It’s a fascinating film, Fight Club. A treasure trove of meaning, with a bit of subtle manipulation depending on how old you are, what in your life you are watching it and primarily what reaction the film gives you. This film might empower you, it might want you to flee societal norms, or even, for a split second anyway, actually create a Fight Club. Or you might find yourself observing a deeply troubled man and his obsession with death and destruction.
Fight Club could be personified as being the perfect metaphor for doing things that seem painful or outside of your comfort zone, or even using the pain from these experiences as some sort of release, a distraction perhaps, from one’s everyday life. But whatever interpretation you got from this film, in this episode, it’s an exploration of the characters and the overarching themes of death, destruction and of course, a little bit of mayhem.
Be aware that these are theories and actual thoughts from various people I have asked. For more of what they thought, have a listen to my new but sporadic podcast, Idle Chat, available on YouTube, Spotify and Anchor.
Anyway.
This is Two Takes, and this is One Shot. An analysis of the film Fight Club. Spoilers are ahead.
We follow a protagonist that might be seen as the everyman; working a job, buying things, wearing good clothes. He doesn’t have a name, but we can all relate to him. Or can we? The narrator, or ‘Jack’, presents us with his inner thoughts that take a morbid curiosity to things we potentially try to ignore. And then walks in Marla and Tyler, two opposing forces that essentially manifest these thoughts of death and destruction beyond a simple thought. We know alot about Tyler, we know some about Marla, but did we get the whole picture, the whole point of Fight Club? Let’s take a look, starting the narrator, coined Jack.
I Am Jack’s Wasted Life.
The introduction of Jack’s character is someone who seemingly doesn’t have any friends or family; has a fascination of defining himself and trying to fill a void in a consumerist way; and primarily working for an unknown auto company as a recall co-ordinator (meaning he sees the aftermath of car accidents whilst travelling to and from places constantly), has Jack facing a linear and perhaps lucid state of apathy. He is faced with death and destruction in his job, and his thoughts reflect this morbid way of thinking throughout the film, with recipes of napalm and wondering what it feels like to be struck by lightning, as one example. These thoughts are sometimes even morphing into suicidal ones, with Jack wondering what it would feel like to die in an airplane crash, or reflecting on the sweetness of Chloe’s impending death in the cancer support group. His insomnia gets out of control to the point of us realising he hasn’t sleep properly for around six months.
Jack’s lack of sleep and meaningless but somewhat complicated job amplifies a state of being deeply unsatisfied. And it’s only in the support groups, with another round of people at death’s door, does Jack be able to sleep. It’s their way of listening to you instead of waiting for their turn to speak that has Jack hooked on this human connection, the first in the film, where he is finally able to let go and cry. A connection is formed, but like the single serving friends he meets on the airplanes, it doesn’t go anywhere beyond the surface level of a somewhat addiction to his insomnia. A quick fix to a deeper routed problem mixed with an underlying theme of avoidance. And this is an ongoing theme throughout. With a sense of relief of using the support groups to essentially get a good night’s rest is very suddenly interrupted by the introduction of Marla Singer.
Slide
Narrator: Marla’s philosophy of life is that she might die at any moment. The tragedy, she said, was that she didn’t.
When in meditation in a cancer support group, Jack’s power animal is a penguin in an ice cave. He might have interpreted himself as this animal for a number of reasons. The penguin might represent his inability to let go of his somewhat depressing lifestyle because penguins cannot fly away from their problems, instead just sliding from one thing to the next, which Jack does with Tyler and Marla. The ice cave can also represent the lack of warmth and the isolation we see with Jack throughout the film. And the child like voice of the penguin? Well, Jack is a 30-something year old boy, after all. When do we truly grow up, in a sense? There is a sense of letting go by sliding, the encouragement to find freedom and individuality.
The colour contrast of the penguin also expresses the duality of contradiction within personalities which we later mean Jack versus Tyler. Jack, being shy and insecure, with Tyler being confident and carefree. Jack being materialistic whilst Tyler lives in an abandoned house that is falling part. And then the penguin, a representation that is encouraging Jack to find himself turns into Marla.
Outside of the power animal, the idea of Marla being present just as the narrator is getting some sort of peace, is to actually show how much of a tourist he is in these support groups. Marla is there to remind him of his repressed feelings of guilt for using these support groups for his own personal gain. She is there to remind him that he is lying to himself, and that his morbid thoughts of death and destruction can manifest and present itself to him.
Within the power animal dynamic, Marla’s presence and what she represents to Jack about himself has leaked into his subconscious, making him aware of the fact that he is pretending to be someone else. And so, her saying ‘slide’, then has Jack wanting to be apart from this manifestation of Marla as his power animal. This then encourages him to let go of what has been holding him back and allows him to express himself within the hidden parts of his personality, to which we realise is Tyler.
The acceptance of Tyler through the quote:
“And it started to make sense, in a Tyler sort of way. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide”
So, the power animal, whether that be the penguin or Marla, does have some significance of the change we see in Jack throughout the film. And what I love about this, is that Marla is almost like a reminder, a telling-off of sorts, of Jack lying to himself. And in the end, Jack and Marla, holding hands, are more like kindred spirits than we realise.
Ah, but there is more.
Within jackdurden.com’s theory, Marla is the feminine counterpart of Jack, whilst Tyler is the masculine. And how Marla, as well as Rob, Chloe and of course Tyler, are all differing personalities that Jack has made up. But that’s a little too much for the points I’m making, so let’s stick to the feminine and masculine stuff. But if you are interested in reading the full theory, just search for jackdurden.com and tell me what you think.
Marla’s philosophy that she can die at any moment but the tragedy is that she doesn’t is a valid yet nihilistic point, and I reckon Jack agrees with this philosophy because in a way, this stems from Jack’s internal thoughts that only are dangerous to oneself. She, in this theory, might represent this subconscious morbid thoughts on self destruction in reality. And because she has this kind of power, she might as well be the catalyst for the insomnia that makes Tyler become a solid foundation in Jack’s life, and be that scratch on the roof your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it, but you can’t. She is the reminder, the in between, the feminine side that Jack does not want to accept. Until at the end, when Jack has accepted both masculine and feminine sides of his subconscious, standing in his own truth. But what does this say about Tyler and the supposed killing of him?
I Am Jack’s Complete Lack Of Surprise.
In a way, it can be hinted at that Tyler has been in Jack’s mind for longer than we realise. When Jack says to the doctor near the beginning of the film that he might be suffering from narcolepsy, waking up in strange places with no idea how he got there, it indicates (with the knowledge that Tyler works multiple night jobs) that Tyler has been taking over Jack’s mind way before the events of Fight Club.
It can theorised that the events of Marla exposing his insecurities as a lying tourist in amidst the support groups, and the re-emergence of his insomnia sets the stage for Tyler to re-emerge as something bigger. And that bigger something, remember, comes from the subconscious of a deeply troubled man. Tyler, perhaps, like us the audience, quickly realise that the support groups was like slapping a band-aid on a bigger, deeper problem. His first step, a literal metaphor for Jack’s meaningless life to come to an end, to essentially introduce something else, was destroying his condo full of the things that Jack was trying to fill the empty void with. Tyler, in this aspect, stepped up to create these terrible solutions as some sort of short-sighted answer, merging with Jack’s avoidance to the main issue.
And that introduction to that certain something else? For Jack to hit rock bottom.
YouTuber The Vile Eye, explains further:
“Why this is relevant to Jack’s desire to hit rock bottom is because it amplifies his capability to reach that point. As a man who doesn’t fear death, or wishes for it, is a man who is able to engage in any sort of dangerous endeavour without any regard of his safety, which in Jack’s case, means he’s on the fast track to hitting his goal. And once he hits the goal of rock bottom, he’ll be a new and free man. A man who has unlimited potential and no fear. And this makes Jack into an exceedingly terrifying man”
Tyler’s whole existence is representing all of the things that Jack is not and cannot do. Almost to the point of toxic masculinity. Wanting to be free and away from a consumerist culture, by Tyler’s design is to essentially destroy it. Wanting to express oneself, but by Tyler’s solution, is to fight and have cuts and bruises to show it. Wanting to be free of fear, by Tyler’s thoughts, is to establish a connection between self-destruction by hitting rock bottom. And his death? Jack’s establishes a connection between himself, his troubles with his life, and Tyler. When he realises Tyler is a part of him, he accepts this and cuts him off completely by taking back control by shooting himself, making Tyler believe he is dead. The last words he speaks to Tyler ‘My eyes are open’ speaks volumes about how, in a twisted fate of logic, this could have been Tyler’s plan all along; for Jack to hit rock bottom, realising Tyler’s dependency on him, to have Jack prove to him that he was alive, and to then walk away, his own man. Free and independent.
I Am Jack’s Inflamed Sense Of Rejection.
A person that has nothing to lose, that doesn’t care if he lives or dies, can cause potential harm to this world. Thus the introduction of Fight Club to essentially find others with this desire to find more, to have room to express themselves when they have no outlet in their lives. But this goes further than just people beating each other up and finding some sort of release. Jack still has this aspect of hitting rock bottom to perhaps be the greatest release, and so, the feelings from one man, sharing with some, wants to share it and forcibly make it a reality with the world. Jack wants the entire world to hit rock bottom, hence Project Mayhem.
And that sounds interesting, right? To hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up, right? But what if I told you that this was just another short sighted solution, essentially criticizing what we all thought as we grew up with this film to be the answer?
Remember, this all started as Jack’s problem with the lack of sleep, driven by his apathy, his job and lack of socialisation, whilst drowning in his need to fill a void through material possessions. On the surface, it is an observation of nihilism and how Jack’s consumerism lifestyle and the coming to the conclusion of self-destruction of the individual (“Just Let Go”) and societal destruction (Project Mayhem) is the answer, when really its an avoidance of any proper solution.
It’s the aspect of taking things that are attractive, the freedom in being oneself in a ‘free’ society, and taking it too far, with Project Mayhem hurting the system and destroying the lesser evil by blowing up credit card companies so all credit comes down to zero, or even the act of feeding pigeons to crap on cars for sale, so there is less emissions on the road.
It’s like having the right sort of idea, but doing it the wrong sort of way.
I Am Jack’s Smirking Revenge.
This film is not about empowering men. This film is criticizing or even making fun out of it by the overlapping of irony upon irony within a multi-layer path of avoidance by Jack.
Let’s start with the irony. It’s the want from Tyler/Jack to be away from societal norms with an expression of individuality, but it is also preaching to an army that are stripped of their identities to a primary cause, which in weird way, is what a consumerist culture is all about.
The irony lies in imprisoning people masking it as freedom. Beating you down with physical abuse and masking it as love. Of presenting rules to make a club, but the hidden irony lies in expecting people to break the rules so the club gets bigger. Sounds like a cult now, doesn’t it?
With a seductive and charismatic leader of sorts, it can be interpreted that way. With the monologues and little quips that Tyler says throughout the film that are still relevant to today, it’s the planting of an idea and taking it to the extreme. The film isn’t promoting these life lessons, it’s us watching a nihilistic, narcissistic psychopath use them in his own image and we get to see the result (Project Mayhem) from a inactive protagonist.
Launch Marla to represent a fascination with death and being a danger to oneself, with Tyler, a danger to others, and we get Jack as the apathetic and passive protagonist stuck in the middle.
In this way, the film Fight Club was only ever a fight within oneself in the most extreme and expressive of ways, which then went outside the walls of the subconscious into reality. The ideas of what Tyler and Marla wanted, to not lie to yourself, to prove you are alive, to go out there and be free, and to let go, is like a beautiful dream, but really, it can be accomplished. The year this film was made was the year of finding one’s truth. The Matrix, American Beauty, Eyes Wide Shut, Girl Interrupted…It was the year of finding yourself, of figuring things out. And like I said earlier, this film is still relevant to today because we are all still finding ourselves. And I guess in a way, there’s a little bit of Marla Singer and Tyler Durden in all of us…
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