How ‘Fight Club’ inspired a Papa Roach anthem
David Fincher’s 1999 outing Fight Club is widely deemed one of the highlights of the decade’s cinema, providing a visual and thematic bridge into the hyper-drive promised by the new millennium. A distinctly Generation X film, augmented by the postmodern score from the Dust Brothers, the narrative is a comment on society’s increasing reliance on technology and consumerism. Bringing this into focus, Fincher initially pursued Radiohead for the score, but frontman Thom York declined, as the group were too burnt out from the stress and success of their own social critique, OK Computer.
Since it first hit theatres, the film has been polarising. Some deem it to be one of the finest social commentaries of the period, and one of Fincher’s best works, whereas others decry it as nothing more than a hollow proto-incel manifesto.
Fight Club is based on Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel of the same name, although it takes some very obvious liberties. The book is universally hailed as a masterpiece, with it an accessible and punchy political manifesto. However, as with most movie adaptations, the brilliance of the subject material gets skewed in favour of visual embellishments, acting, and the necessity to make a script as concise as possible.
In the film, the unnamed narrator – who represents everyone in the audience – is played by Edward Norton, in what is regarded as one of his definitive roles. Opposite him is Brad Pitt, who plays the charismatic Tyler Durden, a figment of the narrator’s imagination who acts as a manifestation and mouthpiece for many of the central themes.
For instance, this monologue from Durden: “Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Despite the criticisms that can be pointed at Fincher’s work, as a whole, it served as a realisation of long-held ideas for those in Generation X who were more reluctant to join the rat race than some of their peers. Four of these who understood what Palahniuk and Fincher were saying found themselves in the successful nu-metal band Papa Roach.
In fact, the group were so taken by Fight Club, that one of their biggest hits, 2000’s ‘Between Angels and Insects’, was directly inspired by it. The song’s lyrics feature references to the film, with a couple of lines, “working jobs that you hate for that shit you don’t need” and “the things you own, own you now…“, lifted directly from one of Durden’s speeches in it.
Even the iconic, cockroach-featuring music video references Fincher’s Fight Club. Famously, the Joseph Kahn-directed clip depicts the band performing in a garage. It displays a mixture of visceral special effects, including morphing from angle to angle, Papa Roach moshing in slow motion, and the camera moving through their insides, with it a stylistic homage to what Fincher achieved in the movie.
Have a watch below.
