Dealing with Violence: Fight Club's Assumptions

my good library buddy here at the seminary sent me this review of Fight Club. The author concludes that "The result of Tyler’s and the narrator’s use of violence is, unsurprisingly, violence without end." i wish the author would have written a longer article as to how he sees that this would be the result of Fight Club. I mean, i think i can see it, but i need it explained lest my own assumptions get in the way.

and i think that's where i'll start, my own thoughts on what Mimetic Theory and Fight Club assume about the nature of humanity and what not.

Mimetic theory's main assumption is that human beings are not inherently violent, that somewhere along the way violence was introduced and then others learned from there on and the cycle is continually renewed. When we turn to human history, with a citation found from this article by Alfie Kohn stating that some of the points made by critics of biological determinism are:

• Even if a given behavior is universal, we cannot automatically conclude that it is part of our biological nature. All known cultures may produce pottery, but that does not mean that there is a gene for pottery-making.
• Agression is no where near universal. Many hunter-gatherer societies in particular are entirely peaceful. And the cultures that are "closer to nature" would be expected to be the most warlike if the proclivity for war were really part of that nature. Just the reverse seems to be true.
• While it is indisputable that wars have been fought, the fact that they seem to dominate our history may say more about how history is presented than about what actually happened.
• Many people have claimed that human nature is aggressive after having lumped together a wide range of emotions and behavior under the label of aggression. While cannibalism, for example, is sometimes perceived as aggression, it might represent a religious ritual rather than an expression of hostility.

 But then there's another side of science that takes the opposite track. I think this is the side that Fight Club assumes, that humans are inherently violent and aggressive. This is the belief, popularized by Sigmund Freud and animal researcher Konrad Lorenz, that we have within us, naturally and spontaneously, a reservoir of aggressive energy. This force, which builds by itself, must be periodically drained off - by participating in competitive sports, for instance - or we'll explode in some awful violent action.  in some ways, Mimetic Theory assumes this as well with the scapegoat mechanism.

 

Richard Dawkins (yes, THAT Dawkins) argued in the Selfish Gene that "The general principle that behavior evolves to serve selfish ends has been widely accepted; and the idea that humans might have been favored by natural selection to hate and to kill their enemies has become entirely, if tragically, reasonable."

 

How about we mix the two? Let's mix that the idea that aggression is a natural tendency that must be drained periodically (Fight Club) and violence being a learned behavior (Mimetic Theory), then we see a larger, fuller picture emerge. Innate tendencies such as competition and pride mixed with the way in which a society functions can bring about the need for violent action due to the circumstances of a situation. After all, we are creatures of circumstance. We adapt and react to the world around us, and because of this there are times when we must engage in violent activity. However, we can use culture as a means to create a situation where competitive means for survival are unneeded, but until there is a united effort to reform the way we interact with the world, violence is just an unfortunate consequence. so therefore a united effort is needed to reform the way we interact! That is what Fight Club does. 

 

 Going back to Tyler's vision that Fight Club is after: 

"In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

This sounds rather peaceful, tribal. A return to simplicity.  Fight Club, as i interpret it, attacks the dehumanization that is taking place in soceity. In 8 simple rules, it provides structure, friendship, vulnerabilty, and an empowering outlet in a life that otherwise depowers and dehumanizes. when you punch another person, you see the immediate result and reaction of the other person, not so when you gossip about them or post blog entries about them ;-). in some ways, it is a more honest and open form of violence, one i feel more comfortable with as it doesn't beautify it or refine it. it's real, it hurts, and there is consquences like loosing teeth and explaining away blackeyes.

i think in the Fight Club model, empathy is the result. shared experiences of the fighters bind them together in a true community. like the priest hugging his opponent after a fight. or how every member mourns their martyr "Robert Paulson."

of course, to say that Fight Club is the answer and a means to end the cycle of violence or perpetuate it infinately is pure spectulation. the movie doesn't give us what happens after the buildings blow up. it does give us plenty of evidence to speculate ON, but never enough to go one way or another.

i stand on the side that Fight Club presents a "system shock" model that is counter-cultural and that leads to true community and a new means of ordering society. much like the system shock model we find in the gospels that lead to a new community that the rammifications are still being played out 2,000 years past.

it's hard to figure out, can Fight Club's violent means reach a nonviolent end? My deontologist leanings (right ends by way of right means) cringes at the thought... but my Christian leanings say otherwise (paradox of the Cross and blood of Christ). not to say that these are separate from each other, but it's the best way i can catagorize and try to explain how my thinking is torn.

how do you see it? can peace be reached through violence? or is it like Gandhi stated "There is no way to peace, peace is the way"? is humanity inherently violence and will we ever get over it? by what means can we escape violence?

What Fight Club Says about God and Community

Barry Taylor (Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy. Grand Rapids Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008.) holds Fight Club up as a prime example as what it means to be Postmodern Gothic. There is a transgressive nature in the mindset of the Gothic and the dominant message is “learn to live with mystery” and this is accomplished by sharpening one’s instincts (Taylor 142). So then the Gothic radically embraces passion, learning how emotions like fear, terror, horror, and sadness (as well as the more fiery passions of anger and rage) are means by which people learn to fight back. Fight Club does this to help people liberate themselves from a system that is draining the life away from their souls and keeping them from forming a true community. They find a new code of living through being shocked out of their old ways of doing things. They are able to “come to terms with the world around them through a renewed sense of self through their commitment to a new code of living” (Taylor 143).

For Tyler, dominant ideologies and cultural values exist to be subverted. The means of constructing identity is based on communal relationships, particularly with men although Marla becomes a bigger role as the film goes on, instead of material capitalistic measures.

Tyler does not turn to religion, although the language is frequently used in the film. The Narrator talks about the feeling of Fight Club as being in a Pentecostal church. The grunts were like speaking in tongues and the fights were like dancing. The Narrator seeks a nirvana, however; not salvation first and foremost. “And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”

Even more overt is the scene where Tyler seems to declare that he is an agnostic:

Tyler Durden: Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
Narrator: No, no, I... don't...
Tyler Durden: Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
Narrator: It isn't?
Tyler Durden: We don't need him!

Here we see the complete rejection of all that has rejected Tyler. In the philosophy of Fight Club, salvation is letting go of everything and depending on the community. This is very much like the church described in Acts. The renouncement of property, the subversion of the dominant culture, and finding identity not through the institutions of the day but in one another are all paralleled. The statement of "We are God's unwanted children" comes from Tyler's family system. He is trying to get's his father's attention and this morphs into trying to get God's attention, as noted in this trailer:

The first two rules of Fight Club echo Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, not to tell anyone of his being the Messiah. Word gets out and both movements take off. So is Tyler Durden a Christ figure? I would argue yes and his Christ figure is more in keeping with the Jewish-Christian church than the current idea. The idea of the Messiah as a political agent, anointed by God but completely mortal, that overthrows the oppressors. This is exactly what Tyler does, even going so far as to die at the end and even have a duel-nature. Tyler is both spiritual and human. This could be more along the lines of a Gnostic image of Christ and the real question at the end becomes who dies? Does the Narrator shoot Tyler and is still the same? Or, in Tyler’s death (the Brad Pitt version) we know have the Narrator fully “put on the mind of Tyler”? I would go with the last statement. In the ending scene of the film, we have the Narrator and Marla watching the buildings blow up in a quasi-romantic happy ending. The film then messes up and shows a rather graphic picture of a penis, just like Tyler used to splice into children’s films. This shows that the movement is very much alive and it’s real. Tyler is now in the projector booth and the audience should beware.

Fight Club’s dim view of institutions, including religious ones, are much like the postmodern suspicion of all things systemized. We see a member of Fight Club in the movie try to pick a fight with a priest, smacking the bible out of his hand and spraying water on it. The next scene shows the very same priest wining a fight and hugging his opponent. Even the leaders of the institutions are taken by the message of Tyler.



This idea is best summed up by Robert Capon when he states

“The gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race's perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man's well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for. Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won't be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now" (Capon 166).

Tyler has the same thing in mind. All systems fail, all we need is trust in one another, and to be honest with ourselves. We get our identity from being in community, true community, open and vulnerable. Fight Club embraces the uncertainty of the postmodern life, experienced as is, in the collapse of the supporting structures of modernity, in the loss of traditional social ordering. Reconfigurations of what it means “to be” are explored in every way possible and what emerges is a new idea of what constitutes family and community much like what came out of Christ’s teachings some 2,000 years ago.

FIGHT CLUB!

Fight Club is a 1999 movie starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonam Carter. This movie ranks right up there with the Matrix... every time I see this movie, I see something new.



The Narrator hates his life. His sense of self is rooted in his condo, his clothes, and his Ikea furniture; he works a job he hates so he can buy shit he doesn't need (to paraphrase Tyler Durden). Jack is miserable, he can't sleep. His insomnia suggests that his life lacks substance. He says, "With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy."

The setting starts out in offices and the narrator’s condo, pictures of sterile, light colors, juxtaposed to the darkness that the narrator is launched into after his condo blows up. So there are two images of the human condition. The first is one of being imprisoned. The cell is not stark, in fact it’s extremely comfortable and filled with all sorts of things that will bring personal fulfillment. Despite the clean and polished look, the colors here are unnaturally bright, stark, and alienating. There is nothing welcoming here.

Events unfold and the Narrator meets Tyler Durden whose ideologies are antithetical to the narrator’s: while Jack represents the material self, Durden represents the spiritual self. When Jack returns home from a business trip and finds out his condo blew up while he was gone, he calls Tyler for a place to stay. While the two chat over a pitcher of beer Durden explains to Jack that the "things you own end up owning you," suggesting that losing all his belongings may have been the best thing that ever happened to Jack. From this point on Durden helps Jack develop his spiritual self. Jack moves into a dingy home where he has nothing: No more Ikea furniture, no C.K. clothes or DKNY shoes. So the second image, the one of freedom, is largely shot in dark colors and at night. This image of freedom is everything that the prison is not; it’s dark, dirty, and squalid. The colors however, are warmer earth tones that eventually get softer as the movie progresses.

The mood is set largely by the narration. His tone and style is cynical and ironic and nonlinear. His thoughts are disjointed and there are flashbacks within flashbacks. He is trying to figure out what happened up until where we first meet him, with a gun in his mouth strapped to a chair. There is a lot of foreshadowing and use of sardonic humor. There is also rage and anger at the world.



Tyler articulates the problem of the film,

" Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damnit, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars—but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off."

Identity is the prime concern of Fight Club. The Narrator describes his childhood as one where his dad leaves and “sets up franchises” with other moms every six years. The dad tells the Narrator to go to college, get a job, and then “I dunno… get married?” This formula leaves the Narrator in a dead end job without a sense of self. To compensate for this lack of identity, the Narrator spends his time wondering “What dinning set best defines me?” He tries to get his sense of self from how he’s told by advertising; namely to define one’s self through brands and material goods. This path is ultimately unsatisfying as he cannot sleep at night.

The Narrator’s job is interesting to note, because it is a soulless one.
He works for an auto company, “a major one”, and investigates auto accidents caused by a malfunction in the car’s design. What he does is officially called a “recall coordinator which apples the formula of “Take the number of vehicles in the field (A), multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X... If X is less that the cost of a recall, we don't do one.” He justifies this in his mind by saying “On a long enough timeline everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.” The jokes used by the recall coordinators are trying to make light of the horror that they are confronting.



He then becomes addicted to self-help groups where “Every night I died and was born again. Every evening I was resurrected.” This is until Marla Singer comes in and ruins it by joining his “Remaining Men Together, Men with Testicular Cancer” group. “Her lie reflected my lie” and the Narrator can no longer sleep. Marla is completely different from the narrator. She has no regard, stealing clothes from a laundry and pawning them for money. She crosses the street without looking. Her philosophy of life is described that “she might die at any moment. The tragedy, she said, was that she didn't.” When asked why they are “tourists” in these groups, the Narrator and Marla find common ground:

Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just...
Marla Singer: Instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?

Marla becomes the basis of Tyler Durden. For all intensive purposes, when introduced to Tyler, he appears to be another character in the story. As the narrative progresses, we learn that the Narrator and Tyler are actually the same person. This is evidence of how fractured the Narrator’s identity is. Tyler is free in all the ways the Narrator wishes he could be. This feedback loop created by the Narrator is similar to what he is rejecting in the culture. The conversation at the bar between the Narrator and Tyler shows how different they are:

Tyler Durden: Do you know what a duvet is?
Narrator: It's a comforter...
Tyler Durden: It's a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then?
Narrator: ...Consumers?
Tyler Durden: Right! We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns. Of course, I could be wrong…

Tyler rejects “the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.” He states that “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.” He seeks to destroy the idea of “self” and replace it with a more communal model. The old capitalistic model is father and his company is using is sucking the meaning out of life. The self must be destroyed in Tyler’s mind and one must truly let go of all they think they know and think they want out of life. Even going so far as to intentionally get into a car crash. This serves to teach empathy to the Narrator, as that was the first time he has been in a crash. He studied them for a living but now he knows what being in one is like.

Tyler starts off using the system to gain money. He sells soap to department stores for large profits—the ironic thing is that the fat he uses in the soap is stolen from liposuction clinics. In a sense, he is “selling rich women their own fat asses back to them.” This evolves into a bigger vision. “In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”

Though making the soap and forming Fight Clubs around the nation, Tyler takes it to the next level and creates Project Mayhem. The sole goal of Project Mayhem is to blow up credit card companies and set the record back to zero. It is a biblical jubilee year.

Summer Reading Thus Far

it's been a great summer of reading so far, here's what i've been up to:

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: The vampire/teenie sensation. i'm not above reading these pop novels and i really enjoyed it. i wondered why i was able to read it in 3 days and that's because i didn't have to think about what i was reading the whole time ;-)! which was a nice change. i think it's an excellent methaphor for teenage sexual tension and abstience. you can definately feel the Mormon influence in subtle ways, but i enjoyed the recasting of what vampires are and esp. the concept of "good" vampires.

Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips: dude quits job so he can hang out at coffee shops and ask questions. sounds like my dream job! i'll post more on this book later because there's some questions i want to cover here... this book is a great read for the beginnning or expert philosopher even though, at times, it is poorly worded... like i should talk, i'm the poster-child for that ;-)

A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren: Is really a wonderful book. it mirrors closely to what i believe.. it's about an evangelical pastor who is thinking of quiting the ministry meeting with his daughter's high school science teacher who used to be a pastor as well. the pastor is introduced to post-modern thought by the science teacher and the conversations are full of wonderful stuff. this book is giving me a new perspective, not only on what i believe, but also on what others believe. my evangelical and more conservative/traditional brothers and sisters concerns are presented in a way i can understand. like why have the bible be inerrant and infallable? this book helps me understand that and how best to talk about theology without getting defensive.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner: in preparation for my CPE program this fall (CPE= hopital program to see where your buttons are and to come face to face with tragedy) i figured i best read this classic on why we suffer. i really enjoyed this book and learned a great new insight on the Genesis story of creation:

from pages 72-73: God is represented as saying, "Let us make Man in our image." Why the plural? Who is this "use," the "our" of which God speaks? My suggestion for understanding this sentence is to see it as connected to the sentence immediately before it, in which God creates animals... Let us fashion a creature who will be like you in some ways--needing to eat, sleep, mate-- and will be like me in other ways, rising above the animal level. You animals will contribute his physical dimension and i will breathe a soul into him.

i love this understanding because it's more biblical and literal. no apologetic nonsense of God talking to the heavenly hosts. this is closer to a biological understanding of creation, right inline with what we're finding out through Evolution. i LOVE it.

Reel Spirituality, Theology and Film in Dialogue by Robert Johnston: for my Theology and Film class which i'll post on later as well. talks about how movies are now the new means of conveying and portraying our sacred stories. i agree with this.. we've gone from sitting around the flickering fire to sitting looking at the flickering screen. there's even a whole ritual that goes along with going to the movies.. popcorn and soda is the new communion, the previews are like the call to worship, and then the main event. could movies be the new church?

i'm looking at two movies, Defiance (starring Daniel Craig) and Fight Club (starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt) for my final paper. i hope to post the movies we covered in class as well, Gran Torino, Atonement, Maria Full of Grace, Doubt and Cold Mountain. look forward to those!

coming up on my reading list: Selections from Kirkegaard, The Dangerous Act of Worship, and Domination and the Arts of Resistance. stay tuned and hope your summer is going well!