Fight Club (1999) dir. David Fincher
You younguns don’t understand what this movie was for my generation. I saw it in 2003. I was in college. I was maybe 19. It was like a call to arms.
The only comparable experience is talking to old hippies about Easy Rider. Easy Rider is a good movie. But it is hard to relate to people who were profoundly affected by it, because it was made for an entirely different culture and generation.
Watching Fight Club now is watching a good movie. Watching Fight Club when it was released as a member of the target audience… was a profoundly affecting experience. This movie changed the way I viewed the world. Fight Club came out 2 years before 9/11.
Bill Clinton’s presidency was winding down, and people were still talking about Monica Lewinsky. It is a movie of its time and of its era. Watching it now still feels like watching a truly great film, but it’s not quite the same
I wonder what’s the equivalent for late millennials and Gen-Z?
My Mom and Dad didn’t like Fight Club. Couldn’t sit through it. Thought it was garbage for the MTV generation.
I understand the concepts of Easy Rider. I watched it once and that was enough. It was not a movie meant for me. I respect it as a film, but I don’t like it. At all.
I’m not sure what film is indelibly linked to Late Millenials/Generation Z. I am not sure I would recognize it if I saw it, to be quite honest.
well said, @da77artblog
Palahniuk has been on Rogan’s podcast a couple times. The most telling and revealing comment in those podcasts on the subject of Fight Club was when Palahniuk talked about how young men didn’t have an Oprah. A self help guru. A male-culture acceptable self help counselor.
“You are not your job. You are not how much money you make. You’re not your fucking Kahkis.”
It’s powerful shit, bud.
I am not sure how well received those sentiments are in 2021. A lot of that is probably written off as toxic masculinity or rallying cries of the patriarchy, or whatever the fuck.
The book and the movie was aimed at, as Tyler put it, “a generation of men raised by women”.
My parents got divorced when I was about 10. In other words, I was the EXACT age where I was old enough to think it was my fault, and not wise enough to understand that it wasn’t about me.
Fight Club was a book and then a movie that was absolutely integral to the culture of the time that it was released. Judging it by today’s standards misses the point and the impact.
