The 1999 American film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, presents social commentary about consumerist culture, especially the feminization of American culture and its effects on masculinity. The film has been the source of critical analysis. Academic Jans B. Wager describes the film as retro-noir, while Keith Gandal defines it as a "slumming trauma". Cultural critics Henry Giroux and Imre Szeman assert that Fight Club focuses too much on consumerist culture as society's problem. Academic Robert von Dassanowsky describes Fight Club as an examination of European fascism. Genre classifications Retro-noir According to Jans B. Wager, Fight Club exhibits several film noir characteristics. The film's narrator is a white male protagonist who provides a subjective voice-over. He is involved in "an erotic triangle" with "a female object of desire" (Marla Singer) and a male antagonist (Tyler Durden), all of whom are white. The white masculinity in the film differs from noir films by focusing on the upper middle class instead of the lower middle class or the working class. Both of the narrator's counterparts are simultaneously like him and dangerous to him, and the plot takes place in "an urban, crumbling, criminal milieu". With these characteristics, Fight Club masquerades as neo-noir. It is instead best classified as a retro-noir since its presentation of gender roles is "diametrically opposed" to neo-noir films, which in contrast "allow their protagonists to survive, thrive, and commit or solve crimes, with and without male companionship or assistance". The films also present a "more organic" heterosexual coupling than Fight Club. The female character is introduced as a femme fatale, wearing a dress, hat, and sunglasses, smoking a cigarette, and possessing "voluptuous" red lips. Her presence, regardless of "action or agency", is meant to show that "she is the source of all the problems for the narrator". The femme fatale appearance at the beginning is replaced by a heroin chic appearance for the rest of the film. The male antagonist appears in direct response to the "intrusion" of this female object of desire, recalling how in some noir films, the femme fatale appearance is a catalyst to the everyman's entry into "a criminal and dangerous world". The female character is presented as "necessary but peripheral" since she is never fully aware of what is happening. Cultural critic Henry Giroux describes the nature of Marla Singer as "an ultra-conservative version of post-1960s femininity that signifies the antithesis of domestic