Fine.
You're going to call off your rigorous investigation.
You're going to publicly state that there
is no underground group.
Or these guys are going to take your balls.
There are a lot of reasons a character becomes timeless,
how they endure cultural shifts and evolving landscapes.
Often, it's because those people are iconoclasts.
They challenge beliefs and institutions while making us
question our own ideals and societal norms.
But how does Tyler Durden both represent
hundreds of years of philosophical debate
while remaining so firmly cemented in late '90s pop
culture?
What makes the leader of Project Mayhem
both terrifying and iconic?
Tell you are by far the most interesting single serving
friend I've ever met.
Before this video gets spliced with vulgarities,
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Released in 1999 and based on the 1996 book of the same name
by author Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
was directed by David Fincher with a script by Jim Uhls.
While the basic plot is simple, a depressed office worker
becomes enamored by a crust punk soap maker.
The story quickly spirals into self discovery
and what happens to us after the coming of age part of our life
ends.
Credited as only Narrator, Edward Norton
shines as our audience surrogate.
Insecure and listless, he's the perfect mark
for someone like Tyler Durden.
Tyler was everything Narrator wanted to be.
He wears unkempt clothes, a mismatch
of perfectly fitted thrift store finds,
his hair is intentionally messy, and there's
a wry smile that pulls us in to tell us
that we are part of the club.
We desperately want to be part of whatever Tyler
is involved in, because he is so effortlessly cool.
He is the romanticized idea of a restless loner.
With one look, we can tell this cat isn't showering often,
slapping on whatever dirty clothes
he gathered from a messy floor just
to dumpster dive through alleys while smoking cheap cigarettes.
Via Fincher's methodical lens and Pitt's effortless
performance, Tyler Durden defined what we considered cool
in the late '90s and early '00s.
Despite the film being considered a commercial failure
upon release, it found a cult audience
in the still-thriving DVD market.
All of the main characters and Fight Club
are what is commonly referred to as a searcher--
a character in need of meaning or understanding
that brings their inner self into focus.
And for a while, Tyler seems to have found the ethereal it.
He describes it as rock bottom, wherein
the inability to lose anything grants us freedom.
It's a mystery box we want to unravel because he seems
to have it together so well.
And that is the first part in Tyler's magic trick-- making
Narrator and us feel like we could figure it all out.
Before Narrator meets Tyler, he's
immersed himself in support groups
just for the sense of community it gives him.
But when Tyler shows up, he welcomes the lonely man
with open arms.
The two almost immediately start living together
after Narrator's apartment explodes,
and we're introduced to the house
that Tyler is either renting or squatting in.
Despite being so dilapidated, there's
a romanticism in the house's presentation-- a sort
of modern idea of Neverland.
What a shit hole.
Fincher shoots wide open spaces that invite play.
The two drive golf balls from the rooftop.
They go on giggle-filled adventures
to steal fat in order to make soap.
But under all of that play and joy,
Tyler is laying the groundwork for his most dangerous aspect--
his ideals.
Tyler takes the aimless feeling of his victims
and gives it a voice.
He delivers perfect pop anthem sing along choruses
that soundtrack composers the Dust brothers
surround with thumping bass and looping samples.
Tyler champions anti-capitalism, nihilism, and existentialism,
but only their broad strokes--
only what sounds cool after a few drinks in a dimly lit bar.
At one point, when Tyler is courting Narrator,
he asks if narrator knows what a duvet is.
Do you know what a duvet is?
Comforter.
It's a blanket.
Just a blanket.
When he does, Tyler bemoans the fact
that anyone, especially a hunter gatherer,
would know what a duvet is.
Throughout the film, we see Tyler's disregard
for anything he feels is occupying too much
of his headspace.
He makes Narrator quit his job.
He enlists more members to fuel his cult
yet constantly puts Narrator in charge of training them.
Again and again, Tyler manipulates the situation
by making the work look like fun.
He is forever Tom Sawyer painting a fence,
trying to convince us how much fun it is.
For a long stretch of the movie, we
fall into the pop mantra of in Tyler we trust.
And then there's his relationship with Marla Singer.
Played wonderfully by Helena Bonham Carter,
Marla is another searcher.
Doing her best to attach meaning to her life,
she poses at the same support groups as Narrator.
She's confident, self-sufficient,
and comfortable with her sexuality.
All of these are traits Tyler relates to and exploits when he
feels he has the time or want.
Otherwise, she's regulated to negging, abandonment,
and gaslighting.
He repeatedly abandons her then engages physically.
We see her become emotionally distraught again and again
by his off screen actions until she
serves as the catalyst to Fight Club's greatest reveal--
Tyler Durden and Narrator are the same people.
While this reveal is undeniably clever and the backbone
of the story, it puts Tyler and Marla's relationship
into a horrifying new light.
When Tyler feels she's outstayed her welcome,
he again thrusts the responsibility
of the confrontation onto Narrator.
It is Fincher and Uhls showing us
that for all his bravado and catchphrases about rock bottom,
Tyler is nothing without a small army to clean up his messes.
It is antithetical to what he preaches again and again,
the idea of a man with nothing to lose not just surviving
but living a peak existence.
Like a lot of fiction's greatest villains,
Tyler wants to push his ideas onto the world.
The group of disaffected men he assembles
called themselves Project Mayhem,
and their small acts of vandalism
are at first almost guerilla art--
destroying computers inside window displays,
vandalizing existing art.
They quickly escalate until one member is killed.
And even that moment is spun into an act of martyrdom,
and we are told again, in Tyler we trust.
His name is Robert Paulson.
As Tyler's facade falls, we're left with who he really is--
a terrorist with a plan to blow up several credit card
companies.
And that plan itself is sort of confusing.
Even in 1999, records did not solely
exist in boxes locked within a building.
Whether the buildings were leveled or not,
our credit history chugs behind like a shadow under a high sun.
But again, Tyler is attacking an idea,
and he's doing it with complete disregard
to actual facts or concern for life.
Despite his grandstanding, he is doing it
not for some great justice or attempt to put all of the US
on a level playing field.
He's doing it because it's fun.
It's a continuation of what made us fall in love with him.
So after all this, why does Tyler Durden still
resonate almost 25 years later?
Part of the allure is Pitt's performance.
His crushing good looks coupled with what can only
be described as an enviable swagger
elevate Tyler from the page to our screens.
He moves with an almost giddy excitement,
bouncing with joy at the adventure
the two boys are having.
He reminds us of a carefree childhood,
but now with the wants and desires of an adult.
Tyler irks the responsibilities that's been thrust upon us
and looks to be having an amazing time doing it,
until we shouldn't.
That reveal we mentioned earlier not only puts
Tyler's relationships with Marla and Narrator into new contexts,
but it puts the entire film under a different lens.
Fight Club was famous for its Easter eggs and sly winks,
like single frames of Tyler spliced
into the film at opportune times or the director's claim
that there was a Starbucks cup in every frame.
It was Fincher broadcasting to us that this was inevitable.
This was always a story about how a person like Tyler
can destroy your life.
There have been criticisms that the film ended too
optimistically, maybe at the behest of the studio,
but Hollywood has continuously tacked
on entirely too nihilistic of endings.
Author of Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
hated Kubrick's adaptation so much
he walked out of the premiere.
He claimed the movie was too violent
and bemoaned Kubrick for cutting the book's final chapter where
the main character is rehabilitated.
But in Fincher's ending, we see Tyler defeated.
There is a clear voice telling us that what he was doing
is wrong.
Sadly, that's an idea that seems to be lost.
As the years have passed, the ramifications
and misinterpretations of the story
have persisted with new modern fight clubs still perverting
the film's false idols message.
Even in the cultural lexicon, films
like Todd Phillips' the Joker have given us
the idea of a disenchanted male rallying like-minded folk.
Tyler is a terrifying and iconic villain
because what he sells is appealing and not entirely
wrong, but as we dig deeper, we see the costs of his wants.
That his brand of faith is entirely
in line with what he rallied us against--
an entity who manipulated lonely people
into feeling like they belong all so they
could further their own wants.
Do not [BLEEP] us.
Are there other villains who have lingered as heavy
as Tyler Durden?
Let us down in the comments below.
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