In a developed, well-written response of 400-450 words, evaluate Tyler's goals. Did he achieve his goal of rescuing masculinity, or did he fail?
Rubric:
Use of Fight Club to support your ideas (specific references to the novel)
9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20
Use of the FC readings to support your ideas (specific references to the articles)
9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20
Use of grammar, voice and word choice
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tyler represents the misguided man, searching to regain his masculinity. We learned in the Case Study 4 note that embodiment itself is a form of feminization. This is because women in history were always the ones who represented the body, and ever since the advent of turn of the century capitalism, men have begun to take their places in billboards and flyers. Tyler is trying to return to men his version of masculinity, the aggressive and irrational man. However, just by imposing his ideals of masculinity on others, Tyler has already failed in his mission. Masculinity was a construction of men’s sons, trying to take on a persona expected from them by society in order to repair their relations with their fathers or friends. Once we dive deeper into what masculinity really is, it becomes more and more unclear. Humans are complex creatures, and each one unique to their own personality. Masculinity is an attempt to categorize men into what they should be, or what society idealizes as the perfect man. In my opinion, the only true masculinity is that which frees men from this cycle, and allows them to do as they please without pressure from society. Tyler has failed at creating this, as Project Mayhem essentially became a society itself pressuring its men to dedicate their lives to the Project, promising them their masculinity, a promise the Project can’t possibly keep. Masculinity is something men need to find in themselves, and it’s properties vary from man to man. The only constant idea of masculinity is that it is not constant. We can see this in Fight Club in Big Bob, a character who aspired to becoming the perfect male form, and in an ironic twist of fate lost his testicles and with them all of his manhood. When Bob heard of Fight Club, he immediately thought of it as a chance to take back what was stolen from him, and what he dedicated his entire life to, his masculinity. When Fight Club evolved into Project Mayhem, Bob continued to follow Tyler. This however, became Bob’s undoing as he dies in one of Project Mayhem’s activities. We see clearly in the first half of the novel that the Project Mayhem persona is not Big Bob’s personality at all, as he plays somewhat of a maternal role for Jack in their support group. By forcing Tyler’s masculine ideals on Bob, Tyler essentially killed Bob, while simultaneously forcing Bob to be someone he wasn’t. This is a prime example of Tyler’s failure, and his fallacies on masculinity.
ReplyDeleteBy Jaime Herzog
***JAIME HERZOG'S MARK THIS ONE PLEASE***
ReplyDeleteTyler represents the misguided man, searching to regain his masculinity. We learned in the Case Study 4 note that embodiment itself is a form of feminization. This is because women in history were always the ones who represented the body, “because embodiment itself is a form of feminization.” (Sedgwick, 33) and ever since the advent of turn of the century capitalism, men have begun to take their places in billboards and flyers. Tyler is trying to return to men his version of masculinity, the aggressive and irrational man. However, just by imposing his ideals of masculinity on others, Tyler has already failed in his mission. Masculinity was a construction of men’s sons, trying to take on a persona expected from them by society in order to repair their relations with their fathers or friends. Once we dive deeper into what masculinity really is, it becomes more and more unclear; “(Masculinity) is an especially noisy dialogic sign in crisis, which has been subjected to continual resignification if not over-signification.” (Sedgwick, 35). Humans are complex creatures, and each one unique to their own personality. Masculinity is an attempt to categorize men into what they should be, or what society idealizes as the perfect man. In my opinion, the only true masculinity is that which frees men from this cycle, and allows them to do as they please without pressure from society. Tyler has failed at creating this, as Project Mayhem essentially became a society itself pressuring its men to dedicate their lives to the Project, promising them their masculinity, a promise the Project can’t possibly keep. Masculinity is something men need to find in themselves, and it’s properties vary from man to man. The only constant idea of masculinity is that it is not constant. We can see this in Fight Club in Big Bob, a character who aspired to becoming the perfect male form, and in an ironic twist of fate lost his testicles and with them all of his manhood. When Bob heard of Fight Club, he immediately thought of it as a chance to take back what was stolen from him, and what he dedicated his entire life to, his masculinity. When Fight Club evolved into Project Mayhem, Bob continued to follow Tyler. This however, became Bob’s undoing as he dies in one of Project Mayhem’s activities. We see clearly in the first half of the novel that the Project Mayhem persona is not Big Bob’s personality at all, as he plays somewhat of a maternal role for Jack in their support group. This is opposite to his persona in Project Mayhem:
“Before I leave for work, I ask Big Bob, who let him in?...
Big Bob says, ‘The first rule in Project Mayhem is you don’t talk-’”. (Palahniuk 131). By forcing Tyler’s masculine ideals on Bob, Tyler essentially killed Bob, while simultaneously forcing Bob to be someone he wasn’t. This is a prime example of Tyler’s failure, and his fallacies on masculinity.
By Jaime Herzog
Tyler Durden attempts to rescue masculinity from a world that is trying to commercialize what it means to be a man and sell it to the average joe. Through Fight club and then Project Mayhem Tyler tries to teach the men that follow him how to fight against the society that has started to feminize them. In trying to do this he does several things that undermine his mission; he creates a society that functions along the same lines as the one they are fighting, that society has a noticeable lack of women that leads to the creation of homoerotic undertones. I believe that in the end he fails in this rescue mission.
ReplyDeleteIn Fight Club Tyler creates Project Mayhem, which is designed to combat the capitalist world. The emasculated males who join the group are there to reclaim their masculinity and break away from the society that controlled them. In doing so they place themselves under the control of Tyler, which renders the whole exercise futile. Ferris talks about this. “Project Mayhem attempts to away from capitalist ideals that force individuals into the traditionally feminine role of serving others, but it ends up repeating the capitalistic conditions preclusive to the hierarchal role of serving others”. Tyler fails to totally free the men and just gives them slavery in a slightly different packaging.
The novel features a lack of female characters that traditionally take certain submissive roles. This creates homosocial and homoerotic undertones throughout the story. There are multiple examples of homoerotic behaviour in the book, for example, ”Tyler’s kiss is a bonfire or a branding iron...Tyler tells me to come back and be with him” (Palahniuk). This part in the book shows Tyler branding Jack with a lye kiss that leaves a chemical burn. As the book goes on, the men that join the club are become branded in the same way. Ferris talks about how, “Homosexuality by default works against patriarchal ideals, as it is not heteronormative, and does not have a “natural” use, such as procreation”, which points towards how Tyler’s, Jack’s and the rest of the Project Mayhem men’s homosocial/homoerotic relationships undermine the effort to rediscover their masculinity, though it does work against the ideals of the time.
Jack turns to/into Tyler to try and rescue his masculinity. Tyler creates the help group that is Fight Club to try and teach or motivate men to reclaim what has been taken from them. In doing this he creates an environment that mirrors the society that they are fighting against and forces men to adopt homosocial roles that display homoerotic undertones. Through these things he negates the ‘positive’ work he is doing to rescue masculinity.
-Mathew Nickel
“Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
ReplyDeleteThrough the development of Fight Club and Project Mayhem, Tyler tries to fight the feminization of the middle class male, and promote the contrary hyper-maculation within them. He tries to fight the consumer corporations that emasculate the male through their consumption of commodities. Tyler explains that
“We're consumers. We are the by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra”(Palahniuk).
These commodities are designed to give the male a sense of self satisfaction because they contribute to the stereotypical picture of what a successful male is. However, he ironically fails in this goal by turning the men of Project Mayhem into space monkeys, “ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good” (Palahniuk). He makes his space monkeys perform emasculating tasks in efforts to overthrow the corporations and contribute to the leveling of society. Project Mayhem “reproduce(s) the same effects of capitalism by creating the illusion of freedom through demands for self-regulation and self-punishment” (Lynn M. Ta, Hurt So Good). Through leveling the corporations he levels society and makes everyone “not –all”. The term “not-all” is referring to an equalized gender; under this notion, members of society have no power in their gender. His failure is a result of the submission of the space monkeys in that they build their masculinity by participating in the masochist ritual of fighting, but then when he applies them to his goal of leveling society, he re-feminises them by convincing them to aid him in tasks centered on his goal, such as the production of soap.
“It (Project Mayhem) still demonstrates socialized responses to interactions with domination and subjugation, the very power system that these male subversives are trying to bring down. Without women in the picture, the patriarchal picture of men subjugating women transforms into a homosocial experience in which men can subjugate each other in order to explore their own femininity more freely”(Michelle Ferris, Unmarked Men: Feminism in Fight Club)
Project Mayhem relies on its pyramid structure at which Tyler is at the top and monkeys are at the bottom, effectively dehumanizing and castrating them when they lack even a name. Through their willing participation and submission to Tyler’s pyramid concept, the monkeys give up their phallic power to Tyler, feminizing themselves despite Tyler’s original goal. The re-masculation, defeminisation, or even hyper-masculation of males of this generation by way of destroying capitalist consumer corporations and leveling society itself was Tyler’s intention. However, the implementation of Project Mayhem oppresses the men in the same way that the capitalistic corporations oppressed them originally because of the dehumanizing, emasculating, and therefore feminizing ways that Tyler organized his regime’s attacks on capital consumerism.
-Drew Smith
As its name would suggest, Palahnuik’s Fight Club is filled with fighting, and not just as it occurs in the fist-punching sense of the word. By creating Fight Club and Project Mayhem, Tyler Durden steps into a larger fight against consumer capitalism, which he believes has led to the feminization of men in society. It is my opinion, however, that Tyler’s efforts to break down and rebuild masculinity are ultimately unsuccessful. In his attempt to return to a “raw” form of masculinity, Tyler creates a set of standards and expectations for men that mirror what he is trying to replace.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Tyler tries to liberate men from the controlled hierarchy of consumer capitalism, he offers them relief through a club (and later, an organization) that is equally controlling and repressive. In her article, Lynn Ta pinpoints this irony with the following quotation: “Fight Club, and later Project Mayhem, reproduce the same effects of capitalism by creating the illusion of freedom through demands for self-regulation and self-punishment” (Ta 267). When discussing the criteria for joining Project Mayhem, Tyler tells Jack “no applicant will be considered unless he arrives equipped with the following items and exactly five hundred dollars cash for personal burial money” (Palahnuik 127). Project Mayhem, whose members are required to dress accordingly, follow Tyler’s lead at all times, and even work for Tyler’s soap making business, reflects in many ways the capitalism that is believed to have feminized them. The men may be freed from society’s consumerist definitions of masculinity, but are soon trapped in an organization where their identities (and thus their masculinity) are again controlled.
In addition to creating these ironic standards in Project Mayhem, Tyler also sets up an idea of masculinity that is altogether too constructed by the end of the novel; this works against his purpose and makes the Fight Club (and Project Mayhem) men less masculine. Faludi emphasizes that part of man’s masculinity involves a lack of awareness: “to be self conscious about themselves as men means to be always already suspect as a man” (Faludi 37). In Fight Club, the men are so caught up in the effort towards masculinity that they go as far as trying to castrate their own leader: “You know the drill, Mr. Durden. You said it yourself. You said, if anyone ever tries to shut down the club, even you, then we have to get him by the nuts” (Palahnuik 187). Here, the Space Monkey’s extreme actions seem more like a performance than a necessary step towards rebuilding masculinity. They are so concerned with what it takes to be a man that they unconsciously feminize themselves in the process. Within this same example, a large emphasis is placed on the physicality of the human body. Castration is used as the ultimate threat, conveying the men’s beliefs that the physical aspects of a man are what define his masculinity; that manhood cannot exist in the absence of the male body. This is in contradiction with Faludi’s earlier point that “masculinity and the male body are not reducible to each other but each is articulated through the other” (Faludi 32).
It is for these reasons that Tyler’s attempts to rescue masculinity with the creation of Fight Club and Project Mayhem do not succeed. Though he manages to release the men from some of the previous holds on their masculinity, such as consumerism, his organizations unintentionally create new ways to restrict and over-define masculinity that take away from their purpose.
- KATIE JANY
In Fight club, Tyler Durden is a character created in Jack’s head to represent everything that he wishes he was. Tyler is an idealized character that represents masculinity in its most extreme form. His goal is to bring back masculinity and to bring back purpose to the people of his generation. Traditional male values have been stripped and replaced with commercial values that makes people compete with who has the best and newest things. Jack created him because he did not have the personality or authority to change the way the world had become. Fight club was created for men to feel something real. The media has been putting all kinds of ideas in men's heads on how to be a real man. What they are really doing is trying to expand their market by masculinizing feminine products. In the past men used to not dare look anything like a women. They would do all the dirty work and get in fights and competition to prove their manhood. Now, what are considered female products are being used by men, like hair products and accessories such as scarves and earrings. In fight club men have the ability to go back and feel the way "real" men of the past felt. Project Mayhem was the next step. Its purpose was to cause havok in order to put society at rock bottom so that they could regrow and make something of themselves.“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.” The best and strongest of fight club where put to work as what Jack called them "space monkeys" to do everything that Tyler tells them to do. The space monkeys follow Tyler blindly, and do everything he says to do whether it is making giant smiley faces on buildings or castrating Jack. When they constantly do as Tyler tells them too they are taking mankind back to a time when the norm was for servants to follow and do as their master tells them to, or a wife doing as her husband tells her. Tyler tells his space monkeys that he sees so much potential in them and they could do anything but in the way he is treating them, they are not equal they are his slaves; they will never be or come close to Tyler. He says that he wants to bring back lost masculinity but in the way he is treating his supporters he is just bringing them back to a time when inequality was acceptable. Tyler wants things and has goals that he cannot fulfill. His fear of castration and not being a man anymore led to him and jack becoming just that. His resistance to things being more mixed; as in men becoming more feminine’ has led to him dying. Tyler is a “white male rebels” because he thinks that he is a victim because everything is changing around him but him. Humans evolve and norms change. His attempts to bring back masculinity failed because even he couldn't keep away from the always changing ways of life.
ReplyDeleteAya El-Morched
Tyler Durden is everything Jack wishes he could be. Tyler is the result of Jack’s insomnia mixed with the desire to escape his mundane life, tied together with Jack’s search for masculinity. “Jacks melancholic sadomasochism is the product of what he perceives to be the feminization of late capitalism; as a corporate drone, he feels victimized by a culture that has stolen his manhood”(Ta 266). These problems in Jack’s life prompts his alter-ego to create Fight Club, where Jack can get away from his routine life and validate his masculinity, and Project Mayhem which is an attack on the already established social order and consumerist society. Although Tyler has concocted elaborate schemes to fulfill his ideals, his ultimate goals were never reached.
ReplyDeleteFight Club represents an escape from everyday life. It provides a different identity for people who want to escape the label put on them by the world outside of Fight Club. It also provides men with a sense of toughness and masculinity. “You saw the kid who works in the copy centre,...this kid was a god for ten minutes when you saw him kick the air out of an accountant representative twice his size…”(Palahniuk 48). While escaping the outside world these men step into a new world with the same principles just with a different leader; Tyler Durden. They are labelled not with names or titles, but with scars and black-eyes. “Every bar I walk into, every fucking bar, I see beat up guys. Every bar, they throw an arm around me and want to buy me a beer… It must be the hole in my cheek, everyone calls me sir”(Palahniuk 157). Fights in Fight Club are simulated, thus these men don’t get the authentic feeling of a fight. Instead of Fight Club being an escape from conformity, men are relabeled and retaught Tyler’s ideals making the idea of Fight Club ineffective.
Project Mayhem is Tyler’s way of going against the social norm. Project Mayhem’s true goal is to liberate people from the consumerist society in which they live by evening social status. “...Project Mayhem will break civilization so we can, make something better out of the world”(Palahniuk 125). Project Mayhem recruits a few men from Fight Club, but then it turns into an army of “Space Monkeys” doing everything and anything Tyler Durden will say. Project Mayhem becomes the very things Tyler wants to destroy; a corporation. “...Fight Club, and later Project mayhem, reproduce the same effects of capitalism by creating the illusion of freedom through demands for self-regulation and self-punishment”(Ta 267). Therefore, Tyler’s goal to break the social norm is useless because he creates a new society through Project Mayhem.
-Alvin Fortaleza
DeleteFight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk is an idea that power, designed for a single purpose can be used to provide devastating effects. Tyler Durden is the dominant and manipulative alter-ego of Jack. With this power over Jack, Tyler attempts to make his greater vision of the world a reality. Tyler's ultimate goal is to model the world with traditional masculine values and cease male feminization through consumerism and oppression through capitalism. In Tyler's attempts to tear down masculinity to its purest form, he is successful. This is because something that is an idea in Jack's mind creates animalistic and primitive chaos beyond anyone's control.
ReplyDeleteTyler offers people an alternative to their traditional way of living in a capitalistic oppressive world. Tyler wants society to escape from this place, therefore creating fight club. Tyler is giving the members of fight club (as well as project mayhem) an opportunity to buy into his service of retrieving their masculinity. This is Tyler’s version of creating his own form of consumerism in order to break the current one. In fight club, “The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club”(Palahniuk 48). In Case Study 4: Fight Club we learn that “men were not suppose to be embodied in a public way”(Faludi, Sedgwick 33). Fight club’s secret society revives the idea that privacy is masculine. This contributes to Tyler's solution on creating his perfect world. In project mayhem, Tyler tells his group of space monkeys to only bring:
Two black shirts.
Two black pair of trousers.
One pair of heavy black shoes.
Two pair of black socks and two pair of plain underwear.
One heavy black coat (127).
Through this request, Tyler is asking the members of Project Mayhem to remove themselves from their past consumer identities. This cult-like atmosphere gives these people the ability to regain their masculinity, as it is monitored and maintained.
As in standard society, there are repercussions for wrongful actions. In the case of Jack. “Jack therefore seeks to recover what he perceives to be his lost masculinity by resorting to violent measures”(Ta 266). These violent measures lead Jack creating a masochistic freak alter-ego in Tyler. When Jack eventually learns of Tyler's presence, he fears the worst for the actions that he has caused. During project mayhem the punishment for disobedience or repression against project mayhem is castration. Jack soon learns that even Tyler is not exempt from his own rules. “You said, if anyone ever tries to shut down the club, even you, then we have to get him by the nuts”(187). Tyler has created a secret society revolving around the creation of chaos and destruction in order to go against the current male values in society. Jack and Tyler have successfully destroyed a large group of people all across America.
Through Tyler's ability to manipulate and control people, he has found a way to force and maintain the removal of oneself from a capitalistic and feminist society. He has also successfully managed to convince Jack to commit self mutilation. Therefore, Tyler did accomplish what he wanted. He may have convinced his space monkeys to believe in his capitalistic culture. Tyler did free his group of people from their previously estranged lives serving society. In turn, Tyler did in fact rescue many peoples masculinity.
-PAUL GONCHAROW
Throughout Fight Club Tyler Durden has had one true goal; To save a generation of men raised by women. Tyler’s journey throughout the story is spent creating chaos in an attempt to revitalize the masculinity his generation has left behind. After Tyler and Jack discover a new sense of adrenaline after repeatedly punching each other in the face, the idea of Fight Club is conceived. Violence is a vehicle for the rise of masculinity. Fight Club was created by men for men in an attempt to save the manhood of Generation X. The reason Fight Club is such a masculine activity is the obvious reason; violence. Violence, in this story is the symbol of all powerful symbols in this story. From the raw masculine energy, to the hidden phallacies hidden throughout the violence, and even self-destruction until rebirth/recreation. Tyler later creates Project Mayhem, a group created of the members of Fight Club that destroy corporate and consumerist establishments. The submissive culture of corporate drones, is as Project Mayhem believes, the fault of being raised by women. In an attempt to free the men of their generation from the shackles of a corporate, consumerist America, they cause destruction under the reign of Tyler Durden; However, it is this kind of dictated society the men are trying to abolish in the first place. In order to create a free society, these men must place themselves under the rule of another high power, the exact type of power they were trying to destroy. Did Tyler succeed in his ultimate goal, saving a generation of men raised by women? No. The answer is simple, Tyler Durden did not succeed in saving a whole generation, but what he did do was shape the way for the rest of these men’s lives. All of the members of fight club are there for a reason, they’ve lost themselves somewhere along the way. Jack is the perfect embodiment of this idea. Jack is lost in a world that gives him no satisfaction, Jack does not get to be a man. In Tyler, Jack finds the manhood he searches for. Tyler Durden did not succeed in saving a generation of men raised by women, he did however, save Jack. Jack is the embodiment of Tyler, Jack represents what Tyler represents. Tyler represented a world of change, the destruction of corporate fascism, and the rebirth of masculinity, when Jack fully understood Tyler, his way of life, his soul, his beliefs, all returned to Jack. Tyler saved one man, but that one man could be the one to change the world.
ReplyDelete- Ben Cipryk
Tyler Durden reached his goals of masculinity because he exposed what modern day culture is doing to masculinity and manhood for a brief moment. It is unreasonable to ask one person or even the imaginary friend of one person to accomplish the task of rescuing masculinity completely but Tyler Durden accomplished moments that were groundbreaking such as the many fight clubs he started across the country where men would gather together and release primal urges of violence on one another in order to regain the feeling of being alive. Tyler understood that life wasn’t always perfect and expectations should not be kept high. For instance tyler says: “One minute was enough, A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”(Palahniuk.3.33). Tyler created what some would consider massive destruction with his group that formed project mayhem. This type of destruction only lasted for a short time when looked at from a timeline perspective, however, like the single slices of pornography on the movie reels; this destruction caused a subliminal message to those who have seen or heard about it. This destruction was a lot more successful to Tyler’s goals than what was seen. Furthermore, Tyler Durden who happens to also be the same person as our nameless narrator has rescued his own masculinity successfully. The Narrator unintentionally describes himself when he says’ “You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything.” (Palahniuk.6.51). Tyler, Also known as Jack the Narrator; was once a self-diagnosed victim who forced himself to cry in order to feel human and ultimately cure his insomnia. Tyler Durden burnt down his own house, quit his unethical office job, started having meaningless intercourse with marla singer and formed a cult to rage against consumer society. All of these specific accomplishments contributed to his own personal regeneration of masculinity which which is all you can ask for when attempting to rescue masculinity as a whole.
ReplyDelete-Lukas Brennan