Following its inaugural event in November, the TRUSU Philosophy Club will host a movie night on Feb. 13, themed around the philosophy of the 2023 film Barbie.
The club’s first rule is to “have an open mind.” Students learned this first-hand at the inaugural event, the Philosophy of Fight Club movie night and lecture in the Clock Tower Theatre back in November.
Organizer Noah Redgrove said the club’s movie nights have a simple goal in mind.
“Philosophy is this subject that a lot of people look at and say, ‘That just sounds boring.’ We want to break down that barrier [because] you can watch really interesting movies and get philosophy out of it,” Redgrove said.
Approximately 50 students attended the Nov. 19 event, which began with a Zoom call from Pat Jankiewicz, a background actor from the 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. He talked about his time on the set, his experience playing werewolves and slasher movie villains, and the value of practical movie effects.
One of the club organizers, Tegan Nelson, was given contact information for Janciewicz by a philosophy faculty member who knew him previously.
“Pat plays a bunch of roles that I really enjoy,” Nelson said. “Hollywood insiders know exactly what’s up. That was awesome.”
Following the Zoom call, attendees picked up plates of pizza, cans of pop and settled into their seats for the screening.
“We wanted to do a movie night because that’s a standard thing that clubs do, but we wanted to put our own spin on it,” Redgrove said. “We wanted to bring in the philosophy aspect to a lot of these movies.”
That aspect was fully displayed when the film closed, and TRU philosophy professor Tim Fitzjohn took to the stage at around 9 p.m. to lecture. He spoke about the conditions of human experience and tied it to the perspectives of the two main Fight Club characters.
“Experientially, we always have to approach that question of authorship from always having that answer filled in around us by societal norms, by friends and family,” Fitzjohn said in his lecture.
Following Fitzjohn’s fifteen-minute talk, the audience asked questions, and a range of topics, from masculinity to themes of self-destruction within Fight Club, were discussed.
“It was really successful; there was a big discussion,” Nelson said.
At the club’s next event on Feb. 13 history professor Alana Toulin will serve as guest speaker following a screening of the award-winning film, Barbie. The event will begin at 7 p.m. in the Clock Tower Theatre.