Tyler Durden (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh_ooc2008-08-20 09:09 am
tyler_gone) wrote in fandomhigh_ooc2008-08-20 09:09 am
Entry tags:
Spotlight on Fandoms: Fight Club
Hi, yes, this is three days late.
..Sorry?
Anyhow, this is a story about Chuck Palahniuk. Back in the mid-'90s, or so the story goes, he was a wannabe writer out in the Pacific Northwest, trying to get some short stories published.
And he kept getting rejection slips back that said, thanks, but this is too dark. Too disturbing. No one wants to read this.
In revenge or as catharsis, he started writing the most disturbing shit he could think of, based on the craziest stories his friends told him.
...and it freaking sold. And, more germanely for this, those short stories turned into the book and movie called Fight Club.
It's hard to talk about something that's as much in the culture as Fight Club. If you like it, you don't need me to tell you why it's brilliant and crazy and funny and true; if you haven't seen it, odds are you think it's too violent/macho/nihilistic for you, and you won't see it anyhow.
And then, of course, there's the fact the first rule is that you don't talk about it.
But let me break that rule and try anyhow. I'm going to combine the book (1996, excellent) and the movie (1999, more excellent yet) in this write-up because the movie's very faithful. All the best lines are Palahniuk's, and while some plot points are altered, they're all either fairly minor or changes for the better.
The Narrator: Our POV character, aka Edward Norton, aka Jack or Joe. (Which is pretty obviously not his name, in my humble opinion, but it's what most people use because of the repeated "I am Joe's/Jack's broken heart/complete lack of surprise/etc." in canon -- a running reference to a series of weird "Reader's Digest" articles from the '60s -- and it's easier than calling him "um, that guy." The props department on the movie and the script also used the name Jack.) Jack/UTG has a boring little life, with the perfect IKEA home environment, a job coordinating recalls for car manufacturers, and a whopping case of insomnia that he's been going to support group meetings to fight. (He feels like the people at them are the only ones who really listen.) His dad's remote, there's no mention of other family, and basically he is one lonely guy. All of which leads him to...
Marla Singer: Marla is sad and confused and angry and bitter and unpredictable and suicidal in a “cry for help” way. She also likes to hang out at support group meetings, though she says it's because it's cheaper than the movies. Basically, she's a mess. But also awesome, and the narrator has a huge thing for her that he would deny until his dying day. It quickly seems to become moot anyhow, as Marla is sleeping with ...
Tyler Durden: Okay, technically Tyler Durden is a figment of the narrator's imagination, but shhh, you don't find that out until almost two hours into the movie. Tyler is a fantasy creation -- a hot anarchist. As he tells the narrator, "I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in every way that you are not." He's also basically a psychopath who wants to blow up a bunch of buildings as a way of defeating the corporate status quo. Um. Nobody's perfect?
The Space Monkeys: A bunch of guys who buy into Tyler's nihilist philosophy and like to beat the crap out of each other. The most important one is Bob. Bob is a big, kinda dumb, gentle guy who meets the narrator in a testicular cancer support group and later gets sucked into Fight Club on his own. He's kind of the heart of the story, as much as it has one, and his loss when he gets shot by a cop on a Project Mayhem mission is devastating.
Our narrator is living his life when he gets horrible insomnia. A doctor rather flippantly tells him to go to support groups to see people with real problems.
He ... goes. As you do. And it works, it's great, he can sleep, until Marla Singer "ruins everything," as the narrator informs us. She does this by doing exactly what he does -- shows up to support groups for diseases she doesn't have. She's there, being fake, so the narrator realizes he's fake, and then he can't cry and can't sleep and it's all quite traumatic if you're him. They talk and split up the week so they won't both be at the same meetings, but he's still annoyed to know she's out there.
Then on a business trip he meets Tyler Durden, who he considers an interesting "single-serving friend." When the narrator gets home, he finds out his condo has blown up and calls Tyler from a pay phone. Tyler takes him out for drinks and, at the end of the night, tells the narrator he can crash with Tyler, on one condition: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."
A few false starts ("You hit me in the ear!"), and he starts to find the beauty and catharsis in fighting. He moves into Tyler's dilapidated mansion and they become best friends and soap manufacturers, as their therapeutic fights attract onlookers and expand into Fight Club. As the narrator tells us, “It was right on everyone's face. Tyler and I just made it visible. It was in the tip of everyone's tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.”
So the narrator and Tyler are both living to fight until Tyler starts to get other ideas. Fight Club expands into Project Mayhem, and looks less like amateur boxing and more like terrorism, with homework assignments quickly moving from “start a fight with a stranger and lose” to “destroy a chain coffee bar.” And while the narrator is a more than willing participant for a long time, he starts to freak out when he realizes Fight Club has moved onto the kind of things that get people killed. There’s a confrontation and a car crash, the loss of a friend, and then Tyler seems to take off. Our narrator is left to follow him by flying from city to city, trying to figure out what the hell the guy was doing.
Eventually, he learns that he is Tyler Durden. There’s another confrontation as he grapples with this, and then it’s home to Delaware to try to end the mission he knows is about to destroy half the city – and save Marla’s life.
I can’t spoil the very end of the movie except to say it is much better than the book.
Because David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk are both geniuses.
Because Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are both at their best in the film as they play ego and id.
Because I’m kind of doubting we’ll see too many pro-anarchy black comedies in the near future; 1999 may have been almost the last year they could have gotten away with this.
Because Meat Loaf is a better actor than you would ever expect.
because I don't like violent movies as a rule, and the violence in this one works for me.
Because almost every line in the script is quotable.
Because you’ve always secretly kind of wanted to see what would happen if you let go of everything, stopped trying to create or acquire, and let yourself destroy.
The trailer:
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)
Official Site: http://www.foxmovies.com/fightclub/
Palahniuk’s official site: http://chuckpalahniuk.net/
The film and book are both in print and widely available. You can get a two-disk special edition of the movie for $9.49 on Amazon right now, which is what I have,
And remember, with enough soap, you can blow up the world.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
..Sorry?
Anyhow, this is a story about Chuck Palahniuk. Back in the mid-'90s, or so the story goes, he was a wannabe writer out in the Pacific Northwest, trying to get some short stories published.
And he kept getting rejection slips back that said, thanks, but this is too dark. Too disturbing. No one wants to read this.
In revenge or as catharsis, he started writing the most disturbing shit he could think of, based on the craziest stories his friends told him.
...and it freaking sold. And, more germanely for this, those short stories turned into the book and movie called Fight Club.
It's hard to talk about something that's as much in the culture as Fight Club. If you like it, you don't need me to tell you why it's brilliant and crazy and funny and true; if you haven't seen it, odds are you think it's too violent/macho/nihilistic for you, and you won't see it anyhow.
And then, of course, there's the fact the first rule is that you don't talk about it.
But let me break that rule and try anyhow. I'm going to combine the book (1996, excellent) and the movie (1999, more excellent yet) in this write-up because the movie's very faithful. All the best lines are Palahniuk's, and while some plot points are altered, they're all either fairly minor or changes for the better.
The Narrator: Our POV character, aka Edward Norton, aka Jack or Joe. (Which is pretty obviously not his name, in my humble opinion, but it's what most people use because of the repeated "I am Joe's/Jack's broken heart/complete lack of surprise/etc." in canon -- a running reference to a series of weird "Reader's Digest" articles from the '60s -- and it's easier than calling him "um, that guy." The props department on the movie and the script also used the name Jack.) Jack/UTG has a boring little life, with the perfect IKEA home environment, a job coordinating recalls for car manufacturers, and a whopping case of insomnia that he's been going to support group meetings to fight. (He feels like the people at them are the only ones who really listen.) His dad's remote, there's no mention of other family, and basically he is one lonely guy. All of which leads him to...
Marla Singer: Marla is sad and confused and angry and bitter and unpredictable and suicidal in a “cry for help” way. She also likes to hang out at support group meetings, though she says it's because it's cheaper than the movies. Basically, she's a mess. But also awesome, and the narrator has a huge thing for her that he would deny until his dying day. It quickly seems to become moot anyhow, as Marla is sleeping with ...
Tyler Durden: Okay, technically Tyler Durden is a figment of the narrator's imagination, but shhh, you don't find that out until almost two hours into the movie. Tyler is a fantasy creation -- a hot anarchist. As he tells the narrator, "I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in every way that you are not." He's also basically a psychopath who wants to blow up a bunch of buildings as a way of defeating the corporate status quo. Um. Nobody's perfect?
The Space Monkeys: A bunch of guys who buy into Tyler's nihilist philosophy and like to beat the crap out of each other. The most important one is Bob. Bob is a big, kinda dumb, gentle guy who meets the narrator in a testicular cancer support group and later gets sucked into Fight Club on his own. He's kind of the heart of the story, as much as it has one, and his loss when he gets shot by a cop on a Project Mayhem mission is devastating.
Our narrator is living his life when he gets horrible insomnia. A doctor rather flippantly tells him to go to support groups to see people with real problems.
He ... goes. As you do. And it works, it's great, he can sleep, until Marla Singer "ruins everything," as the narrator informs us. She does this by doing exactly what he does -- shows up to support groups for diseases she doesn't have. She's there, being fake, so the narrator realizes he's fake, and then he can't cry and can't sleep and it's all quite traumatic if you're him. They talk and split up the week so they won't both be at the same meetings, but he's still annoyed to know she's out there.
Then on a business trip he meets Tyler Durden, who he considers an interesting "single-serving friend." When the narrator gets home, he finds out his condo has blown up and calls Tyler from a pay phone. Tyler takes him out for drinks and, at the end of the night, tells the narrator he can crash with Tyler, on one condition: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."
A few false starts ("You hit me in the ear!"), and he starts to find the beauty and catharsis in fighting. He moves into Tyler's dilapidated mansion and they become best friends and soap manufacturers, as their therapeutic fights attract onlookers and expand into Fight Club. As the narrator tells us, “It was right on everyone's face. Tyler and I just made it visible. It was in the tip of everyone's tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.”
So the narrator and Tyler are both living to fight until Tyler starts to get other ideas. Fight Club expands into Project Mayhem, and looks less like amateur boxing and more like terrorism, with homework assignments quickly moving from “start a fight with a stranger and lose” to “destroy a chain coffee bar.” And while the narrator is a more than willing participant for a long time, he starts to freak out when he realizes Fight Club has moved onto the kind of things that get people killed. There’s a confrontation and a car crash, the loss of a friend, and then Tyler seems to take off. Our narrator is left to follow him by flying from city to city, trying to figure out what the hell the guy was doing.
Eventually, he learns that he is Tyler Durden. There’s another confrontation as he grapples with this, and then it’s home to Delaware to try to end the mission he knows is about to destroy half the city – and save Marla’s life.
I can’t spoil the very end of the movie except to say it is much better than the book.
Because David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk are both geniuses.
Because Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are both at their best in the film as they play ego and id.
Because I’m kind of doubting we’ll see too many pro-anarchy black comedies in the near future; 1999 may have been almost the last year they could have gotten away with this.
Because Meat Loaf is a better actor than you would ever expect.
because I don't like violent movies as a rule, and the violence in this one works for me.
Because almost every line in the script is quotable.
Because you’ve always secretly kind of wanted to see what would happen if you let go of everything, stopped trying to create or acquire, and let yourself destroy.
The trailer:
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)
Official Site: http://www.foxmovies.com/fightclub/
Palahniuk’s official site: http://chuckpalahniuk.net/
The film and book are both in print and widely available. You can get a two-disk special edition of the movie for $9.49 on Amazon right now, which is what I have,
And remember, with enough soap, you can blow up the world.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
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