Most of my favourite films involve male protagonists in roles that have no adequate 'feminine' equivalent. When I watch these films I am drawn to certain characters with whom I identify: I imagine myself as them. But they are men. I don't fantasise about being with them, I want to be them. Clearly this is an uncomfortable state of affairs because, of course, I have no desire to be male. But, I want a way of seeing a woman in the way that I see those men without her being masculine, lesbianised (in the perjorative sense of showing lesbian women as overly butch) or leathered and kick-ass.
It's also not to do with Feminism.
It's because I want there to be a female version of Blondie [Clint Eastwood]. Or Tyler Durden.
Which is where the Fight Club bit comes in. Essentially my view of Fight Club is that it is anti-advertising/media. It is about rejecting contemporary roles and anxieties which are 'forced' upon us by largely capitalist regimes. It deals with a set of issues which is not exclusive to men: it just focuses on them from a male perspective. Fight Club and its message could quite easily be reversed as a bunch of women hell-bent on Anarchy and social reconfiguration.
But then, what would it look like? As I am thinking a lot about representations rather than actualities (real anarchists do not look or act like Tyler Durden etc.) then maybe that's where it has to stay. It's a fictional project with no real-world context.
I don't know.
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