Fight Club- Abrief reflection excerpts from a transcript of a talk delivered by Zulfiqar Awan
The Fight Club book was published in 1997 and the movie was released in 1999. The movie became an instant blockbuster, and as a result has a cult following even to this day. The themes found in the movie still impact today’s society and people are still trying to find the answers to the questions raised in the book/movie.
We shall analyse the movie in its entirety or totality. Remember, this means understanding how society shapes the family, the family shaping the individual and the latter repeating that learned shaping in the form of behaviour patterns.
Themes discussed in this talk:
- Society: Market democracy & ‘thingyfication’ of man
- Family: Lack of male role models
- Individual Psyche: Ikea Boy — Schizophrenia
- The spirit of nihilism- Meaninglessness
1-Society: Market democracy& ‘thingyfication’ of man
“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession…Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate…” -Tyler Durden
“We buy things we don’t need with money; we don’t have to impress people we don’t like” — Tyler Durden
“Replace the government of men with the administration of things” — Trotsky’s command
Today’s society is highly rationalised and organised along the lines of a scientific and industrialised grid. As a result the human being has descended into a automated thing, consuming and acting within a pre-arranged gridlocked network. Trotsky’s command marks the beginning of the ‘thingfication’ of modern man. From then on, the state is driven by economics and not politics.
2-Family dynamics: the lack of male role models
Quotes:
“I don’t know my Dad. I mean, I know him, but he left when I was like six years old, married this other woman, had some more kids. He did this like every six years — he goes to a new city and starts a new family.” — Narrator
“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” — Narrator
The Telemachus complex is the reverse of the Oedipus complex — Massimo Ricalcati
The Italian psycho-analyst, Massimo Ricalcati, writes about the Telemachus complex. As well as having an intergenerational conflict between father and son (think of Freud’s Oedipus complex), Ricalcati suggests the modern son has a yearning to receive the father (intergenerational reconciliation) as the father represents meaning, order, purpose and guidance. He uses the model found in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, that model being Telemachus (the son) yearning for his father (Odysseus) to return home from the Trojan war. In the modern context, that father may be present in the home, however he is absent in the sense that he is consumed by capitalist society and swirling within the abyss of modernity. Thus, the son is devoid of the symbolic inheritance from the father.
We should not forget the work of Dr Ronald Laing (ontological insecurity — take your mind back to the last lesson we did) when looking at the causes of ‘Ikea boy’. What we see is the divided self of Norton i.e. Tyler. Norton experiences the ontological break.
3-Individual psyche: Ikea Boy, the divided self, democratic man, the lastman
The political system that all the characters function within is a liberal democracy. The ancient Greek scholars and early modern scholars (those taking from the Greco-Roman tradition) understood how different political systems forge particular psyches. In this movie we saw what type of psychology a democratic system forges. Norton is ‘democratic man’ at the beginning of the story.
Plato’s ‘Democratic Man’
“…he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.” (Plato, Republic)
Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’
“Nietzsche’s ‘last man’ is the modern democratic individual in a complete state of disintegration. The vitality, the piercing intellect to make sense of himself and existence, the high ambition to go beyond his own self-interests, the passion for excellence, and the yearning to create anew are some of the vital human qualities Nietzsche’s ‘last man’ is utterly devoid of. He is poised between not wanting to govern or be governed and does not have a sense of public duty or civic participation. The desire to live and flourish is extinguished in the numb-calm effects of little pleasures, mediocrity, security and work.” (Awan, The End of an Age and the Last Man).
4-The Spirit of Nihilism: Meaninglessness
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pi**ed off.” — Tyler
Living as we do in a risk-less and highly securitised society, modern man has morphed into a numb-calm state. The removal of anything higher then the self coupled with its replacement, work and entertainment, has led modern man to embody the spirit of the age — nihilism.
Post WWII saw the rise of one ideology, and its dominance after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is no longer anything to sacrifice for, only one’s life to pay high taxes and debt to the bank.
However, life has more to offer and for us to receive.
Zulfiqar Awan
