. Explore how far the application of a particular critical approach has either reinforced or challenged your first impressions of your close study film.

On first viewing Fight Club seems simple enough from a  basic point of view. People can take any of the messages the films seems to present and say the film is about corporations and masculinity or any of anything else. Simplifying the rest of the movie. But once critical theory is applied to the film we see the film is polysemic. There being more to it than one simple message.

In the basketball scene we see the crisis of masculinity being presented through the men at the support group. The mise en scene shows a basketball hoop representing the ideals of masculinity with sport. No-one is uses it. To contrast the basketball hoop we instead see the men sat in a circle talking about there feelings in a wide shot this shows they have lost the masculine way of life. The Narrator feels like there a being made by society to be like this. This is shown by a close up of The Narrator looking emotionless and reinforces the idea that film is about rejecting society. We that see behind one of the men Tyler flashes on the screen for less than a second this is edited in to show this is the moment The Narrator felt he needed to create Tyler to change what he is seeing. This also relates the films meta narrative, the film know it is a film, with Tyler later on editing single frames into films just like what is shown here.

The Crisis of Masculinity can also be applied to the bathroom scene where we see Tyler and The Narrator talking about this very thing. With Tyler saying "we are a generation of men raised by women" this shows they believe there problems come from there childhood and lack of a father figure. It also shows how they feel their masculinity means they have to reject any women from their life in a misogynistic way as that is what is ruining them. This mid shot is framed with Tyler just to the right of the narrators head showing him as a voice in his ear. The mise en scene of this shot is purposely dirty with muddy green colours. This shows how bad their life is when they are trying to be free. It challenges my thoughts that their life is better when rejecting society from The Narrators point of viewer. Seeing it as a viewer it seems a mess and it is foolish that they live like that.

In the final scene of Fight Club we see the narrator chose Marla over Tyler rejecting the ideas of masculinity that Tyler presents in the film. Marla isn't portrayed in a negative way which challenges the Misogynistic messages in the film. She portrayed as quite masculine with the mise en scene of her dark clothing and cigarette in hand. This is also a clear reference to film noir femme fetal charactors.

 After the narrator kills Tyler he immediately asks to be alone with Marla despite having to push her away throughout the film. This challenges my intial impressions as he seen to be more free here than before. Free from Tyler and himself. In this wide shot we see the silouttes of Marla and the Narrator looking similar with the mise en scene of the clothing, this relates to Tyler philisophy of men being feminised this not necessarily portrayed as bad. He is calm now.  The music also reflects this changing from the generic lift music used throughout the film to an actual song lifting to mood creating a sort of romantic ending despite all of  the chaos surrounding them.

In conclusion I feel after applying the critical approach of the Crisis of masculinity has challenged the way I initially viewed the film. While a lot of the film does present the ideas of  rejecting society in pursuit of themselves and reinforcing many first impressions. The film is Polysemic presnting much more than that and shows the changing nature of how men view masculinity