Masculinity in Fight Club

This blog post is brought to you courtesy of Tammy, Zena, Misti, and Ryan

The treatment of masculinity and manliness is a major theme throughout Fight Club. 

The first passage from the book we chose is on page 17, and takes place while the narrator is at the support group for testicular cancer, and is in the clutches of Bob:

“You cry,”  Bob says and inhales and sob, sob, sobs.  “Go on now and cry.”  The big wet face settles down on top of my head, and I am lost inside.  This is when I’d cry.  Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.”

There is the obvious significance of the fact this is a group for men with testicular cancer, many of whom have lost their testicles.  This leaves them feeling empty, and without their manhood and what it is that defines them as men.  The male organ is featured prominently throughout the text; in the testicular cancer group, in the pieces of film Tyler splices into family movies, and threat of castration, which is the strongest weapon project mayhem uses.  Whenever someone poses a threat to project mayhem, they are not killed, they are simply held down and shown a rubber band and a rather large knife.  This is a bigger threat to most men than even death.  Because if any man were to suffer this fate, they would end up in that same church basement locked in a big wet hug with Bob.

The second piece from the novel we used is on page 141:

The mechanic says, “If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God.  And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?… “What you end up doing,” the mechanic says, “is you spend your life searching for a father and God.” 

In this example, God is a symbol of masculinity, and another father figure.  A boy’s father is his example and role-model for what manliness is supposed to be; and when a boy is without a father and without God, they have no model for manliness and spend their life searching.  It is also worth noting that the person delivering this speech is known as the mechanic.  The mechanic is regarded as a manly profession, with the cars and working with your hands. 

The novel gives no set definition for masculinity.  What it does present is a notion that masculinity/manliness is its own underground society, bordering on cult-like status.  And men must seek out these underground groups, such as the cancer support group and fight club, and join in an attempt to be around other men and discover what it is to be a man.  

   

This notion of masculinity is the opposite of what we saw when we read Written on the Body.  In that text, the use of the ambigious narrator illustrates how gender does not matter and either sex is capable of acting in such a way.  This goes against what we see in Fight Club, which is an attempt to discovery the exact meaning of what it is to be a man.  Switching to Jameson, we could say that the historical image of masculinity does not exist, and what we have is only a representation of what we think manliness is supposed to be.