<p>The aim of this paper is to answer three questions about Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club. The three questions were chosen because they were widely debated after the release of David Fincher screenplay based on the same book. The questions are: Is the critique on consumerculture offered in Fight Club valid? What does Fight Club say about the relation between man and woman? Can the work be considered fascist? The critique against consumer culture is found valid and not a disguised complaint about the feminization of society. The main female character Marla is vital for Jack as a blueprint for Tyler. Tyler and Marla are found much alike. The fascist tendencies are present in Tylers character but he can be seen as the protagonist Jacks created father. In the course of Jacks struggle for independence Tyler is doomed to be defeated, so the fascist attitudes can’t be said to be represented by Fight Club as a whole.</p>

The aim of this paper is to answer three questions about Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club. The three questions were chosen because they were widely debated after the release of David Fincher screenplay based on the same book. The questions are: Is the critique on consumerculture offered in Fight Club valid? What does Fight Club say about the relation between man and woman? Can the work be considered fascist? The critique against consumer culture is found valid and not a disguised complaint about the feminization of society. The main female character Marla is vital for Jack as a blueprint for Tyler. Tyler and Marla are found much alike. The fascist tendencies are present in Tylers character but he can be seen as the protagonist Jacks created father. In the course of Jacks struggle for independence Tyler is doomed to be defeated, so the fascist attitudes can’t be said to be represented by Fight Club as a whole.

This thesis discusses the influence of consumption on masculinity beginning in the early modern period of the English Restoration through the twenty-first century. Specifically, this thesis investigates the male figures known as the gallant, the fop and the metrosexual, which are found in the Renaissance, Restoration and twenty-first century respectively. Each figure embodied his society's fears about the effect of consumerism on masculinity by openly wearing sumptuous clothing and practicing "effeminate" behavior. A product of the developing early consumer society, the gallant of the Renaissance was widely and harshly chastised for his dress and behavior. Because mass consumerism was so new in the early modern period, the gallant was able to utilize consumption to express social dissidence and to defy class and gender. Writers such as Thomas Dekker, Philip Stubbes and Barnabe Riche rejected the gallant, but their rejection only served to fuel his subversive behavior. The fop built upon the foundation laid by the gallant and found wider acceptance in the Restoration despite the fact he was still mocked by Restoration society. The fop embodied the specific changes in consumption in the Restoration such as a greater influx of international trade through an excessive adoption of French dress and behavior. I first define the fop through George Etherege's Man of Mode. Then, by comparing William Wycherley's The Country Wife to William Shakespeare's All's Well that End's Well, I distinguish the fop's reception in the Restoration from the gallant's in the Renaissance. The metrosexual was the culmination of the impact of five hundred years of consumerism upon masculinity, and as such did not face rejection by society. Instead, metrosexuality embodies the pervasiveness of consumer-mediated masculinity in the twenty-first century. While some members of contemporary society still struggle to recognize the performative nature of gender identity, instead choosing to cling to the notion that masculinity is in "crisis," the metrosexual openly embraces gender performativity by consuming different products in order to maintain his male gender identity. As a result of metrosexuality masculinity is subsumed under consumerism and all forms of male identity become products to be purchased at will. Chuck Palahniuk tries to envision a world wherein consumerism no longer has any influence over masculinity in Fight Club, but he is ultimately unable to break masculinity away from consumerism because of the powerful bond that had been formed over a half a millennia. Ultimately masculinity is found to be dependent upon consumption, and the days when the male identity could exist apart from consumerism have long since departed. The gallant, the fop and the metrosexual each faced individual challenges, but in the end demonstrate the unbreakable and subversive bond between consumerism and masculinity.

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För att ta reda på hur ett verk kan framhäva sin egen fiktionalitet och hur ett verk kan förhålla sig till andra texter gjorde jag en närläsning och tolkning av Fight Club. Syftet med undersökningen var att försöka undersöka verkets pedagogiska möjligheter att matcha och utmana elevernas litterära och allmänna repertoar, med fokus på textens möjligheter att göra motstånd mot förhållningssättet att läsa litteratur som empirisk avbildning av verkligheten, samt hur jag som pedagog kan använda detta verk för att illustrera hur den som fiktiv text skapar sin betydelse genom sitt förhållande till andra texter och klassiska teman. Det som jag fick fram, var bl.a. att genom sin opålitlige berättare och luckor i texten så framhävde Fight Club sin egen fiktionalitet. Tillsammans med dess tendenser och intertextuella relationer så vill jag hävda att Fight Club utgör ett lämpligt läromedel och stöd i att forma kritiska och estetiska läsare

A ‘religion means Christianity’ equivalence seem to be predominant within the academic publications on religion and film. If a ‘philosophical’ film does not fit within the Christian doctrine, secular philosophies are usually applied to it. This paper tries to do a Buddhist analysis of the film Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999). The Yogacara Buddhist doctrine is used as a base for the thematic analysis, its vocabulary is applied on the narrative progression of the films protagonist. Structure: The paper starts with an introduction on how Buddhism came about through the life story of the Buddha, and then goes deeper into the Buddhist doctrine of thought. It concludes by using Yogacara Buddhist theories and vocabulary in a thematic analysis of the film Fight Club.

<p>A ‘religion means Christianity’ equivalence seem to be predominant within the academic publications on religion and film. If a ‘philosophical’ film does not fit within the Christian doctrine, secular philosophies are usually applied to it. This paper tries to do a Buddhist analysis of the film Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999). The Yogacara Buddhist doctrine is used as a base for the thematic analysis, its vocabulary is applied on the narrative progression of the films protagonist. Structure: The paper starts with an introduction on how Buddhism came about through the life story of the Buddha, and then goes deeper into the Buddhist doctrine of thought. It concludes by using Yogacara Buddhist theories and vocabulary in a thematic analysis of the film Fight Club.</p>

Deictic shift theory (DST) was developed as a model of the construction and comprehension of all types of fictional narrative. With respect to the participant structures of texts, however, DST researchers have focused their attention on deictic shifts in third-person narratives, leaving first-person narratives unanalyzed from this theoretical perspective. As a result, DST in its present form does not adequately account for the variety of manipulations of a range of perspectives that may be achieved in first-person narratives. Nor has DST been systematically applied to texts whose participant structures undergo extensive reorganization as the result of a surprise ending or other narrative twist. By analyzing the deictic and referring expressions that create the participant structure of Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club, this thesis tests DSTs potential to account for authors and readers cognitive experiences of first-person narratives with plot twists. The analysis establishes a wider range of linguistic cues that may affect readers mental representations of characters. It identifies interactions between elements in the participant structure, including those that permit the representation of non-narrating characters subjective perspectives, as well as the linguistic features that enable these interactions. The thesis examines the effects of an authors violations of traditional narrative perspective constraints, and it underscores the importance, especially in DST-motivated analyses, of recognizing the potential for interplay between general narrative constraints and the narrative structure of a specific text. The thesis revises DSTs account of the nature and extent of deictic shifts in first-person narratives and describes the role deictic shifts play in fictional narratives that contain plot twists.

The purpose of this thesis is to critically analyze masculinity portrayals in film at the turn of the Twenty-First Century. Specifically, the films Fight Club and American Beauty are analyzed to determine how these films define masculinity and render the ideal male. This analysis finds that the portrayal of men in these films closely matches the perception of a masculinity crisis. The films also offer a solution to the crisis that follows the philosophical theories suggested by Friedrich Nietzsche. It is concluded that masculinity is a social construction that needs new ideals and definitions to more accurately fit the environment of American men in the new century. / Department of Telecommunications