Feminist manifesto or Fascist parable? You be the judge

Rating: Null/10 (12 August 2000)

Here are some thoughts about and inspired by a film that is not only frightening, subversive on hidden as well as surface levels, self-contemplating, knowingly hypocritical and proud of it, but also a feminist manifesto of sorts and the best comedy (albeit 'black' as coal, of course) about male insecurities since Blake Edwards' '10:' SPOILER ALERT Fincher's film is a case of biting the hand that feeds with full consent of the bitten, who don't realize the ramifications or don't think they matter much anymore in this day and age. But already, the word is out on this guy. He'll probably go back to making more ordinary fare like 'Seven' or 'The Game.' Within the Hollywood system, he'll have to. I'll be very pleasantly surprised if he shows some hardcore integrity and makes an independent film instead. Fight Club was a one time hustle that didn't pay-off enough at the box-office to be repeated. Though it may have spawned evil offspring that will turn up in unexpected areas..
The narration is from the point of view of a Norton (Jack) who has finally discovered and become fully aware of his multiple personality. He is now recalling with a metaphorical gun in his mouth (the dream state shown as real to fool the audience and get their full sympathy before betraying them; absolutely essential in an undertaking of this kind). His Tyler personality wants to kill his Jack personality and things have come to an ultimate head. Tyler has run amok without his Jack side checking him or being aware of him, and a final decision has to be made. A new self has to emerge. The flashback of the events that led to this, however, the movie itself, is SHOWN from the point of view of the Lost Jack, the one who is unaware of the existence of his split personality and the increasing dominance of the Tyler portion even when Marla tells him that she's never seen anyone nearly as nuts as him. Marla is, in fact, attracted to this guy precisely because he is even more nuts than her (though he thinks of himself as sane).
`Except for their humping, Tyler and Marla were never in the same room,' why? Because the Jack (Jeckyl) personality can't stand Marla (he's too insecure to imagine himself with a girl as screwed up as her), while the Tyler (Hyde) personality uses her for sex. The narration is aware of this, in retrospect (with enlightened Jack now trying to undo his own doings as Tyler and struggling with this stronger but more evil self which threatens to kill his saner but weaker old self), while the flashback -Jack, as he is going through it, is confused and is SHOWN to be so. Jack lets the receiver hang, disgusted by Marla's suicide attempt and couldn't care less if she died, comes back as Tyler, decides to help her out, but then uses her for sex but refuses to take the relationship any further. So neither of these selves are entirely good or bad, it's just that the Tyler self is the one more susceptible to hoodlumism and psychotic behavior. In fact both selves represent different reactions to feminine power or different faces of male insecurity about its feminine side. Jack is passively hateful while Tyler expresses his hatred by actively using. Later on, Jack realizes that Marla is the one who really gave him back his masculinity (she was his 'power animal' not the penguin!) and that he hasn't been able to admit this (admitting that a woman as screwed-up as Marla can actually have a positive effect on his life, wouldn't sit well with either personality's ego defenses). At this point a metamorphosis has occurred because neither of the selves really cared for Marla. A third version of Jack has begun to emerge, sort of a combination of the best qualities of his former selves, with the addition of Marla (who can be seen as yet another part of his personality, or his feminine side). But in order to achieve this new plateau, Jack has to snuff out whatever evil remnants of the Tyler Durden self that still remain.
Every salesman knows this: attitude is everything, it's not a product you're selling it's yourself. People are always buying 'concepts of becoming' rather than products. In a very real sense, all products are dreams waiting to be sold. Jack as Jack could never have convinced all these roughnecks to follow him. Jack as Tyler absolutely could. He could sell them on that all-out joy of male bonding that comes only when men have respect for each other on the gut physical 'fighting' level; on a more complex level, this is in fact, the 'fascist' dream, so to speak. The 'strength-bonding' of a whole nation of fearless, ideologically determined killers. Hitler was very much an advocate of this type of bonding through physical strength and weeding out of the weak.
THE ONE MAIN DEFECT: there should've been a couple of more short scenes of Norton acting completely like Tyler, instead of the silly shots of him punching himself (since most of the self-punching is supposed to be metaphorical in nature anyway). Norton is one of the few actors who could've pulled this off, acted like Pitt down to the detail of his laugh. For example, a quick scene of him, as Tyler recruiting someone for Fight Club, telling someone to hit him, or taking it from Mr. Lou's Tavern would not have been too much; it would've been just what's needed to really send this flick over the top by emphasizing the validity of its multiple personality angle. As things are, Fincher did a great job but left things way too ambiguous even for someone willing to dig deep.
Why is it important not to be too much of a wimp? Why is it important not to be too much of a tough guy? Why do both states need to be tempered by each other? What concepts of 'geek' and 'stud' are operative in our culture by way of their adaptability to keeping consumers somnambulistic? Have you ever seen a tough guy buy diet Coke? No, they always buy soft drinks with the maximum sugar possible and Marlboro Reds so they can breathe at night. How much of a readiness to physically fight does it take to be a 'man' as opposed to a gorilla (an able protector of woman and child and worthy recipient of reproductive favors in natural selection, if society was a jungle)?
Fighting as intimidation; fighting as release of anger. Fighting as catharsis; Fighting as a reclaiming of the ego when all else has failed. Fighting as the reclaiming of overthrown male prerogatives in an emasculating modern world (it helps to balance the psyche or nervous system against an intemperate amount of rage by providing an outlet). The week before I first saw FC, I got in a ridiculous fight with and got punched in the face pretty good. For a whole week after this incident, I was walking on air. All the rage and tension were gone. I hadn't realized how much tension I had been carrying until it got released. FC was a whole movie about this very state that I had just gone through and its direct link to emasculation. I had never thought of myself as emasculated before. I thought it only applied to macho chauvinist types. I must've had more of both tendencies in me than I'd suspected. Fincher's film made me see this very clearly.
One reason FC flopped is because people like to identify intensely with hoodlums and criminals and fascists of all kinds on a metaphorical level (the Godfather trilogy which passes for Marxist criticism has made over 1 billion dollars precisely through fascist appeal to the masses) and they don't like it when these 'antiheroes' are made to look like utter idiots within situations that in other films would consolidate their 'heroic' criminality . The scene where Brad and the boys pull the commissioner in the bathroom and the camera looks up on them from the commissioner's angle. These guys look menacing but in a way that also makes them look absurd and ridiculous. You can't help but laugh at them. These clowns (looking like Mexican wrestlers with masks on their faces) are trying to take over the world from the powers that be? Are you kidding? Do they have any idea what they're fighting? No, we're kidding and not kidding at the same time! Ambiguity is at the core of all human behavior. Remember the precedents of the past? Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Idi Amin, Jim Jones? All clowns who did tremendous damage...So this stuff can be laughed at, but it cannot be dismissed, it must be recognized. Fincher gives us the opportunity to do both, if we're willing; the choice is ours.
With regard to Pitt's beating from Mafioso Lou. You can laugh in the face of someone who's beating you into a pulp until he either beats you to death or gives up. Either way you win psychologically, which is where all real battles are won. Even the most cold-hearted s.o.b will be haunted for the rest of his miserable life by the fact that he beat someone to death who laughed straight out loony in his face with every punch. In the macho contest of fearlessness he has lost. In the macho contest of craziness he has lost. In the not so 'respectable' area of straight out cold brutality he has won. He has been fully exposed as illegitimate and absurd by someone willing to take the absurdity to its limits.
The many selves we shed but whose remnants we nevertheless retain as we evolve towards our 'ideal' self, which is itself a combination of selves and transitory. The many selves present within any individual at any given time with different levels of influence on his overall personality depending on his values. The incompatibility of certain selves which are contradictory and require a complete reversal of values to coexist (hence the phenomenon of multiple personality which forgets entirely one self in order to make possible the existence of another). What is it that makes this schizoid state mandatory? What has produced it? It must be a defense against something? But what? Why does a person feel the need to create these selves within himself and hide them from each other. Most people don't even have the self-awareness or self-knowledge to know what the hell is going on, they just do it automatically
It's ignorance of fascism that creates fascism, not a thorough familiarity with its nature. A familiarity with its nature is much more likely to render it absurd than romantic. People do not like to have an absurd image of themselves in their heads. It makes them uncomfortable. But heroic, romantic, tough guys and killers with power? Oh Yeah! That image of themselves gives them wet dreams. One famous example even took Travis Bickle's 'heroism' to be romantic and went out and shot politicians. Fincher's film damn near slams the door shut on fascist fantasies for anyone willing to give his film a few looks and a few thoughts and dig deeper. He makes these guys truly laughable. He does not deny the necessity and appeal of physical bravery and the catharsis of fighting, but after you've seen bruised and beaten faces for an hour and a half, he shows you Jared Leto's deformed face as a final reminder of how 'tough guys' get to look like Martians. Any guy in the audience who wants to lose all his teeth or pull them out of his gums one by one or look as f'd up as Leto, is welcome to start a bare knuckle Fight Club. Most of the angry, frustrated, emasculated males in the audience will most likely prefer to keep their teeth and whatever looks they have, so at the most, they'll head for the nearest boxing gym or weight room. There they will seek to regain their increasingly useless 'macho' selves.
The use of subliminal pictures. Fincher's way of saying: Yes. This is Hollywood goddammit! We are trying to manipulate you; but you know this already, so grow beyond it. Become aware of it or be suckers forever.
Fincher's ultimate joke is played on the public itself which thinks it can demand artists to conform and pander to its atrocious tastes. Fincher says don't worry we're pandering, but just enough to get this baby made by Hollywood to the tune of 60 million dollars (here's Brad's naked abs and pubic hair for you, there's the latest in special effects with roofs blowing off airplanes to make you think you're getting your money's worth). On the other hand, don't expect us to pander in a way that makes you look smart. We are giving you what you want so that we can sneak in and smuggle what you don't want, something that may serve to enlighten you a little bit.
The ultimate irony is that general audiences actually understood this total disrespect for them (evident throughout every frame of FC and culminating in the 'twist' which isn't really one at all), that's why the movie flopped after a great opening weekend. I remember being in a packed house on a Friday night, behind a bunch of guys who loved everything up until the point where the multiple personality is revealed, and then instantly reversed their opinion and started saying how much BS the film was. 'Oh man, that's so stupid,' they kept saying over and over again. It was as if they had been given a big middle finger right in their faces. They laughed at the scene where pornographic shots were inserted in a kid's movie but now that a variation of that trick was being played on them in a not so obvious way, they sure as hell didn't like it. These types of guys are everywhere. They have a sense of humor (quite often sick) about everything but themselves; that's where it stops because it gets too painful. They wouldn't have minded much if Fincher had put in an idiotic action movie ending, with thousands of rounds of ammunition flying everywhere between Tyler's hoods and the corporation militias., maybe even a climactic Rocky type fight to the death with blood and teeth flying everywhere. Fincher's point is something he himself was most probably not aware of, but he makes it nevertheless through instinct. Any so called 'sense of humor,' no matter how extreme or 'black' it is, that does not include yourself as an object is a cop-out and a refuge for scoundrels and will be preyed upon by others aware of this. (Most comedians are very much aware of this and use it to their advantage. Howard Stern's entire on-air personality, for example, is a fortress built with walls made of self-deprecating humor which others will not resort to, because their inflated egos can't take it; hence his advantage over them and his ability to 'cut them down to size').
FC becomes at the end almost a feminist film in the way it ruthlessly ridicules male prerogatives and macho fantasies. The fighters are made to look dirty, stupid, homoerotic; like a pack of dogs clamoring for blood. Their physical bravery is useful for intimidation purposes but sadomasochistic and grotesquely pathological. Note Pitt's pimp outfit towards the film's end subtly implying yet another male dominance fantasy in emasculated yuppie land. Jack through his transformation into Tyler has gone from humbled yuppie to blackmailer and has finally arrived at what he assumes to be the pinnacle: a man with mystical power over women, who can keep them in their place. In fact, the entire film can be seen as going on in Jack's head, with Marla as his estranged feminine side, which he comes into contact with at the end to temper the out-of-control 'unbermensch' side represented by Tyler.