Fight Club

[Jaxom 1974]

I feel like this whole thread is violating the first rule of fight club...

[Guest]

Yes!

[Gaston de Foix]

Ed's relationship with Marla goes predictably south.  Man.  This is hard to watch.

[Gaston de Foix]

If you erase the debt record, then we all go back to zero.  This movie must have set back the cause of student loan forgiveness for decades. 

[Gaston de Foix]

 From testicular cancer to the chopping off the balls.  A movie designed to make men squirm. 

[Gaston de Foix]

how does it work, to fight with your imaginary friend? I get that Ed is inflicting this on himself, but how do you punch a guy who doesn't exist? Bullets don't work so why should punches?

[Gaston de Foix]

Ed threatens self-destruction to save Marla and the buildings.  Good for you, Ed. 

[Gaston de Foix]

What happened once Ed shot himself? I don't understand. 

[Gaston de Foix]

And fin.  All the (empty) buildings blow up.  So Ed shot himself in the neck and killed Tyler?

Amazing movie.  Hard to watch in some places, but so psychologically astute and beautifully made.  Even the little details like Tyler mentioning smoke coming out of his mouth and then dying with smoke coming out.   

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

And fin.  All the (empty) buildings blow up.  So Ed shot himself in the neck and killed Tyler?

Amazing movie.  Hard to watch in some places, but so psychologically astute and beautifully made.  Even the little details like Tyler mentioning smoke coming out of his mouth and then dying with smoke coming out.   

I remember being one of the few who saw this when it came out in theaters, and could never understand why it didn't get the love it deserves. I was gratified when it finally became a cult classic.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

52 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

And fin.  All the (empty) buildings blow up.  So Ed shot himself in the neck and killed Tyler?

Amazing movie.  Hard to watch in some places, but so psychologically astute and beautifully made.  Even the little details like Tyler mentioning smoke coming out of his mouth and then dying with smoke coming out.   

You answered this for yourself earlier in the thread. Well, mostly, and people disagree on the exact meaning. 

Ed's name is The Narrator by the way. 

[Argonath Diver]

Always a treat, these threads. I hope you continue to have somehow missed all these fantastic movies for us to all revisit with you.

[karaddin]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You answered this for yourself earlier in the thread. Well, mostly, and people disagree on the exact meaning. 

Ed's name is The Narrator by the way. 

To take this a step further and pose an alternative interpretation I've seen - is Tyler the delusion that allows The Narrator to act out before he's ready to accept it, or is The Narrator the relatable face that Tyler invents to get the audience on side because we wouldn't sympathise directly with him? Just another critical piece of Propaganda in the larger Project Mayhem.

Watching the movie the second time is a completely different experience, but it doesn't remove Tyler's power and agency at all. Tyler is the one with an actual name and an actual relationship with another person.

[Argonath Diver]

Other than, say, Star Wars or LOTR fandom stuff, I don't think there's ever been a movie I didn't want to re-watch so soon. Like karaddin preaches, the movie is just so fun the second time, especially seeing his/their girlfriend completely baffled by this lunatic she's dating.

[Gaston de Foix]

6 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Always a treat, these threads. I hope you continue to have somehow missed all these fantastic movies for us to all revisit with you.

Thanks! I plan to do the SW holiday special next, which I think you'll like. 

[Gaston de Foix]

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

To take this a step further and pose an alternative interpretation I've seen - is Tyler the delusion that allows The Narrator to act out before he's ready to accept it, or is The Narrator the relatable face that Tyler invents to get the audience on side because we wouldn't sympathise directly with him? Just another critical piece of Propaganda in the larger Project Mayhem.

Watching the movie the second time is a completely different experience, but it doesn't remove Tyler's power and agency at all. Tyler is the one with an actual name and an actual relationship with another person.

My own interpretation is that Tyler invents the Narrator as the relatable face of his project for which obliviousness of his own genesis is key.  The Narrator's job is to be the straight man, the everyman, who encounters Tyler in small doses and in degrees so that we, the audience, can join him on his descent.  

When you say Tyler is the one with an actual name/relationship do you mean Pitt or Norton? Because you could say Norton is the one with an actual name/relationship but his own sense of self is so fragmented that I'm not sure its true to say he has all the power.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

To take this a step further and pose an alternative interpretation I've seen - is Tyler the delusion that allows The Narrator to act out before he's ready to accept it, or is The Narrator the relatable face that Tyler invents to get the audience on side because we wouldn't sympathise directly with him? Just another critical piece of Propaganda in the larger Project Mayhem.

Watching the movie the second time is a completely different experience, but it doesn't remove Tyler's power and agency at all. Tyler is the one with an actual name and an actual relationship with another person.

But we see in the end the relationship was always with The Narrator. There are a number of different ways to explain how The Narrator and the idea, say projection, of Tyler interact, but at the end of the day it was always him flying around the country building his terrorist group.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

But we see in the end the relationship was always with The Narrator. There are a number of different ways to explain how The Narrator and the idea, say projection, of Tyler interact, but at the end of the day it was always him flying around the country building his terrorist group.

This can still fit into it being what Tyler wants us to see. There is of course only one person, the distinction is whether the invented persona is the radical terrorist or the relatable straight man. I'm not committed to it being that way, I don't think it's what Fincher had in mind but I do think it's another lens to view the movie through that still adds to the experience.

[Maithanet]

I feel like the argument that Tyler invented the narrator doesn't make all that much sense though.  Narrator's job is product recall coordinator, doing cost/benefit analyses for car companies.  That is a job that would takes years in the field to get, it's not like he just walked in there.  Did Tyler just act normal for years in order to get that job?  What for?  He could have much more easily gotten one of the other low paying jobs held by fellow fighters, like working in hospitality or food services. 

Speaking more generally, IMO Fight Club is overwhelmingly a movie about masculinity.  About how in modern society many men feel lost without healthy channels for violent impulses.  How the pursuit of the perfect body is simultaneously sneered at ("Is that what a real man looks like?" at the ad in the bus) and celebrated (the many, many shots of Brad Pitt's abs).  The lack of healthy male role models, and the desire to latch on to unhealthy ones.  How the "traditional" pursuit of a wealth and status feels increasingly soulless in Corporate America. 

And while it doesn't have a clear message at the end, that discussion has (if anything) become even more relevant in the 20 years since, with the spread of toxic masculinity and groups like PUAs and MRAs online.  Fight Club is a movie about men divorcing themselves from the world at large (AKA the world with women in it). 

 

[Gaston de Foix]

48 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I feel like the argument that Tyler invented the narrator doesn't make all that much sense though.  Narrator's job is product recall coordinator, doing cost/benefit analyses for car companies.  That is a job that would takes years in the field to get, it's not like he just walked in there.  Did Tyler just act normal for years in order to get that job?  What for?  He could have much more easily gotten one of the other low paying jobs held by fellow fighters, like working in hospitality or food services. 

Good point.  But doesn't Tyler (in his Brad Pitt avatar) also have a bunch of low paying jobs? He's selling soap, peeing in soups etc. 

I would suggest there are three pysches at play: there's Tyler as he was before these personalities split off.  There's Tyler in his Brad Pitt avatar. And there's the Narrator. Doesn't  it make sense to analyze them separately?