As far as I can tell the message of the movie is "consumerism is bad because it's emasculating and feminizing, real liberation can be found in ruthless hierarchies of masculine violence"
The only person I know who likes it IRL also has a tendency to complain about the "pussification of modern men"
Fight Club is a satirical novel written by a gay man about how all straight men want to do is secretly fuck in basements. Obvious critique of toxic masculinity and more homo than Top Gun
The two main characters are obviously in a gay relationship until you find out he’s been jacking himself off. Multiple lines about not needing women and “maybe what we need now is no women at all”
Fight Club is extremely gay. It is “ironically” misogynistic, although the author might actually hate women idk
yeah, you were never supposed to see Tyler as a good guy, and strangely it foretold a bunch of loser dork lost boys following their idea of a macho man around.
I think this is a great post. Do you have any thoughts on how well, if at all, the movie adaptation coheres to its source material?
If sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken, what does it make you?
Conservatives are bad at analyzing art. Don’t listen to what they have to say
Fight Club is a good movie. American Psycho is a good movie (though the book is infinitely betteer here). Drive is a good movie. Joker is a good movie. It's not their fault that they are liked by bad people.
I liked it, it was a movie about the problems that arise from neoliberalism and the dissolution of the social safety net, and how our society doesn’t give a shit about the ill. Plus newspapers with the literal headline “KILL THE RICH!”
Yo I'm drunk, so I'm not going to give a serious answer with any political or social analysis.
First of all, I'd like to say "just see the movie." Steal it! if you find it chuddy, delete it! I will say that there are some works of art that can be appreciated despite their politics, and while art may be inherently political, you shouldn't be relying on it for your politics anyway. Life is hell, art can be a sublime escape.
It's a cool movie. Ed Norton's great, Helena Bonham Carter's great, Brad Pitt is great (and shirtless while being so very lean and cut). It's not that strange of a film, but still, but it wouldn't get produced today with the same production level, so it's kind of a relic. If you like violence, you get to see Jared Leto get his face caved in. If the fantasy of sticking it to your boss and robbing the company appeals to you, it's got a scene for that. wanna fantasize about forming a revolutionary group that does acts of sabotage and violence? This movie might appeal to you.
for what it's worth, chuds have terrible art comprehension skills, they miss out on things like irony, subtext, and hypocrisy. A chud might like Star Wars and then get angry if you point out that Ewoks are like the Viet Cong.
Tyler Durden was quoted more times in the age of edgy forum signatures more than pretty much anyone else except maybe Heath Ledger's Joker. The book was actually quite good, if a bit over chud "curtains are fucking blue" reading comprehension levels. The movie smoothed over a lot to make the smooth brains more comfortable, so they gobbled it up and made it part of their MRA/chud/GamerGate identity. :jokerfied:
Chuds still call people "snowflake" for not being abrasive edgelords like themselves. They also still call everyone, including each other, rotting pieces of meat. Pop nihilism and its consequences and so on and so on :zizek-fuck:
Nihilists are some of the most boring people I’ve ever met. It’s like “okay i get it, you believe in nothing, what’s your credit card number again? okay thanks, yeah the trust fund life is hard i know”
It has many facets, few of them bearable to me. I can get the Camus take of "life is absurd, try to imagine Sisyphus happy, no purpose means we're free to find one" but most of it is some variety of reductionist tryharding, like "we are all just apes/meat computers so we should do lots of (drug) and stop caring about anything, except maybe being very mad at anyone who still cares about anything."
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/125
tryhard is a perf definition. it’s baby’s first ideology and pretty much the only people I see into it are extremely privileged, so almost universally boring
There seems to be some overlap between comfort/privilege lifestyles and being bored/apathetic enough to want to make that apathy into not just their own lifestyle, but everyone's lifestyle, usually by way of caring very much about making sure that no one cares about anything.
if you believe nothing matters, then all the stolen wealth you inherited is okay
“fReE WiLL iS aN iLluSiOn” is such a perf screening statement for guys to avoid at a party 10/10 chance they’re a predator
It's a pretty popular reductionist thing, and I've long maintained that regardless of whether consciousness is an "illusion" or whatever, the first thing we experience when we wake up is that "illusion," and even so-called objective experiences after that have to be seen, by living beings, through that subjective experience first.
I've also noticed after decades of argument and debate that the self-described hard determinists I've run into have absolutely ghoulish dehumanizing ideas for how to improve society by way of dispelling that "illusion."
The camus take you posted right there is basically what I came to after doing a ton of acid and having a year in existential crisis lol. I read about absurdist thought and camus and it really spoke to me at the time. I think absurdism is pretty compatible with communist thought though
Nihilism gets a bad rap, but in a lot of ways I think it meshes well with a material understanding of the world. "Institutions are not sacred," "society's morals (such as the inviolability of private property) are subjective beliefs, not uncontestable universal truths" and "the course of society is determined by who is able to take and wield power" are all pretty nihilistic, but they also align pretty well with communist thinking and are powerful motivators for change.
I did emphasize pop-nihilism, the kind that comes from surface level readings and viewings of entertainment products and often a shallow understanding of Nietzsche.
consumerism is bad because it’s emasculating and feminizing, real liberation can be found in ruthless hierarchies of masculine violence
That's a good summary of one character's belief system, but the thesis of the movie is "Wow that guy is fucking crazy."
The long and short of it is Fight Club is a work of satire that went over its target's head, much like Starship Troopers (the film, book is unironic :frothingfash: ) in this regard.
This is a gonna be a long thread. But also CW for violence and discussion of fash ideology. It goes without saying that there will be fight club spoilers.
Edit: this thread is based on my own subjective interpretation, don't take it as the be all and end all.
vague summary
Okay so basic synopsis is this.
The unnamed protagonist, is depressed, lonely and suffering from insomnia. He has a stable job and an apartment, but otherwise feels his life is empty for your typical angry white man reasons: >tfw no gf, etc.
He meets Tyler Durden, a stereotypically macho man, always getting into fights and all that. Shortly after his apartment is destroyed and he starts to live in the basement of a rundown house with Tyler. At first out if boredom, the protagonist begins to attend support groups for problems he doesn't have, mostly those of people with impotence and erectile dysfunction.
He becomes to be radicalised by Tyler's violent rhetoric and together they start something they call Project Mayhem. They begin recruiting men from the support groups into an underground fight club.
Eventually a woman called Marla reveals that she also crashed a few of those support groups and wishes to join Project Mayhem.
Marla overdoses and Tyler rescues her when the protagonist can't find the courage to go check in on her to see if she's ok. Tyler and Marla start having a sexual relationship and Tyler threatens to kill the protagonist if he speaks to Marla about Tyler.
This drives a wedge between Tyler and the Protagonist as he finds himself feeling like he's left out Tyler's schemes.
As Project Mayhem expands it evolves from a fight club into a terrorist cell, carrying out small acts of sabotage at first but slowly escalating. The protagonist quits his job after blackmailing his boss into giving him money to help fund Project Mayhem. One of the men recruited from a testicular cancer support group gets gunned down by a cop. And the protagonist begins to grow suspicious of Tyler. Reading Tyler's notes, the protagonist works out where he's been going, visiting other cities to discover Project Mayhem has spread to them as well. When one of the terrorists calls the protagonist Mr Durden he becomes distressed. He returns to his hotel room and calls Marla who also reveals that she believes he is Tyler Durden.
The protagonist discovers that Tyler's next plot is wipe out all debt by bombing a credit card company.
In every version of the film but the Chinese release, the climax is the same. The protagonist tries to warn Marla about the attack but she's grown distrustful of him, he tries to warn the police but they are already recruited into Project Mayhem, finally he decides to disarm the bomb his self but Tyler incapacitates him. He wakes up on a roof, Tyler is pointing a gun at him. They argue and the protagonist begins to realise that Tyler is him, or rather a dissociated identity. With that knowledge, the protagonist is revealed to be the one holding the gun, which he then uses to shoot Tyler. Members of Project Mayhem bring Marla to him and they embrace as the bomb goes off and buildings collapse around them.
And if I were an idiot nerd this surface level reading is about as far as I'd go with it, Tyler Durden is the cool man who shoots things and has sex. But art has meaning to it so my next comment is going to be a vague rambling attempt at explaining the subtextual themes of Fight Club.
Discussion of themes, part 1 - :pit:
Okay firstly we need to talk about Fight Club as a discussion on fascist radicalisation.
Let's begin with Tyler Durden/Protagonist, or rather their contrast.
Tyler is deliberately paralleled with Nietzsche's conception of an "Ubermensch", a platonic ideal fascist power, the sort of figure that is viewed as aspirational to the chuds, in a more modern vernacular I suppose you could call him a Chad. Furthering the connection to Nietzsche's philosophy Tyler is obsessed with physical strength and is constantly decrying that men are growing weak and effeminate in a society that has grown soft, if you've read "Thus Spake Zarathustra" it's rather easy to grasp the similarities between Tyler's rants and Nietzsche's own warnings of "removed". It's by no way an unimportant detail that the men he picks to recruit for Project Mayhem are mostly from support groups for erectile dysfunction and testicular cancer, people who are in a sense immasculated by their illness.
The protagonist on the other hand is lonely, isolated, ill both physically and mentally, and feels deeply unfulfilled in his life. He works as an insurance assessor, specifically assessing car crashes, and hates his job but is unable to quit for a variety of reasons.
When he "meets" Tyler, they discuss their mutual dissatisfaction with modernity, the main complaints that they present revolve around the commercialisation of society and alienation within capitalism but lacking any form of systemic critique or material analysis they fail to properly identify the cause of their problems. Instead the protagonist begins to project his insecurities as the root of capitalism's failings, ultimately pinning it all on a supposed weakness in the modern man, a weakness he views within himself.
Tyler Durden then, in a work more sympathetic to fascism would be the protagonist's mentor figure. And TBF that is the role he positions himself as, teaching the protagonist to become an Ubermensch, just like him. Save for a couple of major holes;
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Firstly, Tyler isn't real (none of them are, it's a film but you probably get what I mean) he's a projection of the protagonist's insecurities, as an aspirational figure he is unattainable the protagonist made him up.
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Secondly, striving for these ideals is killing the protagonist. As the film progresses, Tyler grows fitter as the protagonist begins to wither away (This was portrayed by the actor that played the protagonist (Edward Norton) fasting during the filming of the movie while the actor that played Tyler (Brad Pitt) would exercise at the gym and visit tanning beds when off set). The protagonist's insomnia begins to grow worse as he falls further into his radicalisation.
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Thirdly, Tyler's teachings aren't actually making the protagonist's life any better. As the film progresses, he never gains anything and only loses more of himself. He loses his apartment, quits his job, becomes even more isolated and alienated, his relationship with the only person he feels understands him (Marla) crumbles. All this to maintain a project that he's gets no benefit from and is just along for the ride of so to speak. We see this happen with other people such as the man who gets shot by a cop and is promptly martyred for a cause that viewed him only as a tool.
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This brings us to the final point that immediately pops up to me, the dehumanisation of Project Mayhem. During the fight clubs, members of Project Mayhem dress the same and gather in the dark to beat on each other while Tyler yells at them down a megaphone. The cinematography of these scenes tends to lend heavily on emphasising (sorry to sound like Gramsci here) on how much like a prison this is and thus the self destructive vision of masculinity they idealise becomes (at least for a short time) a prison of their own creation.
Discussion of themes, part 2 - :joker-dancing:
I'm gonna do something I deeply dislike doing and discuss nihilist philosophy. This means more Nietzsche, sorry.
Nihilism is one of those things at this point. Y'know it's so saturated into the public zeitgeist that you probably have some idea of what it is just via cultural osmosis.
Rather than prattle on like a fool for, like, a couple hundred words I'll spare us both the indignity and link to a video essay that does a better job of summarising nihilism than I possibly could for anyone reading this that legit doesn't know, but at this point you all probably get the gist.
Ok, with all that out of the way, let's talk about Fight Club's connection to nihilism.
Back to "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (listen I read a lot of Nietzsche as a sad and angry teen, let me have this) Nietzsche writes, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?" Or if you aren't a completely pretentious wanker, our current moral system is built upon layers upon layers of different religious beliefs and as the trend of declining religiosity continues, these morals will need to be evaluated and as people we will need to decide what should be kept and what should be discarded. And more to the point, what defines a meaningful existence in a world deprived of reason behind its presence?
I feel that this same conundrum is one that fight club wrestles with, Tyler Durden exists to present us with what Nietzsche postulated would the the solution to a nihilistic existence (striving to become an Ubermensch) and through the Tyler Durden, Fight Club presents a criticism of this answer.
As discussed in my previous comment, Project Mayhem is formed almost exclusively from those who have been convinced that they are unable to attain a meaningful existence and through Tyler Durden's rhetoric they are convinced that they can reclaim their masculinity and thus meaning through violence and conformity to the goals of Project Mayhem, but ultimately Project Mayhem only serves to destroy them, the one meaning they find in life is but to die as martyrs.
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fight club is about toxic masculinity. id link the folding ideas video but it goes into really heavy spoilers so look it up if you wish
I've never seen fight club but I know the plot of fight club at least so far as the main story beats I wouldn't worrry about spoilers that much
going to a church basement every week to beat up your friends is cool actually. i don't know why we're still stuck on this.
Fight club was fun because the idea of a fight club was shocking and subversive at the time. Then we got them and it is just mma.
A new version of this would be an mma club that meets in an abandoned K mart and just starts beating up temp angency and debit collectors.
The stuff about blowing up banks to do a jubilee is based as hell though.
To be jonest the bits about enjoying your body and touching other men being key to overcoming liberalism is still too far out today.
A modern day version of Fight Club is pretty much the Proud Boys. In Fight Club, there is a scene that the Narrator tells Marla that Fight Club is "a support group for men only". In the same way, Proud Boys present themselves as a support group for men. Both Fight Club and Proud Boys say that modern society is trying to make men become feminine. Both Fight Club and Proud Boys focus on doing performative masculinity. Both are private militias that engage in criminal operations. Both have the goal of establishing, reinforcing a male supremacist society.
Proud Boys try to beat up leftists and progressives at political events. It's even known that the police work with the Proud Boys, just like how the police are in Fight Club.
fight club is "a support group for men only"
Some people think that Fight Club is anticapitalism but I disagree. It's only anticapitalist to the extent that the Narrator believes that capitalism is feminizing men.
The film opens with the Narrator having insomnia. The narrator talks about how he believes that consumer products are controlling his life. He talks about the fashion of the people at his office. He talks about starbucks latte. He says that he stays up at night and buys furniture from catalogues. He calls this habit "nesting" which he attributes as feminine.
Then he finds the testicular cancer support group. The men in the group have had their testicles surgically removed. Their wives have divorced them for being infertile. One man named Bob grew feminine breasts because of a hormone imbalance. These are men that the Narrator perceives to have their masculinity stolen from them. The Narrator connects with them because he feels like he also has his masculinity taken from him. After attending the support group, his insomnia is cured and he sleeps perfectly.
Tyler and Narrator make the fight club and then the narrator stops attending the testicular cancer support group.
Later in the film, Marla runs into the Narrator on the street. She asks him why he hasn't been attending support groups. Narrator says that he's attending a new support group for men only, so he doesn't need to go to the old support groups. The Narrator is referring to Fight Club but can't tell that to Marla. This forms an indirect connection to the audience that Fight Club is a support group and that it replaces the function of the testicular cancer support group. For the narrator, Fight Club is a support group for men who have been feminized or had their masculinity taken from them.
My friends and I watched it and decided to fight each other to feel what it was like after watching the film. Got a busted lip needing stitches but was also happy to know how it felt. There was def some homo-eroticism in that basement lol. Otherwise no strong opinions on the film, except that it can be taken pretty fashy really easily
in high school someone in our group brought boxing gloves to the skatepark (we were all skaters) and we all duked it out against one another. On the grass, no anger, a ref to ensure it didn't get out of hand. Getting punched in the face was a fairly positive experience, keep your hands up.
Oh I was like 21 when it happened, not a kid lol. Agree with "Marvel Film for nihilists" though. Except if Marvel films also secretly were parodies of hero stories.
it's the same thing as ppl idolizing rorschach in watchmen
It's an incredibly gay, down to how it's an allegory for the AIDS crisis
