Fight Club Exam Response

What does your chosen film reveal about the usefulness of one or more critical approaches you have applied?

The film that I have studied for this question is David Fincher's 1999 film, Fight Club, which features a certain critical approach that questions the masculinity of the male characters in the film. This critical approach allowed me to understand the narrative of the film more and the reasons as to why certain characters did certain things in the film. The film begins with the audience seeing the narrator, Jack, going to a pressure group that men who are experiencing testicular cancer go to for support. We see several men sitting in a circle talking about their feelings, located in an American gym. In the shot the audience can see an American flag on the wall, as well as a basketball court. This is one of factors of the crisis of masculinity, as these American men, which are usually perceived as manly, are ignoring their surroundings of the sports hall and talking in a circle, which could be considered as being the feminine way of dealing with this problem. It could be argued that to solve this problem, playing basketball like men would have worked, but in this sequence it shows that the males are giving into the testicular cancer and this is making them quite feminine. The males in this circle are wearing name badges, and this shows that they have no identity as it is in the process of being taken away. There is a specific character, named Bob, who has been a victim of this femininity, as he had testicular cancer and therefore had to have his testicles removed. Bob was given pills which contained oestrogen, and this caused him to grow a set of female breasts. It could be argued that Bob's name is a playful pun, as Bob is only one letter away from being the word, Boob. Bob later becomes a member of the Fight Club/Project Mayhem and this helps him to regain some of his masculinity, despite the breasts.