ABSTRACT
THERE ARE TWO INTERPRETATIONS of David Fincher’s Fight Club that have come to dominate our evaluation and appreciation of the film’s philosophical perspective. Henry Giroux represents one dominant interpretation. He claims that in spite of its apparent subversive politics, Fight Club actually embraces that which it is meant to undo. We initially believe that we are getting a critique of late capitalist society, when we are in fact getting an endorsement of capitalism’s structure of power and domination, just in a new, more muscular form. The film’s ethos endorses a violent rage against the feminization of male identity that is brought about by consumerist culture. Thus, the status quo remains ultimately unchallenged and ultimately the same.
