Fight Club - Title Analysis

The opening titles to Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) provides an excellent example of a sequence that symbolically references aspects of the film to come. This is what a title sequence must do. It should give the spectator clues as to what the film is about and in doing so shape their expectations. These clues are not always overt clues about characters and narrative but are often subtle suggestions regarding theme and mood.

The Fight Club title sequence is constructed of subtle references to themes of identity, deception and physical and psychological instability, all of which are explored in the film. The text itself can be seen to strongly suggest themes of identity. The cast and crew’s identity is displayed to the spectator in the form of titles, however the appearance and movement of these titles can be seen to connote strong ideas of not only identity but more specifically, hidden and fractured identity. In some of the titles there are what appears to be chunks absent from some letters, lines of text overlap each other and the top line of text moves further behind the more prominent, bottom line of text as if becoming hidden from the audience. The text is displayed for a short duration each time before seeming to disintegrate through use of transition that looks as though the text transforms to dust or vapour. The fact that the spectator is not given a lot of time to process the information before the titles disappear alludes to the concept of illusive identity. This is reinforced by the extremely quick presentation (one or two frames, when the film’s title ‘Fight Club’ is introduced on screen) of a larger, unreadable title card where letters fill most of the frame. This combined with the appearance of white ‘flashes’ throughout the sequence can be read as a prelude to the subliminal flashes of Tyler Durden’s character later in the film ( extremely short duration, missable visual suggestions of his presence).

The other graphics in the sequence connote ideas about the physical structure of the body. Although only suggested until the end of the title sequence, the spectator is viewing matter inside of the main character’s (and narrator’s) body and brain. We seem to be presented with particles, veins, tissue and cells – suggested but not clearly identifiable. Electric currents run through connective synaptic tissue as the camera winds its way through the represented physical environment. This immediate focus on the human body is also a precursor to themes and narrative events: The main character, experiencing severe insomnia, finds comfort in frequenting a number of support groups for sufferers of serious physical diseases such as testicular cancer. Throughout the film the body and its fragility is a focus, particularly shown in the fighting scenes. At the end of the title sequence the spectator is introduced to the main character as the camera reveals an extreme close up of his terrified face. The theme of threat to the human body is further suggested as we see him with a swollen black eye and a gun pointed into his mouth.