Marla Singer is known to anyone who read the legendary work of the cult American writer Chuck Palahniuk or watched the movie Fight Club by no less outstanding director David Fincher. In both works, this heroine, although not a key character, but plays a very important role, helping to dive deeper into what is happening.
Marla Singer
This heroine is a key female character in Fight Club, which is often compared to a fatal woman. Her main task is to wrest the protagonist from an ordinary, comfortable lifestyle and lead him into the street, full of dangers and difficulties.
Marla Singer adds a certain noirness to the film, since her appearance and lifestyle were created in the style of themes popular at the end of the twentieth century, namely to demonstrate the appearance of a woman doomed to a miserable existence because of her drug addiction.
She appears to the viewer and reader as a naturally attractive young girl, but exhausted and exhausted by drugs. She dresses too defiantly, her make-up is sloppy and vulgar, and she herself has been emaciated because she is depleted of heroin. Pale, unhealthy skin color, circles under the eyes and a careless appearance - these are the image of the fatal woman from the 90s, according to Chuck Palahniuk.
Marla Singer: actress
In the film by D. Fincher, the role of Marla went to the charming actress Helena Bonham Carter, who simply brilliantly coped with this difficult way. Despite the fact that Marla Singer is a key female character in the film, she remains on the periphery of the plot throughout its duration.
In fact, she does not fully understand what is happening, although events unfold very close to her. This is a very controversial role, which not every actress can cope with, so H. B. Carter did a lot of work to play the 100% role of Marla Singer. The filmography of Helena was already quite large then. Thanks to her great professional experience, which she already had then, and the talent of the actress, she was able to cope with this difficult role.
Role in Fight Club
According to the plot of the film, Marla Singer is a woman who, together with the main character (Narrator), goes to a support group. However, she falsifies her symptoms and difficulties. Upon learning about this, the main character loses interest in group activities, so he stops attending them.
Then she and the Storyteller meet again when Marla has already become Tyler’s girlfriend. She leads an extremely unpleasant way of life, uses drugs, almost does not take care of herself, earns theft. She is certainly an antihero. Despite her 24 years, she is already doomed, so she is constantly drawn to commit suicide.
This heroine complements both the book and the film with gloom, creating a noir atmosphere of what is happening. This is exactly the effect sought by Chuck Palahniuk, who specialized in writing works in the style of counterculture and modern prose. In the film, this effect is fully preserved, and perhaps even better represented.
Conclusion
Marla Singer does not cause strong sympathies, and should not. She performs completely different tasks in the work, being only an addition to the main characters and plot. However, if it did not exist, then the pressure atmosphere, which is inherent in the literary and cinematic work, could not be achieved.
But in many ways, “Fight Club” has become cult precisely because of its harsh reality, which shows the reader and the audience a world full of hopelessness in which the Storyteller finds himself. Who knows, Palanic would have managed to convey all these numerous, twofold and complex emotions that the Storyteller is experiencing, if not for the described image.