26 January, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s that time again – I must dust off the academic portion of my dissertation and begin working on it again. Chapter 1: Fight Club. You all know I love Fight Club. It’s a brilliant indictment of capitalist-patriarchy and the damage it does to men. That’s not the dominant interpretation of the film, but that’s how I read it. All of the issues in Fight Club are relevant to women as well, even if on the surface it’s very ‘male.’ Anyway, the next month will be spent writing the novel and finishing this chapter on Fight Club. How I’m going to do all of this work on top of teaching remains to be seen.
Perhaps in related news, my novel is becoming increasingly violent. It’s always had shootings and bombings, but you can distance yourself while writing about that kind of violence. Now I have beatings and torture, which is very up-close-and-personal. At first I found it difficult to write about such things because I was disturbed that these ideas and images existed in my mind, but now I sort of enjoy it. The people being beaten and tortured are really vile, so they deserve what they get (think Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’). Because of that, it’s sort of cathartic. I’m not sure how I’ll reconcile the feminist ideals of my novel with the violence, except to say: Why should women have to play nice? It certainly hasn’t gotten us very far.
