Fight Club and Plato, a review of philosophy and Brad Pitt’s Physique.
An article came up, “https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/after-rewatching-fight-club-first-time-in-years-i-had-very-different-response-to-1999-movie”
In which the author discusses the famous movie “Fight Club”. Much has been said and discussed about Fight Club, from Brad Pitt’s chiseled physique, to the concept, to the insane ending, that it became such a classic in the annuals of teenagers and young adults in the philosophy of “sticking it to the man” and blowing up credit card/credit score companies.
It’s richness is abound, and I won’t bore you with the recap of the movie that you should absolutely watch if you haven’t seen it, but the author and the article stuck out in my mind in more ways than one. Of course, this is all MY opinion and perspective, my own hubris allows me to tell him he’s misguided, but we’ll get to that.
His article can be summed as thus: He adored the movie in 6th grade, and now that he’s an adult, he sees that Tyler and his gang of radicalists cannot cope with “real” life and therefore perform anarchy as a means of evening the score. He sees the movie having a “satirical tone” that’s plainly understood by the true adults that HAVE to go through life in a similar manner to the protagonist, and Tyler is a whiny baby.
From my perspective even when I first watched the movie, I felt that it was more about the underdeveloped/muting of man’s emotions in society. It’s not fun to commit anarchy for pure anarchy unless you’re a teenager-hence the resonation for that age group at first. It’s also about the soul held hostage, forced by society and jobs to endure endless levels of groupthink, sameness and bureaucratic nightmares.
I think the deeper meaning behind all of it was the fact that most of man’s emotional and physical outbursts were the yearning of the constrained aspect of expected society. To feel pain as it is, push yourself to the limits in a manner-in this case fighting, and find out what you’re missing along the cloud of chaos.
I found that aspect myself before the movie even came out in athletics. To be good in a sport-pushing your physical self and boundaries to exhaustion, a feeling of dangerousness of being alive and exerting yourself to the limits that you possibly are. We are animals, after all, and it’s important knowing that the necessary need for rage, power, explosiveness hinge on a tottering edge within us all. We’ve fought wars, expeditions, pirates, lusting and more in one extent or another, and the movie captures the inner turmoil of one who missed the boat.
If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why we support gladiators, fighting, mma, football and other sports that showcase the aspects of a physical society. It’s because we have that animal inside yearning to come out at some point-no matter HOW it comes out, it eventually rears itself, and in the “real” world often with more dangerous outcomes. Men beat their wives, kill others in road rage, abuse animals and more. That’s quite a leap and concise version, but the self destructive tendencies of a person are pretty evident in just about everywhere you look.
You could argue that we should support sports more, and make them mandatory for youth in order to extinguish those feelings and give a larger sense of perspective in the world today. I leave it to the sociologists to provide evidence.
Edward Norton perfectly encompasses the outer loser and the inner hero Tyler all in one person. Someone who didn’t exercise those demons properly in teenagerhood only to find the bottle as an adult explodes much further both physically and figuratively.