After watching this movie for the first time I couldn’t help but wonder why I had never seen it before. Then I watched it a second time to make sure I absolutely picked up on everything, and that is when I realized that this movie is incredibly interesting and disturbing at the same time. I want to focus on a couple of particular things in this movie…
First, the role of Marla in the movie is very intriguing and her relationship with the narrator is essential. She is first introduced into the movie when she begins invading the narrator’s emotional space by attending the support groups. The support groups seemed to act as a resource for the narrator in a number of ways. The support groups helped him sleep when suffering from insomnia, and it seemed to me that the narrator was feeding off of Bob’s pain to realize his pain. When Marla intruded and the narrator confronted her and said he couldn’t cry when she was there, his need to cry becomes an important part in the movie. At that point, Marla has begun invading his life and could very well be the cause of his mental creation of Tyler. In a way her constant fearlessness and freedom also resembled Tyler and who the narrator wanted to be.
Tyler is another essential part to the story. Being that he and the narrator are the same person in the sense that Tyler is who the narrator wants to be is very interesting to me. For the narrator to really have been who Tyler was throughout the story is so mind blowing because, although he insisted they were partners and started fight club together, he never once said anything at any of the meetings. Tyler spoke for him, and you can really see this when he’s in the hospital and repeats exactly what Tyler tells him about having fell down the stairs. A majority of the time the narrator is behind the scenes watching everything that Tyler does rather than taking any control. Is this because it was really him the entire time? It’s so crazy how this is portrayed in the movie.
Tyler and Marla then tie together in the narrator’s life. While he thinks Marla is having sex with Tyler and is dreaming about it and beginning to get quite jealous, he says “she ruined everything”. At that point it seems as though he values his “relationship” (if you can call it that) with Tyler more than Marla which is ironic to the ending. In my opinion, what led to the ending between Tyler and the narrator all had to do with Bob, Robert Paulson, being killed. That was the point where I saw the narrator snap. My thoughts on the situation are when Bob died the narrator started to recognize what was actually happening with project Mayhem and what Fight Club had turned into. He also realized that whoever Tyler was wasn’t who he wanted to be.
This is what sets off the entire end of the movie for me. It’s not that he now sees Marla, who I think he loves at the end, as a crutch, but instead he no longer needs a crutch and no longer need to go back to who he used to be, but he has found a content place in life and needed to kill Tyler or who Tyler was because that’s not who he wanted to be. I’m beginning to ramble so I’m going to leave those thoughts as they are for now!
Okay, you covered so much that I don’t know where to start! First of all, you were smart to watch it again because I definitely think I’d pick up on more if I saw it again since I know how it ends and then I could focus more on the little details. I don’t remember who brought it up in class, but I like the idea that the movie begins and ends with Marla, which is what you also referred to in your blog. She really does seem to be the reason the narrator can no longer function and Tyler comes into his life. I also completely agree with you about how Bob’s death spurned the narrator into realizing that he had to figure out what was going on with Tyler and how he could stop Project Mayhem.
The intricacies of this story/movie blow me away though and I can’t even begin to imagine the attention to detail it took to get it right. I think I need to watch this again to try to put it all together a little more… movie date again sometime?
haha
Okay, you covered so much that I don’t know where to start! First of all, you were smart to watch it again because I definitely think I’d pick up on more if I saw it again since I know how it ends and then I could focus more on the little details. I don’t remember who brought it up in class, but I like the idea that the movie begins and ends with Marla, which is what you also referred to in your blog. She really does seem to be the reason the narrator can no longer function and Tyler comes into his life. I also completely agree with you about how Bob’s death spurned the narrator into realizing that he had to figure out what was going on with Tyler and how he could stop Project Mayhem.
The intricacies of this story/movie blow me away though and I can’t even begin to imagine the attention to detail it took to get it right. I think I need to watch this again to try to put it all together a little more… movie date again sometime?
haha
Hi Marina,
Your post is well reasoned and I very much want to believe the ending is what you say. If I could believe that the narrator no longer needed Marla as a crutch, I would feel far better about the end. To the extent that the narrator becomes whole, I agree. Once Bob dies, the narrator finally identifies with the finality of death that Tyler had known all along. This realization gives him the courage to live as he wishes in the time he has left. But here’s where I feel it gets tricky. The narrator, having fused his dueling identities and reclaimed the traditional masculine qualities, becomes confident, strong, and independent without the need to embrace his crying feminine side any longer. In a world organized linguistically by dichotomies, what does that say about what Marla has become? I can’t help but be bothered that Marla’s strength and independence, odd as it may have been, has shifted back to the more traditional role of subservient woman. She is kidnapped by a bunch of thugs and brought to a fairly vacant, dark room against her will to see a man who has walked all over her for months. Within minutes they hold hands and Marla’s protest silenced as she takes her place along side her “man” to watch the world return to ground zero. It is all very disturbing, if you ask me. In this sense, Marla is still the crutch. First she was a sexual crutch, Tyler’s sport F*@!, and then she “completes” the narrator as his feminine half, the unworthy portion of his psychy that he beat out of himself for the sake of being manly. That “message” nailed my brain to the floor in class and I can’t seem to break free from it. Ew.
I like your comment that maybe it was Marla, who helped with the creation of Tyler. The narrator’s life has no freedom and none of the characteristics which Tyler and Marla posess. And while the narrator had the notions of what he wanted his life to be like, it wasn’t until he met Marla that he was able to externalize those thoughts and feelings, and this maybe is what helped him to create Tyler. Tyler would be his Frankenstein. I also agree with your comment that the death of Bob is a turning point in the narrator’s life. It is after Bob dies that the narrator goes quite some time without seeing Tyler. This could be that the narrator blames Tyler for the death of Bob and all that is happening and is upset with Tyler and has no desire to speak with him, thus Tyler does not appear.
[...] a way her constant fearlessness and freedom also resembled Tyler and who the narrator wanted to be (My blog post). The narrator admits to needing Tyler to get close to Marla in chapter 28 when he says, “I [...]
[...] Winterson 2007.09.17 To Michael on Winterson 2007.09.17 To Christine on Winterson 2007.09.23 To Marina on Fight Club, the film 2007.09.23 To the Class Experts on Lyotard 2007.09.29 To Hannah on [...]
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