Album Rating: 4.0
...presenting this analysis of identity, Fight Club first constructs a world of static identity in which the narrator finds himself trapped in. It is an identity inescapably defined by possessions and material goods: “That was my whole life. Everything, the lamps, the chairs, the rugs, were me. The dishes in the cabinets were me. The plants were me. The television was me.” (p. 111) The narrator here defines himself as being identified with the goods he owns, which, as he begins to realize: “end up owning you” (p. 44). Human agency, in this world, plays no part in the creation of identity. In fact, all that remains is the illusion of choice - In a crucial narrative device, Palahniuk employs iteration to immerse the reader in furniture model names: “Rislampa/Har paper lamps… the Alle cutlery service… The Vild hall clock… the Klipsk shelving unit… Hemlig hat Boxes” (p. 43) and in doing so, removes any sort of distinctiveness about the furniture, which, while all named differently, still play the role of rendering him “a slave to [his] nesting instinct” (p. 44). Furthermore, this fixed identity bears no marks of distinction, his furniture being the exact same furniture as everyone else owns, straight from an IKEA catalog. While this is no doubt a highly stylized, distortion of ‘real world’ identity formation, it serves at the starting point for Fight Club’s critique of modernity...
...Yet, not even the purity of the violence in the fight clubs is enough to satisfy the desperate quest for identity. Having conquered the individual, violence takes on a societal and cultural component that spills beyond the borders of the individual: “You can build up a tolerance to fighting, and maybe I needed to move on to something bigger… Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells” (p. 123). These issues become to be seen as societal identities that also need to be destroyed for the Great Restoration. “The complete and utter destruction of civilization” (p. 125) now becomes the goal, as History and Culture weigh down upon the freedom of identity. This is why Project Mayhem is born, as a widening of the scope of destruction to further affirm the self...
relevant parts in bold because I'd rather quote Second Year English essays at you than bother too much.
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Album Rating: 4.5
"R.E.M. is the first alternative rock band."
exactly what i thought when i read that part... review is pretty bad, didn't really mention any songs other then Bone Machine and Where Is My Mind?. Plus, majorly disagree with the rating. I thought it was a 3 at first, but then at the 2nd listen i just liked it tons more.
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