Review: Fight Club (Film)

Plot summary

Fight Club is the story of an insomniac who is disillusioned with life in 1990s USA. Suffocated in his white-collar job and surrounded by Starbucks, Coca Cola, and Scandinavian furniture from catalogues, his mind fabricates Tyler Durden. Rebelliously individual and adventurous to the point of peril, Tyler is free in all the ways our narrator is not. Together they form an underground fight club, where other ‘trapped’ men can step out of their emasculated selves to brawl with each other. Upon realising that Tyler is his own alter ego, our narrator attempts to halt the escalating violence and foil a terrorist attack of his own design.

  

The oppression of consumer capitalism (thesis)

The draining and depressive emotional effects of consumer capitalism form the central theme of the film.

Our narrator has ‘deep seated emotional problems’ (Marla). What seems to aggravate these problems, to pressure them and squeeze them so unbearably, is modern life. There is nothing but the superficial narrative of going to college, finding a job, and then getting married. Our narrator works for a large car manufacturer in a job he describes in a monotonous tone. The mass-produced items from a catalogue fill his home, and his office is indistinguishable from a thousand others.

With Tyler’s help, our narrator is able to momentarily disarm the supremacy of consumer capitalism through acts of varying degrees of vengeance and violence. While on the bus they laugh at an image of a male Calvin Klein model. The subversion of this ‘ideal’ is extended through Tyler’s production of soap; he steals and uses the excess fat removed in the process of liposuction. Tyler even directly addresses the absurdity of ordering furniture from IKEA.

These private victories over ‘the system’ are littered throughout the film (as are Starbucks cups, which can be spotted by the sharp observer). After leaving an unremarkable car, our narrator and Tyler proceed to smash up one of the most recognisable models in history: a Volkswagen Beetle. The message is clear: ‘the things we own end up owning us’ (Tyler).

There is no world war or depression. This existence is the great depression. It is in these fires of monotony, brand names and aimlessness that Tyler is forged, an artist of chaos who intends to destroy the whole economic system that distracts and hypnotises people with glittering condos and countless sitcoms.

Masculinity (antithesis)

As well as oppressing people under repetitive routines and large, faceless corporations, consumer capitalism has emasculated men. This forms the second central theme to the film, and explains both the personality of Tyler, and the violence of the fight clubs.

We learn that our narrator’s father left while he was young, and Tyler notes that they are a ‘generation raised by women’. Initially, our narrator is forced to behave in ways that are traditionally associated with women. He looks after his condo and furnishes it well, and he attends support groups to release tension in outbursts of crying and hugging. Significantly, the support group given more attention relates to testicular cancer survivors, where one attendee is noted to have had his testicles removed.

At one support group meeting our narrator meets Bob Paulsen, whose use of steroids resulted in the growth of ‘bitch tits’. This man with breasts later finds a more effective escape in the fight club, where it is better to feel pain than to numbly drift through life. The fight club is, as our narrator reminds Marla, for ‘men only’.

Tyler’s creation is the result of our narrator having been denied his ‘self’ in any meaningful way: for a large part of the film we do not even know his name. Tyler is everything our narrator was denied under ‘the system’: athletic, dangerous, no stranger to physical violence, and supremely talented with women. Tyler flaunts his masculinity. He is not threatened by Marla’s phallic instrument of pleasure, and enjoys sneaking one frame of penis into the reel of a family film. This was the character our narrator’s mind crafted in its tormented and total rejection of society. The film becomes a battle between two extreme forces, and our narrator is caught between them.

A solution to the problem (synthesis)

Having been presented with a systemic problem, the intensifying violence of Tyler embodies the devastating antithesis. As the plot hurtles towards the collision of the two, the narrator is capable of proposing the final synthesis.

After realising he has an alter ego, our narrator begins the process of recapturing and reclaiming his ‘self’. By understanding that he and Tyler are the same, we now know one part of the narrator’s true identity: his name.

In order to attain true freedom, the narrator must not join Tyler in an escalating rampage of destruction. Tyler’s world of havoc and chaos must not be allowed to arise, and so the explosives planted underneath the financial centre must not be allowed to detonate. When Tyler brings Marla to one of the buildings in order to ‘tie up loose ends’, he reveals himself as an embodiment of male superiority and violence against women. This maverick would deny the world civilization, and deny our narrator his sanity.

After killing Tyler, our narrator disarms the explosives underneath the building, saving both him and Marla. Although the alter ego is killed, his judgement remains; society is flawed, superficial, and ruled by greed. Individuals become cut off from one another. Change is required, but our hero must not join the other men who sought companionship at the end of each other’s fists. In this sense, it is fitting that none of the other buildings are saved. Our narrator, the true Tyler, has managed to avoid the total destruction of the financial centre, while severely changing the economic landscape.

While the other buildings crumble to the floor in plumes of red fire and black smoke, our narrator holds hands with Marla. This is the only moment of physical affection in a film bursting with brawls and emotionless sex. By tearing down the walls of consumer capitalism–fuelled individualism, while resisting the fury of physical violence, Tyler is able to appreciate something more meaningful: a relationship with another person.