Posted 14th September 2009 1215

I’m torn between the ideal life being that of becoming an “IKEA boy” or a fight club member. The latter seems fictitiously impossible and ridiculous, while the former seems as unfulfilling as it is likely.

That sad fact depresses me while I’m watching the movie for the ten-thousandth time. Yet when it’s over, when I hear the bass rumble with each explosion, and the Pixies slowly fade in, I am filled with relief.

The message here is not to become some sort of rebellious nihilist and stick it to the man. To expect that of everyone or anyone is implausible and without a worthwhile purpose. The point, as I see it, is to do whatever it is that you can do, to not waste your life away.

In the same way that Tyler conjures himself as two people so that he may make progress in his life, we people, we consumers, should use this film as Palahniuk’s imagination so that we may move forward with our own lives. To use it as a realization, an epiphany, and an awakening from the sleep deprived dream we’ve all be preconditioned to have ever since we were born.

I notice this in two great moments. The first, when Tyler lets Raymond go, instead of killing or recruiting him. And that’s because, while he did have in common that he was wasting his life, he had something else that those members of Project Mayhem didn’t have; a future.
The second, was obviously at the end, when Tyler destroyed his conjured self and set himself free of control, and was able to witness that event that only Tyler Durdin could have created, while allowing himself to not turn into him. If you know what I mean.


We should all take a moment, and use this. This movie, this website, our shitty day, or boring lives, those annoyingly, nonsensical (yet ever working) commercials and news reports, to remind us how fucked up life is. How after all of these thousands of years, we’ve come to this. This pathetic, trivial, insignificant existence. Not that it was any more significant ten thousand years ago, but at least they didn’t feel the need to scare themselves shitless in order to make a profit.

I say never be complete.

I say stop being perfect.

I say let’s evolve.

Let the chips fall where they may.



But that’s me, and I could be wrong.

2 Comments Forgive Condemn