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

At first glance, David Finchers vex order and Dreamworks Studios Antz could non be more diametric tot everyyy opposed to each opposite in form and genre. One is a dark commentary on the vacuity of modern life, fraught with homosexual subtext the other is a brightly animated car in additionn where the bad guy dies, the good guy gets the girl, and everybody lives mirthfully ever after. I intention tout ensembley chose these two get hold ofs, however, for their thematic similarity, to examine the recurring motif of striving for identity operator in a society of conveyer belt roles where the value of the individual is quickly depreciating toward extinction. By analyzing both fritter aways through a theological and Freudian lens, I intend to reveal the tension that has evermore existed between possessing the freedom of choice and submitting to an oppressive, delineating structure. Antz opens up with a disembodied voice announcing its anxieties.As the camera penetrates layers of tonic York underground, the voice is revealed to belong to a l 1ly pismire. He is in therapy. We soon learn that his name is Z and he is a disgruntled thespian ant, airing his frustrations everywhere working all his life and never quite popular opinion satisfied. One is expected, as an ant, to devote all his efforts toward the good of his colony and deal with his unavoidably cosmos ignored. This is a common grievance, felt among the spectrum of classes and races. Regardless of status, hardly anybody ever feels he is getting his. in front we have time to dismiss Zs grouchiness as trivial angst, the camera pans out and introduces us to the gung-ho super organism of ant life. What we see is a hyper complex built by and on millions of bodies that interrelate together to drive the meticulous engine that runs and perpetuates the system. It is impossible to make out any one peter from the swarm of activity. We see elevator pulleys marked with phrases like Lets Work and Conquer Id leness, a chilly reference to the Nazi motto that likewise drove millions of human souls to a state of stool 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 argon systematically (one might say, arbitrarily) assigned a role in the microcosm. Roles like worker and soldier ar shouted out at random and these tiny cocoons, before even having a sense of their individualitywhat Freud called recognition of self as separate from the mother (colony)they atomic number 18 deprived of it. They are then designated a locate in the hierarchy that will foreverdetermine their value by output. This systematic allocation of significance by measure of the whole in turn leaves the individual feeling utterly insignificant (Brintall 303). This is the way of life and up until now it went largely unquestioned. As everybody will herald Z, one ant is conveyless. It is not virtually(predicat e) him its about us, the team, working endlessly to build and call for more, and he would do best to content himself with it and be happy. Dont think too much. thought process leads to rogue individualism that puts the whole microcosm in jeopardy.There appears to be no room for delight in this life. Even activities intended to relieve pressure and stress, such as dancing and drinking, are normalized, structured. Socializing 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 submission 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. Inner desires have been buried under dirt and exhaustion and thus, if Freud was mark and our nothing drive must be pointed somewhere, the physical attraction is redirected toward w ork, ungratifying as it may be (Brintall 296).It is transferred into idolizing the cleverness inherent in uniformity, as personified by the macho General Mandible, whos tone comes as ending to sexual gratification 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 realitybecomes the only 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 fall 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. But this is ulterior in the plot, which it makes little sense to spend time recapitulating, as you are around likely already familiar with it. Rather, I would like to isolate and review specific incidents to connect them with themes of religion and sociology. Though the restrictive system of socialism is not stated as overtly in black and white as in Antz, it is clear that the totalitarian regime in Fight Club is modern consumer culture.Having returned home (after successfully realizing his alter-ego Tyler Durden) to find his apartmentbl declare to pieces, the Narrator (whos name is necessarily inconsequential) laments the loss of his beloved interior designer wardrobe and catalogue dining 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 possession will admit them closer to feeling complete. Human beings work to be the masters of their domain, a domain filled with the products of other human labor and frustrations of their own lack and inability to conquer it fully (Brintall 297). All creative energy and hope is transferred into consumerism, an oppressive system we ourselves attend toed crea te and perpetuate and thus permit it to establish mastery over us. And what are we told when we inevitably 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 night the it that inspires Z to run away in anticipate of freedom, in face 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 tho another avatar in the assembly line of human souls and go in search of something best(p), something else. For Z, it is a perfect utopia where insects can choose their own roles in life instead 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 assured choice to pursue a different course in life, meaning to demonstrate how indi viduality is a by-product of free will. But how free are human beings, really? Closer inspection reveals that uncomplete character liberates himself from structure, and especially not from idolatry.His focus simply shifts toward romanticizing a more bohemian lifestyle (or by chance 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 stinging light, stretching contrast, and similar distortion techniques used to achieve the washed-out, deconstructed picturea nod 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 purpose or intrinsic value. But Tyler encouragesus to send all our pre-constructed notions of value and purpose to hell, and face reality. The reality is that there is no greater mean ing, no utopia beyond the mast and across the river, as swears Z, and that putting ones faith in redemption or paragon 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 issue of fatherly abandonment.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 estimation 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 go out on them. To which Tyler, soalikeg nonchalantly in a tub in front of his mate, cogently replies the man is setting up franchises, as though the nurturing of children was nothing more than a simple parentage transaction.So how can these thirty year old boys be expected to enter into, as Freud wrote, normal, heterosexual person 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 extract meaning. We see the Narrator attending support groups for the terminally ill in an attempt to establish a connection and find meaning, once again with pain as the currency. By witnessing the pain of other peoples realities, he finds pleasure, he finds acceptance and releaseand sleep. These groups are for him akin to discourse, a place wh ere pent-up energies can be redistributed. Whatever the grievance, whatever is lacking in this life, a spiritual gathering maintains the possibility for hope.Religion thus becomes not just an outlet, a place where the eros can stir and the soul can come alive, but a way to compensate for the thirst for paternal protection, the feeling of emptiness rooted early in childhood. Even as Tyler argues that religion is ineffectual, we sackthat 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 membership in the bloody communion grows larger and larger, we see the film come full circle. What began as a search for meaning beyond identification with a repressive system of consumerism, swelled into its own macrocosm (not unlike institutionalized Atheism) furnish by identical and nameless, yet willful, automatons. They are tranquillize part icipating 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 crying(a) myth. Are human beings therefore truly free to make their own choices, is the abiding theological and sociological question. The task of determining the controlling force of societyreligious collectivism, political 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 inner desires.But we give out this is not so. There doesnt s eem to be any more meaning or loyalty 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 pursuit 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. Civilization and Its D iscontents.