Author: John Webber

In a interview with Joe Rogan and the author of the novel Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. Joe says,” When you wrote fight club you tapped into something that was really fascinating for me as someone who’s been involved in martial arts my whole life and I always understood the cathartic release of violence, but I never saw it the way you did and you made it intising for a thinking person.”  I strongly agree with his statement and I can very much relate to it. I started martial arts when I was about 7 and I had practiced karate and fighting in tournaments at such a young age, and even growing up the dojo wasn’t the only time I had seen fighting. I am now a first degree black belt, so even though I don’t train in karate currently, that fighting part and athleticism never really left who I am. This of course has gotten me in trouble at an early age for fighting in school, I’ve been suspended in middle school, but thankfully towards high school I became more of a nicer person to which I was cool with everyone and never needed to fully throw hands with someone I really wanted  to hurt. How ever these experiences have taught me that anger and frustration, are valid human emotions. Sometimes we are dealt a shitty had and someone comes around and makes it shittier, and no human is deprived from that feeling no matter what background you come from(unless you mentally lack a part of your brain that creates that feeling); Teachers, babysitters, students, bus drivers, medical workers, etc. We all know what it feels like to be angry especially with the Rona messing up our lives, we all have at least some increase of pent up frustration, anxiety, or anger. And thats what fight club represents, an answer that everyone can understand.

At the beginning of the movie Edward Norton introduces Tyler as a soap salesmen, and throughout the film it is revealed how he makes the soap. Basically he goes to a liposuction clinic and steals human body fat in order to dissolve it and make it into soap. Tyler Durden’s character is a radical character that is very rebellious and it is quite ironic that he “steals rich women’s fat asses and sells it back to them”. If you don’t already know that Tyler and the narrator is the same person then you need to watch the movie again. Tyler asks the narrator to hit him in exchange of letting him stay at his place since his complex was just blow out by an unexpected fire. The narrator disputes his request because he had never been in a fight and believe that was a good thing. Tyler responded with “how much can you know about yourself if you never been in a fight?” Pointing out his lack of experience and really shows you can not know your true self if you are limiting your experiences to what is in front of you. Sometimes you got to go off the trail, flip the script, see it from the other side to see what your real destination is. At the beginning the narrator attends these therapy group sessions as a mental health treatment for his insomnia problem. Although he had no connection with testicular cancer, tuberculosis, organic brain parasites, bowel cancer. He only attended them because that was the only place where people listened and truly cared. This is also where he meets Marla singer who he called a tourist but in reality she was the same as him, a faker just looking for support. As Tyler and the narrator start up a fight club in the basement of a bar which is kind of iconic because where do grown men that work a 9-5 typically go when something bad happens, a bar, and since his complex had just exploded I’d say the stereo type is true in this case. However there are rules to this fight club. First rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. in total there are 8 rules but I think the first two are important because Tyler well knows that these men are going to break the rules, and thats the whole purpose. He wants them to develop into rule breakers because with rules there is no fight club and without their development the will be no Project Mayhem. The narrator work for a car company that requires him to go on trips to put a number to see if recall is financially smart to do and not morally the right thing to do, thus leading to the creation of fight club. Project mayhem was the radical version of fight club, it was the total out break of these men. This is where violence became more than just fighting another man, it turning into fighting the system and vandalism. This is where Tyler Durden and the narrator began to part ways in ideology. As project Mayhem grew the narrator began to grow away from Tyler’s plans. Tyler’s total intentions were self destruction, from day one to the end of project mayhem. His purpose was to give the narrator freedom. And now that I think about it, he did. In the end, the final steps of project mayhem ended with the destruction of several financial buildings for the purpose of leveling the records of debt to zero. The narrator was being held at gunpoint by Tyler when he realized he was in control, this made him shoot himself in the jaw to which made Tyler disappear. But in reality it was what Tyler wanted. My source for this paragraph is the actual film Fight Club (1999)

In this paragraph I will be discussing the message of fight club and what an article has reviewed the message to be. At one point in the article the author brings up this point that “we seek help from our unconsciousness when our consciousness cannot deal with certain problems that involve our emotions and feelings.” This article was written by Arilens from medium.com. I agree with this writer’s evaluation because in relation to the movie’s quotes Tyler Durden says,”Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you lost everything that you are free to do anything.” My reflection to the quote from the article and the quote from the movie contributes to my idea that maybe self-improvment isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. And there are a lot of misconceptions about self-destruction being the answer, this doesn’t mean destroy everything you worked for or everything you were passionate about, but instead break away from the things that keep you from feeling free and doing what you want. In the narrators case from the movie it was his job and a typical lifestyle that keep him in a loop of working to buy things that he was taught to believe he should like in order to give him fulfillment. He trades hours of his life to buy Ikea furniture and house decorations, and when he blew him complex up it wasn’t just things that got blown up but the lifestyle that was keeping him from being free. After that incident Tyler makes a comment and says,”the things you own end up owning you.” This is very much true because when fires and accidents happen that is where insurance will help you out, but just like car accidents when this happens your insurance rates go up. Thus meaning you will have to work more to pay for the items that you once purchase which are now gone. One last part I would like to touch on in the article is where it says, “As Albert Einstein says ‘No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it’.” I believe this connects very much to the meaning of Fight Club because where Tyler Durden first asked the narrator to punch him in the face, he also mentions” how much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight.” When you limit your experiences and hide from change you will never see your authentic self, because that image only comes from a breakdown or a break through and in this case a fight.

In this paragraph I will be diving into another article’s analyzation of the meaning of fight club. In this article the author decides to start with how David Fincher who was the director for the movie Fight Club decided that Brad Pitt would be a good actor for the role of Tyler Durden. It says, “One hot summer night in 1997, David Fincher caught Brad Pitt on the street below Pitt’s Manhattan apartment. When Fincher handed him the script for Fight Club that night, he read it and related to it—not to the chaos or destruction, but to the existential dread of having everything you’ve been told to want and still feeling empty.” In my opinion Brad Pitt was perfect for the role, the character Tyler Durden is supposed to be an image of what the narrator wants to be. As a matter of fact we all do it everyday, we see ourselves as who we’d like to be, but not everyone has the courage to just run with it. Brad Pitt is also well know as the “pretty boy, an empty-headed heartthrob”, as the article describes him. Which is why he said he could relate to the part, because it doesn’t matter if your rich, broke, skinny, fat, cute, ugly. You will have problems in your life. The article also says he commented in a interview in Rolling Stone in 1999 “Im the guy who’s got everything. But I’m telling you, once you get everything, then you’re just left with yourself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It doesn’t help you sleep any better, and you don’t wake up any better because of it.” I would like to connect this to a completely different movie call Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quinten Tarantino. Brad Pitt play a stunt double named Cliff Booth for a 1950’s western Tv series for his buddy and co actor Rick Dalton. In this Film these two characters are the perfect example of what fight club means. Rick Dalton is a famous actor and being a famous actor, publicity and attention is a big part of who he is. And as his career takes a turn from his well known series dropping him, he struggles to find himself and becomes lost and insecure. Mean while Cliff Booth(Brad Pitt) is in fact the complete opposite, he never had much fame to begin with and wasn’t a rich person. He lived in a trailer on a ranch behind a drive in movie theater. Cliff Booth how ever had allegations on him, supposedly he had killed his wife. This of course had an affect on him getting a job as a stunt man. Which may have caused a break down, this connects to “it is only once we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything.” Cliff Booth is the perfect example of someone who is at peace with who they are and confident in their authentic self. Back to the article I read a statement that I can agree with, ” Project Mayhem sets its sights on destruction. Sure, it’s literal anarchy for a while, but after that, it has a purpose: Durden wants to blow up the credit card companies, undo the American Dream, and set everyone free from their debt.” Debt is a big issue with everyone in America. You want to become a doctor? Go to college. You want to buy a house? Take out a loan. Credit card companies make money when you miss payments, this leads to them charging interest. Thus causing you to work more hours to pay off your debts instead of being free to do what you want.

In conclusion I have learned a lot about the meaning of Fight Club. And I have learned about how to view problems in life, and how we must not avoid them, and how we must also search for our authentic self. We must also rid ourselves of the thing that we believe is holding us back from being free while also contributing to a dream we have and not just free loading from responsibilities. I learned to acknowledge those feelings of stress and anger and find ways to expose the true source of them.

Sources

26, Rebecca Renner July. “Everyone Misunderstands the Point of Fight Club.” Literary Hub, 25 July 2019, lithub.com/everyone-misunderstands-the-point-of-fight-club/.

Arilens. “Unheard Message in ‘Fight Club.’” Medium, Writers Guild, 12 Apr. 2021, medium.com/writers-guild/what-does-fight-club-teach-us-about-our-unconsciousness-84452e289744.

Swanson, Anna. “Did Cliff Booth Kill His Wife? An In-Depth Investigation.” Film School Rejects, 26 Aug. 2020, filmschoolrejects.com/cliff-booth-boat-scene-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/.