Fight Club and Adbusters
Nov 26, 2002 Read/heard/seen
I finally rented Fight Club and watched it this week. I liked the cinematography, I liked the soundtrack (especially the Tom Waits song) and Ed Norton is always a pleasure. I watched parts of it with the commentary on and found myself getting more and more annoyed.
The movie makes a point of putting down consumerism but it’s one big consumerist fest. I know people who dress like Brad Pitt, and it takes a world of work to be that hip. Just because it’s thrift store chic doesn’t make it a radical rejection of our consumer culture. (Actually Brad Pitt reminded me a lot of a hypocritical ex-boyfriend of mine — same charisma, same cool ratty clothes.) The director, hipper-than-thou, spent millions of dollars to make this movie about how wasteful our culture is. At one point during the commentary he says something about getting an extra few weeks to do some edits and that it cost the studio about six or seven hundred thousand dollars to get him that extra time. Six or seven hundred thousand dollars. For a movie. For a movie touting an anti-consumer point of view. Oh the irony that is Hollywood.
It’s the same problem I have with Adbusters. OK, this magazine costs $6.75 on the newstands. What the hell? Nearly $7 for a magazine that hates people who use their disposable income for disposable goods. Adbusters is pretty but I also think it’s boring.
To me, Fight Club and Adbusters are like the punk rocker who buys all of his/her punk rock clothes at the mall. Piercings alone do not a radical make. Neither do great soundtracks, cool camera angles, blood, guts or gore. You wanna change the world? Get out and change it. Quitchyer bitchin’ and do something already.
Oh and check out these two cool Fight Club action figures. I think they’re hilarious.
November 26th, 2002 at 4:30 pm
I agree Dawn and am lol actually, but Fight Club began as a novel by an anarchist. Read the books, stay away from Hollywood…rent out a good foreign film like Brassed Off from england or What to Do In Case of Fire from germany.
November 26th, 2002 at 6:58 pm
I’m glad that SOMEONE else was annoyed with Fight Club. I expected to love it, as I’m a fan of Norton, and for the first half hour I liked it. Then it started to suck, and the sucking snowballed. Oooooh, bloody. Ooooooh, violent. Oooooh, tricky ending. In our house “Fight Club” is synonymous for “movie that pisses you off so bad you want everyone involved to compensate you for those two annoying hours.” (I don’t really know how long it was. It felt at least four hours long …) Of course, I’m an Adbusters subscriber (or was before it lapsed), so what the heck do I know?
November 27th, 2002 at 7:52 am
I really thought Fight Club was funny in a comic book sort of way (err, “graphic novel” for the adults here). I may be a bit twisted. But I can see that listening to the director blather on in a holier-than-thou way about consumerist culture would be distracting and annoying.
Reading a novel called “Homo Zapiens” by Victor Pelevin that discusses (through the channelled spirit of Che Gueverra) how “art” will be just about the money spent to make it. (It’s actually much more complicated than that and I’m not really sure I’d recommend anyone read the book because I’m afraid of the spooked silence that would result.) Your comments about how much the director spent and about Adbusters relate to that idea.
November 27th, 2002 at 4:50 pm
I really loved Fight Club, for a number of reasons that I won’t go into in a truncated space like this. I just want to defend Brad Pitt’s wadrobe thusly: Tyler Darden was a fictional character! Even in the movie! He didn’t exist! He was Ed Norton’s fantasy version of himself. Of course he dressed cool. It took him no time to dress because it was all in the lead character’s head.
November 29th, 2002 at 12:24 pm
Palahniuk’s books are really good , dirt! Have you read Survivor? Dave brought it home and i read it in a day.
November 29th, 2002 at 11:51 pm
My main problem with Fight Club was the soap thing. I’m a soapmaker and that movie forced me to endure years of idiotic comments from people about whether my soap is made like the soap they made in Fight Club. Grrr.