The Influence of Fight Club

[Purple Tentacle]

...or The destructive influence of Fight Club


Fight Club is probably one of my favouritest films of all time, when I first got the DVD I must have watched it about once a month for 6 months.

I then deliberately starved myself of it for years, wanting to forget enough so that when I watched it again it would be just as fresh and daring as when I first saw it.


What I actually found when I watched it last week puzzled me..... I found myself thinking "Cuh, cancer eh?", and generally being dissapointed with the "dark" tone of the film.... but this got me thinking, has Fight Club spawned such an array of imitators that it's diminished the appeal of the original film?


I actually do enjoy Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels quite a lot, but the endless fucking rip-offs (some by Guy Ritchie himself) have soured me against the film so much that I don't know when I'm going to watch it.

I hooted with delight at the line "You're too fat to join, old man. And your tits are too big." originally in Fight Club, but where jokes about cancer, disability and suicide were fresh and clever back in good old 2000, have the likes of Nighty Shite, League Of Gentlemen  (which I like, but that's enough now) and countless other "dark" comedies tainted a formerly brilliant film?

I've ranted in other threads about how the endless "flight instruction" pictures that every advertising agency pukes out didn't appear until after Fight Club, and I think it's important not to underestimate the influence that the film had on popular culture... for better or for worse.


In other words... is Fight Club singuarly responsible for the glut of shite dark matter we find ourselves drowning in?

[RFT]

Doesn't the first series of LoG pre-date fight club?

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

And Blue Jam/Jam. Purple Tentacle has messed up.

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

Yeah but the original novel Fight Club was published in 1996 which was before the first series of LoG.

Anyway, jokes about suicide, cancer and abortion and other taboo subjects have been around for ages. I can't think of any examples of those at the moment, but Swift used infantcide and cannabalism as a satirical joke in A Modest Proposal. I think Fight Club took all those old taboos and slapped them about abit, gave them a year 2000 anti-gloss and a grungy 'fuck you' sneer, perhaps reintroducing the idea of dark humour - or whatever you want to call it - to a new generation of comedians who don't read books. Perhaps this new swathe of comedians who tell their jokes in a monotone (there's a difference between Jack Dee's deadpan and Jimmy Carr's monotone) about ordering a dead baby through the post by mistake or giving their sister an abortion for her 30th birthday, or similar supposedly anti-capitalist, anti-bourgoisie, anti-intellectual intellectualism, would not have appeared quite so willingly and strongly if Fight Club hadn't existed, but then perhaps they wouldn't if Morris hadn't existed either. On the Brass Eye press release, Morris wrote: Top this you Quisling fucks! and he's right, once something new, interesting and startling is created, so a lot of feeble slavish imitators are too, but their effort lack most-to-all of the genius of the original creation - hence from Brass Eye we get Ali G and Bo'Selecta; from Jam and LoG, we get Nighty-Night. I think I've lost the plot a bit now...


...I'm not sure how much sitcoms have been influenced (excluding the homages, in, say, Spaced) by the film though. In nihillistic attitude, probably quite a lot - Nighty-Night was quite nihillistic and cynical, but of course lacked the satirical bite, the humour, or the irony of Fight Club.

But Fight Club's a cracking film, the only film (with possibly the exception of Se7en) that I watch Brad Pitt in without making aspursions about him, and containing certainly the best Helena Bonham-Carter performance, although in my mind she can do no wrong, with or without monkey make-up.

[Munday's Chylde]

You're wrong about fight club you know? It's crap.

But on the subject of dead babies with cancer being fucked up the arse... I think it's a shame nowadays that any attempt to add certain things into a comedy programme leads to them being labelled as 'dark' and worse still prompts a lot of  "they're trying to be...." or "oooh look at me arent I being..." comments from people (always a bugbear of mine, getting into the minds of writers instead of just commenting on their work) because as with any label giving criticism it completely narrows the field. Reading some comments recently I really dont think anyone will be forgiven for making a joke about cancer or throwing in a reference to an animal or an 80's star no matter how funny it may or may not be - instant dismissal on the grounds of the writers thought process rather than their quality. No sir I dont like it. It's not going to be the Avid Merrions of this world killing off the future of comedies if you ask me, it's going to be the commentators. Seriously is anything 'dark' (quote marks compulsory too I notice) going to be accepted for the next few years or will it just be poo poo'd for 'trying to be' dark?

Sorry about that ramble. I kind of wanted to start a post about this sort of thing but I thought I'd just latch onto another thread instead.

[weekender]

Seriously is anything 'dark' (quote marks compulsory too I notice) going to be accepted for the next few years or will it just be poo poo'd for 'trying to be' dark?

I suppose it depends if it's funny or not.

[Evil Knevil]

Seriously is anything 'dark' (quote marks compulsory too I notice) going to be accepted for the next few years or will it just be poo poo'd for 'trying to be' dark?

I suppose it depends if it's funny or not.

Yeah, like that's going to change anything.

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

Munday's Chylde wrote:

You're wrong about fight club you know? It's crap

Thanks. [/b]

[Rats]

He's right you know, it's a mediocre watchable trashy film at best. I've never understood why it's held in such high regard by non teenagers. Same with the matrix.

[chand]

He's right you know, it's a mediocre watchable trashy film at best. I've never understood why it's held in such high regard by non teenagers. Same with the matrix.

Because it like, fucks with your perceptions of reality, man. And shit.

I like the film (Fight Club that is, I thought The Matrix was wank), but it seems terribly overrated.

[Narshty]

He's right you know, it's a mediocre watchable trashy film at best. I've never understood why it's held in such high regard by non teenagers.

I have to agree. The first 45 minutes are fantastic, then it just has the distinct feeling of things being made up as it goes along, with a surprise twist that doesn't actually make the faintest bit of sense no matter how many ways you look at it.

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

But whereas The Matrix trilogy has absolutely nothing of interest, except perhaps the odd (one) exhilirating shoot out, Fight Club has. If you forget all the satirical and social commentary stuff, it's still well acted, written and directed, which is more than you can say for, say, The Matrix. And although what it says isn't new, it says it in an interesting, if superficial, way.

If you want overrated, see Se7en, which is just a trashy hardboiled cops movie, that plays like an Industrialist's wet dream, with nothing particularly new in it, only watchable for its last 20 minutes. Or the Star Wars films for that matter.

EDIT: Admittedly Fight Club plays a bit like a grungy nihiliist's wet dream, and it has been used as a mouthpiece for loaded etc., which is rather depressing.

[Rats]

God yeah, sesevenen is another one, utter tripe. I didn't enjoy that. I liked the bit with the skinny guy on the bed though and that line where he goes something like "when do you realise your mad? Are you just sitting there fucking fistfulls of your own shit one day and then say `christ, I'm one twisted fuck up`"

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

A bit like Jam, then.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Re Munday's post:

It's the attitude behind it though, isn't it? You can usually tell when a comedian is doing something from the heart (where the darkness/animal surrealism is incidental to the main thrust of why it's funny) and when they're just pushing the Monkey Dust buttons.

It's like what Stephen Fry said about those who sneer at Ulysses - 'only idiots believe writers set out to shock'. I think that's true of stuff which is good to start with. Jerry Sadowitz, Derek and Clive, MWE, Brass Eye, et al - they weren't good *because* they were shocking, but because they were true to themselves. They couldn't have been done any other way. They evolved naturally from a comedy landscape that needed them.

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

Perhaps the same can be said of  David Lynch. On one side, there are the critics and audience who think that Eraserhead (for example) is just a weird trippy movie about nothing, and its just Lynch messing around with the camera and your heads - he just sets out to confuse, and the film has no meaning whatsoever, thus we shouldn't read anything into it. I think this denegrates Lynch and paints him as a rather witless superficial director, which I don't think he is.

On the other side, are people who think that his films have got underlying meanings (not necessarily messages like 'Love one another' and world peace), and they have been deliberately (and sub-consciously too) loaded by Lynch, with symbolism - thus, his films have deeper meanings. I'd prefer to belong to the latter group, as at least they give Lynch some credit for intelligence. The worst situation is where the former group claim that you're reading too much into the film and you should just treat it like a film and nothing more. I personally think that's like saying a painting or a piece of music is just  some daubs of paint and nice brushwork or a nice tune- and bugger all else. Of course they are great pieces of art etc., and you can just appreciate them on that level (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that; it's not as if I read meanings into every film I see or every painting I look at), but you've got to accept that it is possible to read into art.

Sorry, I've digressed, I was meaning to say that Lynch and others like him (Bunuel, Chris Marker) don't make films solely to confuse you, because that would be a pointless endeavour. I don't think Lynch goes out with the intention of confusing the audience for the sake of it.

On the subject of shock tactics, a quite good (film) example is A Clockwork Orange. In the scene where Alex and his droogs burst into the writer's house and begin to beat him up and eventually rape his wife, Alex sings 'Singin' in the Rain.' He does this while he trashes the writer's desk, kicks the writer, and cuts the clothes of his wife. On one level, this is shocking, because he's beating a guy up and about to rape his wife, and this is intensified by the fact he's singing a famously cheery song and obviously immensly enjoying him. But Kubrick is not trying to shock for the sake of it, and the scene can be deconstructed thus: to exemplify the sadism of Alex & droogs; to make the audience be appalled by the violence, but laugh (perhaps guiltily) at the song, and the absurdity of the siutation; and to demonstrate the break away from the era of Golden Hollywood (as represented by Singin' in the Rain) and into a new era of film-making (eg. A Clockwork Orange). But knowing that does not detract from the enjoyment of the film.

Conversely, I'm not a total convert to 'He's trying to make a point' school of reading films/TV. You could probably over-read ludicrously too much into TDT and BE, and possibly even Jam. Then again, I'm very reluctant to believe that in Jam, Morris isn't, say, criticising certain classes and practises in some sketches - like the Unflustered Parents

[slim]

Sorry, I've digressed, I was meaning to say that Lynch and others like him (Bunuel, Chris Marker) don't make films solely to confuse you, because that would be a pointless endeavour. I don't think Lynch goes out with the intention of confusing the audience for the sake of it.

Do you not ever suspect/wonder though if some directors, artitsts or musicians deliberately pander to the people who are at the extreme of the second set you mention, in order to popularise themselves and milk a gullible set of art lovers of their money?

Perhaps I'm just too cynical and paranoid... I'm not suggesting Lynch is like that, I just wonder from time to time if people like Damien Hirst sit on a big pile of money he's acquired and laugh at the punters buying his stuff.

Then again, perhaps I'm just too ignorant, and I fail to understand some things on the correct level.

Or, perhaps the people milking the punters rely on people feeling ignorant and that they have to be seen to understand. For example, I have a friend who I'm sure only has the two pieces of "art" on his lounge wall through feelings of insecurity and a need to be part of a certain set. Not that that implies the artist  on this occasion deliberately  cajoled my friend into buying them, but others may.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Actually, the example I'd use is that bloke from Viz who does the Gilbert Ratchett strips - can never remember his name, but he's brilliant. He'll do shock-subjects occasionally, and he'll also do animal surrealism (The Bum-Faced Goats) and references to bands (Slipnot in Space), etc. But you just KNOW he's not doing any of it in a posturing, this'll-be-popular way - it's all completely natural, it's stuff he himself finds personally hilarious. Try as I might, I just don't get this feeling from The Mighty Boosh, Nighty Night or (especially) Monkey Dust.

[Munday's Chylde]

It's the attitude behind it though, isn't it? You can usually tell when a comedian is doing something from the heart (where the darkness/animal surrealism is incidental to the main thrust of why it's funny) and when they're just pushing the Monkey Dust buttons.

What would the people who write these types of comedies say if you asked them whether they were just 'trying to be all'? Would they say "No im not i just wrote a silly idea that popped into my head." and if they did say that then are they lying or is the 'trying to be' thought process a subconcious one that they aren't even aware of but you are somehow privvy to?

See my problem with it?

Now you yourself are not a professional synic and are very passionate about comedy, I know that and I don't doubt for a moment you believe you are right when you get into the minds of the creators. I do however think, unfortunately. that the attitude is a contagious one and I find this forum now contains a lot of people who make very similar comments and are quick to disregard a lot of shows on the grounds of being distressed about the thought process of the writers and the types of viewers that watch it. Now to me this actually spoils a lot of genuine 'is is good? is it funny?' analysis that I used to come here for.

I don't think im making my point very well at all. Does anyone brighter than me know what I mean and would they care to say it better? Or am I alone here?

[Happyman]

Sorry, Emergency Lalla Ward Ten, but you're completely contradicting yourself.  Either Stephen Fry is right and only an idiot would believe a writer sets out to shock, or you can tell when a writer is producing comedy for the wrong motives, i.e. to shock, and not 'from the heart'.  If you believe both then you are, by Fry's definition, an idiot.

[weekender]

Either Stephen Fry is right and only an idiot would believe a writer sets out to shock, or you can tell when a writer is producing comedy for the wrong motives, i.e. to shock, and not 'from the heart'.  If you believe both then you are, by Fry's definition, an idiot.

Hold on, that makes no sense, it doesn't seem like you're taking different works into account.

A writer can set out to shock, fine, and a writer can also set out to write a piece of work which they believe in.  The two are different, and very occasionally they overlap - I think that it is the latter that usually results in a great piece of work, like Ulysses, or The Day Today etc.  I tend to think that the 'heart' has come first in such works, and the 'shock' effect is merely a by-product of the original intention/imagination.

When a writer sets out to write a piece of work because their intention is just for it to be 'shocking', like Nighty Night, for example,  I believe that work which is designed with a specific intention in mind does not tend to work as well as work which comes from something the artist believes in.

Apologies for the vague nature of this post.

[Hemi]

Sorry, Emergency Lalla Ward Ten, but you're completely contradicting yourself.  Either Stephen Fry is right and only an idiot would believe a writer sets out to shock, or you can tell when a writer is producing comedy for the wrong motives, i.e. to shock, and not 'from the heart'.  If you believe both then you are, by Fry's definition, an idiot.

It's like what Stephen Fry said about those who sneer at Ulysses - 'only idiots believe writers set out to shock'. I think that's true of stuff which is good to start with.

Happyman, you don't take into account the bit I've made bold.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I think shock is not so much an optional extra, more an integral part of why something works. Instances when something is 'nasty' because no other words would have done the job.

It's also about the sheer guts behind a creation. This was always my problem with Big Train, for example - it seemed a bit anaemic, like they'd taken one aspect of TDT-style comedy, magnified it ridiculously, and done nothing else with it. The idea of Prince being the subject of a wildlife film mightly be vaguely funny as a throwaway gag as part of some huge circus of ideas, but elongated on its own terms it seems a bit pointless. There's a few weak gags in TDT, but the sheer chutzpah of the whole enterprise means you don't notice them - greater than the sum of its parts and all that. Now that *has* to come from a conviction that the team (a) really enjoyed making it, and (b) were pathologically desperate to get their ideas on screen because they knew the show *had* to be made.

Of course, I don't know for sure this wasn't the case with Nighty Night. They may have had a ball for all I know. And I know talking about certain comedy shows having 'souls' or a 'twinkle in the eye' sounds like I've run out of arguments, but...I don't know. I think, a lot of the time, the minutes from the marketing meetings are so easy to visualise I'm amazed anyone falls for them. This is the 2004 media we're talking about here, a world of Peter Bazalgettes and Mark Lawsons. Is Julia Davis really a 'little old me' type, nervous about how her pet project is being received? Isn't that the way they sold The Office to us? Aren't they just trying to repeat the formula?

[Rats]

What shocked you in the day today weekender? I'm racking my brains trying to think of 1 thing that would upset someone.

Is Julia Davis really a 'little old me' type, nervous about how her pet project is being received? Isn't that the way they sold The Office to us? Aren't they just trying to repeat the formula?

No idea, I just saw the show. Were the BBC sending out press kits with pictures of her cowering in a girl guides uniform or something? I saw the trailers, they were awfull.

[Happyman]

"'Only idiots believe writers set out to shock'" is a blanket statement and needn't take different works into account.  Of course, it's Fry who was wrong, some writers do set out to shock, I was just pointing up that the quote damages rather than supports the argument.

[weekender]

What shocked you in the day today weekender? I'm racking my brains trying to think of 1 thing that would upset someone.

Well, personally, nothing in TDT particularly shocked me.  I doubt it did you either, and I doubt it did the majority of posters on the board.

However, I think that some people (twats, admittedly), could probably get offended by some parts of TDT, like that bit on RokTV when the camera zooms up Madonna's cunt.

My mother got offended at the sketch in the Friday (Saturday?) Night Armistice where the word 'breast' is mentioned repeatedly and Iannucci/Baynham/Schneider just giggle every time they hear the word.  She wrote a letter off to the BBC and everything.  

This isn't helping, I'm not making a point at all here, even though I know that there's one to be made.  Sorry.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

No idea, I just saw the show. Were the BBC sending out press kits with pictures of her cowering in a girl guides uniform or something?

Pretty much all the interviews she did portrayed her in this way - the 'I was amazed how nice she was in real life' approach. Amazed? No you weren't, Steven Armstrong of The Sunday Times, you work in the media - you know full-well she'd never have got anywhere in comedy if she wasn't as wily as your average Gervais.

The 'This Is Our War' trailer in TDT is staggeringly offensive, isn't it? If The 11 O'Clock Show team had done it, I'd have hated it. But because you know it's the TDT lot, you know it was done with the right attitude, with a point to make, and because they personally found it hilarious. How do we know this? Because it's a throwaway item among lots of other brilliant stuff.

[alan strang]

"'Only idiots believe writers set out to shock'" is a blanket statement and needn't take different works into account.  Of course, it's Fry who was wrong, some writers do set out to shock, I was just pointing up that the quote damages rather than supports the argument.

The actual quote from Fry was "Only pretentious barbarians believe artists set out  shock". For the comparison to work you'd have to genuinely believe that:

a) that the sort of comedy writers under discussion here - ie those who set out to ape a currently popular 'style' (or indeed reference a certain kind of popular film) can actually be considered 'artists' in the first place (rather than hacks).

b) that anybody who attempts to question the validity of the above must automatically be some kind of reactionary philistine engaging in sneering to disguise their basic ignorance.

Not much of a comparison really. I don't think Fry's necessarily incorrect with his attack - just that he's isolating quite a narrow cliche in the scheme of things. To be fair though, mentioning Monkey Dust would have made a bit of a mess of his original diatribe.

And I know talking about certain comedy shows having 'souls' or a 'twinkle in the eye' sounds like I've run out of arguments

I think the above statement is completely joyless and has no worth, frankly.

[Rats]

to weekender
Ah right, I get you. No, you just maybe chose a bad example for me.
It can't have been Fry, I mean he's a clever bloke, either that or he was just angry, trying to make a point and his term "writers" refered only to people who smoke their cigarettes through a biro. There are people who just write books for money.
Satire is supposed to rattle up the blinkered majority, it's part of the fun and you're inevitably going to shock people if you're trying to change the way they think with a hammer. "writers don't set out SOLELY to shock" is what he means isn't it?

The 'This Is Our War' trailer in TDT is staggeringly offensive, isn't it? If The 11 O'Clock Show team had done it, I'd have hated it. But because you know it's the TDT lot, you know it was done with the right attitude, with a point to make, and because they personally found it hilarious. How do we know this? Because it's a throwaway item among lots of other brilliant stuff.

Yes, that's very true, you can tell when someones heart is in the right place. On the 11 o'clock show, it would have just looked like a jeremy beadle hand gag making light of war to shock you into groaning and laughing with your beer swilling compadres.

[alan strang]

However, I think that some people (twats, admittedly), could probably get offended by some parts of TDT, like that bit on RokTV when the camera zooms up Madonna's cunt.

Ian Curtis' mother wasn't too enamoured with Rok TV, as you can imagine. She did write a letter of complaint - which was replied to by Morris, who expressed his sympathy but refused to apologise.

This story was covered in a little article published in Broadcast magazine at the time. I'd quote it properly for accuracy but I think Bent Halo still has my old scrapbook of clippings.