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Examples Of Masculinity In The 90's

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Within the last century, the definition of American masculinity has gone through many changes. America has gone from the “tough it out” mentality of World War II to the evolved society of the 90’s. In the late 90s, our country went through an economic and social transformation that resulted in men feeling confused when it came to their masculine angst. This is the crisis that both the movie Fight Club and award winning author Susan Faludi explores.

To begin, David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club is a prime example of the 90s masculinity crisis. The movie received mixed reviews when it released. This was due to people believing the plot contained disturbing and offensive content. The intended audience is young adult men in the working class …show more content…

Her 1999 book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man delivers insight on what society has done to evolve masculinity in the 90s. Her first chapter, “The Son, The Moon, and The Stars'' explores how we can not blame the men of the 1990s for struggling to conform with the new demands of manliness. Men went from flaunting their masculinity by showing what they could give to society to men showing off how much they could take. The 90’s men turned to materialistic ideals to fill the void that a lack of guidance created.

Fight Club illustrates Faludi’s argument about the ways American men of the 1990s filled the abandoned promises of their fathers with excess consumerism, thus leaving them further dissatisfied. The Narrator’s frustrations with his life of a “house full of condiments and no food”—fundamentally ornamental and lacking sustenance—led to his existential void, where he and Tyler developed Fight Club as an outlet to ‘fight’ their frustrations with the emasculating effects of American masculinity. In this paper, I will analyze the Narrator's excessive consumerism, the ways Tyler fulfills the role of the father, and how Fight Club provides purpose for the male characters, as well as examine how such elements conform to Faludi’s …show more content…

Fight Club illustrates this. The Narrator gains an obsession with cramming his home with specific furniture that makes his apartment stand out from the rest. These possessions seem to give the Narrator a false sense of identity, yet these items are meaningless. When the Narrator loses his apartment, he says “I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, prove they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.” Tyler does not give the Narrator any sympathy. Tyler explains to him how even after having those items, he was no different than he is now. Tyler's actions reflect Faludi's argument that capitalism “ is a ceremonial gateway to nowhere” (Faludi

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