Like Skald, I’d probably get the heck out of there before he started attacking passers-by. But I have no difficulty believing that a lot of people would stop to watch a guy hitting himself. What I don’t believe for one moment is that these gawkers would then join the self-hitter’s cult. One of those homeless squeegie guys would be a more likely guru.
Heck, that’s what his Boss does (and us, since we’re stuck in the theater) when he beats himself up inside the office. That time he unquestionably WAS beating himself up.
It didn’t start as a cult, though–it started as a group of people watching a guy beat the shit out of himself. By the time it got to cult status, there were only a tiny number of men who’d watched the Narrator beat himself up in the parking lot.
The problem is that there’s no logical path from “Let’s watch this crazy dude hit himself!” to “I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.” The original Fight Club members had watched the narrator beat himself up, and it makes no sense for them to take him seriously after that.
I watched I don’t know how many Zorro movies and TV episodes before I figured out that Zorro is Spanish for fox.
And I didn’t know it until just now.
I disagree - meaning, I can believe that one of the following two things would happen:
[ol]
[li]At least one passer-by would be curious enough about his behavior to stop and ask. (The fact that it’s the only pair of passers-by that we see is just a movie shorthand.)[/li][li]More relevantly, one of the two passers-by asks, “Can I be next?” Which, considering the way Fight Club progresses, could easily mean, “Can I pummel you next?” Remember, too, these are guys who just came out of a bar, in a movie whose theme is at least partly to do with the feral impulses that bubble just beneath the surface.[/li][/ol]
I haven’t read the book - does it go into more detail on this point? Anyone? Anyone? Bue-punch
I never had trouble buying into the premise of Fight Club. Look at something like Jackass, which is founded on a premise not to unlike that: a bunch of guys go out and attempt to inflict as much grievous bodily harm on themselves as they can without permanently crippling themselves. And they’re minor celebrities for it. Of course, Johnny Knoxville is unlikely to attempt to destroy society, at least on purpose, but there are a lot of people who admire him for his ability to throw himself down a flight of stairs. It’s not an unreasonable extrapolation to take that and say, “What if this guy had that sort of mesmerizing charisma that you see in people who found cults of personality?” Real life cults, and even political movements, have been founded by weirder people than Tyler Durden.
Miller, I wrote a rather lengthy reply but then decided I don’t want to spend the time on a movie I disliked so much. I realize that many people enjoyed Fight Club, but there is no way anyone is going to convince me that the basic premise was reasonable, realistic, or even interesting. Anyone who believes it was those things is free to do so, but I don’t.
So instead of posting the reply, you just delete it and tell us that you DID write a lengthy reply, effectively wasting your time?
That just looks silly.
Although if you write a well thought out response to this and then delete it, that’ll really show me!
Lamia, I contemplated writing a rather lengthy reply, but then I realized I’d be wasting my time on someone who’s displaying what seems to be an attitude of such willful ignorance.
Seriously, I get “I don’t like it and never will,” but I’m boggling as “I am going to ignore every single scrap of possible evidence that I’m wrong about something factual, i.e., that this could possibly be a feasible premise.” Why even post here if that’s how you feel?
I did post the reply. Since it existed as a post for several minutes before I removed it, and since Miller is a Mod and may (I’m not sure) be able to see edited posts, I didn’t see any point in pretending that I hadn’t written my original post. I do wish I really had not written it though, because it was a waste of time.
This kind of thing is exactly why I deleted my previous post. I do not care to get sucked into a nasty argument with fans of a popular movie that I hated. If you loved Fight Club then that’s wonderful for you. I’m not going to try to change your mind about it or make nasty remarks about you because you refuse to share my opinion of the movie.
I **don’t care **that you don’t like the movie. De gustibus non disputandum est, as the saying goes. I care that you’ve explicitly stated that you would ignore evidence about a factual point. From what you said, someone could point to a real-world example of this happening, and you’d still refuse to believe it was possible. **That **kind of attitude, on **this **message board, what I’m incredulous about.
I’m not really sure what would constitute factual evidence for this sort of claim. Short of finding someone who really did start an anarchist cult by standing outside of a bar punching himself in the head, any evidence presented one way or the other is going to be largely subjective in regards to how well it matches what’s portrayed in the movie.
No, I didn’t. I didn’t use the word “evidence” at all, and the question of whether something is plausible isn’t really a factual one. “Plausible” isn’t the same thing as “possible”. Since the question of what is plausible is largely a matter of opinion, I decided it wasn’t worth my time or anyone else’s to discuss the matter further. I just don’t care that much about Fight Club. I wish this had struck me before I hit “Submit Reply” on my longer post, but instead it happened a minute or two later. I was hoping to avoid a total hijack of this thread by writing over material that would only have fueled a pointless argument*.
I’m sorry the short message I left in its place upset you so much, but it was late at night and I had only a couple of minutes before the “Edit” window closed so I couldn’t craft a work of brilliant prose. If I’d known people were going to flip out at me over this I wouldn’t have bothered with any message at all, but since for all I knew someone was reading or even replying to my longer post while it was still up I thought it would be rude to remove it with no explanation at all.
*No, that’s actually the only thing I can think of that would change my belief that this part of the premise was completely ridiculous. Find me a real-life example of a cult leader who attracted followers by standing around and hitting himself and I will humbly take back my criticism of Fight Club (on that point, at least). Barring that, I would prefer to let the subject drop and would appreciate it if you’d get off my case about it.
*Just for the record, it’s not Miller in particular I was worried about. He’s a reasonable guy, and even if he were unreasonable there’s only one of him. If I’d been writing a private email to him then that would have been fine. But by posting here I was inviting every Fight Club fan on the boards to argue with me.
And I see Miller posted something very similar while I was writing my own post. I knew he was a reasonable guy. 
I’m a pretty big fan of the movie and I agree with you completely about the origins of Fight Club. The beginnings of Fight Club make absolutely no damn sense.
The rest of the movie is fantastic in my mind, but only if you ignore the fact that the Project Mayhem cult was started by a guy who wrestled with himself in a parking lot. No one is going to commit terrorist acts for a nutball who can’t stop hitting himself.
Your entire take on this seems to be predicated on the idea that people behave logically. I can understand this as you probably try to think and behave logically, however, do you see where there might be a flaw in this? Do you not see or read things daily in the news that puts lie to this?
It just seems to me that we’re asked to “go with” all kinds of unlikely or impossible things in many movies, and this is far from the worst example. Hell, in the same move, Ed Norton puts a gun in his mouth and shoots himself, then stands and watches as the buildings collapse.
How about the flagellants? Someone had to be the first, and he did pretty well at convincing people that whipping yourself bloody made God like you more.
'Course, lots of things seem more reasonable if there’s a plague on.
Then I’ll accept that you were just being ridiculously hyperbolic when you said (and I quote, with emphasis added) “there is **no way **anyone is going to convince me that the basic premise was reasonable, realistic, or even interesting.” It was that “no way” that really pissed me off.