Fighting Words

The Nov. 8 Counterpunch letters featured a number of passionate, loving and caring individuals concerned about our modern American culture responding with great disgust to the “Fight Club” viewpoints of 16-year-old David Green (“Readers Take a Moral Swing at Defender of ‘Fight Club’ ”). What is so interesting about this back-and-forth volley is how clearly it demonstrates the importance of the issues and themes David Fincher’s film explores.

The notion that the film promotes casual views and an adolescent embracing of violence is so comical that I wonder if Rachel Rosenthal (who has not even seen the film) and Rebecca Epstein are on 20th Century Fox’s payroll, attempting to stir up discussion of the film. For who can watch the film and not wince in horror as Edward Norton mercilessly pummels Jared Leto’s character, who appears later in the film inhumanely disfigured, or witness the end of Meat Loaf’s Robert Paulson, his head a visceral, gory mess, and think violence is something to be championed in “Club’s” thematic arc?

Discovering one’s self is the point of the film, whose ending takes the film to the extreme of violence, and instead of encouraging it as heroic (as everyday-action films from “First Blood” to “Die Hard” have been doing for years), pulls back a step, and pushes the point that extremism is truly not the answer; being content with who you are is.

BRYAN C. BISHOP

Los Angeles

I was deeply disturbed and saddened by David Green’s article on Nov. 1 (“The ‘Fight Club’ Debate: Just What Is the Message

Here?”). In it, David, a precocious 16-year-old filmmaker, chides Kenneth Turan’s review of the movie. He claims that Turan is just “too traditional for such a film.” According to David, the film stands as “the voice of a new generation: It is a subversive, cerebral rush, and it must be viewed with open eyes.”

Here’s my message to David and the generation he claims this film speaks to: You’ve all been brainwashed.

“Fight Club,” by definition, is not anti-consumerism. It cannot be. It is a self-consciously hip, star-driven, deliberately packaged product that so happens to critique our “brand-happy” society. “Fight Club” precisely is what it so violently riles against. The film takes the anger and resentment we feel (being “unwilling” slaves to the marketplace) and shamelessly sells it right back to us. It is a blatant double standard. The disease posed as its cure. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton plastered on every newsstand? Come on, kids, can you not see the naked hypocrisy? Or are you too distracted by the Dust Brothers soundtrack?

ROYE SEGAL

Los Angeles