Tyler Durden, not a monster because of great greed or extreme poverty, but a product of the capitalist society. Tyler starts the fight club initially as an outlet to express himself, to take control over some aspect of his life. To have power over someone else, to be in control. The main focus of the group soon becomes to free the world from their debts held by the mega corporations by destroying all the records.
The movie begins with Tyler working a 9-5 cubical job for an insurance company. He comes to the realization that he's a consumer, he doesn't concern himself with matters of survival, but with celebrity gossip magazines and duvets. Living the life that corporations are selling to him through the media and dictating his life by only giving him choices between Coke or Pepsi. He is trapped in society being a busy little worker bee. He is a monster that exists to disrupt the social norms. He intends to change society by freeing the people by showing them the power they possess.
There is a scene where he takes a store clerk to the back of the store at gun point. Makes him kneel like he's about to get executed and asks him what he wants to do with his life and says that is he isn't going back to school the next time he sees him he is going to die. This is obviously something that is against what society would want, but he justifies thinking that right now that store clerk feels more alive than he ever has and the next day will be the best of his life having just escaped death and has a new found motivation for going back to school. Tyler is an example of what type of monster such a capitalist society can create. Like a caged animal just waiting for an opportunity to get out.
The movie begins with Tyler working a 9-5 cubical job for an insurance company. He comes to the realization that he's a consumer, he doesn't concern himself with matters of survival, but with celebrity gossip magazines and duvets. Living the life that corporations are selling to him through the media and dictating his life by only giving him choices between Coke or Pepsi. He is trapped in society being a busy little worker bee. He is a monster that exists to disrupt the social norms. He intends to change society by freeing the people by showing them the power they possess.
There is a scene where he takes a store clerk to the back of the store at gun point. Makes him kneel like he's about to get executed and asks him what he wants to do with his life and says that is he isn't going back to school the next time he sees him he is going to die. This is obviously something that is against what society would want, but he justifies thinking that right now that store clerk feels more alive than he ever has and the next day will be the best of his life having just escaped death and has a new found motivation for going back to school. Tyler is an example of what type of monster such a capitalist society can create. Like a caged animal just waiting for an opportunity to get out.
I really love that someone brought up Fight Club, I know its crazy but this is the one instance I was appreciative I saw the movie before reading the book. Edward Norton is incredibly good at looking a little apathetic, a little dead, and a little mad at the same time. I like to think that this look is meant to express and explain how distraught he is with the word & lifestyle he, and everyone else on the planet it seems, have been put into. I think of the beginning a lot, with the constant quotes of Ikea catalogs and needing to have the best seasonal thing right when it came out, capitalism at its best. I also really like that you brought up the scene with the store clerk. It really sets Tyler aside from the random psychopaths and trouble makers out there. It helps show where I believe his heart kinda lives. He doesn't exactly hate people, at least not all people, he does hate though the society that has created these people and what they're living in.
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