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“What I find really interesting is that my books are heavily banned throughout the U.S.,” he said. “The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it’s only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I’ve been putting up with book banning for a long time.”
...
“A lot of my overseas publishers have edited the novel so the novel ends the way the movie ends,” he said. “So I’ve been dealing with this kind of revision for like 25 years.”
Lol hadn't looked into on any of his recent books
spoiler
and become the new leaders of a new United States, split into the regions of Blacktopia, Gaysia, and Caucasia.
The author also said that he saw the irony in the angry response from many Americans to China’s actions, given that his books are banned in many locations across the U.S.
:joker-troll:
The climatic scene was excised and replaced with a blank screen showing the message: “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”
:michael-laugh:
Haha, they Puyi'd his ass.
I love that it doesn't even end with like, "the government, inherently antagonistic, defeated him" it's like "He as doing bad stuff out of hurt, so we made sure he got help."
Reminds me of the fan-alternate ending to Breaking Bad, where Walter just gets free public health care inside the first two episodes and that's that.
Breaking Bad: version française
"i have cancer"
"do you have your universal health care card?"
"yes, here it is"
FIN
I live for this shit. Sincerely, the tears this article will produce fill me with joy.
Lol "caught and punished" not "caught and rehabilitated". Small deliberate slight, or genuine inability to imagine non-punitive justice?
kind of weird that it was censored it at all, considering the entire movie is an ancom revolution against capitalism.
Fight club is not a leftist movie. The characters in the movie only oppose consumerism to the extent that they believed that consumerism is a feminine trait. Every detail of the movie is about glorifying masculinity or disparaging femininity. The greatest fear that the characters face in the movie is being emasculated. The revolution in fight club is not a communist revolution; it is a machismo fascist revolution.
spoiler
In the beginning of the movie, the narrator talks about how he hates consumerism. That he spent a lot of time and money purchasing things for his apartment from a mail order catalogue. He calls this activity "nesting" and attributes the trait with femininity. He later blows up with his apartment because he can't cope with being associated with what he perceives to be femininity.
The narrator begins attending support groups. The most notable support group that he attends is a support group for testicular cancer. The narrator connects with this support group because these are men who have been literally emasculated by losing their testicles to cancer. The character that the narrator connects with most at these support group is Bob. The narrator exclaims, "Bob has b*tch tits". Bob's cancer gave him an estrogen hormonal imbalance which caused him to develop feminine breast.
The narrator is incredibly threatened when a women, Marla Singer, starts attending all of the same support groups that he is attending. He has an absolute fit when she attends the testicular cancer support group and even forces her divide the support groups so they don't see each other. The narrator is threatened by her femininity.
After blowing up his apartment, the narrator meets Tyler at a bar. Tyler asks the narrator if he knows what a duvet is. Tyler says that guys like us shouldn't know what it is because it isn't necessary for hunter-gatherer survival, referencing masculinity. This is a call back to the narrator blowing up his own apartment because of his feminine nesting trait.
Narrator and Tyler fist fight outside of the bar, not because they are angry at each other, but because they need to have a way to express their masculine agression. Narrator and Tyler form fight club as a way for men to express their masculinity in secrecy from a society that they perceive to be feminine. This fight club replaces Narrator's need for support groups and he stops attending them. The fight club is a support group.
Narrator and Tyler ride the public bus. Tyler points at a male underwear ad, "Is that what a real man is supposed to look like? "
Narrator and Tyler are hanging around the house that they live in together and talk about how their fathers are absent, which they believe caused society to become feminine. It is said that society has told them to go to college, get a job, and get married. Tyler remarks the problem with their generation is that they were all raised by women, so he has no desire to have a wife because they don't need more women.
Marla Singer happens to see Narrator in public and asks why he hasn't been to the support groups. Narrator says that he is attending a "new support group for men only", referring to fight club. Women aren't allowed to join the later project mayhem either.
This list goes on and on. These were just examples from my memory. There are also many references in the movie to having testicles or penis cut off.
tl;dr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cGrg2Gh4gg&t=391s
Tbh this makes a lot more sense now why Fight Club always resonated with so many chuds and basic bros
Which is ironic because the book was written as a tear down of those same chuds and basic bros. The book is a lot more grotesque and does a better job as satire. Casting Brad Pitt and Edward Norton as the protagonists was probably not the right move. They make it all look cool.
This is one of the better descriptions of the intent of the book I've ever read. It really is a satire of fragile masculine ego about a bunch of dudes having a tantrum. Oh boo hoo I can't be a strong hunter gatherer warrior in modern sissy society
There's also a persistent theme that having individuality is feminine. Durden hates individual expression in all regards, using the term snowflake as a disparaging term for anyone believing themselves to be unique. He uses the term space cadet positively for initiates who hang on his every word and follow commands unflinchingly. Initiates in project mayhem are even denied names, with Robert Paulsen regaining his name only after becoming a martyr.
it really is a scathing bitter criticism of whiny toxic masculine pride from the perspective of a gay guy
some people are extremely confused when they read Durden as a positive role model or that project mayhem has leftist goals
So in that case the movie essentially makes the opposite point? The author wrote a satire but the movie goes all "yes but unironically"?
No, I think the movie makes the same point but maybe there's some kind of mistranslation when it went to a visual medium. Because Brad Pitt is cool and handsome, so perhaps it's difficult to see he's presented as a weird fascist. I don't really know honestly. I saw the movie first and read the book later and they're essentially the same thing. The movie just has a particular aesthetic style and makes the characters seem cool. Perhaps the narrator (Norton's character) is portrayed more sympathetically too?
The only difference in the plot from the book and the film are the narrator explicitly ends up in a psych ward at the end and project mayhem has been foiled. Although it perhaps hasn't been, because it's suggested the orderlies and nurses working at the psych ward are also project mayhem members who believe this is still part of some scheme. The film ends with project mayhem succeeding at blowing up all the corporate headquarters, but Tyler Durden has been exorcised.
No, the movie is still a scathing satire. They just cast Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, so everyone thought "Wow cool sexy guys doing cool sexy guy stuff", instead of focusing on how this dude starts a fascist death cult in the basement of a rotting abandoned house.
So your post is basically spot on and I don't disagree with any of your analysis....except that I would argue its not an endorsement of the machismo fascist revolution so much as it is a cautionary tale about one. I wouldn't go so far as to call the movie leftist but its very explicit within the text that the narrator is deeply ill mentally, listening to his id as represented by Tyler has essentially destroyed his life, and that his entire 'movement' is a death driven cult based on the false conscious psuedo intellectual ramblings of an abusive lunatic. The narrator's whole character arc concludes in him rejecting Tyler and accepting his feelings for Marla.
Sure, a lot of people missed that entire point and still view Durden as aspirational but its hardly alone in that camp (American History X, Watchmen, WH40k, et al.)
huh, I had never seen it that way... it's been a long time since I last watched the movie and I hadn't thought of it like that, really good and interesting take, thanks!
Every detail of the movie is about glorifying masculinity or disparaging femininity.
Superficially. But the narrative gradually shifts from bemoaning the emasculation of modern men into the toxic self-destructive nature of excess masculinity. These scene where Jack/Tyler breaks a man's face because it is too pretty is intentionally horrifying. The scene where he morns his friend's death - killed doing hyped-up petty vandalism - only to watch the anguish he feels permuted into senseless rage is supposed to throw up a big warning sign. His inability to connect with Marla Singer on anything more than a once-removed fuckboy relationship via Tyler is supposed to illustrate a pointless and self-inflicted loss.
Hell, the end of the story involves him putting a gun to his own head rather than endure the Tyler identity any longer.
The revolution in fight club is not a communist revolution; it is a machismo fascist revolution.
The revolution is a murky blend of the two. Emasculation is a function of modern capitalism. The flensing of individuals down to terrified asexual worker drones perpetuates the business cycle. Rediscovering one's agency, one's courage, and one's collective spirit becomes a precursor to rebellion.
But the superficial focus on cultural pastiche both undermines real revolutionary works and prevents solidarity between people (specifically men and women, in this instance). The casual disregard for the value of individual human well-being in pursuit of a social movement hollows out the moral core of the movement. That's what makes the story fascist. And that's something the author freely criticizes.
yeah there's a buncha chauvinist undertones for sure, but the members of project mayhem all there by choice and live communally a run down anarchist collective squat house and their lead goal is to destroy the financial sector. it's also convenient that once they finally achieve their goal he has gotten rid of tyler durden, as if he was only used as a method of meeting their goal, which is the destruction of the banking system.
If I recall correctly Chuck's intended message was "Are the straights okay?". The author's intent was to highlight how weird, alienated, and violent straight men were/are.
Remember two things:
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Being the product of a proletarian revolution, the role of the state is very different in China than it is in the capitalist US. The concern, I would imagine, is that people might interpret the attempted revolution against modern society in the movie as a call for counterrevolution in China.
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Most media censorship in China is self-censorship. This would be a decision of the distributor, not the state or party.
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PRC didn't do it though. It already debuted in cinemas unedited. This came out pre-9/11 and like @KobaCumTribute mentioned, the author's books had been subject to censorship in the US. Futhermore, the ending message was written in English. It's not hard to imagine that the censorship came from the US and that's what 1 particular streaming platform got and ran with.
pretty sure the chinese government isn't a big fan of anarchism. i don't think that's a controversial claim.
There’s nothing to kill anymore, there’s nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore.
Somebody contact David Fincher, I have some news he's gonna love:cyber-lenin:
Socialism with Chinese characteristics. The people's revolution was hijacked onto the capitalist road. Mao warned against it, Deng ignored the warning.
Don't mistake that for the ultimate goal, though. It's just a means to an end. Something like half the Chinese economy is still directly owned by the state.
It also serves the dual purpose of building productive forces and protecting the revolution from American interference. Think of it like Molotov-Ribbentrop, in a vacuum it looks like appeasement, but put in context it provided breathing room to build military capacity, and was absolutely necessary.
Until Xi, the rhetoric around China was much less aggressive, both from states and regular people. The west thought they had won, China was a source of cheap labor, no longer a threat, but an asset. They took the capitalists money, and then they killed him. :zizek-joy:
Do you think Germany would’ve invaded Poland if it weren’t for Molotov Ribbentrop?
Yes. It might not have happened as soon, but it would have happened.
The Nazis were out for Slavic blood from the get-go. They had no intention of keeping the pact for long, and Stalin and the CPSU understood this very well.
They weren't looking west for their "lebensraum".
There is a difference between having a market and being capitalist. Obviously they have to have markets to interact with tbr capitlaist world. But they used those markets to gain power for the government. When they are not useful they are ignored. See videogames and education lately. So Obviously they are doing "ism" part of capitlaism.
The hard line views economic activity as the econinc arm of the army. And as it has done a great deal to destory american power you'd be hard pressed to find fault in their logic. They did seized the means of production and are now using them to improve the lives of the workers rapidly.
They did have liberals, and thus corruption, but they seem to have it well under control.
Pretty sure Durden's multiple personality thing symbolizes false consciousness
They can put any endong they want as long as Where is my mind? plays in the background
Yeah, I read the first part of it back in thr day but I fell off at some point
