Fight Club: As a Novel and As a Film
Sergen Ünveren, TR 111.01
Clandestine literature –also called underground literature– is a recent field of literature which is often remembered with its usage of harsh, unusual and critical language towards capitalist system. Fight Club, one of the best known representatives of the clandestine literature, is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk which tells the story of a middle-aged insomniac man. This middle-aged man, who works as a recall specialist for the automobile industry, strives to recover from insomnia in vain and ends up creating a fight club. David Fincher’s highly controversial adaptation of Fight Club into a movie got a lot of public attention when it was released in 1999; however, the movie didn’t
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As far as the characters of both the novel and the film versions of Fight Club are concerned, we could easily see that some aspects of main characters in the novel, especially Tyler Durden and Marla Singer, are slightly modified in the film version. Fincher’s depiction of Tyler in the movie is closer to the popular culture, while Palahniuk doesn’t favour a popular character as he intends to create a more non-capitalist character. In this sense, Fincher’s manner as a director could be interpreted as a betrayal to the source material. What’s more, Tyler’s portrayal in the novel is more rebellious and chaotic; nevertheless, he isn’t that much impressive in the movie. In other words, Fincher tones down the extent of Tyler’s violence and his approach to capitalism both of which are the main interests of the novel. As regards Marla Singer, there is no background for her character. For instance, Palahniuk provides Marla a job background in funeral homes although the film doesn’t specify such context. In addition to this, Marla in the film is like a property of Tyler and this makes her less interesting in comparison with the novel. In the movie, besides Tyler and Marla, there are some other characters that are depicted totally different. Bob, who makes great effort to lose weight until he meets the narrator, is one such example. After he meets the narrator, he begins to think that it is meaningless to look good. However, he doesn’t any aspire to lose weight in the novel. We can understand from this modification that Fincher merely attempts to catch the audience’s attention but he fails to do so because weight problem is just an ordinary problem of our