Strypey

A couple of years ago I rewatched Fight Club and it hit me like a ton of bricks; this isn't about the anticapitalist left, it's about the alt-right! Which was impressively prescient, considering the original novel was written in 1996.

The Fight Club movie came out in 1999. The same year as another movie that's since been adopted as an aesthetic by the militant right; The Matrix. So now I'm wondering, was that movie about them too, all along?

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#FightClub #TheMatrix #books #novels #movies

Apr 15 at 5:59amWeb
Show threadStrypeyApr 15

Or is it really a situationist parable for the culture jammers of the radical left, as I thought at the time? Is someone on the alt-right going to rewatch it at same point and have the converse of the realisation I had about Fight Club?

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Show threadKiwiana 🦣Apr 15
@strypey it’s generally understood that The Matrix is a transgender allegory (confirmed by the makers)
Show threadStrypeyApr 15

@Kiwiana13C
> The Matrix is a transgender allegory (confirmed by the makers)

I tend to subscribe to 'death of the author' when it comes to analysing the meaning of a literary work. There's what it's intended to mean by the author, and what it says about the culture that produced it. Which can be 2 entirely different things.

I've read my own writing from years before, and realised I was saying things I wasn't even conscious of ; )

Show threadcwicseolforApr 15

@Kiwiana13C @strypey I mean for this reason it’s heavily about fascistic tendencies in society, instrumentalist views of people as fungible resources who are “malfunctioning” if they step outside their role as prescribed by birth status.

But also not for nothing these movies were authored by a couple trans ladies (not yet out) and a gay man. The illusion of functionality in a cultural script breaks down if it can’t include your experience, and then you can see at least some of the artifice, the erasure, and the pandering.

Show threadStrypeyApr 16

@cwicseolfor
> it’s heavily about fascistic tendencies in society

Agreed. But I was always uncomfortable with how blasé our heroes were about killing people who'd been temporarily taken over by agents. Even when they thought agents couldn't be killed.

> instrumentalist views of people as fungible resources who are “malfunctioning” if they step outside their role as prescribed by

... the machines, OR the needs of our heroes. Maybe this prefigures liberal attitudes to Culture Wars?

@Kiwiana13C

Show threadWombatDhampirApr 15
@strypey Fight Club is about male powerlessness in modern society, a theme that intersects with the alt-right.