The American Dream (Or Nightmare Depending on Your Outlook)

I think the representation of women in both Brokeback Mountain and Fight Club can come across as outside the norm that we are used to due to the portrayal of what is supposed to be the standard life of the American and how it has evolved in the characters' minds. Many people even today still carry a stereotype of the All-American life as being occupationally successful as well as having a family and children. This is easily identified in Brokeback Mountain, because both of the characters carried on so-called "normal" lives, even though presumably they both wished to be together. It can be argued that this facade was not merely kept up for the external reasons of their safety in the intolerant Post-War America that they lived in, but it was also maintained because ingrained in each of them was this feeling of failure if they did not accomplish the goals society laid out for them. Fight Club also deals with this topic of women in the American Dream. There is an entire scene devoted to it in the movie, where Tyler and the Narrator discuss their upbringings and how they effected their futures. Tyler's father tells him he must go to college and get married, but he doesn't share this interest. The narrator who mostly without a father, never had it to start with. "I can't get married, I'm a thirty-year-old boy." Even though I particularly don't understand that attitude, I can see where with no guide to tell you what you should want, a family may not enter into your goals. Women in both stories are portrayed as outcasts which, no matter how the characters may try, can never be clearly communicated to or understood.