I really enjoyed Fight Club. The reason I enjoyed it so much is that I read a completely different meaning into the bulk of the movie than what has been presented here. Since I don’t know the writer personally, your guess is as good as mine with regards to his intent.
The film does not make any statements about consumerism its self. Tyler does. Tyler makes the statements that he does because that’s why Norton’s character (henceforth referred to as Norton) created him. At no time does the movie encourage us to believe that Tyler’s ideas are good, logical or profound. The movie does illustrate how and why humans, in times of desperation, will cling to each other. That’s the point from the first scene of the testicular cancer group session to the last scene of Norton abandoning childish things once he achieves a sense of strength.
In the beginning, Norton seeks to challenge himself in order to identify his personal worth. His efforts to achieve a sense of worth through hard work and material success have come to a halt. His life is not progressing. He does not sleep because, subconsciously, he does not believe that he has earned sleep. He destroys his possessions because they distract him. He physically abuses himself because feelings of real pain give him moments of absolute clarity when he can separate himself, the thing that hurts, from the instrument of his torture, be it an object, an action or a person. I don’t think I’ve explained that part very well, but you can ask any athlete or masochist about the value of physical pain in order to understand what I’m getting at.
Norton tries so hard to identify himself in a world of confusion and what he perceives to be trivial shit, that he actually creates another personality which he fills with the most fundamental things that he discovers about himself. Tyler is not a complete package suddenly born out of Norton’s subconscious. Tyler is the collection of discoveries that Norton makes through the course of the film while he is investigating every aspect of his existence (“I am Jack’s colon . . .”) in order to find a reason to keep living. In the end, it doesn’t matter where he shoots himself or if he does it at all. What’s important is that he has finally come to understand what death means. Thus he is able to separate life and death, identify his position is the play between the two and find value in himself. The self-discovery project is ended and Norton no longer needs is scratch paper. Tyler is balled up and thrown away.
There’s the basic outline as I see it. Now for the details.
Norton builds an army. An army of weak, lost souls. Men (and one woman) who have lost sight of their values as humans. Some, like Bob, are challenged by realities of the physical world, the flesh. Some are just dissatisfied with the identities that they have achieved within society. Some, like Marla, are just lonely. She has lost sight of herself because she has no one around her to use as a basis for comparison.
Speaking of Bob coming to terms with the reality of the flesh . . . Consider that, once he died and was nothing more than I pile of flesh, the world knew him (“His name is Robert Paulson.”). He joined a society, fight club, where his physical limitations did not matter and only his abilities did. He was not distracted from his true self by the physical world and neither were his mates. That pile of flesh was Robert Paulson, no matter what condition it was in.
Tyler’s army followed him, not because they believed in his ideas, but because they were all desperate to believe in something. The simple reality of the pain and struggle brought to them through fighting made everything else seem that much more real and believable. It didn’t matter what he asked them to do as long as some reward was attached to it. The reward was not pride because “you do not talk about fight club”. The reward was obviously not physical gain because they had given up everything. The reward was honest toil and pain.
The film ends giving us the suggestion that all of these lost souls have found themselves again. Marla has come to terms with her anger and depression to clearly see the value of her life which has been challenged and nurtured by Norton and his army. The men of fight club attain a true sense of empowerment. They have set a lofty goal and achieved it, not for the benefit of society or any other questionable purpose, but for themselves. They never talked about it so there was never a chance for the value of their deeds to be poisoned by ego gratification. Norton has a woman. That’s all he gets out of the whole deal, but that’s all he needed. This isn’t just any old love affair, though. Norton has exposed Marla to the unmasked fundamentals of his personality and she loves him for it. What better accomplishment and affirmation of self worth is there than to have a beautiful woman love even the ugliest, basest aspects of you?
Maybe I saw too much in the film that wasn’t there. Sometimes that happens to me.
Crap! This is a really long post. Oops.
) economic. Hence credit card companies.
