“You are not your work. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing shit of the world. This is the underlying message of Fincher's Fight Club (1999), which satirically analyzes and critiques consumerism. The film's characters vividly depict society's immersion in materialism and present viewers with the harsh reality regarding the uselessness of material possessions. The opening scenes of the film focus on the narrator, the embodiment of the consumerist. He says: "Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct... I would flip through catalogs and ask myself 'what kind of dining room set defines me as a person?' » » His IKEA fetish is the result of his unobtainable identity. . He buys these goods not because he needs them, but because they are presented in catalogs as the optimal apartment for a single man. It is undoubtedly because of his lack of identity that he suffers from insomnia. His insomnia intensifies his identity crisis, as he is unable to differentiate between dreams and reality. Ironically, the remedy the narrator finds only proliferates his lack of identity. He participates in support groups for the terminally ill under different pseudonyms. While his fetish for IKEA was due to "the consumer's ability to choose from a vast array of identities through products and labels" (Davis, 2002), support groups are an attempt to belong somewhere . “His portrait of an exhausted and numb narcoleptic insomniac is a vivid depiction of a man suffering from the failed promise of personal fulfillment in a brand- and corporate-driven consumer society” (Davis, 2002). Although the groups are becoming more widespread... ... middle of paper ......, S. (January 9, 2007) The goal: Wealth and fame. The United States Today. Retrieved February 3, 2014 from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-09-gen-y-cover_x.htmLizardo, O. (2007). Fight Club, or the cultural contradictions of late capitalism. Journal for Cultural Research, 11. Accessed January 22, 2014, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797580701763830 Lockwood, R.D. (2011). Journal of Contemporary Religion. Cults, consumerism and self-construction: exploration of religion within Fight Club, 23. Retrieved January 22, 2014 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537900802373320 Lyon, David. Jesus at Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Malden, MA: Polity P, 2000. Robinson, S. (2011). Fight Club and the limits of anti-consumerist criticism. Genders Journal, 53 (Spring 2011). Accessed January 31, 2014 from http://www.genders.org/g53/g53_robinson.html