Is it alright for a man to cry in public? The media’s representation of masculinity says that real men don’t cry. Instead they show their emotions through fighting. In the movie fight club the narrator (no name given), is trying to find his masculinity that society took away from him. The narrator has a boring office job, wears the same gray suit every day, and goes back to his apartment filled with Ikea furniture. The narrator has Insomnia and he goes to the doctors to see if anything is wrong. The doctor said nothing was wrong with him other than the Insomnia. The doctor tells the narrator about a testicular cancer support group to see what real men look like that is suffering. At the support group the men were crying and telling the group about their emotions. Male support groups allow men to keep masculinity because they are remaining men together. Men do not normally go to support groups to talk about their emotional problems since they do not like to us words. After attending the support group Joe could finally sleep.
The narrator has an imaginary friend named Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) and he is Joe’s alter ego. Tyler is everything that narrator wanted to be, and rejects consumerism and materialistic lifestyle. The narrator and Tyler team up to create Fight Club. Fight Club allows men to relieve their tension and stress the proper way, fist not words. If a group of men do that too then it can appear normal and socially acceptable. The men can prove their masculinity by fighting another member of the club. The men are not fighting because they are angry at each other; they are fighting to find self-discovery, “We’re designed to be hunters and we are in a society of shopping”. When the men fight, they are not being violent; they are challenging each other to be all we can be. “When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered. We all felt saved.” At Fight Club the men can release the stress that society and the work place has put on them. “After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down. “
Fight Club shows many men who are desperate to break free from the prison of modern life and all they need is a way out. The film is arguing that men are growing more feminine and losing touch with their former instinctive selves. They created Fight Club to get back their manhood that society does not accept.
From what we learned in class, man have a tendency to act muscular and when they break that norm, then it questions their manliness. Therefore it takes away their respect of being a man if they cry in public.
ReplyDelete