The final exam will consist of a
three page, double-spaced handwritten in-class essay on either Red
Azalea or Fight Club. Remember to bring Red Azalea
with you for the exam. You may also use any notes you made from Fight
Club. I will count the highest grade of your two in-class essays for
your final grade.
For the exam, consider these
themes:
Fluid gender in Red Azalea
Deconstructing society in
Fight Club
Tyler’s job as a film editor
and its effect on the filmography of the movie.
Comparing or contrasting the
revolution/Red Fire Farm in Red Azalea with Project Mayhem in
Fight Club
Violence/repression in Red
Azalea
For Fight Club—consider
these quotes:
“You are not your job. You
are not how much you have in the bank.”
"A new car built by my
company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential
locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside.
Now: should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the
field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by
the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
Tyler: "The things you own
end up owning you”
Tyler: "You just had a
near-life experience."
"Like everyone else, I had
become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. If I saw something like
clever coffee table sin the shape of a yin and yang, I had to have
it. I would flip through catalogs and wonder, "What kind of
dining set defines me as a person?" We used to read pornography. Now
it was the Horchow Collection. I had it all. Even the glass dishes
with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the
honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever."
Tyler: "Our generation has
had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our
depression is our lives."
Tyler: "You are not
special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the
same decaying organic matter as everything else."
Boss: "Can I get the icon
in cornflower blue?"
“"When deep space
exploration ramps up, it will be corporations that name everything.
The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy.
Planet Starbucks."
"And then... something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion -- dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom."