Fight Club Explained
When people try to explain Fight Club they say that it’s about masculinity, nihilism, anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism, anti-materialism, self-realization, self-indulgence, self-acceptance and Buddhism of all things. Well, If you keep on going you’ll hit the mark eventually. But the funny thing is — nobody has.
I mean, given all the penis references, the strongest claim would be that of the masculinity. Bob the bitch tit guy, peaked as the masculinity beauty ideal by becoming a “champion bodybuilder”. What’s the ideal? Highly muscular, unpractical physic, gained by shortcuts of steroids, with a shaved body to showcase the goods. Simply put a physic that exclusively focuses on appearance, just like the beauty ideal of a woman. It’s a valid critique but it’s a shallow one, masculinity as a concept goes beyond looks. There’s no mention of responsibility, overcoming challenges, reason and so on. The same goes for all of the rest of words I gave at the begging, Fight Club superficially touches on these problems but it’s not about them. Making fun of modern masculinity ideals, showcasing the emptiness of reaching for stuff, e.c.t. Those are ways to make the underlying message hit home. What nobody seams to notice is that it’s really all about Dionysus.
The Problem Facing Narrator
“I couldn’t sleep. With insomnia nothings real. Everything’s far away. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy… When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep and your never really awake. ” — Narrator
The story begins with Narrator being unable to sleep for 6 months. That’s a little bit of an over exaggeration, since the longest one can survive without sleep is little under 2 weeks. Let’s just say that his sleep quality is poor. Which leads him to be in a state of mind where nothing seams real. Insomnia leads his physiological state to reflect his psychological state. As a psychological rule: “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it will happen outside, as fate.” — C. G. Jung. His life is full of distractions, that keep him away from focusing on what’s meaningful. Meaning designates realness of things. It might seam unusual to tie meaning to be the judge of realness of things, but if you think about it — it makes sense. People don’t doubt the existence of the things that are meaningful to them. You don’t doubt the existence of a loved one but you might doubt the existence of global warming — if you don’t really care about it. The Narrator has no family, friends, no hobbies (apart from buying IKEA furniture), he has a job that would force anyone to question their faith in humanity, he has a meaningless life and that’s the reason Narrator has issues. The reason he has a meaningless life is that he’s too busy chasing carrots dangled before his face. The carrots in his case are IKEA furniture of all things and by collecting it, he’s reaching for completeness.
[When talking about his apartment after it blew up] “I was close to being complete.” — Narrator
A religious impulse, usually directed at ones spiritual life but here it has twisted into “material completeness”. Obviously there’s no real growth possible by collecting objects around you. What got the Narrator out of the limbo was going to self-help groups of people who faced tragedy. That might have been the most spiritual thing he has done in his life. He described his moment of liberation as giving up, might I add, with religious music in the background. The things he gave up on was chasing IKEA furniture. In it’s place came chasing self-help groups — a progress of sorts.
Marla the Silenus
Of course it wasn’t the end of things, resolving the challenge of the protagonist 10 minutes into the movie, is just unacceptable which led to a plot twist and her name was Marla. Marla is an interesting but rather singular character. The Narrator encapsulates her essence as follows:
“Marla’s philosophy is that she could die at any moment, the tragedy she said is that she didn’t.” — Narrator
Marla disturbed Narrators new found hobby. She forced him to become aware of his own hypocrisy. He knew that he didn’t belong to those groups, he didn’t have testicular cancer or any other medical issue. But he had issues he wasn’t facing — more on that latter.
I want to focus on Marla for a second. She reminds me of a character from the past that lived pretty much in the same way, he was a friend of Dionysus. Silenus is best described in a story:
Pertinently to this they say that Midas, after hunting, asked his captive Silenus somewhat urgently, what was the most desirable thing among mankind. At first he could offer no response, and was obstinately silent. At length, when Midas would not stop plaguing him, he erupted with these words, though very unwillingly: ‘you, seed of an evil genius and precarious offspring of hard fortune, whose life is but for a day, why do you compel me to tell you those things of which it is better you should remain ignorant? For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature’s excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.’
There’s more where that came from. The point though is quite apparent — Marla and Silenus — both espouse a morality where they would prefer to die as soon as possible, these characters play the same role. They shine a light upon an undeniable realization that a bright kindergartner could grasp — no matter what we do, we’re all going to die. It’s something we forget, as long as it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind. The perspective from which we tend to make most of our decisions is that of now that’s going to exist forever. Which leads us to reach for goals that aren’t ideal — complete set of IKEA furniture comes to mind. The reason a close experience of death shakes people so much is that their perspective changes from now that’s going to exist forever to now that could end any second.
But this part of the story isn’t at the center ether. It’s a stepping stone. The problem with Marla and Silenus is that you can’t make much of a story out of them. They are relatable and they reveal something interesting about our own natures but if you truly lived according to their philosophy you wouldn’t live for long. All it would take Marla to avoid the tragedy of living is take a few quick steps into oncoming traffic.
Dionysus and Tyler
After Marla disturbed Narrators new found hobby, Tyler came into the picture and instantly it became his show. The story continues to be told trough the Narrators eyes but he isn’t the one directing the events. He’s in a state of psychosis that can only occur in movies. What was the line, I wrote earlier… “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it will happen outside, as fate.” — C. G. Jung. Tyler personifies that which Narrator had to realize on his own and integrate parts of it within himself. The Tyler character isn’t a unique creation. Characters like him have existed for a long time and the oldest of them is Dionysus.
Traditionally Dionysus is an ancient Greek God of wine. He’s not really about wine but the state wine gets you in. When you’re drunk you disassociate from your ego and you start to go with the moment. Therefor I prefer to expand Dionysus, as others do, to be the God of intoxication with the object. Anything that gets you to forget yourself and truly experience the moment is the experience of the Dionysian spirit. You don’t need an intoxicant to experience Dionysian delights, all you need to do is realize what Marla and Silenus realized — the fact that there’s an expiration date for you, but instead of being upset about it, rejoice — you’re free to do anything!
Let’s look at how many similarities we can find between Tyler and Dionysus. There’s a sentence in Wikipedia about Dionysus that points to his nature perfectly:
“Dionysus Eleutherius (“the liberator”), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful”
Now let’s look at few quotes from Fight Club:
“The liberator who destroyed my property realigned my perceptions.” — Tyler
“I reject the basic assumption of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.” — Tyler
“You weren’t alive anywhere as you where when you were there [the Fight Club]” — Narrator
Both of them are refereed to as “the liberator”. Both of them are against civilization. Both of them provide a cure to the sickness of chasing carrots dangled before your face. One in the form of wine the other in the form of highly engaging activity — fighting. Both of them are wanderers. Both of them don’t care about status. They are essential the same character. Tyler is the modern day equivalent of Dionysus.
The Teaching of Dionysus
Dionysian spirit stands against any ordered system of control. There’s nothing else that imposes as much control on people as civilizations do. What civilizations inevitably do is create bunch of systems of control. It doesn’t matter what sort of control it is, it will restrict you. You could have made Fight Club in a socialist country and there Tyler would be anti-socialist, make it in a theocratic state and he would be against religion. The problem doesn’t lay in the system of wealth distribution, political organization or in any specific cultural values. It lays in the fact that civilization expands, it becomes bigger, more intrusive, less tolerant of deviation and harder to escape. Civilization becomes so dominant into peoples lives that people become all about shit that’s valued in the cult of their own birth.
Civilizations require a counter balance, something to get outside the perspective of the accepted values and ideas. That counter balance is presented by Tyler and Dionysus. It’s not without a reason that Fight Club members were blue-collar people and the Dionysian festivals in ancient Greece and Rome were loved by common folk. If your rich civilization doesn’t restrict you, it enables you. But if your not rich then the experience of the Dionysian spirit enables you to become liberated from constraints of your own civilization, to rekindle the spark of life. As the movie showed it’s really all about giving up. Giving up on the things you were nudged in by you’re culture. “You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.” — Tyler. Your life is more that the role you play in your society — that’s the the point of the movie.
The Resolution
Rather quickly after creating Fight Club, Tyler began working on the project Mayhem which was the plan to destroy modern banking system which as a result would reduce wealth inequality. The solution Fight Club provides to reduce the tyrant of the state is trough a catastrophe — that’s quite the historically justified decision. The natural tendency of the state is to just keep on growing. The only time the state gives back freedom to individuals is when catastrophes occur, ether natural or man made. Just go trough the history, in late middle ages it was the Bubonic plague that destroyed the crushing hand of Christian Church. It was WW 1 that killed the monarchy. You would think that short term economic prosperity, safety, other goodies that come with control would be balanced with freedom, but in the long run, it never is. Countries reducing their control over citizens for a long period of time during peaceful times would be the first time in human history. It’s more likely that the history will repeat and only a catastrophe will reduce the influence of the state on peoples lives.
The death of Bob is what leads the Narrator to get into a spiral of discoveries that led him to realize that Tyler is a part of him. An unintegrated part which disobeys his will. He tried arguing with Tyler, he tried fighting him, he tried shooting him — none of that changed anything. You do not integrate things by just fighting against them nor do you integrate them by accepting them with open arms like Marla so clearly did. It’s a balance. The act of shooting himself in the face united Tyler and Narrator. It was acting out the teaching of Tyler against Tyler that did the trick. That might be another point of the movie — instead of trying to change the world as man possessed, try to change yourself first.
