Final paper draft

Heather Evensen

Cline

November 6^th, 2011

The Things You Own, Can Get Expensive

            There are many ways men deal with growing up. Some crave it, and some try to avoid it at all costs, but it happens anyway. Sooner or later it’s time to move out, go to school or find a job, pay rent, get married, have kids, and do laundry every Sunday. Some men have issues with this cookie cutter existence that has become so normal in today’s society. Some men are wondering how much pride they can really have in a house that looks just like the neighbors, or driving a mini van with two kids and a dog in the back seat. Some men are craving a world where things are much different. A place where a man’s worth is based solely on his abilities. A place where the type of car that you drive, the style of clothes that you wear, and the job that you have means absolutely nothing. What matters is your ability to stand up for yourself, to break the mold. Author Chuck Palahniuk created this world in his underground classic Fight Club, and director David Fincher made that world come to life in his film. The story represents consumerism at it best. It shows how generations are becoming lost in a world of IKEA furniture and Gucci underwear, and the dangerous length some will go in order to escape it. 

            Fight Club takes place in a modern society, with an unnamed main character (he will be referred to Jack from now on,). Jack is in his late 20’s, works a good job and lives in a nice apartment. His job has him traveling constantly, forcing him to give in to the little conveniences that come along with travel, “Everywhere I travel…tiny life: single serving sugar, single serving crème, single pad of butter, the microwave cordon blue hobby kit, shampoo and conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap.” (Fight Club). Jack has been trained by repetition to believe that he needs these things. Not just that he needs them for comfort, but that they help shape who he is. He is the guy that travels. His entire existence revolves around this single serving life, or so he thinks. He says:

Like so many others I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. If I saw something clever, like a little coffee table in the shape of a yin yang, I had to have it…I’d flip through the catalogues and wonder, what kind of dining set defines me as a person? (Fight Club)

So he is a drone in society. He does the same thing over and over again every single day, and he doesn’t even like it. He has expensive, handmade dishes in his cupboards but no food in his refrigerator to put on them. He is the perfect example of a modern day consumer. Everything serves a purpose of convenience instead of need, preference instead of function. Then, he comes home from a business trip to find his apartment up in flames. He sees all his belongings strewn out over the parking lot, embarrassed by his empty refrigerator. He begins to struggle with the idea of not having all the things he thought made up who he was. After all, what kind of person could he possibly be without a nice set of flatware? This is when Tyler Durden comes in. Jack’s “other personality”.

            Tyler is everything that Jack is not. While Jack is thin, Tyler is muscular. While Jack is wearing a suit and tie, Tyler is wearing a bright red leather jacket. Jack is an example of a man who has structure and lives on a schedule, while Tyler does what he wants whenever he feels like it. Meeting up with Tyler right after leaving his burning apartment, Jack begins to take on a different mindset, Tyler’s mindset:

Tyler: Do you know what a duvet is?

            Jack: A comforter

Tyler: It’s a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and I know what a   duvet is? Is this essential to our survival? In the hunter-gatherer sense of the word, no. What are we then?

            Jack: Consumers

Tyler: Right. We are consumers. We are byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.   Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines. Television with 500 channels. Some guys name on my underwear. Rogain. Viagra. Allestra.

            Jack: Martha Stewart

Tyler: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all goin down man! So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne Green stripe patterns. I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say lets evolve. Let the chips fall where they may…the things you own, end up owning you. (Fight Club)

Tyler points out how silly they’ve become as men. How all the things that Jack thought shaped him as an individual, actually made him less of an individual. It made him just like every other person who bought the same sofa he bought from IKEA. But how does a man evolve in a consumer driven society? What can he do to save himself? Find another man, and beat the crap out of each other, how could you not feel like more of a man afterwards?

The first fight club was just Tyler and I pounding on each other. It used to be enough that when I came home angry and knowing that my life wasn’t toeing my five-year plan, I could clean my condominium or detail my car. Someday I’d be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and a car…Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. (Palahniuk 49)

Jack and Tyler found just what they needed in bare-knuckle boxing. Not for money, not for sport, but because it made them feel like men. Real men. They were using and perfecting their ancient fight-or-flight instincts, and afterwards, they felt like they could do anything. Like starting an organization called Project Mayhem, and blow up commercial coffee shops, destroy advertisements, and create chaos. James Annesley explains:

Vigorously opposed to consumption in all its forms, Durden is the catalyst for the development of the network of ‘fight clubs’ and the founding of ‘project mayhem’, an anti-capitalist, terrorist organization bent on taking America back to year zero. Dreaming of leather-stockinged heroes from the American past, he seeks to bring down the Sears Tower and leave only wilderness in its place. Central to these ambitions is a very specific image of masculinity that is defined as antithetical to consumption. Where the shop windows of contemporary culture are filled with flimsy dresses and tuxedos, Durden looks to reject these commodities in favour of durable items of clothing that are, one assumes, crafted by manly, unalienated labour. The implication is that real men aspire to things not commodities. (45-46)

So Tyler’s wild attempt at saving his fellow men is to destroy society. Burn the buildings that hold their debt records, and destroy the corporations that crush the self-employed. This, on top of weekly boxing matches in the basements of bars, and all should be right with the world. Annesley continues with:

Exclusively male, the fight clubs promise an escape from ‘ornamental’ masculinity. Fighting, the raw punching of fist on skin, thus becomes both a release from the mundane currents of consumer society and a visceral critique of that society. These fights, in contrast to the seemingly false images peddled by advertising and the media, are presented as moments of truth, authenticity and reality. Durden’s claim is that ‘You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club.’ (47)

There is now an entire army of men all over the country following Tyler’s antics. The irony is that they are supposed to be escaping the mold. They are promised a life more full and natural as men, yet they are doing nothing more than Tyler’s dirty work. They’ve simply traded one routine for another. “Getting fired, Tyler says, is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives.” (Palahniuk 83). For the “space monkeys” of Project Mayhem, giving up treading water and doing something with their lives meant shaving their heads so they all look the same, chanting propaganda all night long, and not having a name unless you die. But Tyler is very convincing. In a speech before a fight club he says:

Men I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential. And I see it squandered. God damnit, an entire generation pumping gas, and waiting tables. Slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hare so we can buy shit we don’t need. We are the middle children of history man. No purpose or place. We have no great war. No great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars but we wont. We’re slowly learning that fact, and we’re very, very pissed off. (Fight Club)

            In the end, the message is clear. Nothing gets burned down, Jack shoots his own face off to rid his body of Tyler, and winds up in a mental institution (in the book version). So while man may hate his cookie cutter existence, anarchy is not the answer. There is potential to become a drone in an anarchist society as well, working for some crazy guy who has spit personalities and fight himself in parking lots, or sacrificing opinions and voice to someone bigger and stronger. So love it or hate it, consumerism drives the world. We cannot escape it, and according to Chuck Palahniuk, it’s too dangerous to try. 

Work Cited

Annesly, James. Fictions of Globalization : Consumption, the Market and the Contemporary American Novel. London, GBR: Continuum International Publishing , 2006. eBook

Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Norton, Edward. Fox 2000 Pictures & Regency Enterprises, 1999. Film.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Henry Holt and Company LLC, 1996. Print