This week--you need to compose one more blog entry on Fight Club, by Thursday at the start of the class. Here are the topics I gave you in class on Monday, but please feel free to write about whatever may move you as an artist, person, bystander, punching bag--
1.) Marla—what is the role/function of Marla? Is she real, and how does her lie reflect the narrators lie? How is Marla the problem that will not heal, will our narrator not let it heal?
2.) Tyler muses, “the things we own end up owning us…I say lets evolve.” Is Tyler suggesting that evolution take place by society taking a step back? Is this similar to Thoreau’s notion of “simplify, simplify, simplify” or Dostoevsky’s arithmetic that 2 X 2 =5?
3.) “One can make all sorts of explosive items with simple household things.” Like what? Again, why soap? An obvious question but an answer that may be hard to articulate.
4.) Why have pornography, why have fantasy, is this necessary—is it a good thing? Burgess in the introduction to A Clockwork Orange writes, “I enjoyed ripping and raping by proxy.” Thus, are we all clockwork oranges composed of good and evil, grinding opposition, do we all have impish and evil desires and should we find a way to act on them in healthy ways?
Let me know if you have any questions....lastly, the posts as of late have been great, keep up the exemplary work.
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When we were watching Pan's Labyrinth, we discussed in class that the creature with eyes in his hands was something in the third world created by the mind of the young girl that travels into that third world. It's a creature of her imagination that shows the bad, what she fears. "Bad" creatures can also be found in everyone's third world. These creatures can be mirror images of the individual and what they fear themselves becoming. It's almost like an evil twin sort of. The narrator's evil twin/"bad" third world creature is represented by Marla.
Marla is not a real character. To be honest, I don't think Tyler is either. She's created within the narrator's mind, within his own third world. She starts appearing everywhere he is, until he confronts her. Once confronted, she disappears for awhile. It's like he talks to his evil side and shoos it away for awhile, while he is fraternizing with his "id", Tyler. The narrator goes through the worst period of time while experiencing Tyler and Marla commencing in sexual intercourse. I see this as the interaction of two parts of him. It is a conflict between his "id", his spontaneity, and that of his fears/"bad" side. She is normally dressed in dark clothing, smoking, and almost always negative. She's like a side to him he doesn't want to see, tries to shut out, but comes back. It's odd that she is a female, since he is a male, but this is also a key that she is part of him. I see this because when marriage takes place, male and female are said to "complete" each other; they turn into each other’s halves. Marla is half of the narrator.
She's a problem that will not heal because she represents the narrator’s problems. He can never really get rid of her if she's thought as his other half and something that completes who he is. The only way he might be able to get rid of her is if he, Tyler, and Marla can come together as one being to offset each other, creating a "new" narrator. By having all components, he would be complete and less troubled. Marla is controlled by Tyler, the "id" suppressing the "bad side" with the narrator still as the "ego", the rational part to the whole being.
Just to warn you: I have no idea where this post is going so I apologize beforehand. I'm taking the feel free to write about whatever so just be prepared. However, before I start is there meaning in the Krispy Kreme donuts that keep coming up or did they just pay a ton to be in there because there's been at least 3 appearances?
So my journey started off by looking for inspiration from quotes on imdb.com (my favorite website ever) and it reminded me of a quote said earlier on that I really liked. It's when our narrator confronts Marla about faking and going to all the support groups. "When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you instead of just...instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?" It just really makes me think and recognize how much we all do this. I even include myself in this because I would guess I do it too. I don't think we all try to do it it just happens. We aren't really focused on what that person is saying we are focused on what we are going to say. When Ed asks Tyler what he does for a living and Tyler replies Why? So you can pretend you're interested? I think we do it not because we are interested but because we want the person to ask of back and we can talk about ourselves. It's only when we know that that person may be saying their last words, we really listen and take it in. Not only do I think our narrator goes to these support groups to release emotion but because of this, because people actually listen and care about what you are saying. I think it's the way we've been brought up and society, which leads me to question 2, I guess.
If Tyler is suggesting we take a step back, I don't think it's wise. Yes, it's a good idea to change the way we live and not make it so materialist, however, there are ways to do that without going back. I think if we take a step back and try to simplify everything, it's only going to make everything worse because we'll always remember when we had certain things to make our lives easier. I don't think it's about making away those things, I think it's about changing out views on them so we don't become dependent on them. I don't think living like Tyler is the best way to go about this. If we all did this, we'd probably end up going back and just complaining about how horrible that time was, similar to the Thoreau project. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we don't really need to simplify but we need to just change our outlooks on things.
Ok, you win, I'll answer the pornography option.
So pornography does appear a lot in this film. This idea of self indulgence is recurring… in the beginning of the film, instead of reading a porno magazine on the toilet, the narrator is reading a furniture catalog. This is to show that indulging yourself in material possessions such as furniture that you do not need is equivalent to self indulgence in sexual pleasure.
Later Tyler says "Self improvement is masturbation. Now self destruction…" this ties into the self completion through buying furniture idea that popped up in the beginning because they are so similar here. Each action is self serving. If these are the same, then perhaps what we are all doing, this so called "self improvement" of trying to obtain useless items is no better than sitting in front of porn and getting off. This is the main driving force of our lives; the need to provide ourselves with pleasure, whether it is through Swedish furniture or American porn. Fight Club is also one of these needs because the people fighting are also partaking in self indulgence, it is self destruction and self improvement at the same time, because although they are allowing themselves to be hurt physically, the pain becomes a "white ball of healing light". I want to say more so badly, but it runs into other parts of the film involving project mayhem and I don't want to spoil the movie, but they realize this; "you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake, you are part of the same decaying matter as everything else. we are all part of the same compost heap." and "you have to give up you have to realize that one day you will die, until then, you are useless."
I am going to write on question 4-
When we look at one another, we basically look simple. Eyes, ears, mouth, torso, legs, etc. however when we wonder in deeper the eyes aren’t just eyes they become the Optical System containing the cornea, aqueous, iris, lens, etc. Looking at the outside is simple, it always is, however when we choose to go deeper into something we find something so much more complicated. Pornography exists people because its something we all know so well but at the same time we are so foreign to. We all have the same body parts its just if we are in the inventory room or on window display. This obsession with pornography stimulates the senses and becomes an addiction; this is also true with fighting. We must notice in the movie that our main characters are men and the Marla the crazy chick is misplaced and trying to kill herself. “Real-life fight clubs are the male version of the girls who cut themselves…They want to feel differently. They want to get hit, they want to feel something real.”(from the USA Today article) this obsession with fights is much like obsession with sex or pornography. Our main characters are in their mid/late 20’s they yearn for excitement and at that age sitting at a computer all day looking at pron isn’t always the ‘coolest’ thing. They have to be creative the fight club and the pornography are one in the same. They are an adrenaline rush that may be short or long. It becomes an obsession, which ultimately leads as an escape from reality.
I made my own topic, writing about the use of cancer reference in the film.
With its repeated references to various types of cancer, “Fight Club” portrays an important theme of sickness and human suffering that acts as a link between characters. As first seen in the support group for testicular cancer, people have the ability to bond over their struggles with the disease, though the narrator has yet to experience cancer himself- but the lack of a medical, classifiable cancer does not make the narrator invulnerable to it. “I wasn’t host to cancer or blood parasites,” explains the narrator during one of his meetings, not then realizing that he is host to a stronger cancer than any support group could ever relieve him of. The narrator’s cancer is Tyler Durden.
Cancer is random and unpredictable- a Russian roulette of genes and mitosis. One day it pops up, and gives its host body a nonchalant greeting before reeking havoc on their cells. While family lineage can play a pivotal role in whether or not one’s body must prepare for this unwanted guest, it is still primarily a matter of chance, an idea only intensified by the fact that anything from cell phones to nail polish have proven to cause cancer. For the narrator, insomnia and depression proved to be carcinogenic, because both of these things lead to his chance “meeting” with Tyler on the plane, a “single-serving friend” who stayed far over his assigned usage.
Cancer, explained in the most simplest of terms, is an unrestrained reproducing of cells, mitosis on speed. The narrator eventually gets to this point of having no control over the effect of Tyler, but the process is gradual- just as cancer is often a slow, drawn out sickness. Early he is seen merely meeting his cancer, getting acquainted with it. Then Tyler’s presence becomes stronger, as it first begins to control the narrator’s actions by sleeping with Marla. Nearing the end of his disease, the narrator is almost entirely controlled by the cancer that has successfully multiplied within him, getting to the point where Tyler is dictating everything he and his fellow fight club members do. This shows that this Tyler cancer isn’t exclusive, it operates on a larger scale. First popping up in the narrator, little pieces of Tyler begin to form with in other members, an idea he summarizes by saying: “ Listen up maggots, you are not special, you are not a beautiful or a unique snowflake, you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” The narrator explains that “Tyler built himself an army,” and with this overwhelming spread of cancer, we can’t help but question what could be a cure.
Everyone has heard success stories. Bald heads and colored ribbons remind us of chemotherapy, the best solution we’ve gotten so far. Though it can be successful, chemotherapy alone is a painful process that literally strips down the patient (as shown with the hair loss) in order to remove one thing. Finding out who Tyler really is becomes the narrator’s form of chemotherapy- it’s shocking and leads to a painful process of putting together a life he’s been living through two sides. However, within this chaos, there is still the hope that acknowledging Tyler as a cancer can succeed in taming him, if not removing him entirely. But here’s where the catch lies: chemotherapy doesn’t have a 100% success rate. It can work, it can partially work, or it can fail completely, but in any situation, there is still the threat that the cancer might pop up again. It’s a less-than-optimistic outlook, but the only real freedom from cancer is within death, or as Tyler says it: “It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.” If the chemotherapy gives him enough strength, the narrator must kill Tyler, and only then will become healthy and “free.”
This is to #2, merged with the one on soap.
It may not be a coincidence that America, the most economically successful country, also has the highest rate of depression. To me, that's an indication of our wealth growing past the point of benefiting us, and onto the point of hurting us. Thoreau once said that “We have become tools to our tools," similar to the line from Fight Club, “The things we own end up owning us.” In Fight Club, Tyler urges us to evolve and become less dependent on our tools, and more dependent on ourselves. He introduces a completely different way to measure evolution. Tyler doesn't measure evolution by wealth or advances in technolgy, but in how far you’ve evolved into who you want to be. The only way to advance is by stepping back, examining your existence, and then taking charge of your life. It has nothing to do with the car you drive, the neighborhood you live in, or the possesions you have accumulated. If you aren’t doing what you want to be doing then you haven’t advanced, you’ve failed.
Throughout Fight Club, soap, “the yardstick of civilization,” is used to show how far the narrator has taken charge of his life (evolved). Soap is made from human fat, and represent and endless amount of possibilities, yet it all depends on how you use it. Most people stick to the typical 2x2=4, and use it simply as a household cleaning product. At the beginning of Fight Club, the narrator uses soap in the same way that everyone uses it. During the scene where the narrator is listing of the material possessions in his room, he makes note of the sample hotel soap in the bathroom. Not only is the soap used the typical way, but it is also small, just a sample. He hasn’t found himself yet, so everything in his life is just a sample; he is a tourist. Then later on he meets Tyler, who makes and sells soap. He carries his soap carefully stacked in a brief case, in the same way that someone would carry money. This shows what Tyler values. He doesn’t care about what money can buy, but he cares about the possibilities of soap (human life). Tyler hands the narrator a business card, and then he notes that “This is how I met—Tyler Durden.” But since he is Tyler Durden, this is how he met himself, his true self. Tyler is who the narrator wants to be and who he will slowly evolve into by the end of the movie. His transformation into Tyler is a time where the narrator discovers and evolves into his inner-being.
The narrator's transformation begins by destroying everything from his outside world through the use of soap. On the plane Tyler tells the narrator that “one can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items…If one were so inclined.” This is saying that we don’t have to be passive, we can take action. We have two choices: to take hold of our lives or to be household items. The destruction of the narrator’s house with dynamite is the first step to becoming more than just a household item, more than just a meaningless copy. When the narrator is suspected by the police of causing the homemade-explosion, Tyler replies “Tell him you fuckin’ did it,” which makes it more evident that he did, in fact, cause the explosion. He caused his own destruction, because he is the one in control of his life. We are the ones behind the wheel, and we can decide if we want to crash or we want to keep following obediently along in the procession of traffic. The narrator decides that he wants to crash, because crashing is the only way to clean himself of his dependence on material items and the outside world. After this he must enter within, which is initiated through the use of lye, the essential ingredient of soap. At one point Tyler informs him of the discovery of soap: “People found clothes got cleaner when washed at a certain point in the river. Human sacrifices were once made on the hills above this river. Water permeated the ashes to create lye.” Lye + Body Fat=Soap Lye represents sacrifice, energy, taking control. Body fat represents the human body, the instrument we use to go through life. Together they form one of the most versatile substances: soap. It all depends on how you use it; you create the limits. If you want you can stay within the rigid structure, and use soap in the same way everyone does, then you can. But I think Fight Club urges us to step back and examining the many ways we can use soap. We can do anything with our lives but the key ingredient is lye: action. Action is the only way to control our existence, the only way we can evolve as individuals, and society.
Numero dos
It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to turn back the clocks so dramatically and act like society was so long ago. This is simply because we are aware of this media centered and materialistic society unlike they were. Evolution isn’t returning to what times were once like, instead it’s developing new mentalities incorporating all past experiences. Evolving by having society simply taking a step back isn’t really evolution, because it’s based on denial instead of building. It’s not enough to make an attempt at an old, less materialistic society, we must acknowledge what makes us this materialistic, and then attack the issue from the inside in this way.
Based on Tyler’s methods, I don’t think it’s far fetched to assume that he wants to break people down so they can build themselves up in a new way, not keep them down. This is how I relate his methods for channeling emotions to this quote. Tyler makes people acknowledge their lowest of lows, and forces them to tackle their emotions. In Fight Club, he says, “It’s only after we’ve lost everything, are we free to do anything,” which very much sums up his methods. Tyler says that we need to have “premature enlightenments” about our own material possessions, and then we can realize how they negatively affect us. We cannot however, be able to avoid them forever, and part of the continuation of this enlightenment is also dealing with these materials in a new way. Hopefully then, with time, since your mentality has changed, you can make more dramatic of an outside change and then you can eventually get rid of all of those things that you acknowledge aren’t important. First though, you must have the tools necessary to evolve, and that’s the knowledge, not the action that may result from it. After all, getting rid of your car, throwing away your diamond necklaces, or burning your couch means nothing if that’s the only statement you’re making, and you don’t truly no why you’ve done it. We need to be aware of what those actions mean to us, and then why we’ve done them, not try to understand after the act.
In the movie Tyler says, “Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may,” to our narrator. The part of this that strikes me the most is the part about never being complete, and how we often force that because we want it to happen so badly. We do this of course, by obtaining material possessions to fill the voids caused by our emotional problems. Tyler says that if we stop trying to be complete, then we are just trying to stop being complete from materialistic items. Once we accept ourselves as incomplete by removing certain extravagances from our lives, we can “let the chips fall where they may.” He encourages us to look around and observe whether the absence of sofa units, or strine green stripe patterns, is above an absence of internal awareness.
By using extreme measures, Tyler not only encourages, but forces people to take a step back and examine their lives. He forces them to physically strip themselves, to strip themselves of material possessions. Then, if they are left naked, and have nothing to show for themselves once their belongings are removed, they need to evolve. It is up to us whether we choose to load ourselves with materials, in order to feel clothed and complete, or we can clothe ourselves with what truly matters in life. The point is that the option is there for people to evolve, they don’t have to stay one step back forever.
This is kind of ironic, because I’m listening to a song that has a line that relates to this. The song says, “How I wish I could surrender my soul/ Shed the clothes that become my skin/ See the liar that burns within my needing.” Clothes, and other materials, become so linked to us that they are our skin. In Fight Club, Tyler says something like, “You are the same decaying matter as everyone else.” These clothes are not our skin, the skin is the same decaying matter as everyone else’s, so putting ourselves above everyone through materials does not help us, and will not serve as any protection from us decaying.
If we do not evolve, we will have a new generation with clothes for skin, and little substance inside it. Tyler is telling us that as a society, we do indeed, need to take a second to step back, because this move is necessary for us to shed the clothes that have become our skin. Evolution can only be evolution after the inclusion of forward progress, so once you have moved back, you can choose to move forward by making your skin something that isn’t materialistic.
Thoreau believed that the more possessions you own, the less they reflect you, because you end up just purchasing them for the heck of it and you can’t really take ownership of them. This I can relate to Tyler’s point, especially the statement, “You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” Tyler is saying that we reach so far outside of ourselves in order to identify ourselves, which seems dumb once you think about it. Thoreau argues that when you simplify to materials you must have, then you acknowledge what they mean even more to you, because you need them to survive. So then, they define and shape you much more than another nameless extravagance.
How I relate Tyler’s message to Dostoyevsky’s 2 x 2=5 is the element of thought involved. Looking back at our class notes, we mentioned how 2 x 2=5 requires thought, because it is the “natural” way that often goes unquestioned. In this way, not letting our things own us definitely requires the thought, which is involved in this step being taken back. Only then can we evolve and possibly reject that we are our material possessions, just like we can reject that 2 x 2=4. Once we escape the one definition, 4, of the 2 x 2 problem, we also escape the definition of us based on how much stuff we own. We have to tweak our own definitions to fit us, and not to fit society.
If it hasn’t become clear already, I don’t think Tyler wants us to take a permanent step back by saying that quote, but rather take a temporary one followed by an “enlightened” step forward.
NUMBER 3
Tyler Durden notes during his first encounter with the narrator that this innocuous substance can be used as a weapon if the ingredients are mixed slightly differently. I believe this is a metaphor for not just the narrator but all the men who participate in Fight Club. Before Tyler came into their lives, they were all harmless individuals. Yet now they are wreaking havoc upon the city and one another. It's not that Tyler has turned them into new people; he's just stirred their inner chemistry a bit with the Fight Clubs. Like the lye simmering on the stove, Tyler has boiled these men's disenchanted views of society to the point where they are bubbling over.
I don't believe that the irony concerning Tyler's profession is unintentional: soap, a product most often used to scrub oneself clean, can also be used for destruction if mixed with nitric acid. This is linked with Tyler's master plan behind the Fight Club and Project Mayhem: a societal cleansing. The nihilistic gospel he preaches and the army he creates of clean cut, uniformed men all prove his desire to wipe out the stain of materialism and consumerism.
The making of soap ties in with Tyler's belief in the necessity of human sacrifice. Lye was first discovered when human sacrificed were tossed in the river. The combination of water, burnt ashes, and human fat created the ultimate tool of cleaning. The basic formula has remained the same for thousands of years, despite numerous advances in technology. In the same way that human sacrifice is necessary for soap, Tyler insists that human sacrifice is necessary for the realization of a better society. "Without sacrifice, without death, we would have nothing," he tells the narrator. Or as he says more callously concerning the death of Bob, "You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet." (A metaphor that doesn't really make much sense if you think about it, because an omelet is composed entirely of broken eggs. Is Tyler implying here that the solution is we all have to be dead for his master plan to succeed? Or perhaps its more of a spiritual death, a crack-up if you will. "First you have to give up, he says." "First, you have to know that someday, you are going to die. Until you know that, you will be useless.")
If anyone has any good ideas on what Tyler's definition of soap ("the yardstick of civilization") might mean, I'd love to hear them. I have been trying literally for days to come up with some sort of logical metaphor or reason, but I've got nothing.
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Complete Sidenote: Maybe I'm just looking into things too much, but has anyone else noticed how much the narrator's lifestyle is reverting back to what it used to be? Tyler insists that he has changed the narrator from dissatisfied to enlightened, but there are many parallels to his former life and the one he leads trying to chase Tyler after he's disappeared. There's the obvious traveling connection -- waking up in one city, falling asleep in another, and spending so much time on planes that you begin to lose track of the destination. The narrator also says that chasing Tyler was like having "perpetual déjà vu," a very similar statement to one he made in his life pre-Tyler, about how "everything's a copy of a copy." The insomnia/dreaming issue is also brought up again. "Was I asleep? Or was I awake?" he repeatedly asks himself. "Is Tyler my bad dream or am I Tyler's?" The fact that the narrator is still so miserable and the life he leads currently mirrors the one he led before indicates that the Fight Club, Project Mayhem, and Planet Tyler in general aren't working for him. The narrator's has tried so hard to reach his center through others like those in the support groups and now Tyler. Yet the only way he can truly break from discontentment, the only way he can truly wake up, is if he seizes the initiative and makes decisions for himself.
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