The first rule of Fight Club is . . .
New review up on Brattle Film Blog: [link]
"The first rule of Fight Club is, you don’t talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is, you don’t talk about Fight Club. The third rule of Fight Club is . . .
I'm going to talk about Fight Club. Based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk, the film concerns a disaffected white-collar worker who can sum up his life with the three C’s: Catalogs, Condo, Condiments. Not surprisingly, for his efforts he’s got insomnia, ennui, and anhedonia. He starts going to support groups for diseases he does not have, to jump-start his atrophied connection to life. But then he meets a woman doing the same thing; recognizing her as a fellow "tourist," all his ennui and insomnia come racing back. Then his house explodes. Then the movie starts.
He meets a guy on the plane, a flashy artisanal soap salesman named Tyler Durden, who seems not only engaged with life, but engaged fully. Durden is the idealized "id," he does what he wants, when he wants, while wearing wide 1970s ties. Well, who wouldn’t want that? When our Everyman gets home and finds his Condiments in pieces on the pavement, Tyler Durden is the one he calls. Sure, says Durden over a beer, you can crash with me for awhile. But first you have to hit me. We have to Fight.
. . .
But, it's just a movie, right? Well, a book too. Well, it's also some fan Fight Clubs started after seeing the film. Which would not be all that different from "real" Fight Clubs. Well, . . .
Well: let's go online and do some research. In its early days, the internet, and then later the world wide web, was touted as exactly this kind of decentralized yet coordinated anonymous network, a forum for the democratic dissemination of ideas, a perfect vehicle for (information about) effective anarchist action. Yet its early promise seemed cut short when it was sent to military school to learn to behave better — well, ok, it was born a military brat after all — and emerged (to mix more metaphors) as just another bit of urban real estate, another space colonized by advertising, another place where relationship and communication could be forced into an economic straitjacket. But it had been imperfectly socialized. The pressure to conform split its personality, and the first impish, less controlled persona still peeks out from time to time, not always announcing its presence loudly, but persisting nonetheless. Check @prjctmayhem on Twitter, or look up rtmark, or Google "culture-jamming."
Culture-jamming is often, although not necessarily, political. But the culture-jamming of Fight Club is most definitely political. A hard-nosed socio-economic critique wrapped in a mystery inside a comedy, the implications of Fight Club will stay with you long after you leave the theater. The critique reaches both “out,” to the financial system and the culture at large, and “in,” to what you feel, why you act, and who you think you are.
Go see the film. And then go back to your Condo and Condiments. Or, you know, not . . ."