MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

When David Fincher’s film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s controversial novel Fight Club was released in 1999, reactions were polarized. While many reviewers lauded the film as "one of the best films of the year" and "an uncompromising American classic," critics like Roger Ebert and Rex Reed called the film "fascist," "macho porn," and "a film without a single redeeming quality." A fan of the book and film since their release, I have wondered for almost two decades now how Palahniuk’s story would be received in our increasingly dystopian future. Analyzing the original novel and film alongside more recent adaptations such as the Fight Club video game, the film’s tenth anniversary Blu-ray edition, and the Fight Club 2 comic books (the latter written by Palahniuk himself), this presentation analyzes Fight Club’s relevance some twenty years on. In our era of what Felix Guattari and Antonio Negri have called Integrated World Capitalism (IWC), it is shocking to see the increasing number of individuals violently exploding (and imploding) under its apocalyptic weight. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic approach, this analysis seeks to better diagnose both how (and if) we should still be fighting about Fight Club.