Awkward. My topic for the research paper is a psychoanalytic view of the narrator/narration in Fight Club. Yikes. And of course, this is the one type of paper mentioned in class as what NOT to do. However I think that may saving grace may be that the narrator in David Fincher's Fight Club is more than a character, he is the narration and I can focus on that and perhaps I can just re-work the thesis a little. I wanted to focus mainly on the image of the family projected on Tyler, Narrator, and the members in Project mayhem. Even though there is a total lack of the feminine in this "family" it still creates an Oedipus complex which (SPOILER ALERT although i am sure everybody has seen this movie) leads to the narrator killing the Tyler Durden- his projected father. This Oedipus complex reveals how truly emasculated these characters, and in turn male society feels. Because of this they are trying to re-write history in a patriarchal fashion.I had a hard time deciding what to do, I couldn't think of a text- or a theory that I wanted to write about, so I looked at the sheet that McGuire gave us to choose from and saw that there was a Marxist reading of Fight Club and I thought that I would enjoy doing a paper on Fight Club and then I found a whole bunch of articles about masculinity, sexuality, patriarchal society and the Oedipus complex in Fight Club and I decided to go from there.
The articles I found are:
A Generation of Men Without History by Krister Friday
Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession by Paul Kennett
and
Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight Club, Patriarchy,and the Politics of Masculine Violence by Henry A. Giroux
Obviously I am still slightly confused/overwhelmed. So I welcome and comments or suggestions.
And I am sorry I couldn't think of a corny Fight Club joke to put in here. So I went with a picture instead.
over and out,
Ben Kelley.
