Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

The Oedipal Drama in David Fincher’s Fight Club: “A Child is Being Beaten” and its Deviations

Abstract

This article provides an approach to David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) from some of the principles of the Freudian psychoanalytical narrative and its critical review in Judith Butler’s Theory of performativity. The study follows the narrative signs and consequences of an amplified mise en scène within an Oedipal masochistic scenario that pursues to underpin an hegemonic discourse of Masculinity threatened by the taboo of homosexuality. It concludes that the sublimation of the masculine masochistic scenario and its melancholic development in the film is constructed as a performative act that unfolds a heteronormative model of masculine identity submitted to a deep scrutiny.

Masochism; Oedipal conflict; Queer Theory; Feminist Film Theory; Psychoanalysis

Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu Universidade Estadual de Campinas, PAGU Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz", Rua Cora Coralina, 100, 13083-896, Campinas - São Paulo - Brasil, Tel.: (55 19) 3521 7873, (55 19) 3521 1704 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
E-mail: cadpagu@unicamp.br