Fight Club Presentation

Rating: 10/10 (9 December 2000)

This discussion and review has a few spoilers in it. I suggest ya watch the movie or read the book and then read this over. Maybe you will get the same message out of the movie that I did.
a) What's it about: It focuses on the life of a man in his late 20's. Basically this story follows one mans journey towards enlightenment.
b) Why did I choose it: It gives us a different perspective on our modern culture.
c) What's the focus: This story chronicles the life of a single white male. Beyond these facts that is all we know about him. In the book he is never given a name in the credits to the movie he is regarded only as the narrator. He is unhappy with his job and more specifically his life. He finds no fulfillment in anything. He seems to have achieved the American dream. He is educated, has a good paying job and lives in a well-furnished upper-class apartment. Yet something is wrong. He can't sleep. His insomnia causes him to seek medical attention eventually referring him to a meeting of testicular cancer survivors to see what suffering truly is. There, in the absence of hope he found a release. He was able to cry and vent his frustrations. He was able to sleep once again. He ends up becoming addicted to these meetings. Eventually going to every type of survivors meetings he could attend. A year goes by. One night he encounters a woman who also religiously attends the same survivor meetings. Marla Singer. She as well is not dying of the conditions that are affecting those people. This causes a disruption in his routine allowing his insomnia to reoccur. He makes an agreement with the woman, as sort of trade off between sessions and his life goes on. One night on a business flight he meets Tyler Durden a sly soap salesman with a curious view of the world. They trade business cards and go on their separate ways. The narrator returns home to find his apartment blown up, all his possessions reduced to fiery rubble. He calls Tyler and begins living with him in an abandoned house on the outskirts of the city.
· The narrator is the embodiment of the average man. A consumer, a slave to American society. · Tyler Durden is anti establishment, anti consumerism and against the plight that has become the American dream. In the following quotation he states his true view on citizenship. We are not Americans. `We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world.'
Tyler brings to light the concept of our modern society. America is a society run completely by the media. Movies, TV and literature has turned us into a nation of consumers. It proposes us with what is fashionable, what is desirable. What to love and what to hate. It forms our vision of the future, and the profession we will one day attain. It gives us our views of beauty and comfort. It has formed the lives and world we live in.
Through Tyler they form a group called Fight Club. Tyler ushers in his own vision of an ideal society. A culture that focuses on a more primal self. Within this view people abandon their meaningless jobs and destroy their worthless possessions. Trading in comfort for pain. Fight Club turns into project mayhem an anti establishment terrorist team that fights back against the commercial media, targeting the source of consumerism. Trading passivity for violence. Their group gains in number gathering support and followers in big cities all over the United States. The author calls these disciples `Space Monkeys.' The author seems to be telling us that we have all become caught up within this materialistic, consumer culture. We have all become slaves to our own media created culture. Through Tyler Durden he presents us with a different type of society. A culture based on anti consumerism, anti media. He also shows us that these `Space Monkeys' are also noting but slaves to this new society. I believe that the author is telling us that this is not the entire answer. As the story goes on, project mayhem enacts more and more violent attacks against consumer culture, eventually causing a rift between the Narrator and Tyler. Tyler wishes to destroy the buildings of the major credit card companies. An effort to erase the debt held by the people. The Narrator tries to stop him but is thwarted at every turn. In the stories most drastic plot twist we learn that the Narrator and Tyler are in fact the same person. The Narrator responded to the pressures of our consumer culture by forming a separate version of himself who had the ability to leave this culture behind. The movie concludes with the Narrator being unable to stop what Tyler had started. He finds a way to disassociate himself from his alter ego and falls back into the arms of Marla Singer. The author is telling us that we are not slaves. We have the ability to change and form society to our likening. While he portrays that the consumer society is wrong we are also able to that its destruction is also not the answer. I believe the main message is that we, as a society, need to abandon our roles as consumers and form more secure bond with humanity. We need to leave materialism behind and find our connection with people. We, as a people, must form our own meaning in culture.
d) What is the connection between presentation and objective: The book I encountered is bound in a simple white cover. Nothing elaborate or flashy. I think this echoes the author's view on anti commercialism. The movie is filmed using many flashy and realistic camera angles. The director spends a lot of time focusing on depictions of modern advertisements. You can almost say that the movie itself is filmed sort of like a commercial. I think this shows the directors acceptance of the authors idea and displays the emptiness within our consumer culture. The direction in this movie is something to be seen.