Postmodernism and Violence

-Since its 1999 release, Fight Club has solidified its place among American pop culture.
-Humor is often used as a means of accepting violent imagery.
-Fight Club is just one of many recent films that treats violence in an ironically humorous manner.
-"In the postmodern procession of simulacra, traditional images of violence have lost their affective power, and consequently have been replaced by a more neutral style" (Grant 24).
-The film's release was delayed because of the spring shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.
-Prior to Fight Club's release, ultimate fighting clubs had been thriving in various American cities.
-Just as the men in Fight Club attempt to reclaim their masculinity through violence, "the contemporary wrestler exemplifies the thoroughly postmodern idea that human identity is purely a construction, a matter of choice, not nature" (Cantor 20).
-Fight Club the power exchange is purely competitive.
-Violence is not the answer.

In the first weekend Fight Club opened in 1999 it grossed $11 million in ticket sales placing it number one at the box office for the weekend of October 15-17. Sixty percent of the audience was male and 58% of the audience was under the age of 25.

David Ansen
This is not a movie that can be easily dismissed or forgotten. An outrageous mixture of brilliant technique, puerile philosophizing, trenchant satire, and sensory overload, Fight Club is the most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It's a mess but one worth fighting about.