The Minute you sit down in that chair in the movie theater, you already have a preset notion of who the director preferred audience will be and what the overall message will be. Flight Club has a very distinct way in the manner in which the director shows no leads as to who the movie is for. In my opinion the general audience that Fincher wrote this movie for was the generation of the baby boomers, anyone born in between 1960’s and 1980’s. They were the generation that would change everything in term of how society would function and the new things that would come about. Even though the movie’s main audience was generation x, they are not the only audience for Flight Club. There are still many relevant topics within the movie that today’s generation will be able to relate to. The message David Fincher wanted to convey to the audience was that it was important to focus on the bigger picture. Fincher believed that we, as human being, live “comfortably” in the norms that society places on us. Even though it is much easier to live in what is comfortable, Fincher believed that it was important to make your mark on society.
Flight club revolves one character named Jack (Edward Norton), who is also the narrator. Jack is having trouble trying to figure out who he is and his place in society. Jack spends most of his days working at a job that he hates and working a second job and IKEA ordering furniture. Jack looks for his purpose within his jobs but he gets insomnia. Jack is befriended by Tyler durned (Brad Pitt), a salesman, who thought the movie helps jack find his identity and help realize that life isn’t about the material things. Tyler and Jack form a fight club in the basement of their local bar where a group of men meet once a week to fight. The fight club’s overall intention was to help men release of the pent up stress and anger; take the men back to a time where they didn’t have to wear a suit and tie. Fight clubs became extremely prevalent with Tyler as the ring leader and changes the name to Project Mayhem. After Jacks thinks about what he has created and realizes that Project Mayhem is against everything he believes in, he tries to shut it down.
Fincher has a very strong stand point on Anti-materialism and Anti-commercialism. Material items shouldn’t play a role in who were are as a person. “We are an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves to the white collars. Advertisement has us changing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need” (Fincher). Telling us that the things we own end up owning us. Fincher continues to enforce his message by showing how jacks life changes without all of the material items. He also showed how all the men who were in the fight club gave up everything they had to live with Tyler and Jack. Anti-Materialism is a huge theme in the movie, emasculation of men is another message that Fincher portrays to the audience. Flight Club was showing how men had to carry around a fake persona. They were being who society wanted them to be. The majority of generation x didn’t have a father figure in their lives that was there to teach them how to be a “real man”. They were raised by single mothers and because of that they were taught to be calm and gentle. Fincher implies many times that he feels as if men we emasculated: “We’re designed to be hunters and were in a society of shopping. There’s nothing to kill anymore, there nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this man is created” (Smith 3). In the movie Jack joined the club because it helped him with his insomnia. The support group was a group of men that had testicular cancer. Which I feel is ironic because it shows that the men were being emasculated by losing their testicles. Jack was beginning to gain his confidence back and until he met Marla Singer (Helener Bonham Carter), a women who also started attending the meeting dressed as