obscurum per obscuri | General | 11 August 2004, 2:35pm
There are three ways to make napalm...
Before the Narrator actually "meets" Tyler, he sees him in brief, one-frame flashes, representing Tyler's development in his mind. Below is a list of these appearances.
- Tyler is standing in front of the copier at the Narrator's company, as the Narrator says, "Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy."
- When the Narrator goes to the doctor for his insomnia, Tyler appears as the doctor tells him to go to the testicular cancer support group. As the doctor says, "That's pain," Tyler is standing just over his shoulder, laughing.
- At the support group, when the leader says "really open ourselves up," Tyler is smirking and leaning against him with his arm around him.
- After the Narrator confronts Marla and is watching her walk away, Tyler appears in his line of vision, smoking.
- In the Pressman Hotel welcome video, Tyler is the waiter on the far right. (Thanks to Caite!) This appearance isn't actually subliminal. The Narrator, as Tyler, really did work at the Pressman Hotel, so he would have appeared in the video.
- Tyler is riding down an escalator as the Narrator is riding up in an airport.
In the beginning there are quick flashes of Tyler in the back ground. I counted 3 of them in different times. Later in the movie they explained the projectionist job that Tyler had and how he put pornographic clips in family movies. Do you think those two things have anything in common?"
The characters are aware that they are in the movie (Tyler's references to "flashback humor," etc.), and Tyler DID splice a porn clip in at the end, so it's very likely that he put himself in as well.
So why did the bullet kill Tyler but not the Narrator? My own theory is that Tyler was destroyed because the Narrator hit bottom when he was so unafraid of death that he was able to put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. The Narrator no longer needed Tyler because he had hit bottom, and he had become Tyler."
One more question I think what I thought about with great consideration what does Tyler Durden or the Narrator look like, Edward Norton or Brad Pitt. It doesn't show you clearly you just assume that he looks like Edward Norton because Tyler dies but there are different scenes that make me think he really looks like Brad Pitt.
I always assumed that he looked like Norton, but WANTED to look like Pitt... like in the one scene where the Narrator and Marla are walking past a movie theater, and the marquee says "Seven Years In Tibet." So obviously Brad Pitt "exists" in the world of the movie.
I just thought that the Narrator would want to look like him. (Like Tyler says, "I look like you wanna look.") Also, in the Narrator's flashbacks, he sees himself performing Tyler's actions, which suggests that he looks like Norton.
In Jungian psychology, Tyler is the narrator's Shadow figure, a mental archetype meant to represent all qualities the narrator represses in his daily life. As the narrator's satiric comments on the overrefined sensitivity of the world he lives in make obvious, the rough, brutal, primordially masculine side of the narrator becomes thought of as "evil" and repressed.
While the narrator appears to be the mild mannered, politically correct young man our culture idealizes ("I used to be such a nice guy"), in fact the rough, masculine qualities are becoming so repressed and so concentrated that they eventually reimmerge and take over his life in the figure of Tyler Durden.
As the popularity of the Fight Club makes obvious, many males have similar repressed Shadow Figures ("a guy you met at Fight Club wasn't the same guy you met on the streets") Fight Club allows the masculine Shadow side to vent. Because our culture, while repressing masculinity, also glamorizes it in figures such as the beefy figures of the likes of Fabio, the narrator's instant admiration ("You are without a doubt the most interest single-serving friend I've met") becomes understandable.
Tyler comments that "we have no war, we have no depression"-in times of war or depression, the rough, primordial, violent side of human nature is offered a socially acceptable outlet. The Tyler Durdens in the Gen Xers who fill up Fight Club have no socially acceptable outlet."
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Heh heh...loved that movie. Doesnt that line go something like "we have no GREAT war...we are the middle children of history.."?
btw, do I know you, dude? U left a comment on my blog saying we MUST speak.. :-)
let me know whats on your mind.
I'm at theprocrastinator@rediffmail.com
Aha! One very different blog. Personally I loved the movie, not one of the best but the absolutely best movie that I have ever watched has got to be Fight Club. We want more of your divine analysis
Good analysis. Is there more to come?