Fight Club By Chuck Palahniuk

These are some memes I've created to capture some basic ideas about gender and identity from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. Since the 1999 movie images are now linked within pop culture's psyche of the book, I found movie images to base my memes off of, and wrote, or quoted, the headlines accordingly.

The first one echoes Judith Butler's "gender is performance" idea that she wrote about in her work, Gender Trouble, in the context of Fight Club. I think the narrator's expression of masculinity through the formation of Fight Club is a good example of Butler's premise.

Second image quotes Palahniuk's book, from page 21. I chose this quote because it is a great example of how disconnected the narrator is from his own sense of gender/masculinity and identity.

Next, is another quote from the book that emphasizes the triangle between Tyler/Narrator and Marla, even though the two male antagonist/protagonist characters are one in the same (199). This idea somewhat speaks to the gender spectrum idea, as the Tyler identifies as masculine, narrator as numb/neutral, and Marla as a warped version of the feminine model that bookends the overtly masculine Tyler and dysfunctional Narrator. All three characters complete the spectrum from both binary ends.

The narrator crying on Big Bob's "bitch tits" is a powerful commentary on his disconnect, and the only way that he can open up and express emotion is with a man that has female features such as breasts and nurturing tendencies such as hugging/holding (21). This scene makes the reader understand how repressed the narrator's gender identity truly is against the backdrop of a conformist, heteronormative, traditional society.

Marla and the Narrator locked into their support group dynamic (facing each other down like gunslingers) is one of the most entertaining and revealing parts of Palahniuk's book. The fact that each of them are "tourists" to such morbidity so they may feel better about themselves speaks to how apathetic and lost they truly are. Also, the fact that the two of them male and female conform into a romantic (somewhat) heteronormative roles in a supremely grotesque manner is interesting. They can only be a couple under the most ugly and dysfunctional circumstances, such as voyeurism towards those that are almost dead (non-existant).

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. Print.

Fight Club. 20th Century Fox Film Corp, 1999. Film.