- Posts: 11110
- Thank you received: 8101
Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)
Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.
Fight Club
I haven't read the book. Without fail, it has always been at "checked out" at the local library, and I can't be bothered to do a request or hold or whatever for it. But I have seen the movie a few times, and now read the comic sequel.
One reason that I wanted to read the sequel was to look for resolution to a long-standing argument with the friend who watched Fight Club with me the first time around. He sincerely believes that the reveal of the unreliable narrator at the end completely contradicts the rest of the movie, making it a purely internal story about one man's insanity. I feel that interpretation is worthless because it ignores the exploding building after the big revelation, and would take the unreliable narrator concept beyond the point of absurdity.
So what did I learn (no spoilers here) from the comic Fight Club 2? I'm not certain. It opens with the narrator as an unhappy suburbanite, married to Marla and raising a young son. The story clearly makes the case for the narrator and Tyler Durden as multiple personalities of the same individual. But then there are meta-scenes showing writer Chuck Palahniuk arguing with three women about what direction the plot should go. And there is a scene featuring a zombie with superhuman strength. Other than that, the sequel is right in line with the style of the movie, and presumably the book.
But enough about the sequel for now. The real significance of Fight Club is probably complex and debatable. It definitely offers a critique and satire of consumer culture. But where does it go from there? Fascism? Anarchy? Nihilism? When people talk about the movie, they tend to dwell on the literal Fight Club aspect, which is the fighting in the secret club. But there are so many other elements going on. The support groups for the various ailments. The soap-making. The homoerotic subtext. The significance of that crumbling mansion. What did they mean to you? Did you like or dislike the movie (or book), and why? Did you like the ending, and was that ending a refutation of everything before it?
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- SuperflyPete
- Offline
- Salty AF
- SMH
- Posts: 10733
- Thank you received: 5119
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- hotseatgames
- Away
- D12
- Posts: 7183
- Thank you received: 6306
My bugbear friend, Barry, agrees.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Disgustipater
- Offline
- D8
- Dapper Deep One
- Posts: 2181
- Thank you received: 1685
For me, the story has never been about the fighting. It's about how conspicuous consumption is no good, but swinging the pendulum as far in the opposite direction as he does is just as bad.
I also love the movie for the technical aspects, and crazy attention to detail. It is such a perfectly crafted movie.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- SuperflyPete
- Offline
- Salty AF
- SMH
- Posts: 10733
- Thank you received: 5119
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Black Barney
- Offline
- D20
- 10k Club
- Posts: 10045
- Thank you received: 3553
..oh no, that was What Would Tyler Durden Do? I remember now.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Michael Barnes
- Offline
- Mountebank
- HYPOCRITE
- Posts: 16929
- Thank you received: 10375
And like The Bible, people tend to pick and choose what its meanings and metaphors are all about.
I saw it opening night and it blew me away- it was the right movie at the right time, right there at the close of the 20th century. It really resonated with me, and the themes of masculinity, advertising, rebellion and disassociation came at a perfect time in my life. But I never saw it as a manifesto to go out and start Gamergate or to go start a real-life fight club. I saw it as a smart, morally messy, technically immaculate and bound to be culturally significant movie. When it came to DVD, I think I just about wore it out.
But I also haven't seen it in...I don't know, 10 years? And I'm not really sure I want to see it again, there's no way it has the same burn and of the moment relevance it once had and I'd rather remember it as a film of its time than as something that is now pushing up toward 20 (!!!) years old. I could probably quote the script, the soundtrack, and even draw the whole film shot by shot. But I am kind of finished with it, I think.
I have absolutely zero desire to see any kind of sequel or additional material connected to it. I can't believe they did a video game.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Colorcrayons
- Offline
- D8
- Wiz-Warrior
- Posts: 1693
- Thank you received: 1703
Its a movie/book about self hatred, and wanting to no longer be a disease, but as part of a whole entity.
There is a part where Tyler contemplates how the jungles will reclaim the cities, and how equilibrium will be regained if humanity could start seeing the point of its existence to cohabitate with the planet, instead of becoming wrapped up in a reality we have dreamed up, since actual reality is too harsh.
So fight clubs are birthed to remind us of what we lost, either by coersion or by choice in our long path towards "civility".
The destruction of TRW is another reminder to humanity about what we lost. Since many debts transfer to our children, we have become our own slaves, and the only way out is to destroy the devices by which we have enslaved ourselves. And it must be done completely, no half measures or we risk falling back into the same trap in the future.
Tyler Durden is the sounding of the Rams horn for Jubilee. For sacred freedom.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 64
- Thank you received: 81
It's not much of coincidence that soon after he invents an imaginary friend, who is strong in all the ways he is weak, outgoing in all of the ways he is introverted. For all the talk of hating consumerism and rejecting social convention what really drives the Fight Club and later Project Mayhem is that it allows all of these lonely, angry people to find a desperate, self-destructive way to connect. The alpha-posturing just gives them a way to do it in a safe way.
It's also not a coincidence that one of the first things Brad Pitt's character does is have sex with Marla.
The anger that drives the story is all about isolation, how consumerism keeps us isolated and focused on things rather than bridging that gulf, so is the anger toward the "elites" of the world. The unclean food and the dick pics in family films are just a juvenile way of lashing out against the cultures that have rejected them.
Norton has a short moment where he talks about how his dad had all these other families all over the country, "like franchises," and then says he has no idea how to start a family of his own.
I think that is the real strength of Fight Club, it's that it understands that we lash out nearly everything around, especially ourselves (something else Norton literally does on a couple of occasions) but we don't know any other way to bridge the distance between us.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Disgustipater
- Offline
- D8
- Dapper Deep One
- Posts: 2181
- Thank you received: 1685
Michael Barnes wrote: But I also haven't seen it in...I don't know, 10 years?
I'm the same. I know it so well I don't really have a reason to watch it again.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 11110
- Thank you received: 8101
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 11110
- Thank you received: 8101
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Because it so plainly isn't in this case. The novel has "first novel" all over it. It was written in fits and starts (by grabbing time from his dull office job), and it shows.
The film does a great job of compressing the Tyler Durden speeches that appear all over the book in snippets to the iconic "Middle Children of History" bit.
It's a great story, and a good book. However, some aging time and a polish from the screenwriter made it hang together substantially better.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Colorcrayons wrote: Fight Club, for me, is about purity. Or at least the return to it..
Oscar Wilde once wrote “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization between”. I think I understand what you mean, but in retrospect, this film’s statements on masculinity are shrouded in a glib class-war caper. There is an eff-ton of literature and film about our detachment from primal roots making us less human or men less… male, but I think it’s naïve to project purity or nobility to savagery and brutality of bygone eras. Palaniuk (and Burgess) had the understanding that when civilization collides with barbarism, barbarism overwhelms. Fincher doesn’t miss the point entirely, but I think his stylized achievements with Fight Club overshadow a climax that would have been more disquieting in the hands of a director like Haneke, Vinterberg, Peckinpah, etc.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Cranberries
- Offline
- D10
- Don't give up.
- Posts: 3082
- Thank you received: 2371
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.