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Psychoanalytic Perspective In Fight Club

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Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, was directed by David Fincher and made in 1999. The two scenes analyzed in this paper will show that the male body is used as a commodity and therefore falls into a Marxist theory. At the same time, the male body becomes the object of the masculine gaze and can be analyzed using a psychoanalytic tool. The Narrator initiates a sexual desire for his alter ego's body, and therefore for himself. Fight Club reveals, through a Marxist-psychoanalytic reading, that the Narrator has homoerotic tendencies, is narcissistic, and unstable both mentally and physically. The nameless narrator of Fight Club, played by Edward Norton, creates an alter ego, Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. Throughout Fight …show more content…

The first flashback occurs when the Narrator is realizing he and Tyler are the same person. He thinks of the bathroom scene whenever they threatened the masculinity of a leader of the city. His first thought upon regaining his true self is of castrating an authoritative figure. Before he can even get the words "because we're the same person" out of his mouth, he has another flashback to giving himself a chemical burn. This flashback shows his control over pain. The next flashback contains a mixture of Tyler and the Narrator. The Narrator is saying "We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world," yet while he is saying it the camera shakes and reveals Tyler's face mouthing the words as well. Here the audience is able to see that these two characters are the same. Since the image has been made clear, explanations need to be made. Tyler tells the mind, "All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you want to look. I fuck like you want to fuck. I am smart, capable and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not" These lines reveal both the Marxist and Psychoanalytic side to Fight Club. Whenever Tyler says, "I look like you want to look," he is referring to the body as commodity. Through the lines, "I fuck like you want to fuck," Tyler reveals the homoerotic tendencies present in the Narrator's

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