Fight Club: Sexiest Film Alive

     The first time I watched Fight Club (1999) I was 12 years old, definitely not an age conducive to understanding the complexities - socially, economically, sexually - which provide the foundation for such an eye-opening, innovative film. Watching it 10 years later, my eyes have been opened again, but in a very different way. Now, knowing full well who Brad Pitt is and what he represents to American pop culture consumers - voted Sexiest Man Alive in 1995, 4 years before Fight Club was released, and then again in 2000, 1 year later - the film takes on a whole new meaning. Aside from the homoerotic undertones, which Brookey and Westerfelhaus energetically point out, another element to which I had been previously blind, is the idea of purposefully casting a white, heterosexual, highly-sexualized celebrity, and making him not the protagonist, but somewhat of an antagonist in a film which centers around heavy concepts, such as brotherhood, fascism (presumably), romance, and, of course, homoeroticism. Now, all of a sudden, it's not just Brad Pitt and Edward Norton experiencing a "bromance," or even Norton's character undergoing an out-of-body, alternate identity, split persona crisis; the "authorities" of this film consciously place Pitt and his character, Tyler Durden, on a pedestal both culturally - after all, Pitt has already become an icon to heterosexual American women - and sexually. The only difference is, for whose enjoyment is he being sexualized in the first place?