Tyler Durden Fight Club Essay

Over time, the United States has experienced dramatic social and cultural changes. As the culture of the United States has transformed, so have the members of the American society. Film, as with all other forms of cultural expression, oftentimes reflects and provides commentary on the society in which it is produced. David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club examines the effects of postmodernity on masculinity. To examine and explicate these effects, the film presents an unnamed narrator, an everyman, whose alter-ego—in the dissociative sense—is Tyler Durden. Durden represents the narrators—thus every man’s—deep-seated desire to break free from the mind-numbing, emasculating world that is postmodern, post-industrial America. Throughout time,

The key to understanding the film’s portrayal of gender-role strain is to understand that Tyler and the narrator are the same person. The narrator, as was discussed earlier, represents the post-industrial American man, whereas Tyler represents the industrial American man in that he manufactures his own goods (e.g., soap), and he lives what is considered by American culture a deviant lifestyle, as is exemplified in his living within an abandoned home which provides only the bare minimum in regards to protection. Understanding that Tyler and the narrator are the same person allows for the audience member to understand the strain and tension associated with two conflicting ideologies. Diken and Lausten state, “The normalized and law-abiding subject [the narrator] is haunted by a spectral double [Tyler], by a subject that materializes the will to transgress the law in perverse enjoyment” (350). This is exemplified as Tyler remarks, “You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do it on your own…I look like you want to look…I’m smart and capable, and most importantly, I’m free in all the ways you’re not” (qtd. in Diken and Lausten 350). Terry Lee draws on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces to assert his claim that “a man in [the narrator]’s position must undergo an annihilation of self—of ego—if he is to move out of a stagnant

Essentially, fighting relieves the blunted affect associated with post-industrialism by revivifying the masculine tendencies suppressed by a feminizing culture. The tension between the industrious and post-industrious is presented in Fight Club with the bruised and bloodied male being constructed as the more masculine, whereas the clean and crisp male is constructed as the more feminine. That is to say that the bruised and bloody male represents the masculine identity absent in the post-industrial consumer society (Iocco