Dr.Strangehorn
100+ Posts
Obligatory spoiler warning in case anyone has never seen Fight Club.
Did anyone ever have to sit through Sex In The City? That show about four single 30 something women in New York who lived fabulous lives having promiscuous sex and buying shoes. I think all American males have been forced to watch this show at some point. And whenever I have watched it, I can't help but wonder, exactly what do these women do with their lives? They do nothing except have sex and spend men's money. That and pretend that if they deny their age long enough that somehow they'll stop aging. We all age and we all die eventually. So all these women do is focus on the now, on whatever little sensation happens to occupy them for the moment. Because they all know that in the end, time will catch up with them. One can not deny the eventuality of death. Do we not all fear reaching the end having done nothing meaningful with our lives?
Which brings me to Fight Club. It is very much about a man whose wasted his life, and deep down he knows it. But he suppresses these feelings by busying himself buying Swedish furniture and coming up with clever things to say. How's that working out for you? What? Being clever.
So what eventually happens? His primordial self, represented by Brad Pitt, breaks away from him and starts going off on its own. This is something predicted by Nietzsche, he theorized that the shortness of human life is the only reason why we think humans only have one personality. He estimated that if humans lived longer lives, our personalities would eventually split into several different people.
Tyler Durden represents all that in him which is innately male. His sex drive, his drive for rawness, for violence, for meaning and purpose. Which is why Tyler Durden eventually creates a Nietzschean cult, but what is the purpose of this cult? Again, as Nietzsche theorized, once you stripped away all man's justification there really isn't much left, except perhaps a propensity for random violence.
Tyler Durden is his maleness searching for reason and purpose in a plastic, fake world that is full of people like the women from Sex In The City. The other side of him is Jack's wasted life. His conscious attempt to fit in to a world which demands of the modern male that he become feminized and obsessed with objects. That strips man of his maleness, his innate need for violence to feel alive. This modern world destroys our maleness. It removes our testicles, one step at a time.
Tylder Durden is a reawakening of his maleness. But eventually Tyler becomes his maleness run wild. And in a way, his coming together with Marla Singer at the end is the reconciling of his maleness with his feminine side or weaker element. Which is what makes Fight Club such an interesting movie. It not only points out the fakeness of his life before, but shows the dangers of going too far in the other direction.
His was a life devoid of meaning, with all that which is male having been ripped away by society. Which is why he went to the support groups, losing hope was freedom, as he said. Giving up on life was the only way he could deal with the sheer meaninglessness of his existence. Tyler was the inner revolt of this giving up. And that’s why the movie touches a cord, have we not all tried to fit into what the world wants from us? Can a man stop being a man?
Did anyone ever have to sit through Sex In The City? That show about four single 30 something women in New York who lived fabulous lives having promiscuous sex and buying shoes. I think all American males have been forced to watch this show at some point. And whenever I have watched it, I can't help but wonder, exactly what do these women do with their lives? They do nothing except have sex and spend men's money. That and pretend that if they deny their age long enough that somehow they'll stop aging. We all age and we all die eventually. So all these women do is focus on the now, on whatever little sensation happens to occupy them for the moment. Because they all know that in the end, time will catch up with them. One can not deny the eventuality of death. Do we not all fear reaching the end having done nothing meaningful with our lives?
Which brings me to Fight Club. It is very much about a man whose wasted his life, and deep down he knows it. But he suppresses these feelings by busying himself buying Swedish furniture and coming up with clever things to say. How's that working out for you? What? Being clever.
So what eventually happens? His primordial self, represented by Brad Pitt, breaks away from him and starts going off on its own. This is something predicted by Nietzsche, he theorized that the shortness of human life is the only reason why we think humans only have one personality. He estimated that if humans lived longer lives, our personalities would eventually split into several different people.
Tyler Durden represents all that in him which is innately male. His sex drive, his drive for rawness, for violence, for meaning and purpose. Which is why Tyler Durden eventually creates a Nietzschean cult, but what is the purpose of this cult? Again, as Nietzsche theorized, once you stripped away all man's justification there really isn't much left, except perhaps a propensity for random violence.
Tyler Durden is his maleness searching for reason and purpose in a plastic, fake world that is full of people like the women from Sex In The City. The other side of him is Jack's wasted life. His conscious attempt to fit in to a world which demands of the modern male that he become feminized and obsessed with objects. That strips man of his maleness, his innate need for violence to feel alive. This modern world destroys our maleness. It removes our testicles, one step at a time.
Tylder Durden is a reawakening of his maleness. But eventually Tyler becomes his maleness run wild. And in a way, his coming together with Marla Singer at the end is the reconciling of his maleness with his feminine side or weaker element. Which is what makes Fight Club such an interesting movie. It not only points out the fakeness of his life before, but shows the dangers of going too far in the other direction.
His was a life devoid of meaning, with all that which is male having been ripped away by society. Which is why he went to the support groups, losing hope was freedom, as he said. Giving up on life was the only way he could deal with the sheer meaninglessness of his existence. Tyler was the inner revolt of this giving up. And that’s why the movie touches a cord, have we not all tried to fit into what the world wants from us? Can a man stop being a man?
