Sociology Of Deviant Behavior
Emily Nostrant
Sociology of Deviant Behavior
Fight Club Paper
SUNY Fredonia
Fight Club follows what at first glimpse seems like a pretty destructive friendship between the narrator and Tyler Durden. However as the end of the movie reveals, Tyler Durden IS the narrator and the Brad Pitt version of Tyler Durden is a made up coping mechanism to become who the narrator was afraid to be all along. There is nothing sane or “right” in this movie. Everything is deviant from faking terminal illness to stealing jeans from the laundry mat and selling them for a profit. These may be acts of deviance but unfortunately we did not talk about setting your own apartment on fire in our class discussion so the three acts of deviance I chose are drugs, alcohol, and suicide. There are two main theories of deviance and they are the Positivist and the Constructionist. The positivist theory “holds deviance to be absolutely and intrinsically real” (Thio, 4). The positivist theory I feel best describes the deviance in Fight Club is the Anomie Strain Theory. This theory is best explained as a feeling a helplessness in your current life role that results in deviance. Narrator has a decent job and an apartment and seems to be able to afford all his wants and needs but, he’s trapped in this constant cycle of consumerism and he wants to escape but does not have the means to. Narrator uses Merton’s rebellion mode of adaption. This is when one reject society’s goals and means and then goes one step further and tries to replace them (Thio, 19). The narrator embodies this by rejecting consumerism and creating fight club which eventually turns into “project mayhem”. He states to the police that the reason for targeting the credit card companies in project mayhem is to erase everybody’s debt to create utter chaos. He wants to create a clean slate and essentially free everyone trapped the way he believes he once was. I mentioned that he did not have the means to escape his
Sociology of Deviant Behavior
Fight Club Paper
SUNY Fredonia
Fight Club follows what at first glimpse seems like a pretty destructive friendship between the narrator and Tyler Durden. However as the end of the movie reveals, Tyler Durden IS the narrator and the Brad Pitt version of Tyler Durden is a made up coping mechanism to become who the narrator was afraid to be all along. There is nothing sane or “right” in this movie. Everything is deviant from faking terminal illness to stealing jeans from the laundry mat and selling them for a profit. These may be acts of deviance but unfortunately we did not talk about setting your own apartment on fire in our class discussion so the three acts of deviance I chose are drugs, alcohol, and suicide. There are two main theories of deviance and they are the Positivist and the Constructionist. The positivist theory “holds deviance to be absolutely and intrinsically real” (Thio, 4). The positivist theory I feel best describes the deviance in Fight Club is the Anomie Strain Theory. This theory is best explained as a feeling a helplessness in your current life role that results in deviance. Narrator has a decent job and an apartment and seems to be able to afford all his wants and needs but, he’s trapped in this constant cycle of consumerism and he wants to escape but does not have the means to. Narrator uses Merton’s rebellion mode of adaption. This is when one reject society’s goals and means and then goes one step further and tries to replace them (Thio, 19). The narrator embodies this by rejecting consumerism and creating fight club which eventually turns into “project mayhem”. He states to the police that the reason for targeting the credit card companies in project mayhem is to erase everybody’s debt to create utter chaos. He wants to create a clean slate and essentially free everyone trapped the way he believes he once was. I mentioned that he did not have the means to escape his