Fragmentation & Pastiche in Fight Club - Analysis #4

A certain amount of life is based on faith. One might question his faith in the reality of his waking life and the surrealism of his dream state, and become schizophrenic in the process. Once schizophrenic, this same individual might question sanity, then knowledge, and ultimately himself. Such an ontological dilemma is what has helped create and define postmodernism. Postmodernists embody a certain ambivalence toward ontology and other soft sciences, and as a result they seem to deny faith and any ultimate truth. As an intellectual movement, postmodernism marked a radical change of thinking in philosophy, sociology and literature. While this movement began after, and largely as a result of WWII, it came into prominence during the 1960’s, and is still seen in the art and culture today. The film Fight Club provides a contemporary example of postmodernism; both through its form and content.

A defining characteristic of postmodern art is the fragmentation of time and space. Whereas works of modernism follow a linear and organized path with regard to plot structure, character development, and theme, postmodern works do not. Derrida was influential in this regard, through his concept of differance, “… by which he meant a simultaneous process of deferment in time and difference in space. One present moment assumes past present moments as well as future present moments” (Rivkin 258). Such deferment is modeled from the very beginning of Fight Club. In its opening scene, the film cuts immediately to another location (space) during narration, and then engages flashback to establish exposition. In addition, this scene doubles as the last scene in the film. In this sense, the entire film is a prolonged “present moment” that recalls details in an anachronistic manner. Another example of this is explicit during the main character, Jack’s travels: “The plane touches down; the cabin bumps. Jack’s eyes open. ‘Pacific, Mountain, Central. Lose and hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?’” (Fincher, Fight Club). This search for identity is couched somewhere in the midst of an unpredictable time-space continuum. The sense that no true identities or truths exist is a reoccurring theme of both Fight Club and postmodernism.
Relating to this fragmentation is the postmodern aspect known as pastiche. Pastiche describes a "stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without a norm. The absence of a norm is what gives pastiche its particular flavor and flair. The demise of the modern world and the subsequent disappearance of the individual subject have provided fertile ground for the flourishing of such heterogeneity” (Boler EBSCO). Pastiche is another aspect of postmodernism that is embodied by the characters of Fight Club. Much of the frustration and repressed anger seen in the film can be ascribed to the characters’ coming of age in a postmodern society that has embraced this aspect that is “devoid of any conviction that ‘normalcy’ exists beyond contradictory and random measures” (Boler EBSCO). The film incorporates and blends together elements from commercial advertising, Marxism, Fascism, Psychoanalysis, and gender roles. This stew of ideas and images steep together to form a film that can at times seem contradictory, but in its postmodern context such contradictions are only a matter of social construction, and are of no consequence.

Taken as a whole, Fight Club exemplifies postmodernism in its stylistic composition, and its thematic montage. In doing so, it forces its audience to question reality, truth, and faith. Such a process may be disenchanting to one’s preconceived notions of substance, presence, and identify, but that is the point. Actually, there is no point. Postmodernism.

Works Cited:

Literary Theory, an Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies). Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2004.

Boler, Megan. "An Epoch of Difference: Hearing Voices in the Nineties." EBSCO. Web.
vid=3&hid=106&sid=310df891-0f72-45a5-b24f-990726312777%40sessionmgr104>.

Fight Club. Dir. David Finch. Perf. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. 20th Century Fox, 1999. DVD.