Religion in Film: a Comparison of Fight Club and Antz Essay

At first glance, David Finchers Fight parliamentary procedure and Dream feats Studios Antz could not be more diametric entirelyy opposed to each other in form and genre. wizard is a dark commentary on the vacuum cleaner of modern life, fraught with homoerotic subtext the other is a brightly lively cartoon where the bad guy dies, the good guy gets the girl, and everybody lives happily ever later. I intention al maviny chose these two films, however, for their thematic similarity, to examine the recurring radical of striving for identity in a hostelry of conveyer smasher roles where the value of the individual is quickly depreciating toward extinction. By analyzing both films by dint of a theological and Freudian lens, I intend to reveal the tensity that has always existed among possessing the freedom of choice and submitting to an oppressive, delineating structure. Antz opens up with a disembarrass voice announcing its anxieties.As the cam sequence penetrates layers of Ne w York underground, the voice is revealed to belong to a lonely ant. He is in therapy. We soon learn that his discern is Z and he is a disgruntled worker ant, airing his frustrations over running(a) all his life and never quite touch modality satisfied. One is expected, as an ant, to devote all his efforts toward the good of his colony and deal with his needs cosmos ignored. This is a common grievance, felt among the spectrum of classes and races. Regardless of status, hardly eachbody ever feels he is getting his. Before we adopt time to dismiss Zs grouchiness as trivial angst, the camera pans out and introduces us to the gung-ho super existence of ant life. What we mind is a hyper complex built by and on millions of bodies that link together to drive the meticulous engine that runs and bear ons the system. It is impossible to annoy out whatsoever one creature from the swarm of activity. We see raise pulleys marked with phrases like Lets Work and Conquer Idleness, a chi lly reference to the Nazi motto that likewise drove millions of compassionate race souls to a state of dejection reflected in the demeanor of the worker ants, as well as Ed Nortons character from Fight Club.We see ants producing their bundled babies for appraisal, where they are systematically (one might say, arbitrarily) assigned a role in the microcosm. Roles like worker and s gagaier are shouted out at random and these lilliputian cocoons, before even having a sense of their laissez fairewhat Freud called recognition of self as separate from the mother (colony)they are strip of it. They are then designated a inject in the hierarchy that lead foreverdetermine their value by output. This systematic allocation of logical implication by measure of the whole in turn leaves the individual feeling utterly insignificant (Brintall 303). This is the way of life and up until straight it went generally unquestioned. As everybody will grade Z, one ant is meaningless. It is not vi rtually him its about us, the team, working endlessly to build and acquire more, and he would do best to content himself with it and be happy. Dont view too much. Thinking leads to rogue individualism that puts the whole microcosm in jeopardy. in that respect appears to be no room for cheer in this life. Even activities think to relieve pressure and stress, such as dancing and drinking, are normalized, structured. socialisation too has its place, as the ants are transferred from one ghetto to the next. Ants dance in a group and any who desist are either bullied back into subduedness or removed entirely. If one may speak of computerized ants in a sexual nature, we can observe how the libidinal economy is so tightly controlled in their environment that all drive toward freedom and creativity is squelched. national desires consume been buried under dirt and exhaustion and thus, if Freud was correct and our qualification drive must be pointed somewhere, the eros is re goed to ward work, ungratifying as it may be (Brintall 296).It is transferred into idolizing the strength inherent in uniformity, as personified by the butch General Mandible, whos face scratchs as close to sexual comfort as an ants could when glancing out at the swarming and sweating organism. Although pleasure is at odds with pain, when all prospects for it are denied, painthe endurance of populacebecomes the lone(prenominal) frontier where any pleasure can surface (Brintall 299). It is through pain that the Narrator in Fight Club asserts his identity, his masculinity and his come apart from the whole of society. He feels the punch, not the corporation he slaves for. That scar, that bruise, that burn is on his body and his alone. provided this is later in the plot, which it makes little sense to evanesce time recapitulating, as you are most likely already beaten(prenominal) with it. Rather, I would like to isolate and review specific incidents to connect them with themes of dev otion and sociology. Though the repressive system of collectivism is not stated as overtly in b wishing and white as in Antz, it is pretend that the totalitarian regime in Fight Club is modern consumer culture.Having returned family (after successfully realizing his alter-ego Tyler Durden) to find his apartmentblown to pieces, the Narrator (whos name is necessarily inconsequential) laments the loss of his beloved designer wardrobe and catalogue dine room set. What are we, asks Tyler? And the answer is infamous we are consumers. Consumers who exhaust themselves to emptiness, working to fulfill a false dream, to acquire and acquire, believing each new(a) possession will bring them closer to feeling complete. Hu soldiery beings work to be the masters of their do main, a domain filled with the products of other pitying labor and frustrations of their own lack and inability to conquer it fully (Brintall 297). only creative energy and hope is transferred into consumerism, an oppressi ve system we ourselves helped create and perpetuate and thus permit it to establish mastery over us. And what are we told when we necessarily find ourselves feeling even more empty than where we started? To lighten up and not dwell on it.What is this it? This is the it that keeps the Narrator up at wickedness the it that inspires Z to run away in bet of freedom, in research of release the it that leads both characters into the next stage of their development in their search for meaning and identity the elusive it that excites the first blow and enables both the main characters to opt out of being just another avatar in the assembly line of human souls and go in search of something better, something else. For Z, it is a perfect utopia where insects can choose their own roles in life or else of being handled by the institution. For Tyler, it is a dystopia, perfect in its chaos and lack of oppressive structure. Each character makes a conscious choice to tag a divergent unravel i n life, meaning to demonstrate how identity operator is a by-product of free will. But how free are human beings, really? Closer inspection reveals that neither character liberates himself from structure, and especially not from idolatry.His focus simply shifts toward romanticizing a more bohemian lifestyle (or perchance it is the audiences focus that shifts). Although Fight Club is rarely referred to as romanticized. In his commentary about the film, director David Fincher talks about the meticulously sloppy care devoted to the film by exposing it to durations of harsh light, stint contrast, and similar distortion techniques used to achieve the washed-out, deconstructed picturea gesticulate back to the film noir genre that characterized the inescapable dreariness and nihilism of the war-time era when life was so desperately devoid of all end or intrinsic value. But Tyler encouragesus to send all our pre-constructed notions of value and purpose to hell, and face truth. The rea lity is that there is no greater meaning, no utopia beyond the mast and across the river, as swears Z, and that putting ones faith in redemption or God is useless, seeing as how in all probability God hates you. It is not surprising he feels this way, given the direct correlation between God and the father. Both films are interlaced with the electric receptacle of fatherly renunciation.When the scene first opens up on Z reclining in his therapists office cavity, we are subjected to the comical farce of an ant theorizing that his anxieties are most likely rooted in his childhood abandonment issues his father crawled out on him when he was just a maggot. One cannot help but feel the cinematic hilarity of a tiny ant whos immense feelings of inadequacy are not only mirrored by our own, but are actually in consensus with our mind of an ant (and thus ourselves). In a similar exchange between the Narrator and Tyler Durden, the former recalls his fathers proclivity for fostering families all over and then walking out on them. To which Tyler, soaking nonchalantly in a tub in front of his friend, cogently replies the man is setting up franchises, as though the nurturing of children was nothing more than a simple business transaction.So how can these thirty year old boys be expected to enter into, as Freud wrote, normal, heterosexual society when their lives have been devoid of the strong authority of the father? (Freud handout) After all, Our fathers were our models for God, points out Tyler, If they left, what does that tell you about God? But to abandon our search for the divine is impossible, for in religion there lie answers. With the help of religion we can call down meaning. We see the Narrator attending support groups for the terminally ill in an attempt to establish a connection and find meaning, once once more with pain as the currency. By witnessing the pain of other peoples realities, he finds pleasure, he finds acceptance and releaseand sleep. These gro ups are for him akin to communion, a place where pent-up energies can be redistributed. Whatever the grievance, whatever is deficient in this life, a religious gathering maintains the possibility for hope.Religion thus becomes not just an outlet, a place where the eros can bunco and the soul can come alive, but a way to even out for the longing for paternal protection, the feeling of emptiness rooted early in childhood. Even as Tyler argues that religion is ineffectual, we realizethat in a society where childrens mental and social development is outsourced to vacuous advertisements, those products and ads take the place of the fatherand eventually God himself. As Fight Club evolves and social status in the bloody communion grows larger and larger, we see the film come full circle. What began as a search for meaning beyond designation with a repressive system of consumerism, swelled into its own macrocosm (not conflicting institutionalized Atheism) fueled by identical and name less, yet willful, automatons. They are unflustered participating in a society that extinguishes rogue individuality, but they are doing so by choice.Still, human beings need something to elevate and hold up as God, as the ideal. So they elevate Tyler Durden. They elevate fight club, the reality of owning your pain because pleasure is a blinding myth. Are human beings whence truly free to make their own choices, is the abiding theological and sociological question. The task of determining the controlling force of societyreligious collectivism, semipolitical collectivism, even anarchical collectivismnags at our notion of free will. Of course in Antz, it being a kids film after all, the tyranny is embodied in one character. In Fight Club it is intentionally disembodied, in-your-face yet still invisible. Our great war, Tyler advocates, is a spiritual war. One might think if we just do away with consumerism, religion, any system, the subconscious would be free to express its most inn er desires.But we discover this is not so. There doesnt seem to be any more meaning or truth in the Ikea catalogue than in the eventual culmination of Project Mayhem, which conspires for the destruction of all authority and corporeal idolswhat Freud would deem the death drive. Though the characters in Fight Club have been so disheartened by the lacking prospect of creativity and purpose, and now seek to destroy everything theyve ever identified with, they are still not free. Perhaps it is only through losing oneself in God, in work, in different institutions, each with their own offerings of value, that one can seek out ones unique identity. It is possible that the hope for something betterbe it called enlightenment, utopia or deeper understandingallows one to exercise free will in the hunting of meaning and pleasure, if never finding either itself.Works Cited1. Anker, Roy M. Narrative.2. Antz. (1998, dir. Eric Darnell)3. Brintnall, Kent. Psychoanalysis.4. Fight Club. (1999, dir. David Fincher)5. Freud, Sigmund. elegance and Its Discontents.