Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, represents the rebellion against order facilitated by the threat to masculinity among a specific class of American men. Promoted by violence and the desire to revert back to primal instincts, its members partake in a cultural and primitive form of play theorized by Johan Huizinga. The narrator in Fight Club, unnamed in the book but who the movie refers to as Jack, is a single middle-class white man who, in the absence of a father figure, never pursues the path of traditional manhood. He is an unmarried “30 year old boy,” and in his adult years, fails to find self-fulfillment with superficial material possessions. He becomes “a slave to the IKEA nest egg instinct.” In an attempt to relieve his chronic insomnia, Jack attends various support group meetings. However, the emotional release he discovers by visiting these support groups does not resonate with the primal and traditional views of masculinity. As a result he develops a split personality, Tyler Durden, a hyper-masculine superego bent on replacing the disempowered “generation of men raised by women.” The direction of masculinity in Fight Club towards violence becomes a crucial function to reaffirm the traditional characterization of men in modern society.
Since the earliest human societies, man’s primal impulse to reproduce is one of the most basic instincts for survival. Man evolved assets designed to attract at mate. For instance, large muscles may have signaled a man’s proficiency as a hunter and defender. However, men could not rely on strength alone. To be successful, men also had to show that they were creative and dependable providers, cleaver enough to find food and shelter for their families in hostile environments. Although these physical attributes have little meaning in modern societies, where most people work in offices and buy food at the local grocery store, they still hold a powerful sex appeal, an image that is constantly advertised to consumers to fuel their consumption.
Jack’s emotional emasculation results from the cultural consumerist consumption, as Tyler simply says, “The thing you own end up owning you.” Jack becomes addicted to the social groups as his only means of an intimate emotional release from the pains of feminization. Fight Club stages the fight against corporate consumption as a fight against all that is feminine, in which the idea of individualism is a marketing ploy designed to convince people to buy things like “the clever Njurunda coffee tables in the shape of a lime green yin and an orange yang” in order to express themselves (43). This is the domestication of masculine identity Jack is absorbed in, and the only release of his dissatisfaction is to pretend he is dying at various support groups. The support group for men with testicular cancer, “Remaining Men Together,” allows men to freely confide in each other their fears and humiliation as a result of their testicular cancer. One of the members, Bob, a former body builder who juiced up on steroids, lost his testicles to cancer and developed “bitch-tits” as a result of hormone replacement therapy. After the requisite sharing of stories, it is time to hug; it is a process that is clearly mocked as a feminized approach in therapy for men. Yet the therapy they seek involves the reconciliation of their loss by saying “we’re still men.” Fight Club contains numerous references to castration as the epitome of loss of masculine identity. For example, after Jack’s condo is blown up, Tyler tells him that it could be worse: “A women could cut off your penis while you’re sleeping and throw it out the window of a moving car.” Also, castration is used as a threat to various enemies of Project Mayhem. These men have lost not only their manliness, but also their capacity to reproduce future generations. They have lost a major part of their primal instinct for survival. While Tyler is emotionally emasculate, Bob represents the physical manifestation of emasculation by having his testicles removed. But even Bob with his “bitch-tits” is able to reaffirm his masculinity through the violence of fight club.
Violence is portrayed as a sport in Fight Club. Fight club provides the basic structure for men to vent their aggression with the contempt they find in society around them. In primitive man (as well as other carnivorous animals), it would seem that the primal emotion inciting combat with other fellow humans was the instinct to survive. Generally speaking, since they must eat to live and kill to eat, when they were driven by hunger they had two options: to hunt other animals less mighty then themselves, or combat their own kind by either stealing from them, or in the stress of famine, devouring them for food. While the men in fight club are not fighting to satisfy their desire for food, the warrior mentality of the individuals who participate in the ritual of fight club are engaging in a form of play theorized by Huizinga. Like animals, men participate in play, an action that “is more than a mere physiological phenomenon or a psychological reflex” (Huizinga 1). This basic instinct for survival is fundamental to the simplest forms of play; possibly to satisfy some primal necessity to prove one’s dominance. Huizinga summed up the formal characteristic of play to a “free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly” (Huizinga 8). Each man is allowed the chance to fight an opponent in a testosterone-fueled bare-knuckled brawl until one becomes limp or yells “Stop!” War in Fight Club is seen as a cultural function. The one-on-one battles are “waged within a sphere whose members regard each other as equals or antagonist[s] with equal rights” (Huizinga 89). This camaraderie allows the members to fight each other so fiercely and remain loyal friends after. The participants are “convinced that the action actualizes and effects a definite beatification, brings about an order of things higher than that in which they customary live” (Huizinga 14). Each fight becomes an endurance of pain, a test of who can last the longest and achieve a heightened state of what it means to be alive. The glorification that comes from this blend of combat and play intertwined to form war as “the most intense, the most energetic form of play and at the same time the most palpable and primitive” (Huizinga 89).
War as a game resonates in fight club the same way that Huizinga proposed: “all fighting is bound by rules of play” (Huizinga 89). The rules of Fight Club adhere to this formal characterization of play, allowing the men to engage in physical contact “within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner” (Huizinga 89). The setting of fight club allows for this form of play to exist. The first two rules of fight club, “You do not talk about fight club,” are designed to encourage all men to follow in the newly established counterculture. Under the illusion of secrecy, fight club existed “only when fight club started and fight club ended.” The basement arena of fight club provides a space, “a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally,” where each man has the opportunity to transcend reality and rise above the lifestyle that corporations have cast upon them, essentially saving their masculinity (Huizinga 10). Violence, as play in this setting, “promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world” (Huizinga 46). We can clearly see the regression of masculinity in the all male members of fight club towards violence in a gruesome spectacle of bare-knuckled brutality and stylistic gore, in which fighting becomes more than a ritual, it is the source of their release of inhibitions.
Fight Club becomes a self-destructive method of self-discovery that frees men from emasculation. Each male in fight club turns to violence in an attempt to reawaken the senses. Fight Club turns violence into a traditional notion of masculinity, and enables men to engage in a heterosexual style of brutality and male bonding. It becomes a place where men can experience a true admiration of the now, a sense of being in the present. They are searching for a type of freedom that doesn’t come until one has nothing to lose. “You weren't alive anywhere like you were alive here,” Jack says, because, “who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world” (51, 49). Fight club “isn’t about winning or losing fights” or “about looking good” (51). Unlike the commercial image of men, to which Tyler remarks “self-improvement is masturbation”, Jack understands fight club to be a rebirth through violence. He remarks that after fight club “when you wake up Sunday afternoon you felt saved” (51). For the members of fight club “self –improvement isn’t the answer…self-destruction is the answer” (49).
In fact, Jacks manifestation of an alter ego is primarily the result of his desire to escape. Tyler is composed of all the traits he wished he had, “I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck. I’m smart, capable and most importantly I am free in all the ways you are not.” Tyler often questions Jack’s motives towards a feminized sense of consumerism by asking if it is “essential to our survival in the hunter-gatherer sense of the world.” Tyler wants to revert back to minimalism, which brings up the issue of primal necessities. Unlike Jack who is concerned with material goods and the status they would bring him, Tyler lives on mere necessities. The house he lives in is a basic shelter, and a leaky one at that. He stops watching television and rarely showers. Tyler’s aspiration towards primalism is clearly evident when he describes his vision of the world around him. “In the world I see,” he says, “You are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” Tyler’s persuasion for an instinctive primal direction leads to the creation of fight club and eventually Project Mayhem.
Violence in Project Mayhem is used as a tool to attack corporations which hinder grey-collar masculine identity. Through fight club, the practice of minimalism, and the destruction of various aspects of white-collar society, the members of Project Mayhem construct a new identity where they abandon commercialized individuality in favor of their own counterculture. The members of Project Mayhem are told: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.” Rather, “You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” This theme is constantly repeated in order to escape capitalist society, where image is everything. Tyler instructs that "You are not your bank account. You are not the clothes you wear. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your bowel cancer. You are not your Grande Latte. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis.” In addition, Tyler sends each member various homework assignment. For example, one of the assignments was to pick a fight with a stranger, but to lose. The homework assignments Tyler hands out exemplify the crisis portrayed in America and the need for violence as radical change. Jack says that “most people, normal people, do just about anything to avoid a fight.” By using violence against total strangers, the members of Project Mayhem are reaching out and expanding the thrill of violence as a means of redefining masculine identity. Jack also uses self-inflicted violence to blackmail his boss. Ironically the “corporate sponsorship” he received is used to wreak havoc on the rest of corporate society.
The overwhelming spectacle of violence in Fight Club plays a key role in providing the audience with a primal understanding of masculinity. Violence in Fight Club progresses out of Jack’s dissatisfaction with corporate consumption into a massive counterculture army bent on demolition as a means to freedom. It is this physical aggression that serves as the crucial element of male bonding. In terms of Huizinga, fight club as play involves each participant into a state of higher being. Just as each step, from therapy support groups, to the creation of fight club, to the widespread destruction in Project Mayhem, is packaged as an attempt to reestablish masculine identity.
4.14.2008
“Dogfight” in terms of Huizinga: What happens when a game ends?
In “Homo Ludens” Huizinga characterizes play as limited; as an act “played out” in the confines of a specific time and place. He says play has its own course and meaning. “Play begins, and then at a certain moment it is “over”. It plays itself to an end” (9). Unfortunately, Huizinga does not take the player into consideration, who has invested himself in the act of play, which inevitably will end. What then is the player to do? Like a junkie, the player must wait for his next fix; his existence is purposeless until he can resume his game of fancy or find a new game to sink his teeth into.
In Gibson’s “Dogfight”, all the characters experience a “what then?” moment, where the game they play spirals to an end. They are left in a transition period, with one game over and another yet to begin. Huizinga describes each game as “temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart” (10). When a temporary world ends how does it affect the player in the real world?
Deek, the protagonist of “Dogfight” begins the novel in limbo, inhabiting an empty existence until he is introduced to SPADS&FOKKERS, a flight simulator game. Deek hones his skills and refines his program in hopes of defeating the ultimate player, Tiny. When the two finally battle, Deek takes the illegal drug hype in order to maximize his chance at victory. Deek’s dreams of triumph materialize and he narrowly defeats Tiny. However, the means Deek uses to attain success leave him ostracized from everyone he knows. Gibson ends “Dogfight” with, “A starry old night like this called for big talk. But standing there with all of Jackman’s silent and vast and empty around him, he realized suddenly that he had no body left to tell it to. Nobody at all.” (167). Deek is in the same situation as in the beginning of the story; living an isolated, purposeless existence.
What is purpose? “The American Heritage Dictionary” defines purpose as, “an object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal”. This all depends on which perspective the word purpose is looked at from; biological or spiritual? Huizinga would argue that play cannot be looked at soli from a biological perspective, because play is more than merely a biological function. Huizinga asks, ““Why is a huge crowd roused to frenzy by a football match?”” (2). He continues, “This intensity of, and absorption in, play finds no explanation in biological analysis. Yet in this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence, the primordial quality of play” (2). To Huizinga play is above biological purpose because a key element of play is fun. Huizinga says, “…the fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation” (3).
I agree with Huizinga that play serves more than a biological purpose; I would argue that this purpose is a self-realizing one. A key aspect of play is the capacity to put ones abilities to the test and to discover something about the self in the process. This self realization is the safety net which prevents the player from losing purpose when a game ends. Deek may be physically alone in his moment of victory, but his solitude will not take away from the self realizations he made while playing the game. These realizations or spiritual discoveries are not always positive, and in Deek’s case are quite negative. At the end of “Dogfight” Deek realizes that his selfish antics led to his exclusion and has a better understanding of his morality. These realizations will stay with Deek, till his death, through memory. They can be learned from or discarded, but could only arise through the decision to participate in a form of play. In relation to play and memory Huizinga says, “Once played, it endures as a new-found creation of the mind, a treasure to be retained by the memory” (10). Deek’s treasures (aka realizations) will guide him until he finds his next type of play where he can expand on them and form new realizations.
Similar to Deak, Nance plays the game of student as an engineering major at William and Mary University. The purpose of her game is to ace a job interview with I.G. Feuchtwaren. “Dogfight” ends with the reader never knowing whether or not Nance passes the interview, but odds are she does not, because Deek uses her second hit of hype. Without hype Nance will lack the ability to produce the same quality of work that she was able to muster for her final project. Even in the slim chance that she does pass the interview without hype, she will still lack the ability to consistently perform in the spirit of her final project, and her hirers will discover her fraud. Let us assume that Nance does not pass the interview and has to continue her schooling. Nance faces a game-over situation, and like Deek is presented with a “then what?”
Even though Nance has been denied a programming job, she is left with two options; to continue pursuing the job or to give up and move on to another game. Huizinga believes that the ability to repeat a game until one is victorious at it is one of the most essential qualities of play. He says, “In nearly all the higher forms of play the elements of repetition and alternation (as in the refrain), are like the warp and woof of a fabric” (10). I agree with Huizinga that repetition is essential to play, but repetition is not always a possible alternative. For example, in 1988 Tim Dagget, a member of the U.S. Gymnastics team, had to withdraw from the Olympic Games because he had broken his leg and severed an artery competing in the World Championships in October of that year. In a New York Times article Dagget gave a comment about his condition; “I had reached a point it wasn't possible to do any more”. Just as Dagget cannot repeat the 1988 Olympic Games, Tiny can never restore the prestige the kickers at Jackman’s had for him. Tiny lived for the esteem of being the best SPADS&FOKKERS player, and Deak’s one-hit wonder changed Tiny’s life purpose. Ironically Deak’s victory over Tiny leaves him in the same situation as Tiny. Deak knows that he would never be able to defeat Tiny again, especially without the use of hype. Deak is left with a game in which the same results can never be reproduced. At the end of “Dogfight”, both Deak and Tiny are forced to create a new purpose for SPADS&FOKKERS, or find an entirely new game to play.
The game-over puts Deak (the winner) and Tiny (the loser) into the same situation. The winner and the loser are brought back to ground zero; the winner must find a way to keep on winning, while the loser must find a way to start winning. This parallels with Huizinga’s statement, “In the sphere of sacred play the child and the poet are at home with the savage” (26). The child and the poet are as the winner and the loser, and the savage or drive to win is the core purpose for both.
Some games cannot be repeated; in this case the winner and the loser are forced to find a new game. For instance, Australia’s swimming legend Dawn Fraser, winner of eight Olympic medals, twenty-seven individual and twelve relay world records. In 1964 due to inappropriate conduct, she was banned from competition for ten years, and spiraled into depression. Dawn recalls, “I wanted to die…I felt I had no friends, which was wrong, but I pushed away anyone who tried to help me….” (bluepages). She claims that pursuing another sport, golf in her case, brought her out of depression and near suicide. For some starting up a completely new game is an affective way to rekindle the spirit of play. Who knows, maybe Deak and Tiny might take up golf and be saved from the emptiness of their transition from one game to the next.
Unfortunately, not all players can successfully transition from game to game as Dawn Fraser could. For example, Austria’s ex-cross-country-skiing coach Walter Mayer attempted suicide, after he was relieved of his job because of a doping scandal he was part of. In this case, Mayer could not successfully transition from one game to the next, and felt that death was his only escape. Suicide is another option for both Deak and Tiny, and I consider it the antichrist of play. Suicide is the abandoning of play; it is a conscious choice to exterminate all forms of play, especially the solo form of play, the imagination. When the mind is abandoned, play cannot exist. Huizinga says, “But in acknowledging play you acknowledge mind, for whatever else play is, it is not matter” (3).
When a game ends ones mind is taken back to reality, and one is able to reflect on the choices made during game-play. In many instances the “absorption” or “maddening power” of a game will result in unintentional, yet severe outcomes for individuals involved with the player. An example in “Dogfight” is Deak taking advantage of Nance’s brainlock, and exploiting it to steal hype from her. After Deak had attained his victory, he had to come to terms with this unscrupulous act that enabled his success. This parallels to Huizinga’s example; “A Kwakiutl father in British Columbia killed his daughter who surprised him whilst carving things for a tribal ceremony” (23). The Kwakiutl father and Deak were both so involved in the “pretend” aspect of their play, that they were able to commit these devilish acts, which would never have been enacted outside the sphere of game-play.
The end of a game marks the beginning of another; for life consists of moving from game to game, self-actualizing in the transition period, and applying new found realizations to novel pursuits. Players cannot always cope with their realizations, or let go of previous games. In such situations, a player may be found in limbo, the heaven of a previous game out of grasp, and the hell of starting a new game to hard to bear. A Players life is comprised of an ongoing cycle of game-play, game-over, and start-over; only through death will one be relieved of such an existence. Or will one? Maybe death is just a form of game-over that enables us to reflect in transition and then be born again, able to continue our play. Huizinga was correct in saying, “…It seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature” (97).
In Gibson’s “Dogfight”, all the characters experience a “what then?” moment, where the game they play spirals to an end. They are left in a transition period, with one game over and another yet to begin. Huizinga describes each game as “temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart” (10). When a temporary world ends how does it affect the player in the real world?
Deek, the protagonist of “Dogfight” begins the novel in limbo, inhabiting an empty existence until he is introduced to SPADS&FOKKERS, a flight simulator game. Deek hones his skills and refines his program in hopes of defeating the ultimate player, Tiny. When the two finally battle, Deek takes the illegal drug hype in order to maximize his chance at victory. Deek’s dreams of triumph materialize and he narrowly defeats Tiny. However, the means Deek uses to attain success leave him ostracized from everyone he knows. Gibson ends “Dogfight” with, “A starry old night like this called for big talk. But standing there with all of Jackman’s silent and vast and empty around him, he realized suddenly that he had no body left to tell it to. Nobody at all.” (167). Deek is in the same situation as in the beginning of the story; living an isolated, purposeless existence.
What is purpose? “The American Heritage Dictionary” defines purpose as, “an object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal”. This all depends on which perspective the word purpose is looked at from; biological or spiritual? Huizinga would argue that play cannot be looked at soli from a biological perspective, because play is more than merely a biological function. Huizinga asks, ““Why is a huge crowd roused to frenzy by a football match?”” (2). He continues, “This intensity of, and absorption in, play finds no explanation in biological analysis. Yet in this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence, the primordial quality of play” (2). To Huizinga play is above biological purpose because a key element of play is fun. Huizinga says, “…the fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation” (3).
I agree with Huizinga that play serves more than a biological purpose; I would argue that this purpose is a self-realizing one. A key aspect of play is the capacity to put ones abilities to the test and to discover something about the self in the process. This self realization is the safety net which prevents the player from losing purpose when a game ends. Deek may be physically alone in his moment of victory, but his solitude will not take away from the self realizations he made while playing the game. These realizations or spiritual discoveries are not always positive, and in Deek’s case are quite negative. At the end of “Dogfight” Deek realizes that his selfish antics led to his exclusion and has a better understanding of his morality. These realizations will stay with Deek, till his death, through memory. They can be learned from or discarded, but could only arise through the decision to participate in a form of play. In relation to play and memory Huizinga says, “Once played, it endures as a new-found creation of the mind, a treasure to be retained by the memory” (10). Deek’s treasures (aka realizations) will guide him until he finds his next type of play where he can expand on them and form new realizations.
Similar to Deak, Nance plays the game of student as an engineering major at William and Mary University. The purpose of her game is to ace a job interview with I.G. Feuchtwaren. “Dogfight” ends with the reader never knowing whether or not Nance passes the interview, but odds are she does not, because Deek uses her second hit of hype. Without hype Nance will lack the ability to produce the same quality of work that she was able to muster for her final project. Even in the slim chance that she does pass the interview without hype, she will still lack the ability to consistently perform in the spirit of her final project, and her hirers will discover her fraud. Let us assume that Nance does not pass the interview and has to continue her schooling. Nance faces a game-over situation, and like Deek is presented with a “then what?”
Even though Nance has been denied a programming job, she is left with two options; to continue pursuing the job or to give up and move on to another game. Huizinga believes that the ability to repeat a game until one is victorious at it is one of the most essential qualities of play. He says, “In nearly all the higher forms of play the elements of repetition and alternation (as in the refrain), are like the warp and woof of a fabric” (10). I agree with Huizinga that repetition is essential to play, but repetition is not always a possible alternative. For example, in 1988 Tim Dagget, a member of the U.S. Gymnastics team, had to withdraw from the Olympic Games because he had broken his leg and severed an artery competing in the World Championships in October of that year. In a New York Times article Dagget gave a comment about his condition; “I had reached a point it wasn't possible to do any more”. Just as Dagget cannot repeat the 1988 Olympic Games, Tiny can never restore the prestige the kickers at Jackman’s had for him. Tiny lived for the esteem of being the best SPADS&FOKKERS player, and Deak’s one-hit wonder changed Tiny’s life purpose. Ironically Deak’s victory over Tiny leaves him in the same situation as Tiny. Deak knows that he would never be able to defeat Tiny again, especially without the use of hype. Deak is left with a game in which the same results can never be reproduced. At the end of “Dogfight”, both Deak and Tiny are forced to create a new purpose for SPADS&FOKKERS, or find an entirely new game to play.
The game-over puts Deak (the winner) and Tiny (the loser) into the same situation. The winner and the loser are brought back to ground zero; the winner must find a way to keep on winning, while the loser must find a way to start winning. This parallels with Huizinga’s statement, “In the sphere of sacred play the child and the poet are at home with the savage” (26). The child and the poet are as the winner and the loser, and the savage or drive to win is the core purpose for both.
Some games cannot be repeated; in this case the winner and the loser are forced to find a new game. For instance, Australia’s swimming legend Dawn Fraser, winner of eight Olympic medals, twenty-seven individual and twelve relay world records. In 1964 due to inappropriate conduct, she was banned from competition for ten years, and spiraled into depression. Dawn recalls, “I wanted to die…I felt I had no friends, which was wrong, but I pushed away anyone who tried to help me….” (bluepages). She claims that pursuing another sport, golf in her case, brought her out of depression and near suicide. For some starting up a completely new game is an affective way to rekindle the spirit of play. Who knows, maybe Deak and Tiny might take up golf and be saved from the emptiness of their transition from one game to the next.
Unfortunately, not all players can successfully transition from game to game as Dawn Fraser could. For example, Austria’s ex-cross-country-skiing coach Walter Mayer attempted suicide, after he was relieved of his job because of a doping scandal he was part of. In this case, Mayer could not successfully transition from one game to the next, and felt that death was his only escape. Suicide is another option for both Deak and Tiny, and I consider it the antichrist of play. Suicide is the abandoning of play; it is a conscious choice to exterminate all forms of play, especially the solo form of play, the imagination. When the mind is abandoned, play cannot exist. Huizinga says, “But in acknowledging play you acknowledge mind, for whatever else play is, it is not matter” (3).
When a game ends ones mind is taken back to reality, and one is able to reflect on the choices made during game-play. In many instances the “absorption” or “maddening power” of a game will result in unintentional, yet severe outcomes for individuals involved with the player. An example in “Dogfight” is Deak taking advantage of Nance’s brainlock, and exploiting it to steal hype from her. After Deak had attained his victory, he had to come to terms with this unscrupulous act that enabled his success. This parallels to Huizinga’s example; “A Kwakiutl father in British Columbia killed his daughter who surprised him whilst carving things for a tribal ceremony” (23). The Kwakiutl father and Deak were both so involved in the “pretend” aspect of their play, that they were able to commit these devilish acts, which would never have been enacted outside the sphere of game-play.
The end of a game marks the beginning of another; for life consists of moving from game to game, self-actualizing in the transition period, and applying new found realizations to novel pursuits. Players cannot always cope with their realizations, or let go of previous games. In such situations, a player may be found in limbo, the heaven of a previous game out of grasp, and the hell of starting a new game to hard to bear. A Players life is comprised of an ongoing cycle of game-play, game-over, and start-over; only through death will one be relieved of such an existence. Or will one? Maybe death is just a form of game-over that enables us to reflect in transition and then be born again, able to continue our play. Huizinga was correct in saying, “…It seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature” (97).
Fight Club as Voluntary Play
Among Huizinga’s ideas on the concept of play, he says at one point that all play “is in fact freedom” (8), and “play is superfluous” (8). Paradoxically contrary to this, Huizinga later makes the statement that “all play has its rules (11). Even going further, he solidifies this by saying, “The rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt” (Huizinga, 11). For example, if children are playing, pretending they are airplanes, running around with their arms spread, that is a completely free game. Even in that, there is a rule, though unsaid, that one child should not stop short and say ‘no, we are not airplanes.’ This child would then be a characterization of Huizinga’s “spoil-sport” (Huizinga, 11), having broken the rule fundamental in all games: the game itself cannot be denied its own reality. So, the addition of rules such as those of a game of tag, played by the very same children, does not actually complicate the reality of the game or play any further. In Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, there is a dichotomy between Tyler and Marla along the very same lines; Tyler makes many rules, while Marla makes none and follows none.
Tyler, throughout the course of the story, attempts to spread his view that we should not be bound by the rules of society. His way of doing this, however, involves making up many rules of his own, in essence just creating a new society of different rules. Tyler’s rules of fight club, as well as those of Project Mayhem, both reinforce and contradict Huizinga’s thinking. Having created a rule for almost everything, including that the narrator is not to talk about him, Tyler’s behavior shows Huizinga’s thinking about the universal presence of rules in games. However, the thinking of Tyler and Huizinga split at the point where, “The rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt” (Huizinga, 11). Many of Tyler’s rules, such as: “The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club. The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club” (Palahniuk, 50), are clearly meant to be broken. Tyler wants more people to show up, to get more of a following. On the other hand, some of Tyler’s rules are “absolutely binding” (Huizinga, 11), while others are simply vague. One could say that if it is not absolutely binding, it is not actually a rule, especially if, as with the first two rules of fight club, they are designed for the very purpose of being broken.
Marla Singer lives in a perpetual state of free play. She has no agency, lives by no rules, but as a result, never does anything with her life. The narrator does not know Marla before she realizes that she might have cancer: “Marla started going to the support groups after she found the first lump” (Palahniuk, 107). So, this freedom of hers may be a result of the cancer and nothing more. The narrator says, “The morning after we found her second lump, Marla hopped into the kitchen with both legs in one leg of her pantyhose and said, ‘Look, I’m a mermaid’” (Palahniuk, 107). Marla has everything Tyler is promoting. Marla is not afraid to die; Tyler meest Marla because Marla tries to lackadaisically kill herself, saying, “This wasn’t for-real suicide, this was probably just one of those cry-for-help things” (Palahniuk, 59). She is pure play, and free of the rules of any game, including life itself. When Huizinga says that play “is in fact freedom” (8), he is right for the purposes of Marla Singer.
So if indeed Tyler’s existence is based around this woman, he is the part of the narrator’s mind who is attracted to her. The narrator’s statement, “Without Marla, Tyler would have nothing” (Palahniuk, 14), would indicate this. Coupled with the fact that Tyler becomes apparent in the narrator’s life at about the same time that Marla does, would indicate that Tyler is a direct result of Marla. Tyler, for the purpose of his creation, is trying to relate to Marla is some way, being the part of the narrator that is attracted to her. At least from the perspective of Huizinga’s writing, though, he is her complete opposite.
Tyler’s rules are made to impose his idea of freedom upon others. As contradictory as that may be, this works to a limited degree. With Project Mayhem, Tyler himself points out, “No one guy understands the whole plan, but each guy is trained to do one simple task perfectly” (Palahniuk, 130). So, despite creating a master plan with elaborate rules and complexity, he keeps every single person completely out of the loop, in the aimless moment. Tyler, however, knows and plans all of it: “The rule in Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler” (Palahniuk, 130). So, in essence, Tyler keeps all of the members of Project Mayhem in a state of simple perpetual play. The narrator notices, “There are guys whose job it is to just boil rice all day or wash out eating bowls or clean the crapper. All day” (Palahniuk, 131). As menial as these tasks sound, and may be, they fit into Huizinga’s conceptions of what play is. Huizinga says that “play is a voluntary activity” (7), “play is superfluous” (8), and that play is “an interlude in our daily lives” (9). All of the “space monkeys” are there voluntarily, and do not need to be involved in fight club or Project Mayhem at all. Also, all of them presumably have their old lives, as empty as they may find them, to return to. This world of Project Mayhem and fight club is completely separate from their real lives. Fight club, fit Huizinga’s definition of play perfectly, in that it is outside of daily life. Project Mayhem, on the other hand, is practically a new life. They leave their old lives behind to come and join, separating Project Mayhem from their real lives, and it becomes their play-world.
In that way, Tyler’s destruction of the narrator’s home did much more than to destroy the narrator’s belongings. Tyler destroyed the narrator’s “‘ordinary’ life” (Huizinga, 9), in which play must be separate from. The narrator is stuck in the perpetual play world of fight club and Project Mayhem. He could not leave. Not because he was not allowed to, but because he can not return home from the game Tyler has him wrapped up in.
However, to the best of our knowledge, the space monkeys’ old lives are not destroyed in the way the narrator’s was. They are choosing to join up, as Huizainga says that “Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be put a forcible imitation of it” (7). So the problem with this is, of course, that there are rules to fight club and Project Mayhem, ordering how things are to be done. Both groups are entirely voluntary, but being told to do things voluntarily. Excluding possibly the narrator, all of the space monkeys want to be there; they had to wait three days to be allowed to enter the house. They willingly submit themselves to Tyler, which itself, is one of the rules: “The rule in Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler” (Palahniuk,130).
So these men are willingly submitting and choosing to do what they have been ordered to do. This proves true in many situations of play in our society. Children are required to play sports by their schools or their parents, yet they are still choosing to play. At an even more basic level children are told to play at recess, and there is never a second’s thought to questioning why. Even in the adult world the narrator is living in at the beginning of the story, the narrator willingly buys into the game of consumerism. As he says, “The Alle cutlery service, Stainless steel. Dishwasher safe. The Vild hall clock made of galvanized steel, oh, I had to have that” (43), it shows that he is tied up in that game. Tyler, in order to break away from similar things that all these men are frustrated with, falls into the same pattern that they were living in before. He has them living the same game, with a façade of difference to it. Huizinga calls this “Puerilism” (Huizinga, 205), being a false play only trying to imitate. Considering the jobs Tyler orders the space monkeys to do around the Paper Street house are the equivalents of real jobs, only in his fake society, this parallel becomes especially clear.
This paradox that choice is and is not being made is contrasted by Marla. Marla does not do things because she is told to. Nor does she choose to do them. She has an absolute lack of agency, so life just happens to her. For example, when Marla was playing at being a mermaid, she said afterwards, “This isn’t like when guys sit backward on the toilet and pretend it’s a motorcycle. This is a genuine accident” (Palahniuk, 108). Likewise, when a space monkey was not letting her enter the house, for not following the rules of Project mayhem, she simply left: “And I hear the front door slam shut. Marla doesn’t wait the three days” (Palahniuk, 133). This portrayal of Marla’s refusal to follow the rules, further identifies her as the “spoil-sport” (Huizinga, 11). Her impatience also shows how she aimlessly lives in the moment. Despite Huizinga’s definition that “all play has its rules” (11), Marla plays and does not have any rules and will not follow any. However, the distinction between Marla’s character and Huizinga’s assumption is that Huizinga assumed that all people have a deterministic choice.
Huizinga’s way of responding to this problem causes him to make a distinction away from “child and animal play” (8). One could easily say that animals and children do not have the freedom to be able to choose this for themselves, that “they must play because their instinct drives them to it and because it serves to develop their bodily faculties and their powers of selection” (Huizinga, 7-8). This ignores the fact that although we would not say that adults must play, the instincts of any human operate in the same way Huizinga describes here. If we are to make this division, Marla is certainly be grouped with Huizinga’s considerations of children and animals: Child and animal play because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom” (Huizinga, 8). Marla’s spontaneity of her life shows this quite well. Marla has no plans or aspirations for the future.
The larger problem, however, is that although Huizinga excludes children and animals as having a different kind of voluntary play, he does not specify who to include as having real choice. In Fight club, we see adults acting the same way Huizinga describes children and animals acting. The space monkeys want to do the things they are doing for Project Mayhem, just as much as a child or an animal, “they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom” (Huizinga, 8). They were not forced.
Pushing aside any grand debate about free will or determinism, this divide between voluntary as in choice and voluntary as in desire becomes especially weak. The narrator in the story continuously plays along with Tyler’s games when he sees it most desirable, and then reverts to being the spoil-sport as he sees that most desirable. Yes, Tyler destroys his life which he would go back to, but it is when he realizes this that he chooses to be the spoil-sport. The space monkeys join because Project Mayhem is desirable to them.
Tyler, on the other hand, shows no desire whatsoever. Being the only character involved in Project Mayhem who knows what is happening, he is also the only one making voluntary choices as opposed to just responding to desire. For all the humor of some of Tyler’s statements, Tyler never laughs. Not once does he show enjoyment of what he is doing. So for all intents and purposes, Tyler’s way of playing is Huizinga’s explanation of human play. The problem with this, of course, is that Tyler is not actually a real person. The agency and choice he has comes from the mind of the narrator, and thus the desire that motivates his agency comes from that too. He is a person without desire but with choice and agency, which almost intrinsically is a nihilist.
Even with Tyler, however, this form of voluntary play according to choice does not work. Tyler as an independent person does not have any desire of his own, yes. Yet, Tyler more or less is the subliminal desires of the narrator, and thus exaggerates the desires of the narrator in order to fuel his choices. The other thing to keep in mind is that Tyler creates the game and its rules, and thus is overseeing it more than actually partaking in it. Not being real, it would make sense.
Tyler, throughout the course of the story, attempts to spread his view that we should not be bound by the rules of society. His way of doing this, however, involves making up many rules of his own, in essence just creating a new society of different rules. Tyler’s rules of fight club, as well as those of Project Mayhem, both reinforce and contradict Huizinga’s thinking. Having created a rule for almost everything, including that the narrator is not to talk about him, Tyler’s behavior shows Huizinga’s thinking about the universal presence of rules in games. However, the thinking of Tyler and Huizinga split at the point where, “The rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt” (Huizinga, 11). Many of Tyler’s rules, such as: “The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club. The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club” (Palahniuk, 50), are clearly meant to be broken. Tyler wants more people to show up, to get more of a following. On the other hand, some of Tyler’s rules are “absolutely binding” (Huizinga, 11), while others are simply vague. One could say that if it is not absolutely binding, it is not actually a rule, especially if, as with the first two rules of fight club, they are designed for the very purpose of being broken.
Marla Singer lives in a perpetual state of free play. She has no agency, lives by no rules, but as a result, never does anything with her life. The narrator does not know Marla before she realizes that she might have cancer: “Marla started going to the support groups after she found the first lump” (Palahniuk, 107). So, this freedom of hers may be a result of the cancer and nothing more. The narrator says, “The morning after we found her second lump, Marla hopped into the kitchen with both legs in one leg of her pantyhose and said, ‘Look, I’m a mermaid’” (Palahniuk, 107). Marla has everything Tyler is promoting. Marla is not afraid to die; Tyler meest Marla because Marla tries to lackadaisically kill herself, saying, “This wasn’t for-real suicide, this was probably just one of those cry-for-help things” (Palahniuk, 59). She is pure play, and free of the rules of any game, including life itself. When Huizinga says that play “is in fact freedom” (8), he is right for the purposes of Marla Singer.
So if indeed Tyler’s existence is based around this woman, he is the part of the narrator’s mind who is attracted to her. The narrator’s statement, “Without Marla, Tyler would have nothing” (Palahniuk, 14), would indicate this. Coupled with the fact that Tyler becomes apparent in the narrator’s life at about the same time that Marla does, would indicate that Tyler is a direct result of Marla. Tyler, for the purpose of his creation, is trying to relate to Marla is some way, being the part of the narrator that is attracted to her. At least from the perspective of Huizinga’s writing, though, he is her complete opposite.
Tyler’s rules are made to impose his idea of freedom upon others. As contradictory as that may be, this works to a limited degree. With Project Mayhem, Tyler himself points out, “No one guy understands the whole plan, but each guy is trained to do one simple task perfectly” (Palahniuk, 130). So, despite creating a master plan with elaborate rules and complexity, he keeps every single person completely out of the loop, in the aimless moment. Tyler, however, knows and plans all of it: “The rule in Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler” (Palahniuk, 130). So, in essence, Tyler keeps all of the members of Project Mayhem in a state of simple perpetual play. The narrator notices, “There are guys whose job it is to just boil rice all day or wash out eating bowls or clean the crapper. All day” (Palahniuk, 131). As menial as these tasks sound, and may be, they fit into Huizinga’s conceptions of what play is. Huizinga says that “play is a voluntary activity” (7), “play is superfluous” (8), and that play is “an interlude in our daily lives” (9). All of the “space monkeys” are there voluntarily, and do not need to be involved in fight club or Project Mayhem at all. Also, all of them presumably have their old lives, as empty as they may find them, to return to. This world of Project Mayhem and fight club is completely separate from their real lives. Fight club, fit Huizinga’s definition of play perfectly, in that it is outside of daily life. Project Mayhem, on the other hand, is practically a new life. They leave their old lives behind to come and join, separating Project Mayhem from their real lives, and it becomes their play-world.
In that way, Tyler’s destruction of the narrator’s home did much more than to destroy the narrator’s belongings. Tyler destroyed the narrator’s “‘ordinary’ life” (Huizinga, 9), in which play must be separate from. The narrator is stuck in the perpetual play world of fight club and Project Mayhem. He could not leave. Not because he was not allowed to, but because he can not return home from the game Tyler has him wrapped up in.
However, to the best of our knowledge, the space monkeys’ old lives are not destroyed in the way the narrator’s was. They are choosing to join up, as Huizainga says that “Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be put a forcible imitation of it” (7). So the problem with this is, of course, that there are rules to fight club and Project Mayhem, ordering how things are to be done. Both groups are entirely voluntary, but being told to do things voluntarily. Excluding possibly the narrator, all of the space monkeys want to be there; they had to wait three days to be allowed to enter the house. They willingly submit themselves to Tyler, which itself, is one of the rules: “The rule in Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler” (Palahniuk,130).
So these men are willingly submitting and choosing to do what they have been ordered to do. This proves true in many situations of play in our society. Children are required to play sports by their schools or their parents, yet they are still choosing to play. At an even more basic level children are told to play at recess, and there is never a second’s thought to questioning why. Even in the adult world the narrator is living in at the beginning of the story, the narrator willingly buys into the game of consumerism. As he says, “The Alle cutlery service, Stainless steel. Dishwasher safe. The Vild hall clock made of galvanized steel, oh, I had to have that” (43), it shows that he is tied up in that game. Tyler, in order to break away from similar things that all these men are frustrated with, falls into the same pattern that they were living in before. He has them living the same game, with a façade of difference to it. Huizinga calls this “Puerilism” (Huizinga, 205), being a false play only trying to imitate. Considering the jobs Tyler orders the space monkeys to do around the Paper Street house are the equivalents of real jobs, only in his fake society, this parallel becomes especially clear.
This paradox that choice is and is not being made is contrasted by Marla. Marla does not do things because she is told to. Nor does she choose to do them. She has an absolute lack of agency, so life just happens to her. For example, when Marla was playing at being a mermaid, she said afterwards, “This isn’t like when guys sit backward on the toilet and pretend it’s a motorcycle. This is a genuine accident” (Palahniuk, 108). Likewise, when a space monkey was not letting her enter the house, for not following the rules of Project mayhem, she simply left: “And I hear the front door slam shut. Marla doesn’t wait the three days” (Palahniuk, 133). This portrayal of Marla’s refusal to follow the rules, further identifies her as the “spoil-sport” (Huizinga, 11). Her impatience also shows how she aimlessly lives in the moment. Despite Huizinga’s definition that “all play has its rules” (11), Marla plays and does not have any rules and will not follow any. However, the distinction between Marla’s character and Huizinga’s assumption is that Huizinga assumed that all people have a deterministic choice.
Huizinga’s way of responding to this problem causes him to make a distinction away from “child and animal play” (8). One could easily say that animals and children do not have the freedom to be able to choose this for themselves, that “they must play because their instinct drives them to it and because it serves to develop their bodily faculties and their powers of selection” (Huizinga, 7-8). This ignores the fact that although we would not say that adults must play, the instincts of any human operate in the same way Huizinga describes here. If we are to make this division, Marla is certainly be grouped with Huizinga’s considerations of children and animals: Child and animal play because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom” (Huizinga, 8). Marla’s spontaneity of her life shows this quite well. Marla has no plans or aspirations for the future.
The larger problem, however, is that although Huizinga excludes children and animals as having a different kind of voluntary play, he does not specify who to include as having real choice. In Fight club, we see adults acting the same way Huizinga describes children and animals acting. The space monkeys want to do the things they are doing for Project Mayhem, just as much as a child or an animal, “they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom” (Huizinga, 8). They were not forced.
Pushing aside any grand debate about free will or determinism, this divide between voluntary as in choice and voluntary as in desire becomes especially weak. The narrator in the story continuously plays along with Tyler’s games when he sees it most desirable, and then reverts to being the spoil-sport as he sees that most desirable. Yes, Tyler destroys his life which he would go back to, but it is when he realizes this that he chooses to be the spoil-sport. The space monkeys join because Project Mayhem is desirable to them.
Tyler, on the other hand, shows no desire whatsoever. Being the only character involved in Project Mayhem who knows what is happening, he is also the only one making voluntary choices as opposed to just responding to desire. For all the humor of some of Tyler’s statements, Tyler never laughs. Not once does he show enjoyment of what he is doing. So for all intents and purposes, Tyler’s way of playing is Huizinga’s explanation of human play. The problem with this, of course, is that Tyler is not actually a real person. The agency and choice he has comes from the mind of the narrator, and thus the desire that motivates his agency comes from that too. He is a person without desire but with choice and agency, which almost intrinsically is a nihilist.
Even with Tyler, however, this form of voluntary play according to choice does not work. Tyler as an independent person does not have any desire of his own, yes. Yet, Tyler more or less is the subliminal desires of the narrator, and thus exaggerates the desires of the narrator in order to fuel his choices. The other thing to keep in mind is that Tyler creates the game and its rules, and thus is overseeing it more than actually partaking in it. Not being real, it would make sense.
Freedom: A Revolt Against Established Rule
Our lives are governed by rules and limitations. Like an infinitely complex game, civilization is built upon rules that provide boundaries for our actions. They come in many forms, from laws to constitutions to commandments, but they all share the common goal of giving the masses of civilians a guide for how to play the game of civilized life. In order for these rules to be followed, however, there must be a threat of punishment for those who break the rules. Whether it be by fines, imprisonment, or ostracism, punishments serve to protect the order created within the game world. Johan Huizinga describes this need to protect rules in his book Homo Ludens when he says that one who breaks the rules “must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community” (Huizinga, 11). Although there are punishments that deter most people from breaking the rules, sometimes one will find the game so odious that they can no longer passively take part in it. It is at this point that Huizinga’s “spoil-sport” is created. By refusing to abide by the rules of the game, the spoil-sport “reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others” (Huizinga, 11). He reveals the game for what it really is, just a temporary world of order that belies a chaotic reality.
This is precisely what the protagonist, Jack, does in the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. He had successfully mastered the game of his civilization, and yet he was a slave to it. A slave to his heartless job, to his IKEA catalog, to the material rewards that come with playing by the rules of his civilization. What he really wanted was freedom; freedom from the illusory game-world in which he was “perfect and complete” (Palahniuk, 46). While he may have been perfect and complete in his game-world, he knew that there was something very wrong with the game he played. He had no control over his life. His hopes and desires were dominated by the rules of the consumerist society he lived in. He gets his first taste of freedom at the support group meetings. “Losing all hope is freedom” he says, after witnessing the pain and hopelessness of the terminally ill patients. Losing all hope allowed him to see the insignificance of the arbitrary rules that he lived by, and realize that there is more to life than his game-world. After leaving the meetings, he “felt more alive than [he’d] ever felt before” (Pahlahniuk, 22). By seeing the futile nature of the game he played, he experiences what Huizinga would call “the first main characteristic of play: that it is… freedom” (Huizinga, 8). According to Huizinga, civilizations are founded on play, yet “as a civilization becomes more complex, more variegated and more overladen, and as the technique of production and social life itself become more finely organized, the old cultural soil is gradually smothered under a rank layer of ideas, systems of thought and knowledge, doctrines, rules and regulations, moralities and conventions which have all lost touch with play” (Huizinga 75). This play aspect has been mostly lost in Jack’s game world, to a point where he no longer feels the freedom of living. He is biologically alive, yet he is bound by the restrictions of a civilization that keeps him trapped in his “single-serving butter and cramped airline seat role in the world” (Pahlahniuk, 173). He is a walking zombie, a body evacuated of its soul yet still going through the motions of life. The closest he can get to feeling alive is through the temporary façade he puts on during his support groups. By pretending to be dying, he is able to temporarily feel freedom from the burdens of his society, he can “relax and give up” (Palahniuk, 18) playing the game that he is trapped in. But his façade is eventually broken when Marla discovers his act. He can no longer fake the feeling of being free, and in his desperation, his alter ego Tyler Durden springs from his psyche to deliver him from the game he had become a slave to.
Tyler’s mission is to destroy all the rules of conventional civilization so that it can be rebuilt into something better. To do this he must become the spoil-sport, the one who transgresses the rules so that the game-world itself collapses (Huizinga, 11). He questions the established rules of society, the rules that keep people from living in the moment. He wants to demolish the rules that keep people from expressing their anger when provoked in the street, the rules that tell you what furniture you need, what clothes to wear. He is at war with the cultural norms that tell you how much money you should make, how you should treat other people, and what repetitive job you should perform to maintain your place in society. He calls this a “great war of the spirit…a great revolution against the culture” (Palahniuk, 149). Tyler’s solution to end this great “spiritual depression” is to bring the “spontaneity and carelessness” of the play-spirit back into existence, and to abolish the “spirit of the professional” that had taken over Jack’s life (Huizinga, 197). The spirit of the professional is what Jack had been living before the start of fight club. Huizinga describes this spirit in terms of the sports professional who has raised the game “to such a pitch of technical organization and scientific thoroughness that real play-spirit is threatened with extinction” (Huizinga, 199). Such was the life Jack lived prior to fight club; a life so organized by the rules of civilization that each individual was consigned to performing one task with professional perfection. “You just do your little job. Pull a lever. Push a button” in a chase for “cars and clothes [you] don’t need” (Palahniuk, 193, 149). To bring the spontaneity and carelessness back into Jack’s life, Tyler must bring him back into the moment.
In order for Jack to experience the complete freedom of living in the moment, he would have to be broken down to his lowest point. He would have to hit rock bottom. At that point, there would be no past history of civilization or hope for a future to bind him. He would not be bound by his bank account, his job, his hopes, or even his name. Tyler wanted to demolish all of the rules that held him in his previous life, so that Jack could be completely free. He had to be free from all of the material possessions that once owned him. “The liberator who destroys my property… will set me free” says Tyler, after blowing up everything Jack owned (Palahniuk, 110). He had to be free from his job, so Tyler kills his boss. Even the most fundamental rule of all living things, the preservation of life, was an obstacle to his freedom. It is only when he gives up this most fundamental rule that Tyler’s job is complete, and Tyler is no longer needed.
It is ironic, however, that in his attempt to bring Jack into this state of complete freedom, Tyler creates a culture of his own that is bound by its own rules and limitations. At first, fight club was created as a way for people to “mutually withdraw from the rest of the world and reject the usual norms” (Huizinga, 12). Although this new game also had rules, the rules in this game served to keep participants in the moment. The first and second rules of the game give a solid definition to the duration of fight club; it “exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends” (Palahniuk, 48). When it ends, there was to be no mention of fight club until the next meeting. This defined duration is what gives fight club its play spirit, because all “play begins, and then at a certain moment it is over” (Huizinga, 9). Play requires not only a defined time, but a defined space, and requires that all participants play voluntarily. These were all true of the original fight club. But fight club eventually grows into a movement that is no longer about just fighting at night in the basements of bars. It begins to stray from the original play-spirit of fight club, and towards the seriousness of doctrines, rules, and moralities that Huizinga describes as typical of complex societies. Out of fight club evolves a new game that is as restricted by rules as the one Jack is trying to escape.
In an effort to abolish all rules, the project had created its own illusory game-world that mirrored the doctrines and moralities that they were trying to escape from. The elusive freedom that Jack sought was not to be found in paradoxical Project Mayhem. While Tyler tries valiantly to engineer a system in which Jack can be free of his past rules and obligations, the act of guiding someone towards freedom is a paradox in itself. To guide someone requires showing them a path to follow and to tell them that there is a destination for them to reach, both of which limit a person from doing what they want. By sending a mechanic to engineer Jack’s freedom, Tyler is only able to give Jack a temporary illusion of being free, much like the support groups that Jack had once turned to. As in his support groups, Jack is able to grasp a fleeting sense of being free in the moment by being on the brink of death, and “for that moment, nothing matters” (Palahniuk, 143). It is in this moment that Jack realizes his true desire, the one thing he wishes to do before he dies, to quit his job (Palahniuk, 144). This realization is what Tyler had in mind for Jack’s rebirth as a free man. Tyler even went so far as to plan a birthday cake for his rebirth, and also carry out the birthday wish that he knew Jack would make. This is where his guided freedom falls apart, however, because in guiding Jack towards freedom, Tyler has simply replaced one job with another. While his old boss and old rules were blown up, Jack is now trapped in a new job with a new boss, Tyler Durden. Jack makes his wish to be free of his job, but his wish does not come true because he is not able to blow out his birthday candles (Palahniuk, 147). Jack eventually comes to the realization that the freedom that he seeks cannot be achieved through guided meditation or guided destruction. True freedom comes at the expense of all rules, because all rules will limit your actions.
Project Mayhem, in essence, is no better than the civilization that Tyler was trying to bring down. With Project Mayhem comes a new set of rules that members must follow. These rules are no longer about keeping the play-spirit alive, and instead are meant to obscure the members from what is really going on. Just like the old civilization that they were fighting so hard to destroy, the spirit of play in fight club has been turned into the spirit of the professional in Project Mayhem. The members of Project Mayhem “all know what to do… no one guy understands the whole plan, but each guy is trained to do one simple task perfectly” (Palahniuk, 130). It loses all the elements of freedom and the play-spirit that characterized fight club. It is no longer a game with a defined time; members of Project Mayhem are constantly working, rendering fat, gardening, causing destruction. It no longer has a defined space, as the endeavors of Project Mayhem could happen anywhere, from shopping malls to public parks. And no longer is it a voluntary activity, as unsuspecting victims are forced to be a part of homework assignments and participate as human sacrifices. Although the members share a goal for these actions, “to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them” (Palahniuk, 149), the mere thought of having a goal distances them from playing in the moment, and from complete freedom. Jack eventually sees the resemblance between Project Mayhem and the world he was trying so hard to escape from. He once again feels “trapped in [a] clockwork of silent men with the energy of trained monkeys” (Palahniuk, 130). Jack has broken free of his old game, but now has a new one in which he is still a slave to the goals and aspirations that the game prescribes him.
The moment is where freedom lies, where the purest play-spirit exists. As play extends beyond the boundaries of the moment, it becomes tainted by the past and the future. Beyond the moment, there is less freedom of action. The play you must make in the current moment is defined by your past actions and future goals. In the most extreme form of this, the professional player of any game, all the optimal plays are calculated beforehand so that the player is never in the moment. The plays have already been spelled out, and he has no choice but to follow the path to reach his goal. To play a game to achieve an end is to be a slave to the game. The game provides you with many possible endings, some in which you are a winner and other in which you are a loser. It then gives you rules to play by in order for you to become a winner, and one who strives to become the winner is bound by the rules and terms of the game. In playing this game, the professional becomes his goal. His every moment is defined by what he wants to achieve, and not by what he wants in the moment. This is not to say that play cannot exist outside of the moment, but instead that play lies on a continuum, with its purest form existing only in the moment. It is when the rewards of a game extend past the desires of the moment that our freedom is threatened.
References:
1. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Boston: The Beacon Press
2. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company
This is precisely what the protagonist, Jack, does in the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. He had successfully mastered the game of his civilization, and yet he was a slave to it. A slave to his heartless job, to his IKEA catalog, to the material rewards that come with playing by the rules of his civilization. What he really wanted was freedom; freedom from the illusory game-world in which he was “perfect and complete” (Palahniuk, 46). While he may have been perfect and complete in his game-world, he knew that there was something very wrong with the game he played. He had no control over his life. His hopes and desires were dominated by the rules of the consumerist society he lived in. He gets his first taste of freedom at the support group meetings. “Losing all hope is freedom” he says, after witnessing the pain and hopelessness of the terminally ill patients. Losing all hope allowed him to see the insignificance of the arbitrary rules that he lived by, and realize that there is more to life than his game-world. After leaving the meetings, he “felt more alive than [he’d] ever felt before” (Pahlahniuk, 22). By seeing the futile nature of the game he played, he experiences what Huizinga would call “the first main characteristic of play: that it is… freedom” (Huizinga, 8). According to Huizinga, civilizations are founded on play, yet “as a civilization becomes more complex, more variegated and more overladen, and as the technique of production and social life itself become more finely organized, the old cultural soil is gradually smothered under a rank layer of ideas, systems of thought and knowledge, doctrines, rules and regulations, moralities and conventions which have all lost touch with play” (Huizinga 75). This play aspect has been mostly lost in Jack’s game world, to a point where he no longer feels the freedom of living. He is biologically alive, yet he is bound by the restrictions of a civilization that keeps him trapped in his “single-serving butter and cramped airline seat role in the world” (Pahlahniuk, 173). He is a walking zombie, a body evacuated of its soul yet still going through the motions of life. The closest he can get to feeling alive is through the temporary façade he puts on during his support groups. By pretending to be dying, he is able to temporarily feel freedom from the burdens of his society, he can “relax and give up” (Palahniuk, 18) playing the game that he is trapped in. But his façade is eventually broken when Marla discovers his act. He can no longer fake the feeling of being free, and in his desperation, his alter ego Tyler Durden springs from his psyche to deliver him from the game he had become a slave to.
Tyler’s mission is to destroy all the rules of conventional civilization so that it can be rebuilt into something better. To do this he must become the spoil-sport, the one who transgresses the rules so that the game-world itself collapses (Huizinga, 11). He questions the established rules of society, the rules that keep people from living in the moment. He wants to demolish the rules that keep people from expressing their anger when provoked in the street, the rules that tell you what furniture you need, what clothes to wear. He is at war with the cultural norms that tell you how much money you should make, how you should treat other people, and what repetitive job you should perform to maintain your place in society. He calls this a “great war of the spirit…a great revolution against the culture” (Palahniuk, 149). Tyler’s solution to end this great “spiritual depression” is to bring the “spontaneity and carelessness” of the play-spirit back into existence, and to abolish the “spirit of the professional” that had taken over Jack’s life (Huizinga, 197). The spirit of the professional is what Jack had been living before the start of fight club. Huizinga describes this spirit in terms of the sports professional who has raised the game “to such a pitch of technical organization and scientific thoroughness that real play-spirit is threatened with extinction” (Huizinga, 199). Such was the life Jack lived prior to fight club; a life so organized by the rules of civilization that each individual was consigned to performing one task with professional perfection. “You just do your little job. Pull a lever. Push a button” in a chase for “cars and clothes [you] don’t need” (Palahniuk, 193, 149). To bring the spontaneity and carelessness back into Jack’s life, Tyler must bring him back into the moment.
In order for Jack to experience the complete freedom of living in the moment, he would have to be broken down to his lowest point. He would have to hit rock bottom. At that point, there would be no past history of civilization or hope for a future to bind him. He would not be bound by his bank account, his job, his hopes, or even his name. Tyler wanted to demolish all of the rules that held him in his previous life, so that Jack could be completely free. He had to be free from all of the material possessions that once owned him. “The liberator who destroys my property… will set me free” says Tyler, after blowing up everything Jack owned (Palahniuk, 110). He had to be free from his job, so Tyler kills his boss. Even the most fundamental rule of all living things, the preservation of life, was an obstacle to his freedom. It is only when he gives up this most fundamental rule that Tyler’s job is complete, and Tyler is no longer needed.
It is ironic, however, that in his attempt to bring Jack into this state of complete freedom, Tyler creates a culture of his own that is bound by its own rules and limitations. At first, fight club was created as a way for people to “mutually withdraw from the rest of the world and reject the usual norms” (Huizinga, 12). Although this new game also had rules, the rules in this game served to keep participants in the moment. The first and second rules of the game give a solid definition to the duration of fight club; it “exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends” (Palahniuk, 48). When it ends, there was to be no mention of fight club until the next meeting. This defined duration is what gives fight club its play spirit, because all “play begins, and then at a certain moment it is over” (Huizinga, 9). Play requires not only a defined time, but a defined space, and requires that all participants play voluntarily. These were all true of the original fight club. But fight club eventually grows into a movement that is no longer about just fighting at night in the basements of bars. It begins to stray from the original play-spirit of fight club, and towards the seriousness of doctrines, rules, and moralities that Huizinga describes as typical of complex societies. Out of fight club evolves a new game that is as restricted by rules as the one Jack is trying to escape.
In an effort to abolish all rules, the project had created its own illusory game-world that mirrored the doctrines and moralities that they were trying to escape from. The elusive freedom that Jack sought was not to be found in paradoxical Project Mayhem. While Tyler tries valiantly to engineer a system in which Jack can be free of his past rules and obligations, the act of guiding someone towards freedom is a paradox in itself. To guide someone requires showing them a path to follow and to tell them that there is a destination for them to reach, both of which limit a person from doing what they want. By sending a mechanic to engineer Jack’s freedom, Tyler is only able to give Jack a temporary illusion of being free, much like the support groups that Jack had once turned to. As in his support groups, Jack is able to grasp a fleeting sense of being free in the moment by being on the brink of death, and “for that moment, nothing matters” (Palahniuk, 143). It is in this moment that Jack realizes his true desire, the one thing he wishes to do before he dies, to quit his job (Palahniuk, 144). This realization is what Tyler had in mind for Jack’s rebirth as a free man. Tyler even went so far as to plan a birthday cake for his rebirth, and also carry out the birthday wish that he knew Jack would make. This is where his guided freedom falls apart, however, because in guiding Jack towards freedom, Tyler has simply replaced one job with another. While his old boss and old rules were blown up, Jack is now trapped in a new job with a new boss, Tyler Durden. Jack makes his wish to be free of his job, but his wish does not come true because he is not able to blow out his birthday candles (Palahniuk, 147). Jack eventually comes to the realization that the freedom that he seeks cannot be achieved through guided meditation or guided destruction. True freedom comes at the expense of all rules, because all rules will limit your actions.
Project Mayhem, in essence, is no better than the civilization that Tyler was trying to bring down. With Project Mayhem comes a new set of rules that members must follow. These rules are no longer about keeping the play-spirit alive, and instead are meant to obscure the members from what is really going on. Just like the old civilization that they were fighting so hard to destroy, the spirit of play in fight club has been turned into the spirit of the professional in Project Mayhem. The members of Project Mayhem “all know what to do… no one guy understands the whole plan, but each guy is trained to do one simple task perfectly” (Palahniuk, 130). It loses all the elements of freedom and the play-spirit that characterized fight club. It is no longer a game with a defined time; members of Project Mayhem are constantly working, rendering fat, gardening, causing destruction. It no longer has a defined space, as the endeavors of Project Mayhem could happen anywhere, from shopping malls to public parks. And no longer is it a voluntary activity, as unsuspecting victims are forced to be a part of homework assignments and participate as human sacrifices. Although the members share a goal for these actions, “to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them” (Palahniuk, 149), the mere thought of having a goal distances them from playing in the moment, and from complete freedom. Jack eventually sees the resemblance between Project Mayhem and the world he was trying so hard to escape from. He once again feels “trapped in [a] clockwork of silent men with the energy of trained monkeys” (Palahniuk, 130). Jack has broken free of his old game, but now has a new one in which he is still a slave to the goals and aspirations that the game prescribes him.
The moment is where freedom lies, where the purest play-spirit exists. As play extends beyond the boundaries of the moment, it becomes tainted by the past and the future. Beyond the moment, there is less freedom of action. The play you must make in the current moment is defined by your past actions and future goals. In the most extreme form of this, the professional player of any game, all the optimal plays are calculated beforehand so that the player is never in the moment. The plays have already been spelled out, and he has no choice but to follow the path to reach his goal. To play a game to achieve an end is to be a slave to the game. The game provides you with many possible endings, some in which you are a winner and other in which you are a loser. It then gives you rules to play by in order for you to become a winner, and one who strives to become the winner is bound by the rules and terms of the game. In playing this game, the professional becomes his goal. His every moment is defined by what he wants to achieve, and not by what he wants in the moment. This is not to say that play cannot exist outside of the moment, but instead that play lies on a continuum, with its purest form existing only in the moment. It is when the rewards of a game extend past the desires of the moment that our freedom is threatened.
References:
1. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Boston: The Beacon Press
2. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company
Pleasure, Perfection, and Jouissance in Fight Club
I. Pleasure and Perfection
The effort that characters in Fight Club put forth in order to sustain a sensation of pleasure is often self-destructive. According to Richard Howard in the preface to Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, pleasure refers to a state, and in this essay, it is one of satisfaction and enjoyment (vi). This essay focuses on pleasure derived from control, which means to possess the function or power of directing and regulating, having domination and command (OED). This pleasure comes at the perfect moment.
When Tyler Durden makes the giant hand out of driftwood on the beach, creating a perfect moment, he asks the narrator what time it is. The narrator responds by asking where, and he says, “Right here. Right now (32).” Tyler enforces the idea that the narrator should be aware of his life at that moment and says that he needs to know the time so that he knows when the hand he created casts the perfect shadow. By saying, “ One minute was enough. A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection (33).” In saying this, he acknowledges perfection for what it truly is – momentary.
II. Pleasure’s Limits
Noting that perfection is momentary indirectly states another side to it – perfect can’t last forever. The word perfect can be traced back to the Latin word perfectus, which means fully realized, complete, [and] finished (OED). Perfect is a climax. It is a final state. Like other states, it passes and it is not something that can be maintained. Perfection should be appreciated while it is there, but it should not be expected to last indefinitely. Many instances of satisfaction in life are momentary.
The narrator tries to make aspects in his life, such as his furniture, both perfect and unchanging. The narrator describes an instance of perfection when he says, “You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled (44).” For a period of time, you are content with what you have since it’s what you wanted. After some time, though, your furniture, or whatever was perfect, no longer satisfies you. The pleasure it once brought you leaves. It follows the rules of perfection since its worth comes to pass.
The narrator subconsciously creates the character of Tyler Durden as a representation of everything that he imagines as perfect. He says, “I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not (174).” Tyler has the looks, the job, the money, the freedom – everything that the narrator wishes he could have, and he’s the person that he wishes he could be. The narrator feels more in control and is more pleased with his life with Tyler in his company and through his help. However, Tyler is still just another example of perfection. Just as he provides pleasure, as other moments of perfection do, he also cannot remain as a constant. He functions as the narrator’s game, and as Huizinga says, “Play begins, and then at a certain moment it is ‘over’ (9).” Tyler must abide by these rules, and he does. He is present, and then he leaves.
III. Jouissance and Puerilism
If a person is able to transgress “the pleasure principle it is not more pleasure, but pain that they get, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this ‘painful pleasure’ is what Lacan calls jouissance; ‘jouissance is suffering’ (S7, 184 QTB Evans).” Amid one of Tyler’s absences, the narrator needs to find him, and he tries to search him out. While he’s searching, at “every bar [he’s] walked into, everybody called [him] sir,” and he wonders, “ how can a stranger know who I am (158)?” He is confused and talks with Marla to try to find out if they had sex. He believes that they didn’t, but Tyler did, and if strangers think he’s Tyler, he wants to know who Marla thinks he is. In doing this he’s trying to sort things out. When he asks, she insists that they did. She reminds him, “That night I said I wanted to have our abortion (160).” Upon hearing this he says, “We’ve just lost cabin pressure (160),” as he realizes that Marla really does believe that he’s Tyler Durden and he is feeling a loss of control. He feels unsure about his life again as he wonders what could be happening. Even more now, the narrator desires to find Tyler Durden so that he can find out what is going on and regain the pleasure from certainty. He wants the feeling of having things going perfectly back, and he wants his sense of control. He tries to break through the limit on enjoyment, known as the pleasure principle (92, Evans). The narrator doesn’t want to be left in the dark as to what is happening with the fight club and what Tyler is doing. He enjoys the control that Tyler makes him feel that he has, and the extra confidence. He feels like he is winning at life because of Tyler, but the narrator starts to lose that feeling when he leaves. He states, “I am nothing in the world compared to Tyler (146).” When he is present, though, he feels more powerful. His life is like a game and, as Huizinga states, winning means showing oneself superior in the outcome of a game (50). Tyler’s absence creates a feeling of inferiority in the narrator. Despite the paradox in his endeavors, of getting a painful pleasure, the narrator continues on his mission. Jouissance is an action, and not a state, so it can be maintained (Howard’s preface to Barthes, vi). The attempt to regain Tyler in his life refers to what Huizinga calls puerilism. Puerilism is a quality “which, to a superficial eye, [has] all the appearance of play and might be taken for permanent play-tendencies, but [is], in point of fact, nothing of the sort. Modern social life is being dominated to an ever-increasing extent by a quality that has something in common with play and yields the illusion of a strongly developed play-factor (205).” Even though the narrator is aiming at winning Tyler back in his life, it is not a true game. As hard as he is trying to get the outcome of a game back, the pleasure, he is pursuing this outcome through the actions of a false game.
IV. Jouissance and Libido
Jouissance is not the only action that is false game. Around 1957, jouissance became connected with a sexual connotation of enjoyment. As Evans says in An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, “there are strong affinities between Lacan’s description of jouissance and Freud’s concept of the LIBIDO (S20, 26 QTB Evans).” Both jouissance and libido are attempts to extend the time frame of a pleasurable moment – with the sexual connotation; it is referring to an orgasm. Jouissance is an action like libido in that it functions as the drive for a person who desires to extend the enjoyment. After the sexual climax, or the orgasm, both jouissance and libido drive the person to try to sustain the moment, even though it can’t be maintained.
According to Freud, “there is only one libido, which is masculine,” and according to Lacan, “jouissance is essentially phallic, which means that it does not relate to the Other as such (S20, 14 QTB Evans).” Both statements suggest that the “Other,” referring to females, do not experience this drive. However, Lacan goes on to say that there is a “specifically feminine jouissance (S20, 58), which is ‘beyond the phallus’ (S20, 69 QTB Evans).” According to Lacan, the feminine jouissance is incapable of being expressed in words since, even though it is experienced, the Other knows nothing of it (S20, 71 QTB Evans). Women, unlike men, don’t realize that they have the drive. Despite the variation in how it is experienced, both sexes may endure a type of jouissance.
V. The Death Drive
The feminine jouissance applies to Marla. She has what Evans refers to as the death drive. This is the name given to that constant desire in the subject to break through the pleasure principle towards the THING and a certain excess jouissance. Thus, Evans remarks, jouissance is ‘the path towards death’ (S17, 17 QTB Evans). Marla even says herself, “she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn’t (108).” She tries to play off the idea that she has no concerns and that she has gotten to a point in her life where she can just go with whatever happens to her – she can go from place to place and what ever may come of it, it doesn’t matter. It is almost a subconscious drive to try to make her life as carefree as possible. One morning she came into the narrator’s kitchen saying, “Look, I’m a mermaid (107).” She has accidentally slips both legs into the same pantyhose, and she takes the time to recognize the moment and laugh at it. She lives her life one moment at a time, and points out small innocent mistakes for the fun of it. Despite this fact, she still does have concerns. She doesn’t want to know that she’s going to die, and when she gets another lump in her breast, it concerns her.
The narrator shows a good example of masculine jouissance. In the end of the book, it is the climax for both the story and for the narrator – though it is a climax that he obtains through jouissance. He is finally in control of his life and the current situation, with the gun in his hand. All the time that it has taken to get to this point of perfection is worth it, as Tyler says earlier in the book. However, this cannot really be perfection since he gains it through jouissance. It would be more fitting to this situation to say that all the time it takes to destroy something is worth the end result. When you finally achieve what you have been working towards, that perfect moment overshadows all of the work you have put into it. The narrator is close to achieving what he has been striving for, but he will never obtain it since that would be breaking the pleasure principle – an impossible feat. During this scene Tyler is in the middle of what Huizinga refers to as false play. Huizinga says, this type of “play-form may be used, consciously or unconsciously, to cover up some social or political design (Huizinga, 205).” Tyler is trying to make the narrator think that he needs Tyler and that he isn’t in control, despite the fact that Tyler is imaginary and is only inside the narrator’s mind.
Marla and other people from the support groups come to help the narrator, saying, “Wait. Stop. We can help you (204).” However, to accept their help would mean giving up his absolute control of the situation and he does not want to do that. He is driven by the death drive in conjunction with jouissance. He wants to keep his control away from Tyler. Once his moral sense takes a role in altering the game (Huizinga), he wants to end his game and put an end to Tyler. At the end, when he turns the gun on himself in order to kill Tyler, he is no longer playing. Huizinga would classify the narrator’s actions as puerilism. He is now doing this to set things in order and put himself back in control. By shooting himself he attempts to maintain his control, and he continues down ‘the path towards death’.
All of the narrator’s attempts to prolong his pleasurable moments of perfection only make his situation worse. Through jouissance he ends up causing himself pain in his attempt to find pleasure.
Works Cited
1. (vi)
Roland, Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. Note on Text by Richard Howard. Hill and Wang New York; a division of Farrar Straus and Giroux Inc. ©1973, translation © 1975
2. (vi)
Pleasure
(Howard)
Roland, Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. Note on Text by Richard Howard. Hill and Wang New York; a division of Farrar Straus and Giroux Inc. ©1973, translation © 1975
3. (OED.com)
Control:
“Oxford English Dictionary”, Oxford University Press,
Copyright © Oxford University Press 2008
SECOND EDITION 1989
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50048961?query_type=word&queryword=control&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=t41Q-lU0awH-9717&hilite=50048961
4. (OED.com)
Perfect:
Perfectus:
“Oxford English Dictionary”, Oxford University Press,
Copyright © Oxford University Press 2008
SECOND EDITION 1989
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50175288?query_type=word&queryword=perfect&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=t41Q-8AYg64-10095&hilite=50175288
5. (92, Evans)
Pleasure principle
Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Published by Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, England; 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York 10001, USA and Canada. ©1996. Printed and bound by TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.
6. Jouissance
QTB Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Published by Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, England; 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York 10001, USA and Canada. ©1996. Printed and bound by TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.
QTB Evans:
(Page 91)
a) (S7, 184)
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60; trans. Denis Porter, notes by Dennis Porter, London: Routledge, 1992
(Page 92)
b) (S17, 17)
Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XVII. L’envers de la Psychanalyse, 1969-70 ed. Jacques- Alain Miller, Paris: Seuil, 1991
(Le Séminaire. Book 17. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis)
c) (S20, 14)
d) (S20, 26)
e) (S20, 58)
f) (S20, 69)
g) (S20, 71)
7. (32)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
8. (33)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
9. (44)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
10. (107)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
11. (108)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
12. (146)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
13. (158)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
14. (160)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
15. (174)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
16. (204)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
17. (Winning)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 50)
18. (Time frame)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 9)
19. (Peurilism)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 205)
20. (Moral)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 210)
21. (false play)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 205)
The effort that characters in Fight Club put forth in order to sustain a sensation of pleasure is often self-destructive. According to Richard Howard in the preface to Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, pleasure refers to a state, and in this essay, it is one of satisfaction and enjoyment (vi). This essay focuses on pleasure derived from control, which means to possess the function or power of directing and regulating, having domination and command (OED). This pleasure comes at the perfect moment.
When Tyler Durden makes the giant hand out of driftwood on the beach, creating a perfect moment, he asks the narrator what time it is. The narrator responds by asking where, and he says, “Right here. Right now (32).” Tyler enforces the idea that the narrator should be aware of his life at that moment and says that he needs to know the time so that he knows when the hand he created casts the perfect shadow. By saying, “ One minute was enough. A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection (33).” In saying this, he acknowledges perfection for what it truly is – momentary.
II. Pleasure’s Limits
Noting that perfection is momentary indirectly states another side to it – perfect can’t last forever. The word perfect can be traced back to the Latin word perfectus, which means fully realized, complete, [and] finished (OED). Perfect is a climax. It is a final state. Like other states, it passes and it is not something that can be maintained. Perfection should be appreciated while it is there, but it should not be expected to last indefinitely. Many instances of satisfaction in life are momentary.
The narrator tries to make aspects in his life, such as his furniture, both perfect and unchanging. The narrator describes an instance of perfection when he says, “You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled (44).” For a period of time, you are content with what you have since it’s what you wanted. After some time, though, your furniture, or whatever was perfect, no longer satisfies you. The pleasure it once brought you leaves. It follows the rules of perfection since its worth comes to pass.
The narrator subconsciously creates the character of Tyler Durden as a representation of everything that he imagines as perfect. He says, “I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not (174).” Tyler has the looks, the job, the money, the freedom – everything that the narrator wishes he could have, and he’s the person that he wishes he could be. The narrator feels more in control and is more pleased with his life with Tyler in his company and through his help. However, Tyler is still just another example of perfection. Just as he provides pleasure, as other moments of perfection do, he also cannot remain as a constant. He functions as the narrator’s game, and as Huizinga says, “Play begins, and then at a certain moment it is ‘over’ (9).” Tyler must abide by these rules, and he does. He is present, and then he leaves.
III. Jouissance and Puerilism
If a person is able to transgress “the pleasure principle it is not more pleasure, but pain that they get, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this ‘painful pleasure’ is what Lacan calls jouissance; ‘jouissance is suffering’ (S7, 184 QTB Evans).” Amid one of Tyler’s absences, the narrator needs to find him, and he tries to search him out. While he’s searching, at “every bar [he’s] walked into, everybody called [him] sir,” and he wonders, “ how can a stranger know who I am (158)?” He is confused and talks with Marla to try to find out if they had sex. He believes that they didn’t, but Tyler did, and if strangers think he’s Tyler, he wants to know who Marla thinks he is. In doing this he’s trying to sort things out. When he asks, she insists that they did. She reminds him, “That night I said I wanted to have our abortion (160).” Upon hearing this he says, “We’ve just lost cabin pressure (160),” as he realizes that Marla really does believe that he’s Tyler Durden and he is feeling a loss of control. He feels unsure about his life again as he wonders what could be happening. Even more now, the narrator desires to find Tyler Durden so that he can find out what is going on and regain the pleasure from certainty. He wants the feeling of having things going perfectly back, and he wants his sense of control. He tries to break through the limit on enjoyment, known as the pleasure principle (92, Evans). The narrator doesn’t want to be left in the dark as to what is happening with the fight club and what Tyler is doing. He enjoys the control that Tyler makes him feel that he has, and the extra confidence. He feels like he is winning at life because of Tyler, but the narrator starts to lose that feeling when he leaves. He states, “I am nothing in the world compared to Tyler (146).” When he is present, though, he feels more powerful. His life is like a game and, as Huizinga states, winning means showing oneself superior in the outcome of a game (50). Tyler’s absence creates a feeling of inferiority in the narrator. Despite the paradox in his endeavors, of getting a painful pleasure, the narrator continues on his mission. Jouissance is an action, and not a state, so it can be maintained (Howard’s preface to Barthes, vi). The attempt to regain Tyler in his life refers to what Huizinga calls puerilism. Puerilism is a quality “which, to a superficial eye, [has] all the appearance of play and might be taken for permanent play-tendencies, but [is], in point of fact, nothing of the sort. Modern social life is being dominated to an ever-increasing extent by a quality that has something in common with play and yields the illusion of a strongly developed play-factor (205).” Even though the narrator is aiming at winning Tyler back in his life, it is not a true game. As hard as he is trying to get the outcome of a game back, the pleasure, he is pursuing this outcome through the actions of a false game.
IV. Jouissance and Libido
Jouissance is not the only action that is false game. Around 1957, jouissance became connected with a sexual connotation of enjoyment. As Evans says in An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, “there are strong affinities between Lacan’s description of jouissance and Freud’s concept of the LIBIDO (S20, 26 QTB Evans).” Both jouissance and libido are attempts to extend the time frame of a pleasurable moment – with the sexual connotation; it is referring to an orgasm. Jouissance is an action like libido in that it functions as the drive for a person who desires to extend the enjoyment. After the sexual climax, or the orgasm, both jouissance and libido drive the person to try to sustain the moment, even though it can’t be maintained.
According to Freud, “there is only one libido, which is masculine,” and according to Lacan, “jouissance is essentially phallic, which means that it does not relate to the Other as such (S20, 14 QTB Evans).” Both statements suggest that the “Other,” referring to females, do not experience this drive. However, Lacan goes on to say that there is a “specifically feminine jouissance (S20, 58), which is ‘beyond the phallus’ (S20, 69 QTB Evans).” According to Lacan, the feminine jouissance is incapable of being expressed in words since, even though it is experienced, the Other knows nothing of it (S20, 71 QTB Evans). Women, unlike men, don’t realize that they have the drive. Despite the variation in how it is experienced, both sexes may endure a type of jouissance.
V. The Death Drive
The feminine jouissance applies to Marla. She has what Evans refers to as the death drive. This is the name given to that constant desire in the subject to break through the pleasure principle towards the THING and a certain excess jouissance. Thus, Evans remarks, jouissance is ‘the path towards death’ (S17, 17 QTB Evans). Marla even says herself, “she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn’t (108).” She tries to play off the idea that she has no concerns and that she has gotten to a point in her life where she can just go with whatever happens to her – she can go from place to place and what ever may come of it, it doesn’t matter. It is almost a subconscious drive to try to make her life as carefree as possible. One morning she came into the narrator’s kitchen saying, “Look, I’m a mermaid (107).” She has accidentally slips both legs into the same pantyhose, and she takes the time to recognize the moment and laugh at it. She lives her life one moment at a time, and points out small innocent mistakes for the fun of it. Despite this fact, she still does have concerns. She doesn’t want to know that she’s going to die, and when she gets another lump in her breast, it concerns her.
The narrator shows a good example of masculine jouissance. In the end of the book, it is the climax for both the story and for the narrator – though it is a climax that he obtains through jouissance. He is finally in control of his life and the current situation, with the gun in his hand. All the time that it has taken to get to this point of perfection is worth it, as Tyler says earlier in the book. However, this cannot really be perfection since he gains it through jouissance. It would be more fitting to this situation to say that all the time it takes to destroy something is worth the end result. When you finally achieve what you have been working towards, that perfect moment overshadows all of the work you have put into it. The narrator is close to achieving what he has been striving for, but he will never obtain it since that would be breaking the pleasure principle – an impossible feat. During this scene Tyler is in the middle of what Huizinga refers to as false play. Huizinga says, this type of “play-form may be used, consciously or unconsciously, to cover up some social or political design (Huizinga, 205).” Tyler is trying to make the narrator think that he needs Tyler and that he isn’t in control, despite the fact that Tyler is imaginary and is only inside the narrator’s mind.
Marla and other people from the support groups come to help the narrator, saying, “Wait. Stop. We can help you (204).” However, to accept their help would mean giving up his absolute control of the situation and he does not want to do that. He is driven by the death drive in conjunction with jouissance. He wants to keep his control away from Tyler. Once his moral sense takes a role in altering the game (Huizinga), he wants to end his game and put an end to Tyler. At the end, when he turns the gun on himself in order to kill Tyler, he is no longer playing. Huizinga would classify the narrator’s actions as puerilism. He is now doing this to set things in order and put himself back in control. By shooting himself he attempts to maintain his control, and he continues down ‘the path towards death’.
All of the narrator’s attempts to prolong his pleasurable moments of perfection only make his situation worse. Through jouissance he ends up causing himself pain in his attempt to find pleasure.
Works Cited
1. (vi)
Roland, Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. Note on Text by Richard Howard. Hill and Wang New York; a division of Farrar Straus and Giroux Inc. ©1973, translation © 1975
2. (vi)
Pleasure
(Howard)
Roland, Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. Note on Text by Richard Howard. Hill and Wang New York; a division of Farrar Straus and Giroux Inc. ©1973, translation © 1975
3. (OED.com)
Control:
“Oxford English Dictionary”, Oxford University Press,
Copyright © Oxford University Press 2008
SECOND EDITION 1989
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50048961?query_type=word&queryword=control&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=t41Q-lU0awH-9717&hilite=50048961
4. (OED.com)
Perfect:
Perfectus:
“Oxford English Dictionary”, Oxford University Press,
Copyright © Oxford University Press 2008
SECOND EDITION 1989
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50175288?query_type=word&queryword=perfect&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=t41Q-8AYg64-10095&hilite=50175288
5. (92, Evans)
Pleasure principle
Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Published by Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, England; 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York 10001, USA and Canada. ©1996. Printed and bound by TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.
6. Jouissance
QTB Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Published by Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, England; 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York 10001, USA and Canada. ©1996. Printed and bound by TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.
QTB Evans:
(Page 91)
a) (S7, 184)
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60; trans. Denis Porter, notes by Dennis Porter, London: Routledge, 1992
(Page 92)
b) (S17, 17)
Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XVII. L’envers de la Psychanalyse, 1969-70 ed. Jacques- Alain Miller, Paris: Seuil, 1991
(Le Séminaire. Book 17. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis)
c) (S20, 14)
d) (S20, 26)
e) (S20, 58)
f) (S20, 69)
g) (S20, 71)
7. (32)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
8. (33)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
9. (44)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
10. (107)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
11. (108)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
12. (146)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
13. (158)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
14. (160)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
15. (174)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
16. (204)
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 10110. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT. © 1996
17. (Winning)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 50)
18. (Time frame)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 9)
19. (Peurilism)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 205)
20. (Moral)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 210)
21. (false play)
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Ed. And trans. Not fully attributed: “This edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author’s own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death…” London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.
(Page 205)
Anonymous from 4chan as the Evolution of Fight Club
The novel, Fight Club, and its movie adaptation in 1999, exposed to America a new way of life through the notion of a secret underground group dedicated to solely beating each other up to a pulp for fun, committing flamboyant vandalism, and creating a better world through terrorism. The concept of a fight club appealed to the masses because it represented a freedom and escape from the everyday boring lives that many white-collar workers lived. However, with the movie’s release into culture through mass media, the elusive cult-like status of the group had been publicized and its allure was somewhat lost. Fight Club was revealed everywhere and before long, it just wasn’t special anymore. As Chuck Palahniuk describes in his afterword, “old ladies would meet in a church basement… where ‘the first rule of the quilting society is you don’t talk about the quilting…” (211). Now, when your grandma knows about fight club and is talking about it, obviously something went wrong. The concept of fight club had aroused the interest of society, but the knowledge itself condemned the creation of new secretive groups in accordance with rule one, “The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club” (Palahniuk 48). To be able to finish a forty-hour week and release pent-up aggression through physical violence was an ideal world that many people wanted to be a part of, but simply did not have access to.
While the fight club paradox as an American cultural entity was developing, the internet was slowly gaining popularity in the background. This latest media source had everything that was needed to establish the next fight club. It was convenient, easily accessible to the masses, allowed for group communication and most importantly there was no need for identification online. People realized this potential and soon began contributing to a community that would eventually become a new digitized fight club.
In Fight Club, we see the narrator (hence referred to as Joe) move from support group to fight club to project mayhem. Because in real life this sequence is cut short, we resorted to the internet and its virtual world. The internet with all its perks was perfect for forming the next underground society. This escape into cyberspace was first developed in America in 2003 as the image board 4chan, which introduced the central idea of anonymity (for simplicity’s sake, we will refer only to 4chan, which was the first English image board of its kind although there are many other older similar sites including the original Japanese 2channel and futaba channel). Collectively, the users of these sites commonly refer to themselves as Anonymous. A quick warning, due to the black humor and sometimes vulgar language/images of the site, please use discretion in following some of the links later provided in the works cited. Also, since 4chan is an image board after all, many of the links will be to discussions saved in the form of images.
The basis of 4chan is simple. You can say whatever you want and post a picture along with it (within certain boundaries such as no child pornography etc.) completely anonymously. The anonymity allows anyone in the world to supply information or opinions safely without being judged. Under this system, anything can be taken either seriously or not seriously and therefore all content must be treated equally. With these basic guidelines, 4chan is divided into different “channels” where various topics are discussed, from photography to video games. Each channel is abbreviated for simplicity, such as /v/ for video games or /sp/ for sports. The most infamous and popular of these channels is random, which was arbitrarily named /b/ since /r/ was already taken by the request channel. In /b/, there are basically no rules for the users with a few minor exceptions. However, this also means that users can be banned by the moderators of the website indiscriminately [see http://www.4chan.org/rules.php ; http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202270740885.jpg]
Combine anonymity with complete freedom of speech and you have one of the simplest formulas for free play. As Huizinga concludes, all play must be voluntary, provide no material utility, be secluded temporally or spatially, and have rules. The internet already meets all of these qualifications although the last rule is a bit more obscure. Anonymous, as self-proclaimed representatives of the internet, created what is generally agreed upon as the “Rules of the Internet” (see http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/thehamsterwheel/Rules.jpg). Glancing through the list, it should be obvious where the inspiration came from. From rules 1 and 2, “do NOT talk about /b/,” the overlying concept of what Anonymous does and what they stand for is based almost entirely around fight club and Project Mayhem. Because fight club also follows Huizinga’s formal definition of play, since “all fighting that is bound by rules bears the formal characteristics of play by that very limitation,” we can draw parallels between the two easily through the various extensions of fight club into an internet phenomenon (Huizinga 89).
The main contributing factor of fight club’s sense of play and appeal as a group is in its escapist qualities. As Joe puts it, “after a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down” (Palahniuk 49). Everybody, at some time or another, wants to get away or break free from life. Joe first finds his escape through support groups then fight club, while the other men eventually move on to project mayhem. Connecting all of these getaways is pain. Voyeurism of pain or feeling his own physical pain in the case of fight club makes Joe “[feel] more alive than [he’d] ever felt” (Palahniuk 22). To Joe and the other men, pain (whether it’s their own or afflicted on someone else) is a method through which they can forget what’s happening in their current lives and appreciate just being alive. We, as humans, take comfort in our own perceived glory through dwelling on the misery of others. Since there is nothing holding back what can be said on /b/, it isn’t surprising that a lot of the content revolves around hate and violence. Stories of people’s despair are posted for others to laugh at, similar to how Joe went to support groups just to make himself feel better (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY). While the support groups already provided the pain as an escape, project mayhem and /b/ use violence to have fun at the expense of the others. To accomplish this, Anonymous uses internet terrorism mainly through spamming and hacking websites, the online equivalent of vandalism and crime.
Many examples of Anonymous’ current work, such as crashing websites, can be found in their “war” against the Church of Scientology, which started just January of this year. What began as the removal of a youtube video soon led to the issue of free speech and censorship on the internet due to the Church’s “[misuse of] copyright and trademark law in pursuit of its own agenda” (see http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=261308). Anonymous decided to expose and “expel [the Church] from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form” for “the good of [their] followers, for the good of mankind” and of course “for the laughs” (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ). Herein, lies a paradox. Huizinga states that once a group “recognizes a higher goal [other] than the gratification of the self, the group or the nation will… pass beyond the ‘play’ of war to true seriousness” (211). Does this mean that as long as there is a “higher goal” in what Anonymous is doing, their actions cannot be “true play” anymore? What if this generalization of a “higher goal” was simply a by-product of the play? Huizinga’s solution to play versus seriousness lies in ethics; however, even he is lost for an answer as he concedes in the end that “moral awareness will always whelm the question” (213).
Although we have applied Huizinga’s terms and definitions for play directly to the cultures of fight club, Project Mayhem, and 4chan, Huizinga would have never categorized these as results of play or even being play. Huizinga could have never imagined groups like fight club or even the internet existing when he wrote Homo Ludens during World War II. He looks down on gatherings composed of “a blend of adolescence and barbarity” because he thinks they become “hotbeds of sectarianism, intolerance, suspicion,” all of which to a certain degree describe 4chan (205). However, he contradicts himself by making the generalization, “the connection between culture and play is particularly evident in the higher forms of social play where the latter consists in the orderly activity of a group” (46). The solution to this paradox lies in the definition of “orderly” and “barbarity.” Huizinga lived through World War I and experienced the rise of fascism in Germany first hand. In his mind, play became corrupted as people became brainwashed and controlled by the government and so Huizinga became biased against all groups who did not portray the noble, honorable, and fair side of play and war. Because of this, he states that “to be a sound culture-creating force [the] play element must be pure” (211). 4chan, fight club, and Project Mayhem would fail completely at fitting in with Huizinga’s romanticized ideals of play due to their almost cult-like status and actions. However, Huizinga’s prejudiced view causes him contradict one of his first presumptions, “Play… lies outside morals. In itself it is neither good nor bad” (213). Essentially, play should not be viewed subjectively or judged with ethics in mind. With that said, free play on the internet and fight club is what founded the unique culture even if it may seem morally “bad” to people like Huizinga who idealized civilization and play groups.
As /b/’s popularity grew despite the first and second rules, the channel eventually developed into its own unique culture. People looked to /b/ to escape their monotonous lives in order to participate in a virtual society where they could make a difference or gain attention, even if it means getting arrested for something like an empty threat (see http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/net-shooting-threat-australian-man-held/2007/12/08/1196813079398.html). Hiding behind a computer and lacking an identity makes expressing ideas very easy. Because of this free contribution to culture, the channel is loaded with inside jokes, black humor, and stories of violent or sexual acts. As stated openly by rules 42 and 43, “nothing is sacred. The more beautiful and pure a thing is - the more satisfying it is to corrupt it” (see http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/thehamsterwheel/Rules.jpg). If we looked back to Fight Club, Joe claims, “I was in a mood to destroy something beautiful” as he completely breaks the new guy (122). These two ideas link together the fact that once the world equalizes through the deconstruction of civilization (the beautiful, sacred things), life would be “better” for everyone. After this inspiration strikes Joe, project mayhem is born. The cyberspace society of /b/ was built upon these similar principles of play it shared with project mayhem with all the violence and vandalism replaced by its internet counterpart. In Fight Club, “Project Mayhem [is] going to save the world” while in reality, the culture of Anonymous is starting to revolutionize and “own the friggin’ world, never mind that [they] blew it up in the process” (pg 125, see http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1203554914619.jpg).
The theory behind the origin of /b/ and what Anonymous tries to do is all an extension of fight club and Project Mayhem. Rule 30 of “rules of the internet” states that “there are no girls on the internet,” which brings forth the ideas of gender in fight club and Project Mayhem into question (see http://www.4chan.org/rules.php). This idea of gender issues, considering the lack of an identity on the internet, is an area that definitely needs further analysis and inquiry. Another topic that could be expanded on is the concept of a “spoil-sport” that Huizinga mentions. Marla as a “spoil-sport” in fight club also has a counterpart in 4chan called “newfags” (see http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202243882175.png). These people are new to the rules and culture of Anonymous and sometimes go around exposing them; hence, “if you don’t know what this guy did wrong, you are one.” Even with this exposure, Anonymous is a relentless force just like Project Mayhem. While Joe is in an institution after Tyler’s death, fight club and Project Mayhem live on because people are always willing to contribute to a part of what they think is something greater. The culture essentially brainwashes people as they become addicted to their new potential voice as a part of Anonymous. The principles and appeal of /b/, as an evolution of fight club and Project Mayhem, are spreading quickly as we immerse ourselves more and more in cyberspace rather than the real world.
Works Cited
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1996.
4chan rules. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://www.4chan.org/rules.php.
4chan ban. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202270740885.jpg
Rules of the Internet. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/thehamsterwheel/Rules.jpg.
Anonymous on FOX11. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY
Online Group Declares War on Scientology. Accessed 6 April 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=261308
Message to Scientology. Accessed 20 March 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ.
Revolution. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1203554914619.jpg.
Net shooting threat: Australian man held. Accessed 5 April 2008
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/net-shooting-threat-australian-man-held/2007/12/08/1196813079398.html
/b/ guy. Accessed 20 March 2008
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202243882175.png
While the fight club paradox as an American cultural entity was developing, the internet was slowly gaining popularity in the background. This latest media source had everything that was needed to establish the next fight club. It was convenient, easily accessible to the masses, allowed for group communication and most importantly there was no need for identification online. People realized this potential and soon began contributing to a community that would eventually become a new digitized fight club.
In Fight Club, we see the narrator (hence referred to as Joe) move from support group to fight club to project mayhem. Because in real life this sequence is cut short, we resorted to the internet and its virtual world. The internet with all its perks was perfect for forming the next underground society. This escape into cyberspace was first developed in America in 2003 as the image board 4chan, which introduced the central idea of anonymity (for simplicity’s sake, we will refer only to 4chan, which was the first English image board of its kind although there are many other older similar sites including the original Japanese 2channel and futaba channel). Collectively, the users of these sites commonly refer to themselves as Anonymous. A quick warning, due to the black humor and sometimes vulgar language/images of the site, please use discretion in following some of the links later provided in the works cited. Also, since 4chan is an image board after all, many of the links will be to discussions saved in the form of images.
The basis of 4chan is simple. You can say whatever you want and post a picture along with it (within certain boundaries such as no child pornography etc.) completely anonymously. The anonymity allows anyone in the world to supply information or opinions safely without being judged. Under this system, anything can be taken either seriously or not seriously and therefore all content must be treated equally. With these basic guidelines, 4chan is divided into different “channels” where various topics are discussed, from photography to video games. Each channel is abbreviated for simplicity, such as /v/ for video games or /sp/ for sports. The most infamous and popular of these channels is random, which was arbitrarily named /b/ since /r/ was already taken by the request channel. In /b/, there are basically no rules for the users with a few minor exceptions. However, this also means that users can be banned by the moderators of the website indiscriminately [see http://www.4chan.org/rules.php ; http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202270740885.jpg]
Combine anonymity with complete freedom of speech and you have one of the simplest formulas for free play. As Huizinga concludes, all play must be voluntary, provide no material utility, be secluded temporally or spatially, and have rules. The internet already meets all of these qualifications although the last rule is a bit more obscure. Anonymous, as self-proclaimed representatives of the internet, created what is generally agreed upon as the “Rules of the Internet” (see http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/thehamsterwheel/Rules.jpg). Glancing through the list, it should be obvious where the inspiration came from. From rules 1 and 2, “do NOT talk about /b/,” the overlying concept of what Anonymous does and what they stand for is based almost entirely around fight club and Project Mayhem. Because fight club also follows Huizinga’s formal definition of play, since “all fighting that is bound by rules bears the formal characteristics of play by that very limitation,” we can draw parallels between the two easily through the various extensions of fight club into an internet phenomenon (Huizinga 89).
The main contributing factor of fight club’s sense of play and appeal as a group is in its escapist qualities. As Joe puts it, “after a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down” (Palahniuk 49). Everybody, at some time or another, wants to get away or break free from life. Joe first finds his escape through support groups then fight club, while the other men eventually move on to project mayhem. Connecting all of these getaways is pain. Voyeurism of pain or feeling his own physical pain in the case of fight club makes Joe “[feel] more alive than [he’d] ever felt” (Palahniuk 22). To Joe and the other men, pain (whether it’s their own or afflicted on someone else) is a method through which they can forget what’s happening in their current lives and appreciate just being alive. We, as humans, take comfort in our own perceived glory through dwelling on the misery of others. Since there is nothing holding back what can be said on /b/, it isn’t surprising that a lot of the content revolves around hate and violence. Stories of people’s despair are posted for others to laugh at, similar to how Joe went to support groups just to make himself feel better (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY). While the support groups already provided the pain as an escape, project mayhem and /b/ use violence to have fun at the expense of the others. To accomplish this, Anonymous uses internet terrorism mainly through spamming and hacking websites, the online equivalent of vandalism and crime.
Many examples of Anonymous’ current work, such as crashing websites, can be found in their “war” against the Church of Scientology, which started just January of this year. What began as the removal of a youtube video soon led to the issue of free speech and censorship on the internet due to the Church’s “[misuse of] copyright and trademark law in pursuit of its own agenda” (see http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=261308). Anonymous decided to expose and “expel [the Church] from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form” for “the good of [their] followers, for the good of mankind” and of course “for the laughs” (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ). Herein, lies a paradox. Huizinga states that once a group “recognizes a higher goal [other] than the gratification of the self, the group or the nation will… pass beyond the ‘play’ of war to true seriousness” (211). Does this mean that as long as there is a “higher goal” in what Anonymous is doing, their actions cannot be “true play” anymore? What if this generalization of a “higher goal” was simply a by-product of the play? Huizinga’s solution to play versus seriousness lies in ethics; however, even he is lost for an answer as he concedes in the end that “moral awareness will always whelm the question” (213).
Although we have applied Huizinga’s terms and definitions for play directly to the cultures of fight club, Project Mayhem, and 4chan, Huizinga would have never categorized these as results of play or even being play. Huizinga could have never imagined groups like fight club or even the internet existing when he wrote Homo Ludens during World War II. He looks down on gatherings composed of “a blend of adolescence and barbarity” because he thinks they become “hotbeds of sectarianism, intolerance, suspicion,” all of which to a certain degree describe 4chan (205). However, he contradicts himself by making the generalization, “the connection between culture and play is particularly evident in the higher forms of social play where the latter consists in the orderly activity of a group” (46). The solution to this paradox lies in the definition of “orderly” and “barbarity.” Huizinga lived through World War I and experienced the rise of fascism in Germany first hand. In his mind, play became corrupted as people became brainwashed and controlled by the government and so Huizinga became biased against all groups who did not portray the noble, honorable, and fair side of play and war. Because of this, he states that “to be a sound culture-creating force [the] play element must be pure” (211). 4chan, fight club, and Project Mayhem would fail completely at fitting in with Huizinga’s romanticized ideals of play due to their almost cult-like status and actions. However, Huizinga’s prejudiced view causes him contradict one of his first presumptions, “Play… lies outside morals. In itself it is neither good nor bad” (213). Essentially, play should not be viewed subjectively or judged with ethics in mind. With that said, free play on the internet and fight club is what founded the unique culture even if it may seem morally “bad” to people like Huizinga who idealized civilization and play groups.
As /b/’s popularity grew despite the first and second rules, the channel eventually developed into its own unique culture. People looked to /b/ to escape their monotonous lives in order to participate in a virtual society where they could make a difference or gain attention, even if it means getting arrested for something like an empty threat (see http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/net-shooting-threat-australian-man-held/2007/12/08/1196813079398.html). Hiding behind a computer and lacking an identity makes expressing ideas very easy. Because of this free contribution to culture, the channel is loaded with inside jokes, black humor, and stories of violent or sexual acts. As stated openly by rules 42 and 43, “nothing is sacred. The more beautiful and pure a thing is - the more satisfying it is to corrupt it” (see http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/thehamsterwheel/Rules.jpg). If we looked back to Fight Club, Joe claims, “I was in a mood to destroy something beautiful” as he completely breaks the new guy (122). These two ideas link together the fact that once the world equalizes through the deconstruction of civilization (the beautiful, sacred things), life would be “better” for everyone. After this inspiration strikes Joe, project mayhem is born. The cyberspace society of /b/ was built upon these similar principles of play it shared with project mayhem with all the violence and vandalism replaced by its internet counterpart. In Fight Club, “Project Mayhem [is] going to save the world” while in reality, the culture of Anonymous is starting to revolutionize and “own the friggin’ world, never mind that [they] blew it up in the process” (pg 125, see http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1203554914619.jpg).
The theory behind the origin of /b/ and what Anonymous tries to do is all an extension of fight club and Project Mayhem. Rule 30 of “rules of the internet” states that “there are no girls on the internet,” which brings forth the ideas of gender in fight club and Project Mayhem into question (see http://www.4chan.org/rules.php). This idea of gender issues, considering the lack of an identity on the internet, is an area that definitely needs further analysis and inquiry. Another topic that could be expanded on is the concept of a “spoil-sport” that Huizinga mentions. Marla as a “spoil-sport” in fight club also has a counterpart in 4chan called “newfags” (see http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202243882175.png). These people are new to the rules and culture of Anonymous and sometimes go around exposing them; hence, “if you don’t know what this guy did wrong, you are one.” Even with this exposure, Anonymous is a relentless force just like Project Mayhem. While Joe is in an institution after Tyler’s death, fight club and Project Mayhem live on because people are always willing to contribute to a part of what they think is something greater. The culture essentially brainwashes people as they become addicted to their new potential voice as a part of Anonymous. The principles and appeal of /b/, as an evolution of fight club and Project Mayhem, are spreading quickly as we immerse ourselves more and more in cyberspace rather than the real world.
Works Cited
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1996.
4chan rules. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://www.4chan.org/rules.php.
4chan ban. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202270740885.jpg
Rules of the Internet. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/thehamsterwheel/Rules.jpg.
Anonymous on FOX11. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY
Online Group Declares War on Scientology. Accessed 6 April 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=261308
Message to Scientology. Accessed 20 March 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ.
Revolution. Accessed 20 March 2008 http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1203554914619.jpg.
Net shooting threat: Australian man held. Accessed 5 April 2008
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/net-shooting-threat-australian-man-held/2007/12/08/1196813079398.html
/b/ guy. Accessed 20 March 2008
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff50/I_AmLegion/1202243882175.png
Science in Fight Club as Play
Johan Huizinga’s discussion on modern science brings up the main question: is science play? Although he concludes that modern science is not play, but early science is, he creates tension between the two, which leads me to question his credibility. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, definition 5b of the word “science” refers to the “branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws…” for example, chemistry. Fight Club involves the science of chemistry and its use for violence. Huizinga’s passage poses many questions. Is playing around with chemistry truly play?
Saponification, the process of making soap is the basis of Fight Club. It brings in a major aspect of chemistry leading to the lye kiss and ultimately the explosives. Huizinga would say that this process is play, because it is bounded by the strict rules of its own methodology (203). In addition, “the rules of a game cannot be altered without spoiling the game itself (203). If the procedure to make soap is not followed precisely, (for example, if the fat has too much salt, the soap will not get solid (Palahniuk70)) then the process would be incomplete. If a step was omitted, then there would be no actual soap. I used to have a soap making kit, with a pre-made soap base made up of glycerin and lye. If I heated the soap too long, the soap would turn solid with a layer of fat on top; it was crucial that I followed the instructions, or I could not successfully make the soap. Huizinga is wrong when he says that science is not pleasurable or mirthful; I enjoyed making soap and I even felt “lost” in the science because it was fun to add color and fragrance to the melted glycerin and watch it turn solid. Even the narrator is relaxed when he makes soap. Because saponification requires creativity, it is considered play. The space monkeys are very creative in choosing specific plants to use as natural dyes and scents (132). Huizinga recognizes that science is constantly undergoing modification, proof of how science goes beyond limitations and rules. Even if the procedure must be followed, there are so many different types of soap such as antibacterial or facial, that going beyond limitations is crucial.
Saponification is an example of applied science, which is what modern science is. Pure science is playing around with ideas and creating theories, and requires intense creativity, but applied science must not be forgotten. The basic rules, such as that lye is basically sodium hydroxide and therefore is a very strong base, are the foundation of creating something much more complex. You must “play” around with new ideas based off of pure science.
The lye kiss is an essential aspect to the science in fight club; it represents human sacrifice. If in this case science is human sacrifice, then is human sacrifice considered play? Literally, its performance is its own end. The narrator recognizes that without human sacrifice and ultimately lye, “‘we would have nothing’” (Palahniuk 78). The plotline would then be missing a play element. In this situation, human sacrifice is considered play. The narrator uses it to help overcome all pain and to hit rock bottom (Palahniuk 76). Playing around with lye has no reality outside itself; the narrator tries not to think about the reality of the pain. However, he uses vinegar to mitigate the pain suggesting that the play of science has limitations. The use of lye is considered play, even if the narrator tortures himself. Once that pain is gone and the lye stops burning, play is over; the lye is no longer there and has no more effects. This brings up a problem, because using vinegar to neutralize the burning is still playing around with chemistry.
Making explosives and setting them off to create chaos in the world is the narrator’s ultimate goal. He enjoys making explosives and thinks “You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club (Palahniuk 51). He feels ‘saved” and that none of his problems matter anymore. He also plays with chemistry as leisure, so it is considered play. Chemistry is like cooking in that one can combine different ingredients to make different explosives. However, like saponification, there must be rules and certain limitations. For example, nitroglycerin does not react with paraffin, a substance that does not react easily.
Play lies outside of morals (Huizinga 213). To what extent is using science for violence considered play? The violence in Fight Club shows several play forms, as shown in the previous paragraphs. Play does not necessarily refer to good deeds. Making explosives and blowing up buildings is play, because the narrator enjoys what he is doing; it depends on the person’s perspective on whether or not they are using violence for doing something fun. Using science for violence is like a playing a game with an evil twist to the end. Huizinga did not fail to leave out that science can be used for violence and seemed horrified that all branches of science are play (203).
An interesting observation is that (diethyl) ether is used to anesthetize the victims of fight club. Instead of watching the victims writhe in pain, the space monkeys cut off the testicles for the sake of cutting off the testicles. This shows play because they do it for fun, not because they enjoy torturing people. However, when the narrator is anesthetized, the space monkeys do not cut off his testicles; the narrator is scared but intact (Palahniuk 192). I believe the goal is to threaten the victim and use the effects of the ether to bring the victim out of reality. According to Huizinga, a game or play has no contact with any reality outside itself (203), and really, unconsciousness is actually a type of consciousness.
I have disagreed with Huizinga when he says that playing with science is not pleasurable, mirthful, or relaxing by showing examples from Fight Club. However, chemistry is not only combining ingredients to make a reaction, whether it is an explosive or making soap. As a student in organic chemistry, we are required to perform various experiments to learn more concepts in chemistry. Chemistry lab can be boring, because we are often “forced” to perform these experiments so we can pass the class. How, in this case, is playing with chemistry considered play? Technically it is not if we are not doing something out of our own leisure. In effect of following a strict procedure (for example, add exactly 10 mL of hydrochloric acid or the reaction will not follow through), experiments lack creativity and seem monotonous. Yes, it is an activity occurring within certain limits of space, time and meaning (Huizinga 203) because we are stuck in a laboratory, but it is not a relaxation from the strains of ordinary life. What I learn in lab is all concepts which is basically pure, or early science. I want to perform my own experiences and discover new concepts, which is what pure science is all about. Hypothetically speaking, could I successfully make an explosive by combining nitroglycerin and powered limestone (chalk)? This is an example of modern pure science. My experiences with chemistry have biased me so that I am almost forced to disagree with Huizinga when he says that early science is considered play.
On the other hand, I enjoyed playing with chemistry in sophomore year of high school where we made ice cream in a plastic bag. I applied the fact that adding salt to ice will lower the freezing point and therefore help make the cream turn to a solid form. This is considered modern or applied science, because I created something using knowledge based off of pure science.
Overall, I strongly believe modern science is play. Applying the basics of chemistry to everyday life and making something, whether it is soap or a bomb, shows many play forms and enjoyment. However, I have only mentioned certain aspect of chemistry; chemistry is applicable to almost everything in life. What about the chemistry between two people? Courtship can build up and a bond can be created. Chemistry is a natural process where it usually happens on its own and there is really no contact with reality; it is a world of its own. However, can this chemical attraction be created, and if so, would this be play?
Saponification, the process of making soap is the basis of Fight Club. It brings in a major aspect of chemistry leading to the lye kiss and ultimately the explosives. Huizinga would say that this process is play, because it is bounded by the strict rules of its own methodology (203). In addition, “the rules of a game cannot be altered without spoiling the game itself (203). If the procedure to make soap is not followed precisely, (for example, if the fat has too much salt, the soap will not get solid (Palahniuk70)) then the process would be incomplete. If a step was omitted, then there would be no actual soap. I used to have a soap making kit, with a pre-made soap base made up of glycerin and lye. If I heated the soap too long, the soap would turn solid with a layer of fat on top; it was crucial that I followed the instructions, or I could not successfully make the soap. Huizinga is wrong when he says that science is not pleasurable or mirthful; I enjoyed making soap and I even felt “lost” in the science because it was fun to add color and fragrance to the melted glycerin and watch it turn solid. Even the narrator is relaxed when he makes soap. Because saponification requires creativity, it is considered play. The space monkeys are very creative in choosing specific plants to use as natural dyes and scents (132). Huizinga recognizes that science is constantly undergoing modification, proof of how science goes beyond limitations and rules. Even if the procedure must be followed, there are so many different types of soap such as antibacterial or facial, that going beyond limitations is crucial.
Saponification is an example of applied science, which is what modern science is. Pure science is playing around with ideas and creating theories, and requires intense creativity, but applied science must not be forgotten. The basic rules, such as that lye is basically sodium hydroxide and therefore is a very strong base, are the foundation of creating something much more complex. You must “play” around with new ideas based off of pure science.
The lye kiss is an essential aspect to the science in fight club; it represents human sacrifice. If in this case science is human sacrifice, then is human sacrifice considered play? Literally, its performance is its own end. The narrator recognizes that without human sacrifice and ultimately lye, “‘we would have nothing’” (Palahniuk 78). The plotline would then be missing a play element. In this situation, human sacrifice is considered play. The narrator uses it to help overcome all pain and to hit rock bottom (Palahniuk 76). Playing around with lye has no reality outside itself; the narrator tries not to think about the reality of the pain. However, he uses vinegar to mitigate the pain suggesting that the play of science has limitations. The use of lye is considered play, even if the narrator tortures himself. Once that pain is gone and the lye stops burning, play is over; the lye is no longer there and has no more effects. This brings up a problem, because using vinegar to neutralize the burning is still playing around with chemistry.
Making explosives and setting them off to create chaos in the world is the narrator’s ultimate goal. He enjoys making explosives and thinks “You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club (Palahniuk 51). He feels ‘saved” and that none of his problems matter anymore. He also plays with chemistry as leisure, so it is considered play. Chemistry is like cooking in that one can combine different ingredients to make different explosives. However, like saponification, there must be rules and certain limitations. For example, nitroglycerin does not react with paraffin, a substance that does not react easily.
Play lies outside of morals (Huizinga 213). To what extent is using science for violence considered play? The violence in Fight Club shows several play forms, as shown in the previous paragraphs. Play does not necessarily refer to good deeds. Making explosives and blowing up buildings is play, because the narrator enjoys what he is doing; it depends on the person’s perspective on whether or not they are using violence for doing something fun. Using science for violence is like a playing a game with an evil twist to the end. Huizinga did not fail to leave out that science can be used for violence and seemed horrified that all branches of science are play (203).
An interesting observation is that (diethyl) ether is used to anesthetize the victims of fight club. Instead of watching the victims writhe in pain, the space monkeys cut off the testicles for the sake of cutting off the testicles. This shows play because they do it for fun, not because they enjoy torturing people. However, when the narrator is anesthetized, the space monkeys do not cut off his testicles; the narrator is scared but intact (Palahniuk 192). I believe the goal is to threaten the victim and use the effects of the ether to bring the victim out of reality. According to Huizinga, a game or play has no contact with any reality outside itself (203), and really, unconsciousness is actually a type of consciousness.
I have disagreed with Huizinga when he says that playing with science is not pleasurable, mirthful, or relaxing by showing examples from Fight Club. However, chemistry is not only combining ingredients to make a reaction, whether it is an explosive or making soap. As a student in organic chemistry, we are required to perform various experiments to learn more concepts in chemistry. Chemistry lab can be boring, because we are often “forced” to perform these experiments so we can pass the class. How, in this case, is playing with chemistry considered play? Technically it is not if we are not doing something out of our own leisure. In effect of following a strict procedure (for example, add exactly 10 mL of hydrochloric acid or the reaction will not follow through), experiments lack creativity and seem monotonous. Yes, it is an activity occurring within certain limits of space, time and meaning (Huizinga 203) because we are stuck in a laboratory, but it is not a relaxation from the strains of ordinary life. What I learn in lab is all concepts which is basically pure, or early science. I want to perform my own experiences and discover new concepts, which is what pure science is all about. Hypothetically speaking, could I successfully make an explosive by combining nitroglycerin and powered limestone (chalk)? This is an example of modern pure science. My experiences with chemistry have biased me so that I am almost forced to disagree with Huizinga when he says that early science is considered play.
On the other hand, I enjoyed playing with chemistry in sophomore year of high school where we made ice cream in a plastic bag. I applied the fact that adding salt to ice will lower the freezing point and therefore help make the cream turn to a solid form. This is considered modern or applied science, because I created something using knowledge based off of pure science.
Overall, I strongly believe modern science is play. Applying the basics of chemistry to everyday life and making something, whether it is soap or a bomb, shows many play forms and enjoyment. However, I have only mentioned certain aspect of chemistry; chemistry is applicable to almost everything in life. What about the chemistry between two people? Courtship can build up and a bond can be created. Chemistry is a natural process where it usually happens on its own and there is really no contact with reality; it is a world of its own. However, can this chemical attraction be created, and if so, would this be play?
Performance-Enhancing Drugs: Are Steroids a Social Problem, or Just Sport’s Problem?
Currently, performance-enhancing drugs, including anabolic steroids, HGH, and even over-the-counter supplements, have come under fire through congressional hearings and public debate, as evidenced by the fallout from the Mitchell Report. There are two divisive sides to this issue; on one hand there are the purists who claim that any use of performance-enhancing drugs taints the sport and is a slap in the face to the heroes and records of the past. This side of the argument suggests that any records broken during the steroid era be stricken from the book, while also advocating frequent random drug testing and severe penalties for violators. The opposition, whom I have talked at length about this issue, believes that performance-enhancing drugs make sports more exciting to watch. The supporters of this viewpoint even include college-level athletes, such as Cal water polo player Charles Steffens who has gone on written record and said, “I have one wish...that all sports allow steroids it would be more exciting” (Weblog entry, date unknown). They see athletics as being primarily about the fans and their enjoyment first and foremost. They prefer to see the spectacle provided by longer home runs and harder tackles. The Mitchell Report, the United States Congress, and those who hold authority in every major athletic league, all the way from minor league baseball to the International Olympic Committee, agree, with varying strengths of opinion, that performance-enhancing drugs are tearing sports apart at the seams and are the greatest foe modern athletics has ever faced. The use of performance-enhancing drugs makes the playing field uneven and is therefore cheating, that much is certain. But what about the athletes who use them? They must live with both the short-term and long-term consequences of their actions, and their trials and tribulations are the ignored story in this saga. Their decision to employ questionable methods to excel is much more complex, as they must live with the physical and mental problems brought on by steroid abuse and the strain put on their reputation and the relationships with those close to them. Drug use in sports is a subject that has been discussed extensively in the media and sports circles lately, however it has also been considered as an issue in other mediums, including fiction.
This can be seen further in Swanick and Gibson’s Dogfight, where Deke uses a performance-enhancing drug known as “hype” to aid him in his challenge of Tiny in the game Spads&Fokkers. Deke suffers adverse physical reactions, endures mental anguish, taints his reputation, and destroys his relationship with Nance as a result of his drug use. The game of Spads&Fokkers will continue on unchanged after Deke’s decision to use performance-enhancing drugs, but his own life is in shambles. This fits in with the overall pattern of the individual athletes being the ones most strongly affected by steroid use. Abusers are cheating at the game, but more importantly they are robbing themselves of physical and mental soundness, positive relationships, and a respectable reputation. This is why the concern of the public should be directed at stopping steroid use for the sake of the athletes, not for the game.
Although both are important, it is the human individual who must be looked after, especially because in most cases the athletes who abuse have little or no choice in their own mind whether or not to abuse. Athletes who choose to engage in the use of performance-enhancing drugs do so not because they enjoy cheating but because of the ingrained societal pressures to win, and in this case at all costs. According to Johan Huizinga, a Dutch academic who wrote on cultural history, “Winning means showing oneself superior in the outcome of a game. He has won esteem, obtained honour”(Huizinga 50). It is easy to see why these high level athletes, who have been wrapped up in the cocoon of their sport since childhood, would be willing to risk it all by using performance-enhancing drugs to achieve the aforementioned esteem. But if the international governing bodies of sport are so convinced that steroids are a scourge and must be done away with, why aren’t there stricter policies, more frequent random tests, and harsher punishments for infractions? The answer lies with the group of people who enjoy sports for the spectacle of almost superhuman plays brought on by steroid use, instead of being concerned with the tradition and fairness of the game. These people are not so much concerned with the integrity of the game and its players, but with their own viewing experience. As Huizinga says, “Success readily won passes from the individual to the group”(Huizinga 50). A nation likes to have its heroes who they can point to and can identify with. These athletes serve as an admirable representation and extension of their society. These same people do not want to be confronted with the possibility of dishonesty and unethical training methods. This can be seen in many cases, such as the East German women’s Olympic swim team, whose athletes were essentially forced to take anabolic steroids, leading to horrific consequences. The women exhibited many side effects of steroid use such as the development of masculine features including facial hair and deep voices, most also became infertile. More importantly however, they had to live with the social stigma of having cheated in the Olympics (CBC Sports, http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/stories/top10.html#5). The athletes had their life altered irreparably, and it is they whom we as a society should be worried about first and foremost before we sympathize with fist-pounding speeches by aging commissioners about how steroids are ruining their sport.
In Dogfight, Deke also faces adverse physical reactions to “hype”. The reaction his body has to this fictional drug is similar to many performance-enhancers used today. First, he feels the physical lift that the drug gives him, his reflexes become sharpened and his mind is clear. “Deke summoned Jackman’s elevator with a finger that moved as fast and straight as a hornet and landed daintily as a butterfly on the call button. He was full of bouncing energy and it was all under control”(Swanick and Gibson, 161). Like most athletes who choose to abuse steroids, Deke is amazed by the initial results he sees, this is dangerous because it can lead athletes to take increased dosage and maybe even stop strictly regulating or cycling their use. The nature of steroids is such that it takes longer for the side effects to kick in than it does for the results and this causes many abusers to do irreparable damage to their body before they even realize that something has gone wrong. In Deke’s case he is aware of the negative physical reaction that many have to “the hype” so he is prepared for it. “But Deke had done his homework. He was expecting the hallucinations and knew he could deal with them. The military would never pass on a drug that couldn’t be fought through”(164). Here Deke makes a common mistake among steroid users, he assumes the quality of the substance he is using. Many athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs see the benefit someone else is getting and so they decide to try it thinking that the steroids they get will be of the same caliber. However, this is not true as most steroids being used by Americans today are illegally brought up through Mexico and are veterinary-grade, never meant to be used by humans. The physical reaction is the most basic and common one to steroids, but unfortunately it is often the most dangerous one as well.
Hype is a fictional performance-enhancer, but it might as well be real given the pattern of usage and the results Deke gets. Hype is most reminiscent of baseball players using amphetamines to boost their speed and reactions in the 1960’s (http://thejuice.baseballtoaster.com/archives/873976.html). These two performance-enhancers both appear to be very poorly regulated and have severe adverse physical reactions, making them all the more dangerous.
Mental reactions to steroids are often intertwined with the physical ones because a performance-enhancing drug changes the body’s chemistry. The hallucinations Deke experiences during his game with Tiny are also a mental response to “the hype”. The biggest mental issue associated with steroids is “roid rage”, a slang term for the increased irritability and untriggered anger experienced by an abuser. One of Deke’s uncharacteristic bouts of anger occurs before his actual use of “the hype” but we can still consider this a mental side effect of performance-enhancing drugs because if it were not for the existence of “the hype”, Deke would never have acted that way towards Nance. “Deke felt revolted and nauseated, all the more so because on some unexpected and unwelcome level, he was enjoying this”(161).
Deke is the perfect example of someone who throws away his relationship with the person closest to him as a direct result of his performance-enhancing drug use. He allows himself to be so caught up in the culture of winning; it becomes almost a biological need that is brought on by social needs and expectations. As Huizinga says, “From the life of childhood right up to the highest achievements of civilization one of the strongest incentives to perfection. Is the desire to be praised and honoured for one’s excellence”(Huizinga 63). Our society has made the need to win so ingrained that we judge our own self-worth off this idea. For an athlete whose whole life is their sport, their entire concept of self is based on being a winner (Winning Clearly on Clemens’s Mind, Jason Stark). If they begin to falter, it is very likely that they would turn to performance-enhancing drugs believing that is the only way they can realize their full potential. Thus, steroids are not so much a sports problem as they are a social one. We as a society have chosen what we want to value, i.e. winning, that we have indirectly chosen to support, albeit subtly and often unconsciously, the acceptability of steroids. Of course we proclaim the evils of performance-enhancing drugs and we are all aware of the dangers, but it is our values that encourage athletes to walk down this path.
The only way the steroid era will end and this problem will be solved is if society can make a firm distinction between wanting to win and being willing to do anything to get to that point. This by no means is suggesting that we should not value winners and competition, after all that is how people have always found out what they are really made of. That is one reason why Huizinga refers to play as a civilizing function. We just need to put the proverbial foot down and say that this is unacceptable and we want victory with honor, or not at all. This is for the sake of the integrity of our sports but more importantly for the safety of our athletes, because as Huizinga made clear they represent and are an extension of us as a society.
This can be seen further in Swanick and Gibson’s Dogfight, where Deke uses a performance-enhancing drug known as “hype” to aid him in his challenge of Tiny in the game Spads&Fokkers. Deke suffers adverse physical reactions, endures mental anguish, taints his reputation, and destroys his relationship with Nance as a result of his drug use. The game of Spads&Fokkers will continue on unchanged after Deke’s decision to use performance-enhancing drugs, but his own life is in shambles. This fits in with the overall pattern of the individual athletes being the ones most strongly affected by steroid use. Abusers are cheating at the game, but more importantly they are robbing themselves of physical and mental soundness, positive relationships, and a respectable reputation. This is why the concern of the public should be directed at stopping steroid use for the sake of the athletes, not for the game.
Although both are important, it is the human individual who must be looked after, especially because in most cases the athletes who abuse have little or no choice in their own mind whether or not to abuse. Athletes who choose to engage in the use of performance-enhancing drugs do so not because they enjoy cheating but because of the ingrained societal pressures to win, and in this case at all costs. According to Johan Huizinga, a Dutch academic who wrote on cultural history, “Winning means showing oneself superior in the outcome of a game. He has won esteem, obtained honour”(Huizinga 50). It is easy to see why these high level athletes, who have been wrapped up in the cocoon of their sport since childhood, would be willing to risk it all by using performance-enhancing drugs to achieve the aforementioned esteem. But if the international governing bodies of sport are so convinced that steroids are a scourge and must be done away with, why aren’t there stricter policies, more frequent random tests, and harsher punishments for infractions? The answer lies with the group of people who enjoy sports for the spectacle of almost superhuman plays brought on by steroid use, instead of being concerned with the tradition and fairness of the game. These people are not so much concerned with the integrity of the game and its players, but with their own viewing experience. As Huizinga says, “Success readily won passes from the individual to the group”(Huizinga 50). A nation likes to have its heroes who they can point to and can identify with. These athletes serve as an admirable representation and extension of their society. These same people do not want to be confronted with the possibility of dishonesty and unethical training methods. This can be seen in many cases, such as the East German women’s Olympic swim team, whose athletes were essentially forced to take anabolic steroids, leading to horrific consequences. The women exhibited many side effects of steroid use such as the development of masculine features including facial hair and deep voices, most also became infertile. More importantly however, they had to live with the social stigma of having cheated in the Olympics (CBC Sports, http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/stories/top10.html#5). The athletes had their life altered irreparably, and it is they whom we as a society should be worried about first and foremost before we sympathize with fist-pounding speeches by aging commissioners about how steroids are ruining their sport.
In Dogfight, Deke also faces adverse physical reactions to “hype”. The reaction his body has to this fictional drug is similar to many performance-enhancers used today. First, he feels the physical lift that the drug gives him, his reflexes become sharpened and his mind is clear. “Deke summoned Jackman’s elevator with a finger that moved as fast and straight as a hornet and landed daintily as a butterfly on the call button. He was full of bouncing energy and it was all under control”(Swanick and Gibson, 161). Like most athletes who choose to abuse steroids, Deke is amazed by the initial results he sees, this is dangerous because it can lead athletes to take increased dosage and maybe even stop strictly regulating or cycling their use. The nature of steroids is such that it takes longer for the side effects to kick in than it does for the results and this causes many abusers to do irreparable damage to their body before they even realize that something has gone wrong. In Deke’s case he is aware of the negative physical reaction that many have to “the hype” so he is prepared for it. “But Deke had done his homework. He was expecting the hallucinations and knew he could deal with them. The military would never pass on a drug that couldn’t be fought through”(164). Here Deke makes a common mistake among steroid users, he assumes the quality of the substance he is using. Many athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs see the benefit someone else is getting and so they decide to try it thinking that the steroids they get will be of the same caliber. However, this is not true as most steroids being used by Americans today are illegally brought up through Mexico and are veterinary-grade, never meant to be used by humans. The physical reaction is the most basic and common one to steroids, but unfortunately it is often the most dangerous one as well.
Hype is a fictional performance-enhancer, but it might as well be real given the pattern of usage and the results Deke gets. Hype is most reminiscent of baseball players using amphetamines to boost their speed and reactions in the 1960’s (http://thejuice.baseballtoaster.com/archives/873976.html). These two performance-enhancers both appear to be very poorly regulated and have severe adverse physical reactions, making them all the more dangerous.
Mental reactions to steroids are often intertwined with the physical ones because a performance-enhancing drug changes the body’s chemistry. The hallucinations Deke experiences during his game with Tiny are also a mental response to “the hype”. The biggest mental issue associated with steroids is “roid rage”, a slang term for the increased irritability and untriggered anger experienced by an abuser. One of Deke’s uncharacteristic bouts of anger occurs before his actual use of “the hype” but we can still consider this a mental side effect of performance-enhancing drugs because if it were not for the existence of “the hype”, Deke would never have acted that way towards Nance. “Deke felt revolted and nauseated, all the more so because on some unexpected and unwelcome level, he was enjoying this”(161).
Deke is the perfect example of someone who throws away his relationship with the person closest to him as a direct result of his performance-enhancing drug use. He allows himself to be so caught up in the culture of winning; it becomes almost a biological need that is brought on by social needs and expectations. As Huizinga says, “From the life of childhood right up to the highest achievements of civilization one of the strongest incentives to perfection. Is the desire to be praised and honoured for one’s excellence”(Huizinga 63). Our society has made the need to win so ingrained that we judge our own self-worth off this idea. For an athlete whose whole life is their sport, their entire concept of self is based on being a winner (Winning Clearly on Clemens’s Mind, Jason Stark). If they begin to falter, it is very likely that they would turn to performance-enhancing drugs believing that is the only way they can realize their full potential. Thus, steroids are not so much a sports problem as they are a social one. We as a society have chosen what we want to value, i.e. winning, that we have indirectly chosen to support, albeit subtly and often unconsciously, the acceptability of steroids. Of course we proclaim the evils of performance-enhancing drugs and we are all aware of the dangers, but it is our values that encourage athletes to walk down this path.
The only way the steroid era will end and this problem will be solved is if society can make a firm distinction between wanting to win and being willing to do anything to get to that point. This by no means is suggesting that we should not value winners and competition, after all that is how people have always found out what they are really made of. That is one reason why Huizinga refers to play as a civilizing function. We just need to put the proverbial foot down and say that this is unacceptable and we want victory with honor, or not at all. This is for the sake of the integrity of our sports but more importantly for the safety of our athletes, because as Huizinga made clear they represent and are an extension of us as a society.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)