Fear Factor

Rating: Null/10 (13 May 2002)

I think that the majorities' high appraisal for "Fight Club" reveals that society as a whole loathes the work force, obviously. If not, then we come to know them as "workaholics"--which I can safely say because I am one.
On a personal level, I enjoyed "Fight Club" a great deal because of the psychological implications throughout, but it also indicates a disturbing theme as blue/white collars buy into the whole Durden philosophy with whole abandon. The creator of Fight Club signifies the terror of a meaningless existence, especially retaining a Sisyphus-like mentality of waking up, working, eating, sleeping... In a sense, this Durden figure is the Messiah, liberating the people from thinking for themselves, thus confirming a philosopher's saying that "people would rather die than to think." (I apologize that I cannot deliver the philosopher's name due to my lack of memory.) With that in mind, the movie also explores the domains of a life that can be possibly achieved once the drudgery of life is melted away, but only first through death. "The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man." (Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death) Perhaps the alter ego remained in the narrator's subconscious, but gradually acquiesced as his desires surfaced and overruled the desires of his heart. Opposingly, the narrator seemed to loathe his secret desires, for it allowed him to do things that procured undesirable effects in reality. That is where the dynamics of this movie takes play, as a sinister dual personality is comprehended during the narrator's revelation amidst his oblivion. Henceforth, the audience is understandably enraptured by the subplot of dual personality as well as the nightly releases of a pseudo-masochistic society.