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Fight Club Sociological Analysis

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Jason Caprioni
Professor O’Hara
Sociology
12/10/15
Fight Club: Sociological Analysis
Fight Club is one of the most bizarre but fantastic movies I have ever seen. The story starts about showing us the life of Jack (the mostly nameless narrator played by Edward Norton), attending a support group to help subdue his insomnia which emerges from his tasteless life and boring career as an office worker. He begins to attend many support groups, even though he is not diagnosed with any of those illnesses since it helps him feel better. Eventually, he meets Tyler Durden. The "two of them" create a men-only underground fight club which later evolves into Project Mayhem, while also creating soap from human fat stolen from liposuction clinics. While the …show more content…
Jack spends his days at a job he despises and his nights ransacking Ikea catalogs, desperate to give some meaning to his life all the while giving himself severe insomnia. As Tyler proclaims at Fight Club that "We are an entire generation pumping gas - waiting tables - slaves to the white collars. Advertisement has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need." These men are the gray-collar workers, not blue or white. In reference to stratification, gray-collar workers are higher than blue-collar employees but are still under the capitalists above them. They will never achieve the advertised ideal because according to the social-conflict paradigm "stratification provides some people with advantages over others" which causes a sense of alienation due the reality of their …show more content…
The jobs/organizations/lifestyle each man belonged to created a form of stratification. One could also say that this all happened out of a form of strain theory. Oxford Bibliographies explains that, “strain theory states that social structures within society may pressure citizens to commit crime.” All these people, “...the all singing, all dancing crap of the world”, felt they were powerless, useless and their life was tasteless without happiness. Because of this, they in a way rebelled and began to wage a war against consumerism and the white collar. They formed Project Mayhem, to be unified and get that power back by means of destroying consumerism symbols and intimidation of the white collar. This is put perfectly by Tyler when he explains to some corporate elite, “Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life. We

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