American History X is the ur-example of this. Nominally anti-racist and anti-fascist, the movie intends to depict a man's journey to recognize his own hatreds as built on prejudice and his own insecurity and anger. He learns to accept others, lets go of his hate, and returns to his community a changed man. But, at the end of the movie, we see that it's not so easy to escape the cycle of violence.
But it's also a movie that starts with a hot, ripped Edward Norton having bed-breaking sex with Fairuza Balk when he is interupted by black men trying to steel his truck. He proceeds to confront the men, gunning one down, before he wounds the other one and curb stomps him with near-orgasmic enjoyment.
And that's what the fash focus on. They laugh and mock the anti-racist messaging, choosing only to engage with the parts of the story they think glorifies their beliefs.
Fight Club is a great example. The story was written by a Gay man and the plot is pretty much "Are the straights alright?" The story follows a nebbish office geek, again played by ripped as shit Edward Norton, under going a delusional tail spin of self destruction where he becomes homeless, terrorizes his coworkers, builds a cult of disenfranchised young men, has hot sex with Helena Bonham Carter, and then engages in a major act of anprim terrorism. In the end of the book the hero defeats his depraved hyper-masculine alter ego but finds he cannot escape the consequences of his actions.
But most straight men focus on the "Ripped as shit" "Sticking it to the man" and "Fucking Helena Bonham Carter" parts and ignore how the protagonist ends up broken and completely alienated from society except for his psycho cultists.
There's a saying that there's no such thing as an anti-war movie (excepting Come and See), and in the same sense there's really no such thing as an Anti-Fascist movie. Death of the Author is in full effect. Whether it's Pink Floyd's the Wall, or something openly and enthusiastically fashy like 24, Fascists and nascent Fascists will engage with the material they like and ignore the rest.
Fight Club (the movie, i haven't read the book) is pretty ambiguous to me. yes, it ends with him destroying the macho hot boy in his head and entering into an emotionally open and heterosexual relationship with the woman he previously objectified, but like, he still blows up all the credit card companies. and this happens concurrently with his moment of personal growth.
also i know it was and probably still is loved by dumb jocks, but i practically never see it mentioned by manosphere guys, not even "red pill" guys, who you'd think would be all over it. i think we just associate it with them because it's partially about them.
anyway my position continues to be you can't judge art by what effect it has on dumbasses
The book is arguably more effective in it's messaging bc it doesn't have Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, and it's much more grotesque. It shares that in common with a lot of Chuck P's writing, the grotesqueness. I don't know how else to describe it.
I think it's old enough to be out of the cultural zeitgeist, but in the 00s it was everywhere. People were forming fight clubs in their gyms and basements.
also i don't really think the work functions as an argument against getting beat up by other dudes. that sounds cool and i don't get why it shouldn't be.