I'm of two minds when it comes to this issue. I quite liked Fight Club precisely because in my younger years it was 'macho porn', but it left me with some thoug

I'm of two minds when it comes to this issue. I quite liked Fight Club precisely because in my younger years it was 'macho porn', but it left me with some thoughts that later on bloomed into understanding that the film is really criticising all of that. I've had similar experiences with other works. Starship Troopers isn't quite the fascist power-fantasy that it appears to be on first sight. American Psycho can sorta be seen as a power fantasy, initially, but it's really about a pathetic guy struggling in his environment. And so on. I don't feel it would do the world a service to criticize these (initially) ambiguous works because they're not spelling out the message they contain. And so while I often liked Ebert's reviews, I felt he was judging Fight Club in precisely the superficial way that doesn't do it justice. I imagine he might review 'Lolita' as a work glorifying adults loving prepubescent girls, when clearly the book isn't really doing anything quite like that. Err, I suppose the counterpoint in my 'two minds' perspective is that I do get that there are cases where it does feel like the 'criticism' is a flimsy excuse to revel in its opposite. I don't think that applies to Fight Club, but it's an edge case. Better examples would be shows like Breaking Bad. I enjoyed that show a ton, but I could not find a proper excuse to watch it other than 'crime porn'. Any 'message' it tried to convey was clear from the first season. We all kept watching because we loved to see how bad Walter White could get.