Fight Club
Sat, 29 Mar 2025 18:35:32 GMT
Just finished watching Fight Club. I have heard about it for a while now. I have seen the memes, the references, and the quotes. Supposedly something you watch when you have an existential crisis.
With the notion of "existentialist movie" in mind, I thought it would be a motivational movie, albeit dark. As it has "Club" in its name, I thought it would be a group of friends who are troubled and come together for support. I thought it would be a movie about friendship, and self-discovery.
I was so wrong.
Spoiler alert. You can stop now if you want to.
The movie subverted my expectation from the very start to the very end. After all, the life of the characters inside it is too chaotic for me to recognize a pattern. At times, I was saying "What the F" out loud and anxious to go to ChatGPT to ask my myriad of questions. Question like, "Is Fight Club a cult?" and "What's the point of Fight Club?".
Then, maybe because the movie repeatedly preaches not to follow your mundane rules and habits, I tell myself to just keep watching until the end. The movie did not disappoint me though. I thought it was glorying a quite unhealthy way for people (especially men) to cope with life, but the movie was actually very self-aware. It even made fun of itself.
I was about to refer to the main character in this passage, but then I realize we were never given his name to begin with. We learned of the world through the eye of the narrator. A scattered worldview, overshadowed by Tyler Durden. He had nothing much to himself, but had a lot of things he wish he could, all manifest themselves through Tyler.
The narrator, well, was very relatable to us all. Maybe that's why we quickly take to his point of view. The boring life made bearable through trying to express ourselves via buying more and matching a certain lifestyle. The sense of loneliness that was temporarily dulled by going to support groups, pretending to be sick, just so that people would listen to you and let you cry your eyes out. (At this point, I was asking myself "Why didn't he just go to therapy?" and I still have that question now).
The rest of the movie, was just a cult. Slowly built up. In the name of "Fight Club".
Everyone was so lost in their lives, they were willing to follow Tyler blindly. They were willing to fight each other, just to feel something. They were willing to destroy everything they have, just to feel alive. They were willing to die for a cause that they don't even understand.
All the unmet needs from the first part of the movie were suddenly fulfilled. Not just the narrator's, all his followers'.
And I get it, I completely get it.
You get to have a clear, single purpose. You are surrounded by people who all have the same purpose and are willing to work together to achieve it. You have no space for doubt, for fear, for restraint, for loneliness. It's an invitation to live life to its highest thrill, like you are a martyr that just becomes enlightened and on your path to greatness, unlike the rest of the sheeps.
The problems, of course, were obvious. The club reinstated the very same structure that it vowed to destroy. Instead of liberating themselves, the followers blindly listen to Tyler's words. There were not much meaning to what they were doing, rather than just trying to achieve the next big thing. And what was it that they were trying to achieve anyway? It sounds noble to try to destruct what you deem is rotten, but what are you going to do after that? What will you do with the ashes?
In the end, our narrator came round to it, albeit too late. We, the viewers, were suddenly privy to a very shameful secret: Tyler was just a figment of the narrator's imagination. His fantasy. And such a fantasy was leading all the men along like somehow it knew the secret to the entire universe.
You know what that means? It means we human are so desperate for meaning, for companionship, for rules and order, for somebody to just tell us how to live our lives. Much like this quote from Fleabag:
I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I've gotten it wrong.
And I think, those are very valid needs. Needs that need to be met, and not be ashamed of. However, I don't think that Fight Club is the right way to meet them, considering how the euphoria of the cult-like lifestyle will crumble once the novelty wears off, or when there's no more destruction to be made.
The question is, how should we meet those needs? In a time where the beginning of the movie still holds true, how do we address the loneliness, the emptiness, and the dullness of life, in a way that is not submitting to cults and cult-like behavior?
Probably not buying the next cute/weird/cool item on Shoppe. I don't have the answer either, but hey, let me know it you do.