This panelist will focus on the concept that the absence of fathers in American society today is equivalent to an absence of God. It will also discuss the social effects of single parenting and will question whether belief in God alone is enough to fill the void of an absent parent or to restore the loss of identity.

This panelist will focus on the themes of nothingness or nihilistic absence and its relationship to Tyler Durden in both the book and movie versions of Fight Club. This panelist will also incorporate real life examples to show how these themes are a true reflection of American society today.

Love is an important element in the life of a human being, and through love and love’s consequences, a lot can be said about human nature. By contrasting the emotions of the narrator, Tyler, and Marla with the violent overtones of Fight Club, a clear assumption can be made about the importance of love and relationships, and how important communication is to build a strong foundation for love.

Human nature. The role of a person in society. Social structure and class. Mores, morality, and the insight into individual’s minds. Using love and violence as tools, and continually comparing and contrasting the two, and pushing the boundaries of their definitions, this presenter will journey into the realm of the individual and the human nature that lies within.

This presentation shows how Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and Survivor all redeliver classical Jewish and Christian theology under the stealth transmission of the paranoid psychic literary genre.

Specifically, Fight Club will be compared and contrasted to Hebrews 9:22 and other Old Testament texts regarding the jubilee year; Invisible Monsters to Genesis 1:25 and the creation myths of the Old and New Testaments; Survivor to a range of Biblical texts that include and go beyond the book’s numerous Biblical quotations.

All of Palahniuk’s texts will be correlated to specific sayings of Jesus in the four gospels to show how the issue of salvation permeates both texts in surprisingly equivalent ways.

The term postmodernity has garnered a lot of attention from both those extolling or condemning its perspective as a well as those cautioned by a healthy skepticism as to the term’s apparent usefulness. While exploring the psychological and sociological implications of the cult-like groups formed in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Survivor and Fight Club, I will differentiate between postmodernity (the time or condition in which we find ourselves) and postmodernism (the schools of thought of various movements it has produced). It is my contention that cults—being primarily pre-modern and modern phenomena—are now in direct conflict with the basic tenets of postmodernity, just as an absolutist philosophy is antithetical to a relativist.

Yet the underlying motivational desires and fears addressed by cults—such as freedom from the fear of death, social belonging, sense of identity, meaning in life—are also exactly those themes most prevalent in Palahniuk’s work (as well as in the fiction of other postmodern writers such as DeLillo, Vonnegut, and Pynchon).

Palahniuk’s protagonists’ first attempts to resolve these desires and fears through adherence to a rigid, cult-like system of belief (evidenced in both the doctrine of the Creedish and in the methodology of Project Mayhem). In this presentation, I will demonstrate that it is ultimately through the questioning and subsequent rejection of all belief systems that Tender Branson and “Jack,” in their own peculiar ways, find redemption.

“Following the release of the movie Fight Club, a group of friends and I began our own slightly altered version. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, we would fight each other, stopping only at submission. We developed our own set of rules, and fought simply for the pleasure and experience of doing it.”

This presentation will describe how this so-called “real life fight club” utilized a variant of the fight club rules that included prohibitions against weapons and blows to the head / groin area, and allowed fights only between friends. It will also examine why this club developed and how it evolved over time.

This presentation is a study of the research Chuck Palahniuk draws from in his novel, Fight Club. The study will focus on how the information to make explosives and the other devices used during Project Mayhem can be found with relative ease. This information is not only easy to locate, but can applied with minimal background knowledge. Virtually anyone is capable of founding and carrying out their own Project Mayhem.

During this panel discussion we will focus on Karen Horney’s psychoanalytic social theory, explaining and applying concepts such as basic hostility, basic anxiety, neurotic defenses, and Horney’s view of the influence of modern culture. Each of these concepts will be tied to specific examples from the movie. The following is a brief description of Horney’s theory with examples:

Horney’s psychoanalytic social theory hypothesizes that social and cultural influences, especially during childhood, have a powerful effect on later personality. She theorizes that individuals who do not receive love and affection as children develop basic feelings of hostility, which then lead to the development of basic feelings of anxiety. She defines basic anxiety as feeling helpless and alone in a hostile world. These feelings of basic anxiety motivate neurotic personality development. Individuals protect themselves from basic anxiety by adopting one of three trends in relating to others. These include 1) moving toward people, 2) moving against people, or 3) moving away from people. Neurotic individuals are compelled to rely on only one of these trends in a compulsive, unhealthy way. This rigid behavior generates an intrapsychic conflict which results in an idealized self-image and self-hatred for not consistently living up to this image. The idealized self-image represents neurotics’ attempts to solve conflicts by adapting a grandiose image of themselves. In contrast, self-hatred is expressed as self-contempt for the neurotics’ real self.

If Karen Horney watched the movie Fight Club, she would, perhaps, conceptualize the main character as a neurotic individual who is experiencing basic anxiety. This could have resulted from an unhappy childhood because Jack / Tyler did not have a positive male role model in his life. He refers to his feelings of rejection and neglect in the movie when he speaks of his father. This basic anxiety results in the main character adopting a neurotic defense against the inner conflict he was experiencing. Jack / Tyler develops a moving against trend protect himself from his neurotic feelings of basic anxiety. Because of his early experience, Jack devalues his real self and develops an idealized self represented as Tyler. The more Tyler begins to manifest himself, the more Jack comes to despise his real self because he falls short of his idealized image.

In addition to personal experiences, Horney would highlight conflicts in society which enhance the difficulties that neurotic personalities such as Jack face. Specifically, she focuses on three conflicting pressures in society: competition versus brotherly love, stimulation of needs versus frustration of needs, and freedom of the individual versus individual limitations. Horney would conceptualize much of Jack’s behavior as attempts to resolve these conflicts in a neurotic manner.

Many aspects of Carl Jung’s theory of analytical psychology underlie the principle themes of the movie Fight Club. Jung’s theory is based on the assumption that there are two levels of the psyche, the conscious and the unconscious. While the conscious plays a relatively minor role, the unconscious significantly influences us and motivates our actions. The unconscious is further divided into the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious fundamentally consists of repressed experiences, while the collective unconscious consists of universal innate predispositions to action that originate from our ancestors. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is the largest determinant of personality and consists of certain archetypes including the persona, the shadow, and the anima (feminine side). Recognition of these archetypes leads to their unification and eventually to the process of self-realization, a central theme of Fight Club.

Specific examples from the movie will be given of the influence of each of these archetypes and the process of defending against them, as well as the process of self-realization. For example, Tyler represents Jack’s unconscious motivation. Early in the movie Jack lacks the courage to confront his shadow. Instead, Jack identifies with his persona, the role the world expects him to play. As the movie progresses Jack gradually begins to become aware of his shadow, and how it motivates his behavior. It is only by doing so that he begins the process of self-realization. One criticism that will be made is that the movie depicts a superficial and incomplete process of self-realization.

The usefulness and validity of the application of these theories to the movie will be discussed. In addition, the impact of this movie as a cultural influence will be discussed from the perspective of each theory. For example, Jung would not be surprised that this movie has become so popular because it allows us to experience our own shadow. As Freud did, Jung believes that aggression is part of our basic human nature and that we are unconsciously motivated toward symbolic representation of this basic nature. Horney would disagree with the idea that humans are aggressive by nature. Rather, she might wonder if the movie reflects society’s difficulties providing children with a sense of love and safety.

In addition to the above comments, I will direct questions from the audience to the panel of the presenter and facilitate discussion.

Examines Marla Singer’s role in Fight Club and will address how Marla both helped and hindered the narrator and Tyler Durden. This presentation will also explore the connection between Marla’s lack of self-esteem and the character of Tyler Durden.

Argues that Marla Singer is an instrumental part of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. It will demonstrate that Marla is as spiritually “barren” as Tyler, but relates to her emptiness more effectively because she can freely admit to this fact.

This presentation will also discuss the similarities of Marla and Tyler’s personalities and will illustrate how each character supports the other. The relationship between Tyler and Marla is pivotal due to the changes taking place within the narrator, and his fear for her safety shows his ability, even through insanity, to care about her.

In the novel, Marla ironically becomes the narrator’s savior and attempts to protect him from harm. It is not possible to label Marla as a minor character after having recognized these and other support mechanisms that Marla provides.

On the surface The Matrix, like Fight Club, appears to be merely an action film, when it is actually a useful tool in discussing important philosophical issues. One of the oldest philosophical issues is appearance versus reality. In the 1999 movie, The Matrix, Morpheus states, “I can’t tell you what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.” Such a quote indicates that there is a struggle between what the senses reveal and hat reasoning suggests.

Two philosophical arguments deal with this issue and can be applied to the film. Parmenides deduces that thought and being are identical and reality is accessible only by reason. On the other hand, the Sophists believe that things are how they appear, and reject an ultimate truth. These two views are present in The Matrix, and the film ultimately shows that a true reality does exist. The Sophists are not wrong per se; Parmenides' argument is just more logical and rational. There very well could be an ultimate truth; humans just may not have the resources to comprehend it all. In addition to being philosophically important, The Matrix has been influential in the film industry as well. Since its release, many other movies such as Fight Club and Being John Malcovich have been produced that try to push the human imagination to its limits.

The nameless guide has been prominent in film for many years. First gaining prominence in Spaghetti Westerns of the 1970s such as My Name Is Nobody, directed by Tonino Vallerii, the nameless guide soon expanded from the Italian imaginings of the Old West. The nameless guide is also found in Western films with American production ties such as Sam Pechinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and appears again in recent Westerns such as Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man.

In each film, the nameless guide takes a different form. In My Name Is Nobody, he is a young manipulative stranger. In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the nameless guide and the hero are both manifestations of Billy the Kid’s personality. The guide is the Billy the Kid who found solace in anonymity while the hero is the Billy the Kid who embraced fame and became the stylized Western hero. In Dead Man we see yet another variation of the nameless guide, the gentle Native American mystic who allows the hero to develop the spirituality they have in common.

In Fight Club, we see a version of the nameless guide that is in such drastic contrast from other variations that one hesitates to classify him as such. This guide even has a name, Tyler Durden, which would appear to disqualify him as a nameless guide. However, Tyler is a projection of the imagination of the nameless hero in that he receives one of the pseudonyms that the narrator used at support groups. Furthermore, it is the hero, not the guide, who is known as Tyler Durden. This degree of confusion of identity far surpasses that found in previous films, and the films mentioned here also play with the often fuzzy line between hero and guide.

This paper examines the variations in the relationship of the nameless guide and the hero with special attention to the relationship of Tyler Durden and his nameless hero. I will present several theories regarding the function of the guide in a narrative and the meaning of the particularly confused relationship of Tyler and his hero as it relates to the general societal conditions at the time that Fight Club was produced.

This paper presentation will examine the implications of technology in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club, and the subsequent 1999 film adaptation of the same name. A comparative study will demonstrate that these two works view technology as a vehicle of apocalypse. Humanity’s relationships to the technology it utilizes will determine the direction of the apocalypse and the viability of the human species in a post-apocalyptic world.

Implicit in the philosophy of the story’s protagonists is the idea that true advancement can only be achieved after heroic sacrifice. Rather than earn the benefits of technology, the story’s protagonists believe that the consumerist societies of Occidental culture have reaped its rewards without appreciating them. Technology, therefore, is a tool that has been continuously abused since well prior to the Industrial Revolution. Occidental culture, lacking the Nietzschean superman who could appreciate and understand modern technology, has developed a salvation myth centered around technology’s role in everyday life. This myth, it will be shown, has served as a key component in the self-stoking cycle that continues to erode the modernist application of technology, replacing it with increasingly absurd postmodern relationships. The protagonists believe that this cycle, if not aborted artificially, will result in the total extinction of civilization and life on Earth.

Capitalizing on this millennial tradition of apocalyptic hysteria, the protagonists invert the salvation myth of technology by triggering a cultural apocalypse. Such a collapse, it is believed, could prevent ecological disaster while simultaneously serve as the heroic sacrifice needed to realign human spirituality in a pre-class systems relationship with the Environment.

This study will follow the workings of these dynamics to conclude that Fight Club’s protagonists are self-proclaimed anti-Christ figures seeking to save the world by eradicating one myth and replacing it with a pre-Christian tradition. As such, it is human relationships to technology rather than technology itself that will prove to be the human race’s salvation, or undoing.

The film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher and starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, contains scenes of violence, fascist subcultures, and other anti-social behaviors that provide insight into the state of society at the dawn of a new century. The main characters initially engage in such seemingly innocuous but unsettling actions as attending support group meetings for the terminally ill while they themselves are perfectly healthy. These actions progress to underground fighting, the formation of violent mobs, and eventually culminate in terrorist activity.

The very core of the perplexities of Fight Club is the Narrator. This presentation will examine how he became so disaffected with his life and the emotions that he could only fulfill through violence at a fight club. It will also examine why Tyler Durden manifested himself as part of the narrator’s personality and will explore whether this led to the narrator’s salvation or destruction.

This presentation will also illustrate that the brutal violence and other anti-social behaviors in Fight Club serve to condemn such behavior in society today.

This presentation will examine the differences between multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia and how they apply to the character of Tyler Durden in Fight Club. It will note the characteristics, life events, and other phenomena that contribute to each.

This presentation will use examples to illustrate that everyone has multiple personality disorder to varying degrees, since we all have different personalities in particular social situations or circumstances.

There is a clinical component to this presentation where definitions of various disorders will be discussed with the audience.

This presentation discusses the role of Dissociative Identity Disorder in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. This presentation will define DID and why it is thought to occur, then compare it to Fight Club. It will also examine whether Tyler ultimately helped or hindered the narrator and will argue that utilizing two personalities of the same character was a more effective device then two separate characters.

Compares Fight Club to American society and argues that the novel is indicative of a profound form of “disrespect” that characterizes American society and culture.

Desperate to ally the crippling insomnia caused by an isolated, angst-ridden existence, the nameless protagonist (whom I call Tag) in Chuck Palahniuk’s iconoclastic novel, Fight Club, suffers a mental breakdown and subconsciously reaches deep into his own psyche for help. He finds it in the form of Tyler Durden, an alter ego ruthless enough to restore order, but at an ultimately unacceptable cost.

Relating to his newfound friend as an individual, Tag is consciously unaware that Tyler is merely a fragment of his own beleaguered subconscious. And Tyler’s forceful, charismatic personality overwhelms and dominates Tag as their philosophical discussions evolve into sermons with Tyler spouting bizarre, radical, quasi-nihilistic dogma.

But Tyler offers more than rhetoric. Since violence is central to his peculiar beliefs, he couples them with rituals akin to sadomasochism, establishing “fight club,” a clandestine gathering where similarly disillusioned men fistfight to gain tranquility.

Initially satisfied by the relief offered at fight club, Tag all but abandons co-opting grief at cancer support groups. And this interrupts his budding relationship with Marla, another “tourist” at the groups. Ironically, an intimate relationship with Marla probably would have helped alleviate Tag’s isolation, but the appearance of Tyler Durden and fight club prevent this from happening.

Meanwhile, fight club’s increasing number of ardent members begins to view Tyler as a sort of messiah. Dubbed “space monkeys” and christened with Tyler’s lye-burnt kiss, they become minions sent to execute “Project Mayhem,” an insidious campaign of vandalism aimed at realigning society.

Learning of Project Mayhem while concurrently discovering (with Marla’s help) that Tyler is the Mr. Hyde to his Dr. Jeckyll, Tag “kills” Tyler, allowing Tag and Marla’s union to flourish; the ensuing bond presumably delivers both from their afflictions.

The aim of this presentation is the proper exposition of the sexism inherent in both Fight Club (Palahniuk’s novel) and Fight Club (Fincher’s film from the Jim Uhls script).

Marla Singer is never much more than an object of possession. One could argue that she presents the human side of the narrator’s decision—the decision between the “freedom” Tyler offers and the humanity that Marla might arguably represent—the softer, “female” yin element to Tyler’s definitive masculine yang. It is my contention that this in and of itself is but one of the most obvious gross oversteps of gendertypical stereotype.

As a man raised almost exclusively by women I feel I’ve been lent a unique perspective into the nature of femininity. It is my staunch belief that socially inflicted gender roles are unnatural and inaccurate and potentially harmful. And while I personally hold both the film and the novel in high regard, the assumption that violence is merely a facet of the masculine condition is far from accurate.

Argues that “therapy” is an emasculating, feminine format for change that fails to address a male biological need for “rites of passage.” Also argues that men want to regain their “manhood” through combat and character building.

Analyzes the atypical roles of females in Fight Club and Survivor and notes that Palahniuk’s female characters tend to sexually dominate their male counterparts. This presentation will also argue that the female characters are assigned more strength of personality than males. While the female characters play secondary roles in the novels themselves, they seem to be attributed with more inner strength than the males. This presentation will also illustrate the reversed gender roles as the male characters tend to internalize their emotions more so than females.

Chuck Palahniuk’s quirky, near-absurdist works focus on the psychological struggles and misadventures of mankind in the late twentieth century. Palahniuk’s paranoid sensibilities mirror many of the same themes upon which Beat Generation godfather, William S. Burroughs expounded throughout his literary career. This is chiefly reflected in Palahniuk’s depiction of American cultural paranoia directed toward mechanical, media-oriented, and medical technologies and the theory of the infectious nature of words, in essence, the concept of language as virus.

Chuck Palahniuk’s books deal with individuals’ infected frustration created by limitless technological possibilities and their attempts to use this technology either to reconcile themselves to living with this syndrome of confusion or to cure themselves of it. Language is always the mode of transmission and Palahniuk manages to use it in his own particularly virulent way to communicate his own message, creating a new kind of science fiction that is not science fiction at all but a surrealistic techno-reality of paranoia.

This presentation traces the Faustian themes (a-la Marlowe as reference text) as it manifests itself in Chuck Palahniuk’s novels, particularly Fight Club and Invisible Monsters. Both books use similar Faustian paradigms as launch pads in theme: paradigms rooted in empowerment, the stunting of individual identity by society, and thus the necessary driving of the truly individual mind to sources outside mainstream thought as conduits to real self-development (I argue that this is the fundamental satanic or criminal act—the autonomous articulation of the self as a self). Thus, the protagonists of Fight Club and Invisible Monsters (seekers of identity and self-dictated growth of mind) are aided in their development by forces outside society’s dictation in a classic Faustus / Mephistopheles relationship: a relationship of both gain and loss.

Ultimately this presentation will discuss the social and psychological implications of such a developmental compact, while pointing out that its genesis is fairly timeless in human nature by comparing Chuck’s work with Marlowe’s text in terms of symbol and language.

This presentation focuses on the concept of rites of passage, or the manipulated versions that are displayed in much modern, postmodern, and contemporary literature and film.

Like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, both the novel and film versions of Fight Club illustrate primitive rites of passage in the modern world through fighting. The boys in Lord of the Flies are left to decide leaders and structures for themselves while stranded on a tropical island; the “boys” in Fight Club abandon the jungle of the civilization in which they live in favor of the pursuit of a nihilistic revolution.

The idea of abandonment that pervades both of these works will also be examined in this presentation. It will look at technology as the cause of the nihilistic thread that ties together much of modern literature.

Tears is an interpretive dance choreographed by Katie Mitchell and is a “lyrical jazz” statement on violence in schools. Its focus is to show the corruption of children in society and asks whether this is due to familial or certain social environments.

The piece is 4 minutes and 49 seconds long and will be performed to Tears for Eddie taken from the Chocolate and Cheese album by the band Ween. This music was chosen because it has a quiet, urgent quality and sound which helps to express the ideas behind the piece.

The inspiration for this piece comes from the recent shootings at a California middle school. This shooting is a horrific example of how adolescents are having difficulty adjusting to adult lives. Tears will examine these issues as well as issues among adolescent peer groups.

This interpretive dance, choreographed by Sylvia Bluhm, is centered on themes of internal struggles and split personalities. One dancer will represent the main character and two others will represent two different aspects of her personality: anger and elation. The resulting struggle between the two aspects will result in the main character being torn apart by the conflict.

Choreographed and performed by Laura Moore, this work concerns the mental disorder of multiple personalities. It shows both the internal and external struggles between these personalities through abstract movement. The theme of this piece was inspired by the issues explored in the movie Fight Club.

Moore will be portraying two very different personalities trapped inside one person. The characters will flip back and forth and there will often be an internal struggle between them. The music will come from the Fight Club soundtrack. The piece will be 4 minutes and 30 seconds in length.

Discusses the reasons behind materialism in society and examines the directions the culture needs to take in the future. This presentation also examines the link between violence and materialism and asks if materialistic attitudes can be physically destructive.

Discusses the psychological “dark side” of normality and success. This presentation is an examination of why so many social “elites” often engage in what is socially considered immoral behavior. It examines how Fight Club interprets the skewed value systems of American society.