White Samurai in a fascistic house of mirrors: Fight Club, Zen and the art of (Re)constructing ethno-nationalism

ABSTRACT

Included in the DVD package of David Fincher’s Fight Club are running commentaries that function as rebuttals to initial criticism. Presenting the narrative as a Buddhist parable was a means to counter critiques of the film’s treatment of fascism. This defence was dependent on an Orientalist understanding of Buddhism as a non-violent religion. However, this paper argues that Fight Club can be read as containing allusions to both ethnocentric Japanese Buddhist militarism and white supremacy. One pivotal scene portraying the formation of the paramilitary organisation Project Mayhem first depicts a Zen monastic ritual employed to accept new members before domesticating the militia with imagery familiar to US viewers that resonates closely with white nationalism. Paralleling this trajectory, the auteurs, in recent interviews have reversed their previous strategy to either simply ignore the narrative’s Buddhist connotations or validate the alt-right’s misappropriation of the term ‘snowflake,’ a Buddhist metaphor for impermanence.

KEYWORDS:

• Fight Club
• Alt-Right
• Zen Buddhism
• White Supremacy
• Religion and Film

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Project Mayhem, particularly as the militia is depicted in this scene, finds resonance with aspects of Samantha Kutner’s (2020) qualitative study of the Proud Boys. One reported appeal to the chauvinistic group is a chance to socialise with alcohol. Being subjected to violence is required for second degree membership while fourth degree membership is attained by engaging in violence with outsiders. Finally, the Aryan character – a signifier of Nazism – can be related to the presence of Proud Boys at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. At the rally extremists chanted the Nazi slogan ‘blood and soil’ (Wagner 2017).

2. As the Narrator and Marla emerge from a diner, the audience catches a glimpse of a movie theatre signboard playing ‘Seven Years in Tibet.’ Eve Mullen (1998) argues that the film, also starring Pitt, presents an Orientalist vision of Tibetan culture and religion: ‘Tibet becomes the exalted, valuable culture in contrast to the murderous, demonic China.’ The intertextual reference connects Fight Club to a Hollywood tradition of essentializing Buddhism – and Buddhist countries – as peaceful.

3. ‘Snowflake’ functions as the inverse to the Matrix appropriated word ‘red pill’ to denote insider/outsider status. Those who have taken the ‘red pill’ are awakened and ready to accept the alt-right’s ideologies. Ironically, from a Buddhist perspective a person attached to the notion that they are a ‘unique snowflake’ is unawakened, because they adhere to a notion that their self/identity is unchanging and permanent. However, to the author’s knowledge, the alt-right has not deployed the term in this way to designate persons as outsiders. Rather ‘snowflakes’ are outsiders due to their sensitivity to – from an alt-right perspective – political correctness.

4. Hays and Werse (2017) describe these ‘Fight Club’ retreats as a form of ‘muscular Christianity.’ Future ethnographic research would do well to probe how the film inspires new forms of religious practices (Thomas 2007); and investigate the potential intersections of popular culture, far-right politics and white Christian nationalism (Whitehead, Perry, and Baker 2018; Bailey 2016).