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Contents

1.  Introduction  2

2.  9/11 as turning point in modern history?  4

3.  Plotting terror  6

4.  Fight Club  7

4.1.  The identity crisis of the nameless narrator  9

4.2.  Project Mayhem and its similarities to Al Qaeda  14

5.  Novel into movie: David Fincher’s version of Fight Club  17

5.1.  FIGHT CLUB after 9/11  19

6.  Conclusion  22

7.  Works cited  24

8.  Transcript  25

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1. Introduction

Something which was a bomb, a big bomb, has blasted my clever Njurunda coffee tables in the shape of a lime green yin and an orange yang that fit together to make a circle. Well, they were splinters, now. My Haparanda sofa group with orange slip covers, design by Erika Pekkari, it was trash, now. And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue. […] It took my whole life to buy this stuff. […] Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. Until I got home from the airport (Palahniuk 44 f.).

As the narrator in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club comes home from a business trip, he realizes that his fancy IKEA nest has been blown to pieces by a bomb. The moment he steps off the cab, the interior of his apartment is still scattered on the street and firefighters are at work to put out the fire in his condo. However, he does not seem to be troubled by this at all- as it turns out, he himself did this. He has decided to turn against his consumerist life in order to live a more meaningful one. The destruction of his home is the beginning of a quest for identity, a process that makes him the leader of an underground terrorist organization in the end.

Fight Club gives insight to a social malaise that has gripped American men, it is the portrait of the nihilistic generation that is commonly referred to as Generation X. Palahniuk depicts the life of a man who grew up in a time without great wars, without a great depression. Hence, he is desperately trying to give his insignificant life a meaning since he cannot give it to a greater cause.

In my paper, I will discuss both Palahniuk’s novel and the David Fincher movie that has been based on it with regard to what these works convey about terrorism and western culture. Furthermore, I will consider the impact of 9/11 on Fight Club, that is, I will examine how 9/11 changed the perception of the novel and the movie. Therefore, I will first describe how 9/11 can be seen as a turning point in modern history. Second, I will shortly explain the relationship between terrorist fiction and political reality to show how terrorism has entered the popular imagination. Subsequently, I will give a summary of Fight Club and analyze the identity crisis of the narrator. Then, I will depict some similarities between the fictional terrorist group in the novel and Al Qaeda. Finally, I will discuss the movie, that is, to what extent it is different from the book, and in which way the visualization of Palahniuk’s novel has a more imminent impact on the audience than the novel.

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2. 9/11 as turning point in modern history?

The horrifying atrocities of September 11 ^th are something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the United States, this is the first time since the War of 1812 that the national territory has been under attack, or even threatened (Chomsky 11).

Although the U.S. government has at all times been involved in international crises, Americans always felt save in their homeland, as it used to be an isolated place that was not directly affected by the wars in other countries. Therefore, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were a shock to Americans as they realized that they were no longer invulnerable, that the United States were no longer a secure place to live. The fear of terrorist attacks has since evoked a paranoia, a panic only comparable to the fear of communists in the 1950s.

In the wake of the Second World War, as our Japanese and West German enemies turned into model citizens working economic miracles, the fear and loathing that fascism had so recently inspired were channeled into Communism. Some forty years later, the collapse of the Berlin wall and the evil empire called for a ‘new public enemy number one,’ and terrorism stepped into that role. Now it is terrorists who lurk in every shadow, images of terrorist attacks that fill our television screens, and fears of new varieties- nuclear, biological, cyberterrorism- that drive calls for increased surveillance and larger defense budgets (Scanlan 1).

Hence, many people living in the United States consider terrorism to be the plague of the new millennium, and after Nazis and communists, terrorists have been declared the enemy number one of the western hemisphere. Terrorism is generally associated with Islamic fundamentalism, and that is why in the public panic subsequent to the 9/11 attacks Muslims tended to be stereotyped as evil terrorists, no matter whether they were peaceful citizens or fundamentalists belonging to a terrorist organization. But what exactly is it that people fear? What exactly is terrorism? Halliday gives the following definition :

Terrorism. Arabic irhab (literally intimidation), Persian terrorizm. Denotes the use by political actors, opposition forces or states, of deliberate fear to promote political ends. First used in 1795 to denote the terror of the French revolutionary states against its opponents, used in a similar way by the Bolsheviks, notably Leon Trotsky, to legitimate their actions, Has come in the second half of the twentieth century to refer to almost exclusively to acts by opposition groups: assassinations, kidnapping and hijacking of planes, occasionally ships and buses, with civilians, bomb attacks on buildings and civilians in public places (Halliday 21).

The FBI provides another, more general, classification of terrorism. Terrorism is defined as the

unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against person or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population. or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives (msnbc.com).

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These two definitions do not specifically speak of Islamic fundamentalism, nevertheless the terrorist actions described by Halliday are strategies that are pursued by, for example, Al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This organization, headed by Osama bin Laden, has the goal of preventing the western culture, that is capitalist ideals, from disrupting the Islamic world. For this reason, they carry out terrorist acts against, for example, American institutions. They justify their deeds with their interpretation of the Koran.

Radical Islamic militants, like Osama bin Laden […] reject popular interpretations of Islamic law as being far too permissive. These fundamentalists interpret the Koran in its strictest sense, which leads them to view the United States, for example, as a corrupt and ungodly country, where the pursuit of money and immoral pleasures rules. […] Regarding the United States, with is modern ways and international involvements, as the chief enemy of their faith, Islamic militants have pledged to drive the enemy out (Landau 16 f.).

This view alone would not be too intimidating for a nation like the United States with their well-equipped army and cleverly devised defense system; what makes Al Qaeda and other similar terrorist networks so dangerous is that the terrorists are able to find a way to strike unforeseen, just as they did on September 11, 2001. Islamic militants have to come up against well-armed conventional armies and therefore, they need to fight in unconventional ways. They have to “leave their enemy shocked, dazed, and wondering how to retaliate against an opponent they can’t find (Landau 67).” In describing their style, an Arab official said “They attack, sow violence, and assassinate such state symbols as government officials, policemen, security agents […]. They detonate bombs and strike state institutions and buildings. (Landau 67).” In attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Al Qaeda destroyed symbols that represented the economic and military might of the United States. The attacks can thus be seen as a symbolic destruction of Al Qaeda’s enemy America. The World Trade Center stood as a symbol of Americ an business and achievement. It was a towering landmark that reflected the United States at its best. Perhaps that is why it no longer exists (Landau 9).

Notably, Osama bin Laden has not been caught until today, more than one year after 9/11 and it is said that Al Qaeda has recovered to full strength. Consequently, the Bush administration still did not regain the full power and control, the government and military officials seem to be helpless in face of such an unpredictable enemy- and thus the attacks appear to have been more effective than many people thought they would be. They took a great deal of the American self-esteem.

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Accordingly, the western fear of the new millennium is that of underground terrorists that can strike at any time, in spite of all security measures. In a way, 9/11 was an epiphany for American society: the question “Why do they hate us?” shook many people awake, and gave way to a discussion of why there is a conflict between western and eastern culture. The discussion, however, soon resulted in a public hate against the other culture, as many people now associate the Islam with fundamentalists that carry out terrorist action against them. Consequently, the “War against terrorism” finally presented an enemy to a whole generation that until then was preoccupied with their own problems.

3. Plotting terror

For the generation of people in their twenties and thirties living in the western world, who have never experienced a war or any personal physical threat, 9/11 is not only a turning point in international affairs, but also a wake-up moment. In his 1996 novel Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk states that this generation has not been involved in a “traditional” crisis but that it suffers from a spiritual depression. We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression (Palahniuk 149).

On September 11, 2001 this nihilistic and bored generation of people who has always searched for thrills by means of brutal computer games, cyber worlds, or extreme forms of sport in order to feel alive was confronted with a horror scenario which they only knew from television, movies, or books. The fictional worlds they enjoyed so as to escape their daily boredom and aimlessness became reality, a scary and life threatening reality. But which of these realities existed first? The movies and thrillers or the killings and bombings? The borders between fiction and reality are blurred. Bombings and hijackings begin with a few people plotting violence for maximum exposure, come to us on television, where distinctions between news and entertainment are ever more tortuous, and quickly pass into the popular imagination, into blockbuster movies and paperback thrillers. Yet however mediated and manipulated it may be, the terrorist story chronicles actual deaths; however low its casualties in comparison with those exacted by terrorizing states, they are real enough; they have historical and social origins and consequences. This paradoxical affiliation between our violence and our fiction lies at the heart of those complex novels about terrorism sometimes called “literary thrillers,” as vital to them as gore and mayhem are to the blockbuster (Scanlan 1).

According to this, political events find their way into the popular imagination, however, it is hard to tell if terrorists are influenced by novels or if authors of novels are

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influenced by terrorist acts. Scanlan cites a Don DeLillo character with the words that “writers know how reality is created (Scanlan 2)” and says that this is why “[terrorist] fictions elucidate the process that allows militants, journalists, and politicians to construct terrorism as a political reality (Scanlan 2).” That means that there is a close, reciprocal relationship between terrorist fiction and terrorist reality. Historically speaking, writers have been always drawn to terrorists, Scanlan explains that the late 19 ^th century revolutionaries had a traditional affinity to writers, as they both shared “a romantic belief in the power of the marginalized persons to transform history (Scanlan 2).” The term revolution is associated with adventure and hence, revolutionaries are related t o romantic values. The term terrorist has different implications as it always goes along with violent actions that result in death, as for example bombings.

Since terrorist has negative connotations, to figure the writer as terrorist is quite different from fighting him or her as revolutionary. Far from being a ritual acknowledgement of originality or power, it is an imputation of violence or underhandedness. Thus within contemporary fiction, we find terrorists both as rivals and as doubles of the novelist. […] In the imagined act of terrorism, a writer may assess his or her political commitments, actions, and failures. Thus the terrorist novel opens itself up to more general questions about the writer’s ability to understand, respond to, and influence politics (Scanlan 7).

4. Fight Club

In Fight Club (1996), the author takes a terrorist as double. By describing the identity crisis of his narrator, Palahniuk gives reasons as to why someone who, according to consumerist ideals, has everything he needs turns into a terrorist leader. The reality Palahniuk creates in his novel is that of the nameless narrator, a white middle-class single in his early thirties. He works in the car industry where it is his job to calculate whether it is cheaper to pay off accident victims or recall the cars with defects. He has a fancy condo and all his furniture is by IKEA. He has everything he needs and that is exactly what bothers him. His life is boring, mediocre. The life of the narrator resembles that of the lives of many people belonging to the so-called Generation X.

As he suffers from insomnia and thinks he is seriously ill, his doctor advises him to go to support groups for the terminally ill in order to see what real pain is like. He likes it so much to be there, that h e becomes a support group tourist as the group meetings are the only place where he is able to relax.. One day he detects another support group tourist, Marla, and from then on, he cannot relax, he feels as a fake. On a