The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #20: "Fight Club"

2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #20

by Xavier E. Palacios

"Fight Club"

3 out of 5

Directed by David Fincher

Rated "R"

Adapting Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name, the Narrator (Edward Norton) is an isolated insomniac trapped in his hated job, consumerist ideologies, and empty life. He only sleeps after attending support groups for conditions he does not have, where he meets another fraud: the chain smoking and overly dramatic Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). Then, the Narrator befriends the philosophizing, anti-establishment, and oddball Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who helps him find a way for them both to vent their fury over their lives and feel a greater sense of self: starting a fight club, where members follow strict rules as they battle one-on-one to achieve a kind of catharsis through empathetic brutality. Under Tyler's direction and his romantically violent ideologies, fight club spreads across the United States and becomes a cult that goes beyond the Narrator's intentions. As he contends with the club's radical members, Marla's dysfunctional attachment to him, and his perpetual lack of control, a question rots the Narrator's sanity: who exactly is Tyler Durden?

The very first time I heard about Fight Club was from a Kim Possible episode where the comical co-protagonist, Ron Stoppable, recounts his time at his high school's chess club, parodying this film's most famous line: "The first rule of chess club is you do not talk about chess club." When I was a teenager, I discovered the cultural buzz surrounding the film and started researching the piece and watching some scenes. I was enchanted by the underground, crazy tone of the flick. I had never heard ideas like, "[We are] working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need." Similar concepts would later be ingrained within me by folks like the king of comedy and, really, American philosopher, George Carlin. Yet before I found him, I heard about Fight Club.

I had never considered that any film could exist that flipped off consumerism and insincere standards of societal conduct. As a loser, borderline outcast, and suffocating Latino geek in high school, there was an edge of coolness to the picture I had to get in on. (Yet, I somehow never could or did. At that age, I ended up watching Green Street Hooligans, which is, to quote a popular meme, the equivalent of "We have Fight Club at home"). I fancied developing a similar kind of edgy, blow-up-the-world film idea, as only an adolescent could do: Rules of the Jungle. I never could conceive of a plot. I just really dug the title. In an embarrassing memory, during some theatre monologue activity, I recited the rules of fight club speech, making a scene by asking the group's fellas to come to the front row so I could address them personally, in character. My performance totally bombed. Recovering from a bad stomach virus, I found a copy of Chuck Palahnuik's book and read a few chapters; always planning to finish the novel.

From adolescence until I was in my early twenties, I had an enormous concept of what Fight Club was in my head: a film made for me. A picture about a club where one could release all their anger at an unjust world that encouraged people to quit their awful jobs and live the lives they want; lives the capitalist empires of the world forbid. A tale that proclaimed anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-corporation, and anti-passivity attitudes are virtues, not deviant flaws. "It's only after we have lost everything that we're free to do anything": empowering words for a teenager who was surviving the Recession and the Obama administration years which seemed to eliminate any war to fight and prove myself. God, the flick was right, not my mother or teachers. Fighting would free me from the drudgery of my place and time. If only I had been punched by bullies and been able to slam my first back in their faces.