by When FIGHT CLUB hit cinemas in 1999, the world as we knew it was changing. There was no Cold War, pop culture had gained an even wider influence than before and access to the internet became available to the mass market. The millennium was anticipated, either for all the new possibilities offered by computers, the internet and technology in general. Or for an almost morbid thrill about whether or not the world would end and how. Living in constant fear of Skynet terminating mankind wasn’t the only crisis of the time. With capitalism ruling, what forms individuality when working hard and long hours at pointless jobs leaves little room for personality, aside from consuming things we’d never need. Chuck Palahniuk asked the question in his 1996 novel that became a cult classic in particular for David Fincher’s adaptation.
Meet the unnamed narrator, living in an anonymous city, working for an anonymous automobile company as recall specialist. Four years of college education for a Job he tells us requires simple math. If it proves predictably cheaper to let people die in accidents, then settle with surviving relatives, cars aren’t recalled. They drive around with flaws in the system never attended. How could anyone possible see any purpose in making a living that way? Not the narrator, who is struggling with a severe case of insomnia, attending support groups to feel better. A room full of men suffering from testicle cancer? People dying, their only wish to be loved once more before it’s over? This should make every healthy person humble. But the narrator exploits suffering for his own cause without remorse. And he’s not alone.
Marla Singer follows the same tactics to keep her own problems in check. Other than the narrator, she’s hit rock bottom, stealing jeans out of washing machines to sell for cash and meals delivered to deceased neighbors. The narrator should be a winner, with his job and education, but at core, they’re equal. It is no wonder they dislike each other, at first, when meeting at one of the support groups. Even though his experiences with Marla should start a self-reflective transformation in the narrator, this comes by disaster when he loses everything he worked for in a single boom. Everything he had, selected but barely used is gone when his apartment blows up and bits and pieces are raining down. What should be catastrophe to any person in a capitalist world turns out to be a liberating serendipity. With nowhere to go, the narrator doesn’t call Marla. He calls Tyler Durden, chance encounter and soap salesman.
When the narrator is organized and phobic about anything that can’t be planned, Tyler is the exact opposite. He works odd jobs, sometimes waiting tables at banquets or working as projectionist at cinemas, editing short sequences out of porn into children movies. But his prolific knowledge on things shows in his producing soap. Tyler uses human fat, stolen from the waste bins behind beauty clinics, to cook soap and sell back at 20 dollars per bar to rich women. It’s a cycle that closes, order in chaos, as everything about Tyler follows a plan as we learn later. The narrator moves in the house Tyler rents in the middle of nowhere, roof leaking, fuses blowing. It is a stark contrast to his prior life, affecting his work. But there’s something that can’t be concealed, as if interior monologue is shown on skin.
Listen up, maggots! You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
Tyler Durden
The narrator and Tyler start Fight Club in a bar’s parking lot. They punch each other into raw hamburgers. That ‘s it. By serving one of man’s wild instincts, they free themselves from the stress and pointlessness of postmodern life. Other people join in, rules are defined. Under Tyler’s lead, Fight Clubs are established all over the city at first, then all over the country. Two people bashing each other turns into a movement. With so many men tagging along, black eyes and stitches in their cheeks, Fight Club inevitably affects regular daily life. Until it becomes much bigger than itself or even Tyler. What Palahniuk and Fincher show us is that all it takes for dictatorship, cult, fascism or ideology to spread is a little spark. Two men searching for purpose in life, laughing conventions in the face. Fight Club becomes Project Mayhem, instituted by the so-called space monkeys in their black pants, black shoes and devotion to the cause. Nobody talks about it, nobody asks any questions. The rules of Fight Club linger and they ring familiar.
Palahniuk worked several menial jobs after graduating college, including repairing diesel trucks, so it is safe to assume a certain autobiographical quality. His novel FIGHT CLUB (1996) has been adapted to screen rather closely, yet there are changes made by Fincher that contribute to the atmosphere. It seems irrelevant at first glance when the narrator and Tyler ride the bus and discuss who in history they would want to fight and Tyler, without having to think about it, says Hemingway. It is a testament to a new literary movement, with modernism dead when it comes to style and prose. Palahniuk’s postmodern writing is far from elegant, yet it’s economic. Prose is only a vehicle, never purpose. A lot of this reflects in the film. The story’s only weakness is what makes it great when first encountered. Twist. Part of the thrill is gone when re-watching Fight Club, yet this enables us to look for small references, symbols and hidden messages. Brad Pitt as Tyler Burden has the best acting part in the film, breathing life into his character’s madness while retaining a sense of sanity that makes his motifs questionable.
There is no doubt Fight Club has garnered a following as devoted as the space monkeys are to Project Mayhem. It is one of the great films that show how things can deteriorate, not how to deal with a deteriorated world. Like Palahniuk’s novel, it lacks style in the conventional sense of the word, that makes it less appealing to fans of classic cinema. And it focuses too closely on the problem without offering much of an insight to the solution. Ambivalence can be a curse when misunderstood. But this is one of the reasons why FIGHT CLUB will stay around.
