How 'Fight Club' Became the Ultimate Handbook for Men's Rights Activists (TOW #14)

     Fight club is a book written by Chuck Plahniuk about an unnamed narrator who is consumed in materialism and capitalism, until he meets Tyler Durden, starts an underground hyper-masculine anarchy group called fight club, and ultimately try's to destroy the world. The book was widely popular and adapted into a block buster film. My essay relates the way that fight club was transformed from such an insightful reflection of the ninety's into the handbook for male rights movements. The article, written by Paulie Doyle of vice news, seems to take a view of this as a tarnishing and misuse of fight club.
     The article opens with a brief summary of fight club and its textual themes and continues demonstrating how it was an effective reflection of its time periods, the 90's, in which male vulnerability and introspection became a more mainstream and acceptable cultural concept. After describing fight club adequately the author then explains how the "manosphere" has sacrilegiously appropriated the text. He explains the men's right belief that there are alpha and beta males, alpha being superior physically and sexually while beta are introverted and weak. Fight club to the alt rights men movement shows the way modern life has confined men to suffer by taking away there killer instinct and replacing it with consumerism. In the eyes of the movement, the author explains, this is the fault of women, who have obviously gained too much power in society and need to be put back in their rightful place. To many men in the manosphere Fight Club is a description of this need. Not only this it shows how a beta like jack the narrator can transform into an alpha like Tyler Durden.
     In my opinion the authors most powerful tool in this article is his tone. He decides to use a very conversational tone so as to effectively portray his opinion on the topic without making it too serious. The author effectively wields tone so as to condemn the manosphere rather than just describe. He uses witty asides, sarcasm, and at some points demeaning references to the manosphere to show this thought.
     this article is effective and informative and serves as a mean of refuting the men's rights view of fight club as well as a way of redeeming the films true purpose.