The meaning of the movie Fight Club
Failed at the box office, but later diverged into quotes and aphorisms, “Fight Club” is filled with postmodernist overtones. Deep meaning and criticism of capitalism are combined with a beautiful picture and product placement. Nonsense and mockery of the viewer.
Fight Club follows the general trend of protest films from the 90s. In it, as in many other films of the late 20th century, the main message is that having a high-paying job, living in an elite condo on the top floor, meeting leggy beauties, or living in a big house with your family is just awful. American Beauty, Fight Club, The Matrix, Route 60 – all of these films have this attitude.
It is a mistake to think that Tyler Durden is an anarchist. He is a transhumanist!
The meaning of “Fight Club” will help to reveal the books of Fromm, Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer and other transhumanist philosophers. Actually, what the scientists of the Frankfurt School of Sociology condemned was embodied in the painting by David Fincher. In short, it can be expressed in the following sentences:
- We are the products of a consumer society.
- Culture is being replaced by a culture industry with simple, stereotyped symbols and images.
- Our uniqueness is shaped by products and brands.
- And our knowledge is fragmentary and piecemeal, like a patchwork quilt.
- Our needs inflate like a bubble, but one day it is destined to burst.
We are “one-dimensional people,” as the philosopher Marcuse put it. This is the main meaning of “Fight Club”.
Tyler Derden’s philosophy
Each of us has a rebel, an interesting and truly extraordinary personality. Consider how the life of a nameless storyteller who became Tyler and gave up all the good things of life has changed. He became a real leader, creating an incredibly complex organization with a clear hierarchy and a plan to destroy the financial system. Could a person who is dependent on brands and novelties, who never misses a single “worthwhile” series and who understands the smallest details of car or watch brands, could create such a complex system? The answer is negative.
If you look at the popular searches on search engines related to Tyler Durden, you will notice an interesting trend. A lot of people are looking for glasses, pants, a jacket that was worn by the eccentric hero of the film. This goes against what Tyler was really trying to convey.
Tyler Durden’s philosophy is simple, but like many simple things, for the time being, we do not understand. The whole meaning of the speeches of one of the main characters of “Fight Club” can be expressed in the following phrase:
Who are we? We’re just consumers obsessed with the outer paraphernalia of prosperity. War, hunger, violence – none of this worries. And what worries me is: celebrities and scandals, TV, where there are 500 channels and whose name is on the tag of my panties.
Tyler introduces reality to the narrator
Tyler Durden’s kiss
What’s the point of kissing in Fight Club? Chemical Burn at Fight Club is a young fighter’s course for a storyteller. So Tyler Durden introduced him to reality. After such therapy, it becomes clear that it is foolish to count on life outside this reality, that there are no miracles, that the world is not a commercial, where everything is clean and beautiful, and people are simply aflame with cordiality. The world is a place where, in addition to good moments, there are also terrible ones, and you need to put up with them, accept them as an integral part of being. The kissing scene can be interpreted through the book of the French philosopher Albert Camus “The Myth of Sisyphus”. The narrator and Tyler, like Sisyphus, deny the influence of God on their lives, placing themselves, a person, as the main source of the meaning of their life in this absurd world.
The meaning of the film Fight Club in the XXI century
Does Fight Club make any sense now? No matter how they resisted, people remembering the Bubl-Gum chewing gum, Windows 95, Dandy, Vid TV, the nineties were 20-25 years ago. A whole generation ago! So does it? Of course, yes. We, like the hero of the film, the storyteller, also have no name for multinational companies. We are consumers, a set of features, parameters that they analyze. Advertising is targeted for us in order to sell more products and provide more services. Images are imposed on us, and the necessary equipment is added to this image. Basketball players wear Nike, respectable men wear Rolex and women wear Kenzo. Targeted advertising has already become the main source of income for major search engines such as Yandex or Google. It doesn’t matter if our name is Jack, Masha or Abraham.
The ending of the film “Fight Club” raised many questions from the audience
The meaning of the Fight Club ending
The ending of the film caused the most questions from the audience of the film. Palahniuk himself admitted that he liked Fincher’s ending better than his own. Let’s figure it out. The narrator realizes that he and Tyler are one and the same person. Durden is just imagination, except for one thing. Pistol. Like the fists of the narrator stabbing himself in his boss’s office, the weapons are just as real. Getting rid of Tyler just by realizing the fact is not enough, you need a powerful emotional outburst, something out of the box, something beyond the brain. The solution was simple. Shoot yourself in the cheek and pretend you’re killing Tyler. The plan is adventurous, but judging by the ending of the film – effective.
In the book, the narrator goes to heaven, where he meets all the same “monkeys in space” following Tyler Durden’s mission. This ending of the book “Fight Club” can be interpreted from two points of view. On the one hand, the narrator really ends up in heaven, in which he did not believe, and on the other, he ends up in a psychiatric hospital.
Such an open ending raises the question, is there really any sense in the ravings of a madman, or is it just a mockery of Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher at his reader?
