My Place by Sally Morgan in relation to the movie Fight Club by David Fincher, the painting Cathedral by Jackson Pollock and the poem Kith of Infinity by Somtow Sucharitkul

My Place by Sally Morgan (Fight Club, Cathedral and Kith of Infinity)

Fight Club

Fight Club is a movie directed by David Fincher and written by Chuck Palahniuk. It is a satire on the dehumanizing effects of consumer culture that forms the backbone of the American Dream as it tells the story of an unnamed man, a child of generation X, "a generation of men raised by women", who is on a journey to recover his sense of masculinity. To do this, he unconsciously creates an alter-ego, Tyler Durden, the ultimate alpha-male.

Through out the movie, the main character's name is never disclosed, however the film credits list him as Jack, after his penchant for ironically identifying himself with various parts of the physical and psychological anatomy, "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise". This namelessness, however, gives a generality to the story, representing the numerous amount of males found in society, in the character's position.

At the beginning of the movie, Jack, in his efforts to attain the American Dream, is rather lost in life, without any sense of himself as a strong, powerful, individualistic man with a purpose who is in control of his own destiny. He is a man who serves others, as women traditionally have, and the movie addresses how such men construct identity and meaning in their lives.

The first phase of the movie addresses this aspect of modern life: defining one's identity by means of furniture and clothing, and in one scene, Jack, ironically contemplating the hollowness and flatness of his consumeristic life-style, moves through his condo as it transforms around him into a living Ikea catalog with prices and descriptions of products floating in air. This disregard for authentic representation of space and time is a part of the postmodern style of the...