YOU MUST write down what the members started to see differently.

Entrance Activity

“After the fight clubs were established, the members began to see things differently”

N________ ihilism

Title:‘Fight Club’ –

Jack & Bob – ‘Male in Crisis’ – Opening scene

Tuesday 21st April 2015

FM4: Varieties of Film Experience – Issues and Debates

Section C: Single Film – Close Critical Study

(30 Marks)

Why?

Aims & Objectives

• YOU WILL establish HOW an ideology and critical approach you need to know for the exam applies to the text.

• YOU WILL develop an understanding of the ‘male in crisis’ representation.

• Review the learning.

AO1

Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of film as an audio-visual form of creative expression together and

AO2 Apply knowledge and understanding, including some of the common critical approaches that characterise the subject, when exploring and analysing films.

Textual Analysis

Task 2) – 10 minutes - YOU MUST establish HOW the ‘male in crisis’ is represented in the text by finding x3 micro feature related examples.

YOU SHOULD investigate a review/critical approach associated to this belief.

Feedback

Fight Club “reasserts a masculine identity threatened by the feminization of American culture” (Suzanne Clark – 2003)

“were still men”

• Re-watch the scene where Jack attends the ‘Remaining men Together: Testicular cancer group’ meeting (about 7 minutes in). Make notes on the different representations of masculinity shown here.

– What examples of ‘traditional roles’ are mentioned and what is seen to have happened to them?

– What examples of confused masculinity are there?

– NOTE: It’s around here that Tyler first starts to ‘appear’ in the film. Keep your eyes open – can you see him?

• ‘…It pushes the concepts of subjectivity and identification to extremes to suggest a male identity that’s not only fragile but frangible. Jack is so filled with self-loathing and repressed rage he’s desperate to get out of his own skin and into someone else’s.”

– Sight and Sound (Amy Taubin – 1999)

“They discover they are exhilarated by this brute interaction” –

Sight and Sound (Amy Taubin – 1999)

Oedipus complex (Sigmund Freud) –

Jack (The narrator) can only become a man by symbolically killing his father (Tyler Durden)

Produce a an essay style answer (40 minutes) of how ‘critical and review writing’ have developed your understanding of the film.

Use the FM4 – Section C Page and the resources to help you (including your A3 Analysis sheets and ‘Studying Fight Club’ guides)

STRUCTURE

START with an ideology about the film – e.g. - Fight Club is “..a provocative anti-capitalist cultural artifact, one which articulates a widely resonant and resistant structure of feeling” (John McCullough – 2004)

Explain the meanings behind this critical review.Link sentence – This essay will focus on….. –

1) Apply language from the Question 2) “Name drop” some Theorists/Critics the essay will focus on.

Introduction

Main Body

“The central character is torn between tedium and torture”

(John McCullough – 2004)

Psycho-analysis (Sigmund Freud)

“He recognizes that his freedom is somehow connected to the end of capitalism”

(John McCullough – 2004)

Ebert (1999) states “The whole movie is about guys afraid of losing their cojones”

“the woman is the hunter and the males are the hunted”

(Chia & Wei – 2009)

“’The Narrators’ real comfort in a world of white middle class male alienation”

(John McCullough – 2004)

Fight Club “reasserts a masculine identity threatened by the feminization of American culture” (Suzanne Clark – 2003)

Oedipus complex (Sigmund Freud)

Coupland (1991) –

‘I just want to show society what people born after 1960 think about things... We're sick of stupid labels, we're sick of being marginalized in lousy jobs, and we're tired of hearing about ourselves from others’

• Choose some critical approaches (x3)• Write x3 PEA Paragraphs based around

these.

Robert Bly (1992) – ‘Iron John’

Critical Review

Conclusion

• Summarise your critical reviews.

• Apply a thought provoking end sentence.

Homework

• Go to the Section C Blog page and complete some Section C Revision

• Research the representation of Ritualistic Violence in the text

• Revise for an upcoming past paper

Due:Next Lesson