Fight Club: An Analogy
Sub-Ed Note: Contains Spoilers
The first rule is, you don’t talk about Fight Club.
It’s a bit astounding that it took me almost 20 years of living with a film buff dad and a film buff older sister to get around to seeing Fight Club. I’ll admit I have one of the worst film repertoires of the Western world, but even I think I waited too long to watch this one.
The second rule is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
Did you know that Fight Club was a novel before it was a film? I don’t mean to sound condescending, but it seems like one of those things that slipped through the cracks. As with most film adaptations, the book was better, although to be honest I didn’t expect it to be. I guess, because the film had such bigger press than the novel, it never occurred to me that I’d enjoy the latter more. Whether that comes down to my inability to interpret people when they’re not explained to me on paper, or whether it’s a true reflection on the material itself, I can’t really judge, but ultimately, the book got something to click in my mind. It verbalised and summarised the thoughts that had been circulating aimlessly in my head for months, or years even.
Rule number three, if someone shouts “stop”, goes limp or taps out, the fight’s over.
I’m waiting, if not hoping, for my Tyler Durden. I want my own Fight Club, my own version of something that makes the tedium of living little more than background noise, while I look forward to the one thing that can get me out of bed in the morning.
The two things that any organism aims for, survival and reproduction, come easy. Being able to do these without struggle is what gives us our top-of-the-food-chain status, and in doing so separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
In a First World country, it is actually more difficult to consciously die than it is to survive, and for the relatively small percentage of infertile people, there are countless treatments and alternative options. We’ve come so far now that it is within our right to choose not to reproduce, and similarly we can, if we really wanted, choose not to survive.
With that, we lost our purpose. When survival and reproduction is no longer our greatest chore, we create our own rules to follow instead. The social norms of an education, a job, a roof over our heads and avoiding the poverty line. Our own individual meanings-of-life all form around aims that tie in with the same pattern, which we only follow because of the rules we created in the first place.
We do it for the sake of doing; now that human evolution has reached a grinding halt and we’re growing stale as a species. There really isn’t a point, until you find your Tyler or your Fight Club to give you one.
The fourth rule is there are only two guys to a fight.
Remember in Fight Club, when Ed Norton says he’s wishing for a plane crash? Just for that something to happen, to shake the earth so that we’d have to abide to our instinct and the things that do actually have a point, rather than the rules we made up to satisfy ourselves. Instead of a plane crash, Ed’s character gets Tyler. The two guys in a fight, one desperately tired of but still tied in with social expectation, the other kicking and punching and biting his way into a world he actually wouldn’t mind living in. Ed wants something more, but it’s not possible. Tyler will find it or die trying.
Rule five, one fight at a time.
There’s always that part that wants you to just stop, to stop following because you know you’re only doing it because you’re expected to. Why bother, all that effort and emotion and pain for something that you don’t really want anyway? But you wake up and you know you have work to go to work, and you could not go, but what if one day you see the point again, and you’ve thrown it all away? So you get up and you do your nothing job and live your nothing life, because you’ve not really got a choice but to follow.
The sixth rule is no shirt, no shoes.
Have you ever stopped feeling for so long, that you can’t remember whether you’ve ever felt anything? It’s as if even memories are tainted with the characteristic numbness, which you read about in those first-person accounts of depression. I remember caring about things before, but looking back it resembles naivety more than it does genuine emotion. It’s the rawness of having nothing to care about, which allows you to think about why it’s so ridiculous to keep on pretending that you want to be an office clerk for the rest of your life. When you care about starting a family or being able to afford things that make you happy, that’s when you appreciate your employment or your university degree. When there’s no happiness to care about, there’s room to realise the only reason you’re doing what you’re doing is because, well, that’s what people do.
Rule seven, fights will go on as long as they have to.
Ed Norton’s character, when he realised who Tyler really was, knew it had to end eventually. Being in Fight Club saved his life, until it didn’t. Being aware of the tedium drove Ed’s character to create Tyler and Fight Club, and then the awareness drove Tyler and Fight Club to kill Ed’s character. Being aware of the absolute inanity of it all goes from enlightening to self-deprecating, and then to straight-up destructive too fast to grab a hold of, and it’s all too easy to not bother. It’s not like there’s a willingness to die, but a willingness to no longer exist. To die is an effort in itself, and a tremendous one at that. To have death happen to you is easy. You’re not to blame, the decision is out of your hands; it either happens or it doesn’t, but if it does at least you don’t have to concern yourself with it any more.
The eighth and final rule: If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
I don’t consider suicide a valid option. There are people I care about; there is always that innate desire to survive, which I probably couldn’t fight. It’s not something I plan on acting on, it’s not something that I ever really consider, partly because the irony of the effort and energy it would take from me and my family is almost laughable. I’m not suicidal, I’m exhausted.
And other than exhausted, I feel nothing.
If you or someone you know has been affected by the issues in this article, you can talk to Meic, the free national advocacy and advice helpline for young people in Wales. Meic are waiting to hear from you, all day, every day of the year.
Related: Fight Club: A Modern Day Classic
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1 Comment – Post a comment
Judith Shakespeare
Commented 33 months ago - 24th August 2013 - 00:24am
I've wanted to comment on this for so long but wanted to wait till I had watched the film due to the spoilers warning at the start.
I love this article. Really, really love it. The structure of it especially and the way you've broken it down. I can relate to a lot you have said in it to be honest. I was thinking about how ridiculous modern life is getting myself the other day. We create more solutions or things or arguments to constantly obsess over - anything, anything at all to make our lives meaningful, exciting and thrilling. Because it never seems to be enough.
But yeah, awesome article.