross platform as there is barely any media that is now not distributed across multiple media platforms. This leads onto Transmedia Storytelling which is a technique of telling a single story across multiple platforms that in turn enable user participation and contributions to the story. (Seawell, 2003)  Transmedia Storytelling can be described as the combination of cross platform media and a narrative thus creating a coherent story using different mediums for the audience. I believe that over time and space from the original release of the book ‘Fight Club’ (Palahniuk, 1996) to the present day with the recent release of the new comic book series,acting as a prequel to the original novel which is also soon to be released all together as one big hardcover Graphic Novel, ‘Fight Club 2’ (Palahniuk, 2015) that Fight Club has developed into a cross platform media.

Fight Club – The Book

Fight Club all started with Chuck Palahniuk’s best selling book ‘Fight Club’ (1996), It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor’s exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy. At the time of its publication, Fight Club was well received critically, it was called “brilliantly creepy” by The Washington Post, and “unsettling and nerve-chafing” by The Seattle Times. The Baltimore Sun commended its very publication, stating, “bravo to Norton for having the courage to publish it.”(Hoffert, 1997) For many critics, Fight Club is considered the embodiment of Palahniuk’s writing style and thematic concerns, however Some have condemned Fight Club because of its violent, heteronormative themes and cult philosophy. Peter Matthews, however, argues that these critics often overlook the novel’s ironic critique of its characters violent worldview (Trudeau, 2014).

Fight Club – The Film

Upon its release Fight Club was believed to be a book that could not be filmed and therefore should not be attempted to be adapted into cinema as it would never match up to the book. However the book received critical interest and eventually generated cinematic-adaptation interest, In 1999, screenwriters Jim Uhls, August Olsen, and co-producers Conor Strait and Aaron Curry joined director David Fincher In turning Fight Club into a feature film. It starred Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden and Edward Norton as the unnamed narrator  an “everyman” who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a “fight club” with soap maker Tyler Durden, and they are joined by men who also want to fight recreationally. The narrator becomes embroiled in a relationship with Durden and a dissolute woman, Marla Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter. Studio executives did not like the film and restructured Fincher’s intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club failed to meet the studio’s expectations at the box office and received polarized reactions from critics, who debated the explicit violence and moral ambiguity, but praised the acting, directing, themes and messages. It was cited as one of the most controversial and talked  about films of 1999. The film later found critical and commercial success with its DVD release, it became more popular via word of mouth (Wise, 2000). This and the positive reception of the DVD established Fight Club as a cult film, that David Ansen g b gof Newsweek conjectured would enjoy “perennial” fame (Ansen,2005).  The film’s success also heightened Palahniuk’s profile to global renown (Flynn, 2007), gaining popularity among young, male American readers. Critics have attributed Fight Club’s popularity with this audience to its critique of an emasculating consumerist culture, and to the implied message that modern men need revert to their primal, aggressive nature. (Trudeau, 2014)  

The later Cult Success of Fincher’s Film is also what i believe is mainly attributed to the transformation of Fight Club into a Cross Platform Media. After the film became more popular and finally received the acclaim that it deserved then this sparked many different merchandising surrounding Fight Club in order to capitalise on the popularity of the film. For example Sony released a Playstation fighting game based around the characters from the film, clothing, even Soap, as well as countless numbers of posters which have been hugely popular amongst youths.

 

This was even satirised about in a recent ‘Honest Trailer’ By the youtube channel ‘Screen Junkies’ which basically take the trailers for famous films and do an honest voiceover of what’s happening over the top of the video. In the Honest Trailer for Fight Club the narrator comically says “Here comes the film that inspired an entire generation…Of College dorm room posters.” (Screen Junkies, 2014) which is a satire on the fact that so many young teenagers have the famous fight club poster on there wall, especially in Universities/Colleges, with many having the poster even though they haven’t seen the film or read the book.

Link to Honest Trailers-Fight Club : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZwsKVL6JfM

 

Textual Poaching in Fight Club

This Screen Junkies Honest Trailer is an example of “textual poaching”; Michel De Certeau’s notions of textual poaching Identifies / debunks an elitist myth, dating back to the 18th century, that sees “readers” as passive consumers, who need to be informed by the “producers” of knowledge & communications media. He states that “This legend is necessary for the system that distinguishes and privileges authors, educators, revolutionaries, in a word, ‘producers’, in contrast with those who do not produce.” (De Certeau, 1984). I decipher from this that there is an ideology of the producers who create the content and the consumers who consume the content. However with recent developments in Web 2.0 it can be argued that this ideology has been destroyed with the rise of the ‘Prosumer’. Gauntlett (2008) discusses this as the way in which media consumers have gone from being passive consumers to active consumers. As in the past most people merely consumed media whereas now many are media producers themselves this is largely due to the internet and web 2.0 which has lead to wide possibilities for users to produce their own content such as creating videos and posting them on Youtube, as well as the ability for audiences to voice their opinions and comment on news articles giving them the chance to have a large social interaction with different voices from across the globe and giving their ideas and allowing their thoughts to be heard which allows for a more satisfying experience for the audience.
Henry Jenkins applies De Certeau’s notions to “fandom”, in order to examine the ways in which fans “poach” elements of popular culture, through copying and sharing the original text, or creating fan fiction. “Like the poachers of old, fans operate from a position of cultural marginality and social weakness. Like other popular readers, fans lack direct access to the means of commercial cultural production and have only the most limited resources with which to influence the entertainment industry’s decisions” (Jenkins, 1992) However this has now vastly improved and changed over time due to advances in technology and the previously discussed “Rise of the Prosumer’. I believe that it can be argued that the prosumer is also where the rise of Textual Poaching is partly down to. This is because as the audience of products develop into creators themselves and thus becoming ‘Prosumers’ this is often where experimentation with textual poaching occurs. A prime example of that would be the previously discussed ‘Honest Trailers’ series, because its creators are fans of the films that they mock in there videos, but they just poach the media text in there own certain way in order to manipulate it into showing something that maybe was not intended by the original producers of the media text, such as how they find humour in what’s really happening in the film trailers.

Paratexts In and around Fight Club

These trailers are also an example of ‘Paratexts’ which Gray(2010) describes as the hype, synergy, promos, and peripherals that surround a media text.  This would include all marketing materials that surround the text as well as fandom that is created on the text. So in the case of our case study ‘Fight Club’ the paratexts that surround this media text would be: Posters, Official Trailers, Fan Trailers, Clothing, Chat Show Interviews (e.g. Jonathan Ross) and any other fan fiction. This list may sound familiar, and that’s because many people may see Paratexts to be the same things as Cross Platform Media, and it can be argued that they’re right. However I believe Paratexts to be a sub branch of Cross Platform Media, as the majority of things that lie under ‘Paratexts’ are also part of cross platform media. But there is also some content that lies under Paratext that wouldn’t be, as Gray discusses; Paratexts are not simply add ons, spinoffs, and also-rans: they create texts, they manage them, and fill them with meaning.
Although the most famous Paratext from Fight Club is argued to be the posters, in the marketing side, the most important paratext is the trailer. This is due to it generally being the biggest and most high budget marketing tool that studios use to promote a film. They’re shown everywhere: On your television, in the cinema, even when you’re waiting for the tube –  so a lot of work goes into making a capturing trailer that will draw in the viewers to going to watch their film. A good trailer should grip the viewer within the first few seconds, In the opening shot of the Fight Club trailer we see the character of Tyler Durden asking “I want you to hit me as hard as you can” (Uhls, 1999) to the Narrator. The fact that Tyler is played by Brad Pitt, who is one of the biggest sex symbols in modern culture, would entice and confuse the audience as this is out of character/type from the usual eye candy roles that Pitt tends to portray. Immediately following this is the intercut text graphic which says ‘From the Director of Seven’. To people who had previously seen Seven (Fincher, 1995) this would signify to them that as Se7en was such a dark film and also starred Pitt, therefore this could be a film of a similar vein. The background in all of the intercut text graphics depicts a brain’s neural network in which the thought processes are initiated by the narrator’s fear impulse (Smith, 1999). I believe that this imagery of the brain’s network, could signify that this film is also to do with the mind, which is why the film’s genre is  often described as a Psychological Thriller. In addition, it could firstly be in reference to the narrator’s insomnia. which is something that is mentioned to the audience very early in the trailer. Secondly, it could be a subtle reference to the fact that the narrator and Tyler Durden actually share the same brain as they are actually the same person, which is revealed at the end of the film, but obviously is not shown in the trailer. Although to someone like me who studies the media on a day to day basis this trailer seems fascinating,gripping and enticing. It is clear to see that this was not the case amongst the general public which can be shown by firstly the negative comments about this trailer on youtube and secondly how it failed to bring in viewers to watch the film which can be seen by its box office figures.

Textual Poaching & Ideology in Fight Club

Textual Poaching can also be linked with the concept of Ideology in the analysis of Fight Club because ever since its release there have been countless interpretations of the media text from various different sources with many of them related to ideologies such as: Anarchism, Anti Capitalism, Capitalism, Anti Consumerism, Consumerism & Fascism. One scene from the film which is a very good example of textual poaching of the film related to ideologies is the scene where The Narrator is looking through the ikea catalogue, which then becomes projected around him, within his living room. The Ikea furniture is a sign for the ideal life, that the narrator is trying to obtain as he believes that buying these items will lead to fulfillments. I believe that the ikea furniture which fills his room, takes place of the things he doesn’t have: relationships, laughter and love. During this scene the narrator says “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” This rhetorical question signifies that his entire self worth is based on the things that he owns and buys, it was used by the scriptwriter to foreshadow a line that Tyler says “The Things you own end up owning you” which I take to mean that if you become too consumed with products than they can take over your life. This links to Berger’s (1972) argument that the whole system of publicity is based on one proposal: that we can change our lives for the better if we buy something. 

This is even more relevant today. than when it was first released with people being so consumed by technology, constantly being attached to their phones and devices. The dullness of the narrator’s life and his materialisticness is juxtaposed with how Tyler is presented as being the antithesis of the narrator and everything that he wants to be. The German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1960) would say that the character of Tyler Durden is an example of his theory ‘The Overman’ which is A man who is capable and great enough to create a new meaning for the world we inhabit. Tyler offers violence and anarchy to the narrator and philosophically evaluates his pathetic and passive lifestyle (Thomas, 2010).

Consumerism & Anti Consumerism in Fight Club

 

Another ideology that many have interpreted from Fight Club is that of both Consumerism and Anti Consumerism, Cultural critics Henry Giroux and Imre Szeman describe Fight Club as a failed critique which focuses on the consumerist culture and how it shapes male identity and ignores how neoliberal capitalism has dominated and exploited society. They write, “Fight Club has nothing substantive to say about the structural violence of unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending, and the destruction of institutions capable of defending social provisions and the public good. The film is “dangerously seductive” because of how it offers through Project Mayhem “a possible vision of a collective response… however disturbing such a response might be.” The vision, in the form of “regressive, vicious, and obscene” politics, is presented as the only possible alternative to defeat contemporary capitalism.  Fight Club is a film that “very powerfully reveals the astonishing limits of our political imagination”, focusing on masculinity and centering on a “hip, stylishly violent” narrative. The critics write, “It tells us very little… about the real circumstances and causes of our discontent, which lie in a very different place than in the seeming emasculation of that social group that wields perhaps the most concentrated power the world has ever seen—urban, upper-middle class, white, male technocrats.” Giroux and Szeman identify Tyler Durden as a failed icon of the revolution whose public appeal is more due to his cult personality than any “strengths of an articulated, democratic notion of political reform.” Durden acts instead of thinking and thereby fails to envision democratic movements; he is described as “a holdover of early-twentieth-century fascism”. While the narrator represents the crisis of capitalism as a crisis of masculinity, Tyler Durden represents “redemption of masculinity repackaged as the promise of violence in the interests of social and political anarchy. The two critics outline three main absences in Fight Club‘s critique. First, the film assumes that capitalism and consumerism are “impenetrable”, and there cannot be resistance or struggle against them. Secondly, the film focuses instead on defending “authoritarian masculinity.” The fight clubs’ violence are complicit with the system of commodification that it denounces because it ties into instant gratification, heightened competitiveness, and “the market-driven desire” to dominate and win in fights. Lastly, Fight Club ascribes to a world under the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes in which cynicism replaces hope. The critics write of this world, “The survival of the fittest becomes the clarion call for legitimating dehumanizing forms of violence as a source of pleasure and sociality.” They summarize, “Fight Club appears to have no understanding of its own articulation with the very forces of capitalism it appears to be attacking. This is most evident in its linking of violence, masculinity, and gender. In other words, Fight Club‘s vision of liberation and politics relies on gendered and sexist hierarchies that flow directly from the consumer culture it claims to be criticizing.” Fight Club is a reminder to have discourse about ethics and politics but its failed critique suggests “a more sustained and systemic critique” of societal conditions. (Giroux, 2001)

Facism in Fight Club

On the other hand, Robert Von Dassanowsky (2007) takes a far different angle of textual poaching from this text and the ideologies that it presents, he  identifies Fight Club, alongside The Talented Mr. Ripley and Hannibal, as an American film released at the turn of the 21st century that examines European fascism through cinematic metaphor and explores fascism’s cultural and sexual politics.Fight Club‘s portrayal of the paramilitary Project Mayhem represents a response to the feminization of America, and the portrayal is reminiscent of the creation of Nazism in response to the “decadent” Weimar Republic of Germany. In the film, the counter to the feminized male is a model of male that is “an identity-less, violent and destructive nihilistic cadre that intends to discipline a world gone too tolerant.” The paramilitary members’ processing of human fat from liposuction into designer soap is a Holocaust reference. The process surpasses in potency Soylent Green‘s premise of processing people into food. Dassanowsky writes, “It is not only possible and marketable in the real world, but the very concept of this postmodern self-improvement elitism derives from the most horrific inhumanity in human history.” I believe that the film’s embodiment of this crisis of masculinity is former bodybuilder Bob Paulson, played by Meat Loaf. As a result of steroid abuse, Paulson has lost his testicles, developed “bitch tits,” and become estranged from his family. His body and spirit are crippled by failed modernity‘s science and technology. He embodies how traditional patriarchy is being lost and how his generation fears feminization. Dassanowsky summarizes: “Without his testicles and with female breasts Bob has become the extreme metaphor for middle-class, male-led panic in the postmodern era, a setting that features a recasting of the same factors of interwar German angst: dehumanization through postmodernity and its technology: international economic and geopolitical instability; and lack of trust in social and political concepts and/or the national identity and role.” (Dassanowsky, 2007)