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One of the important themes that I have found in the beginning of Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk is the underlying theme of capitalism. In chapter five, the narrator explains himself through his belongings. He states all of this belongings and explains how, “It took my whole life to buy this stuff” and continues, “Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you” (44). I saw this as really touching on the nature of capitalism. Many people tend to buy and buy out of no real necessity other than the fact that it is what our society has taught us to do. You get to the point where you have accumulated a bunch of items that you don’t really need, that hold no real meaning and often puts people in debt to the point where now the belongings own you. I felt that the narrator summed this sentiment when he is listing the food in his refrigerator and states, “I know, I know, a house full of condiments and no real food” (45). There is no real substance to what he owns, and this goes hand in hand with the idea of capitalism being expressed in the book.

Fight club in a sense offers an escape from capitalism. If capitalism is about purchasing rather than having to experience anything, fight club offers the alternative. It is something you don’t talk about, because you can not put it into words. You do not need to put fight club into words because it is inevitably about experience. Fight club gives control back to the subject. In a capitalistic world, the subject is a reflection of what they own and fight club offers a release from that.

Jameson uses art, architecture, literature, film and theory to help explain Postmodernism. Within art, Jameson explains postmodernism as signaling the end of the bourgeois ego in what Jameson calls ‘the waning of affect.’ Jameson explains this as the end of unique and personal style, liberation from feeling since there is no longer a self present to do the feeling. Jameson explains this as not being devoid of feeling, but rather being more accurate with feeling. The idea that carries throughout the Jameson reading is that Postmodernism signifies the disappearance of the individual subject and the concept of waning. The Postmodernism concepts of the Jameson reading are visible throughout the film Fight Club. In the film, there is no real time period. As Jameson explains of Postmodern film, “This approach to the present by way of the art language of the simulacrum, or of the pastiche of the stereotypical past, endows present reality and the openness of present history with the spell and distance of a glossy mirage. Yet this mesmerizing new asthetic mode itself emerged as an elaborated symptom of the waning of our historicity, of our lived possiblity of experiencing history in some active way.” (21) Jameson continues, “…we seem increasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience” (21). This idea that we can only represent our ideas and stereotypes about the past is a major theme throughout the film. Tyler wants to dictate their own version of history by creating project mayhem which is involved in such tasks as destroying the credit building. Another major theme throughout the film is that of capitalism and as Jameson explains, “We are somehow to lift our minds to a point at which it is possible to understand that capitalism is at one and the same time the best thing that has ever happened to the human race, and the worst” (47). The film exemplifies how capitalism has taken over with such refrences to Starbucks and IKEA, and how it is causing a decline in society. Ed Norton’s character is in one scene explains his life through his IKEA furniture purchases. The Jameson reading and Fight Club film both exemplifiy the major concepts behind postmodernism.  

I have seen the Fight Club film multiple times, and each time I watch it there are more things I pick up on. The movie made sense the more I watched it, but even more so now that I can apply postmodernism to it. I found that time was significant throughout the film. The beginning of the film is the end; therefore the end is the beginning. There are also references to the time that a person has in life, and what freedoms come from knowing when your own time left in life. The film itself was dark, gritty,  and  neon which is reflective of many cities. I felt that the characters of Tyler and the narrator were cast perfectly. Tyler and the narrator are the antithesis of one another. Tyler; Brad Pitt, is reckless, physically ideal and free. The narrator; Ed Norton, is conformed to society, physically average, and tied down to responsibilties. They are the two extremes in which the insomnia draws out. The modern and the postmodern. One could not exsist without the other, likewise to Tyler and the narrator.

Visually, the film doesn’t hold back. The scenes during fight club are very graphic, which I think is important. The significance of fight club is pain. Pain allows the the men to experience life, because you have to ‘lose everything to get anything.’ Watching this in the film you can almost feel their pain because the fight scenes were gritty and realistic, not glossy and fake.

The Lyotard reading struck me as an interesting and confusing interpretation for postmodernism; what it is and the opposition as well as defense for it . Lyotard begins with the bold statment, “From every direction we are being urged to put an end to experimentation, in the arts and elsewhere” (71). This statement caught my interest from the beginning because it is making serious accusations. Lyotard is able to back up this statement when further in the reading it states, “I have read from the pen of a reputable historian that writers and thinkers of the 1960 and 1970 avant-gardes spread a reign of terror in the use of language, and that the conditions for a fruitful exchange must be restored by imposing on the intellectuals a common way of speaking, that of the historians” (71). 

The ideas behind this statement are that we should not experiment with language but rather conform to one way of speaking, an exclusive way of speaking. I see this as a narrow minded way of thinking that attempts to exclude those outside of the intellectuals.

The explanation of Postmodern was that “A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant” (79). My understanding of this is that we define what is modern by the idea of no positive values. We determin that something is modern because it is not postmodern. Postmodern does not mark at the end of modern but rather in the state of beginning, which is always a constant.

“Could I ever feel any less for this body? Why does ardour pass?” (90)

The way that Sam describes Louise and his love for Louise seems to always be the physical. Sam describes sexual desire and attraction for Louise, but never really touches on the emotional complexities of Louise. It leaves me to wonder if Sam is obsessed or infatuated with Louise rather than in love. The reader is never really exposed to Louise as a full person. We see bits of her as viewed by Sam…that she is beautiful, that she was wife to Elgin, she teaches Art History and so on, but we are not let in to see her personality. What are the emotional and mental aspects of Louise that Sam is attracted to? Sam makes these extravagant proclamations of undying love for Louise, leaving me to feel that there must be more than the physical that attracts Sam to her, but I do not see it throughout the reading. It almost seems that Sam is keeping this aspect of Louise to itself. On page 89 Sam explains, “I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story.” I feel like this is what Sam is doing with Louise. Sam is keeping the most precious part of Louise to Itself, but allow the reader to see the physical side of their attraction and love.  

When I began reading Written on the Body, it was a bit confusing for me but instantly intrigued me. There was no easing into this book, when the first sentence asks “Why is the measure of love loss?” and a few paragraphs later confronts the idea of saying ‘I love you’ as being unoriginal. I thought that this was such an interesting take on a saying that has such bearing in our society. Winterson backs up this statement by stating, “You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them” (9). Saying ‘I love you’ is such a significant combination of three words, yet it’s not specific to any  one person. Within this statement, Winterson beautifully ties in an excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which Caliban is refuting the language that was burdened upon him. I felt that it was an interesting choice to reference The Tempest because the character Ariel is gender ambiguous, similar to that of Winterson’s narrator. Winterson concludes this idea of ‘I love you’ being unoriginal, with the statement that “Love demands expression” (9). I thought that this set the tone for what follows, as many of the relationships described between the narrator and it’s love interests are physically descriptive.  

Winterson’s writing is sometimes difficult for me to follow but I enjoy reading this book. I like her style of being blunt yet at the same time beautifully descriptive and am interested in continuing this reading.

If I were to catergorize myself as either a modernist or a postmodernist; given the loose definition from the Malpas reading, I would fall under the postmodern. Before the reading, I had the inital conception of the term postmodern as a fad, or like Malpas explained a “buzzword” (6). After the reading I could see how I resonated with the ideas of postmodernism. I like and relate to the postmodern concepts of discontinuity, experimentation, playful freedom and it’s eclectic nature. Now with the context of postmodernism, I can see how i have always had an inclination towards postmodern over modern. I enjoy literature and films that deviate from the classical structure, themes or plots. I appreciate and am most interested in those which challenge those to look at things from a different perspective and use one’s mind for unusual and extraordinary ways of thinking. In understanding the ideas behind postmodernism and that it is not just a fad terminology, i can appreciate the attributes of postmodernism in my life. I live near the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry. I always viewed this building as a simply beautiful, unique piece of architecture.  Now that I am aware of the full meaning of postmodernism, I can see how it pretains to the building, making it much more than just unique and beautiful. The building stimulates the senses and challenges original concepts of architecture. I feel that this idea is conveyed throughout all aspects of postmodernism, which is why i would assoicate myself as a postmodernist.     

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