Fight Club (film)/Headscratchers

Rules 1 and 2 of Fight Club are averted for this page. WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Why did anyone else even join Fight Club, given that the Narrator/Tyler Durden would just look like some crazy drunk beating the crap out of himself in the parking lot?
- It's supposed to emphasize that there's something so wrong with our society that people would turn to Fight Club. Rational, "normal" people wouldn't but there's lots of crazy people out there.
- After the club got started up, people wouldn't necessarily have known about the origins, considering all the legends surrounding it. The people who were there the first couple of weeks would have either left when things got more serious than a guy beating himself up in a parking lot or joined in. Since the Narrator, Tyler, and anyone who would have stayed were that messed up, all it took was one guy saying "hey, fight me?" (or, in this case "can I have a go next?" which is vague enough that it wouldn't have tipped off the Narrator that something was weird).
- Could be that Tyler talked to someone else at some point.
- Also, in the scene showing Tyler beating himself and others seeing it, maybe someone just asked what the hell he was doing and Tyler began to explain his philosophies convincing them to try his near-life experiences too.
- Indeed it could be that initially, other people were beating themselves up for the experience of getting hit. At some point, they transition into hitting each other once they get over the first hurdle of taking a punch/giving a punch.
In the scene where Tyler is in the car with the two gang members, what is actually happening? The Project Mayhem guys certainly seemed to be addressing a fourth person in the car.
- I think the Narrator is just arguing with himself and the Project Mayhem guys just know to address both personalities (Both of them were older recruits). Think of how Gollum argues with himself and I imagine that's how it looked to them.
  - Right. Watch the scene again: the perplexed, disconcerted look on their faces indicates that they're probably hearing both sides of the conversation, although it's quite plausible that on other occasions only one side can be heard.
- Maybe they were just following the rules. "You don't ask questions".
  - Yep. This is the point in the process when everyone is as far down the rabbit hole as they can get; Tyler is acting like a fucking crazy man? Well, he's the boss, I'm sure he has a reason. Is this some sort of test maybe? Well, we'll keep our mouths shut, we know how this works, etc.
- Probably some of the conversation was in his head.
- Its possible that the members of Project Mayhem had come to believe that whenever Tyler/narrator acted ignorant or confused that it was just an attempt to catch them out, and they were to strictly keep to the rules of silence. Perhaps at one point when Tyler was in control, he asked a question of one of the Space Monkeys, and beat him up if he received an answer.
  - There was a oneshot on FF which involved this situation. It dealt with it extremely well. (I think it was called A Near Life Experience or something. Not sure, though. You'll find it if you wanna see, there's only about 250 on there.)
  - Link.
  - Remember, when the narrator was following Tyler's "trail" (and coming up short, for obvious reasons) he comes to a bar and talks to the bartender. After the bartender tells him that the narrator was there before (as Tyler) asking about security, the narrator is confused and then demands that the bartender tells him what he thinks his name is. The bartender then repeatedly asks if he's testing him. So, it can be assumed that the Project Mayhem members kept thinking they were being tested.
  - In the book, this was made all simple with the Mechanic driving and telling the Narrator what Tyler had written down for him.
I know part of it was dramatic licence, but really, how exactly does the protagonist survive shooting himself in the head?
- Easy. Bullet didn't pass through the brain, or even through much of the skull- the exit wound was just behind the jawbone. That's why his voice was all screwy. Out of interest, real people have survived far worse head wounds- note, guy with nail in brain.
- He shot out through the cheek. At worst he burned his tongue, lost some teeth and knocked a chunk out of the mandible. Hurts a lot and is properly gory, but one or two reconstructive surgeries and the only way people would know would be that his jaw would set off metal detectors.
- Although it's perhaps worth noting that his voice seems to heal and improve remarkably quickly -- perhaps he didn't...
- How does shooting yourself in the Cheek kill your other self?
  - I thought he genuinely was trying to kill himself, but the Tyler persona took the bullet.
  - A major theme of Tyler's speeches (like when he burns the narrator's hand with lye) is that pain brings you back to your most basic, real self. With that in mind, I figured the pain of shooting himself in the face, and the "near life experience" (as Tyler would call it) of attempting suicide and fully intending to die, was enough to destroy Tyler and leave "Jack" as himself.
  - When you are mentally strong enough to be willing to shoot yourself, even through the cheek, it's a fair chance you are mentally strong enough to get rid of unwanted double personalities.
  - One of the major themes of the movie is hitting bottom, letting go, etc. Sticking a pistol in your own mouth is hitting bottom by any definition.
  - This troper just thought it was because Tyler is shorter than the narrator.
  - This troper always thought that Tyler didn't really die...instead, the narrator and Tyler stopped being seperate, and merged together. After he gets shot, the narrator stops panicking, starts being a lot more assertive, and bosses around the project mayhem guys like he's used to it. He also stops worrying about the bombs in the buildings and calmly watches them exploding. The personality disorder the Narrator has has been known to be cured by a traumatic event, and I'd say a gunshot wound to the face qualifies.
  - No. What happened was- the Narrator, and Tyler, thought they were honestly, truely going to die the moment he pulled the trigger of the gun. Since Tyler is nothing more then a delusion, a being who only exists in the Narrator's mind, believing he was about to be killed inflicted a case of Your Mind Makes It Real. But since the bullet was non-fatal, the Narrator survived, being the "core" personality. The change afterward, stopping panicking, calmly reacting to things, is just because the Narrator finally matured and was able to be responsible, as shown by his ability to be tender and gentle with Marla.
  - It's significant to note that real life cases of Dissociative Identity have (albeit very rarely) been eliminated by traumatic events.
    - Not to mention that it's very farfetched that Dissociative Identity would play out in such a way. It all just works much better as a metaphor.
  - The book had a much better ending, but it was too open-ended and devoid of explosions for David Fincher. The Narrator shot himself, not to kill Tyler, but to get himself placed in a mental hospital where Tyler couldn't hurt anyone else. Also noteworthy, America's economy was never destroyed. So there's that.
    - The ending of the book could also be interpreted as when he shot himself, he believed that he had died. When he was talking to the doctor, he says "Yeah, Well, Whatever. You can't teach god anything", implying that he believes he's in heaven. This would erradicate Tyler.
  - That's a better way to end it?
  - Fridge Logic proves that the book ending is actually the Narrator is in an insane asylum and doesn't want to leave because Members of Fight Club are still lurking around.
- On the DVD the writers say that it is possible that the whole ending after that point is a death hallucination, although the way they said it didn't seem to suggest that this is what they originally had in mind.
  - I just had another idea: the last thing he says before shooting himself is, "My eyes are opened." You know how imaginary friends die when children don't need them anymore? Well, Jack had learned everything he needed to know from Tyler, so Tyler was now unnecessary and committed suicide as a result. He just did it more literally than he needed to because...I guess because at that point he didn't care if either side of him survived, and his spool had pretty much been unwound by recent events. People have survived worse head shots than that. You would be quite surprised.
- Does anyone else think it would've been better if the gun hadn't been loaded, and Tyler died simply because Jack thought it actually was?
  - Yes, actually, I do. You're right.
  - Probably would only work if it was loaded with blanks. And that would take a lot of planning.
- I believed that Narrator had intentionally tricked Tyler into thinking he'd been killed. He seems to tilt the gun at the last second, so I thought that he just thought really hard about killing himself, to make Tyler think it was real. And then, when he proved to still alive, it didn't matter, because Tyler already thought he had that hole through his skull.

We're supposed to believe that it's perfectly plausible for Tyler Durden to have "night jobs" while the narrator wasn't sleeping, but neither of Tyler's jobs would take place during the hours a normal office worker would be sleeping. Movie theaters are generally open 4PM - midnight, with most children's shows (as Tyler was particularly fond of splicing porn into these movies) ending before 10 PM. Tyler was also a banquet waiter, with dinner hours, once again, running about 4PM to midnight.
- It wasn't necessary for Tyler to be operating the projector running the kids' movies: all he needed was access to both the reels of these and the reels of pornographic films. Porn generally would be shown at night, so Tyler could have easily removed a frame or two from the film after running the projector and snuck said frames into a family film at a later date. Additionally, he didn't have a permanent job as a projectionist (the book states that he was the substitute if a union member called in sick), leaving him plenty of time to work his other job.
- Additionally, it wouldn't even be necessary for him to work the full time the theater would be open if they had rotating shifts, and it's not impossible that he made sure to bribe, blackmail, mess with, or simply ask nicely about the waitstaff schedule so as to be assigned only to catering jobs that required his presence at or later than six.
- I think he turns into Tyler as soon as he leaves his office job. He could then work a 6-12 shift.
- Or he could just not really have those jobs at all. Likely, the narrator made them up along with Tyler using his subconscious knowledge like where the abandoned house was or how to make explosives.
  - Given that the Narrator seems to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, this is the most likely explanation. With DID, each personality has their own personal history and backstory different from that of the core personality.
- Ahem... "No, YOU have night jobs because you can't sleep, or stay up late and make soap." -Tyler.
- Consider that projectionists and waiters would be most busy on weekends, when the Narrator would be off work anyway.

Why did so many people miss the point of this movie, going so far as to create their own Fight Clubs modelled after Tyler's? I'm well aware that there's a fine line between condemning violence and glamorizing it, but I thought Fight Club did a pretty good job at showing that it was the insane response of broken individuals.
- See Do Not Do This Cool Thing.
- It's worth noting that at least two of the "real life" Fight Clubs that formed in the wake of this movie were in fact formed by what you might call "insane...broken individuals". Luke Helder and another kid (whose name I can't recall) were both allegedly involved in Fight Clubs and were both caught making homemade explosives. The rest of the real life Fight Clubbers were mostly teens, pre-teens, and college students (and they aren't exactly known for making reasoned, well thought-out decisions).
- Didn't we all know it was going to happen?
- I think the appeal of starting your own Fight Club would die quite quickly- like after the first time you got the crap kicked out of you.
  - Disagreed. Fight injuries are not that scary once you've been through one - the fear of e.g. breaking a bone is worse than the actual thing (speaking from personal experience here). Plus, injuries inevitably happen in regular martial arts, and non-crazy people train those, depending onf your definition of "crazy". Also, adrenaline is a very powerful painkiller. On top of that, if there were non-fictional Fight Clubs, people would probably tap out much earlier, so things would not be as messy as in the movie.
- Two reasons. First: plain and simple, Misaimed Fandom. Second: the movie shows screwed up people and actions, but much of the protagonist's complaining about life, the society etc. does ring true. And easy escapism is tempting - especially wrapped in something badass and glamorous like a Fight Club. Plus, the initial Fight Clubs did no actual harm, it was when Tyler wanted to "change things" with Project Mayhem that everything spiralled out of control (and, might I add, it was only then that the protagonist tried to stop him).
  - Also, it should be taken into account that it's one thing to watch the movie when you've already read Palahniuk's work and are aware that all his characters are unhealthy, deeply broken individuals, who are not supposed to be role models for anyone, in any context, and who, a lot of times, aren't even very likeable. It's another thing to be young and impressionable and watch a movie where Brad Pitt is kind of Crazy Awesome, and makes some very legitimate complaints about contemporary society.
  - Even simpler than that. You're all avoiding the obvious, folks: People. Are. Idiots.
    - ...no, I think the last guy had it down pretty good.
- There's an alternate interpretation. Rather than the members of fight club being insane and broken, they're the only sane ones left in a world that's insane and broken. When things are as fucked up as they are then raw, primal, physical violence becomes the only meaningful response. It's not something I personally agree with but it's a legitimate interpretation of the movie.
- To people whose lives seem pointless and frustrating, with desires that are never fulfilled, who almost failed out of high school, and withdrew from the college they dreamt of getting into because they realized they'd mis-aimed and had only wasted time, money and their first relationship... yeah, the idea of punishing yourself with pain while beating the shit out of someone else is a very attractive option.
  - Mom? Is that you?
  - Me? Is that you?
  - Of course, then the manly men archetype simply gets up and tries again rather than whine and complain. One of the points of the movie is a call to action rather than reaction and follow the leader.
- By the same token, why did a couple of people go and kill the shit out of some other people, then say "A Clockwork Orange/Natural Born Killers/The Catcher in The Rye made me do it?" Because people like that were already in possession of shaky sanity to begin with. When you are denying having a serious mental illness, it doesn't take much to push you completely over the edge.

Remember that scene with Mafia trying to claim the fight club's cellar? It has always bugged me: what does the club intend to do with it. Picture this: civilisation falls (Tyler's vision), state falls, and who has the guns and the men, and no moral restrictions like the government to use them? Mob. In other words, Tyler's anarchoprimitivist utopia would last a week, and then turn into neo-feudalism with mob bosses at the top. Tyler either had a plan and necessary manpower to fight them, or was damned shortsighted.
- Whose to say he hadn't infiltrated the mob? At the bottom of that ladder are a bunch of workaday stiffs making not a whole lot more than the guys Tyler was recruiting.
- I'm gonna go with "shortsighted" there.
- At that point, weren't they just using it as a venue for their fights? I always understood it to be that the Mafia (well, Lou) was the owner of the bar just trying to * re* claim his property. It didn't well for him, of course...
- Tyler is a pseudo-intellectual anarchist. His lack of a post-victory plan is sort of a large part of the point. It emphasizes the danger of the society that brought him about, that at its most extreme it could, in theory (with fictional hyperbole, anyway) turn someone as harmless as Jack--if he's smart enough--into a raging Jekyll and Hyde by making his inner Nietzsche Wannabe into a One-Winged Angel with deadly capacity.
- Tyler even addresses this exact point in one of his speeches: "I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may." He doesn't know or care what happens after civilization comes tumbling down.
- Not to distract from your responses, but there is no mention of mafia taking over the cellar. It's Lou. "Who am I? There's a sign that says 'Lou's Tavern. I'm fuckin' Lou. Who the fuck are you?'"
A minor point, but one that bothered me: after the soap business takes off, Tyler is rolling in cash. In the book, the narrator mentions that they had enough money to eat out and "go dancing." So why did the narrator continue wearing his old, bloody clothes to work when he could easily afford new ones?
- Why would they want new clothes? What was it that Tyler said? "Buying shit you don't need" or something along those lines.
- "Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat."
- Did you miss the part where Tyler had been pulling the narrator into his philosophy and way of living, and that Tyler's ideal society involves the collapse of the global economy, wearing functional leather clothing, etc...? A materialist consumer, Tyler isn't. More like a Spartan.

In the beginning of the movie, the narrator goes to see a doctor who tells him that "nobody ever died of insomnia". Yeah, about that...
- Based on the doctor's demeanor, he clearly seems to think he's dealing with a hypochondriac. That's why he tells him to attend support groups to see what real suffering is like. In that position, there's no way the Doc is going to tell the Narrator that he actually could die from insomnia, as that would just feed his irrational fears.
- 1999 movie, internet not as widespread for looking up obscure conditions.
- It kind of was already widespread for everything, as I remember. But of course there's always the possibility that the doctor (who does not act like he's taking his job very seriously) is simply a quack. I mean, "Chew some valerian root?"
  - Valerian is a sedative and helps with mild insomnia and anxiety. Just because it is a herb doesn't mean it's useless.
    - That's hardly the point. Who actually chews the root itself? Is something that unsanitary and unnecessary what a good doctor would recommend? Again, does he act like he even gives a fuck? He's probably waiting out the rest of his shift so he can have another bong.
    - "Unsanitary"? He's not suggesting that the main character dig a root out of the ground and chew on something covered in dirt. As far as we and the doctor know at this point, our Narrator is having trouble sleeping. There's no indication that it's part of a larger problem. In medicine, the point isn't to be snooty about what you're taking or if it's the right drug "label", like it's a fashion brand or something. You use whatever clears the problem and you start with the basics first, working your way up if need be. The Narrator is self-centeredly equating his lack of sleep to a crippling illness. It may turn out to be but there's no indication that it is at this point. Accordingly, it's a good idea to prescribe a simple sedative that has little further chemical effect on the body. If the problem continued or got worse, the Narrator could tell the doctor this and ask what the next step is. Saying something absurd and unfounded like, "probably waiting out the rest of his shift so he can have another bong" makes you look like an idiot.

Most of the little inconsistencies and quirks of Tyler being imaginary can be chalked up to the total unreliability of the narrator. But that one shot where "Tyler" is dragging the narrator across the floor by his hair, and we objectively see it on the security camera footage, means that the narrator really was dragging himself across the floor by his own hair. That belongs in a Jim Carrey movie.
- What about the scene in which Nameless Narrator is dragging Tyler before our eyes in the basement? He's got one side of him and someone else has the other and I guess that the way it's shot you could say the other guy has Nameless Narrator's entire weight but it looks awkward to see someone supported all on one side. Can we be blamed for thinking they weren't the same person? I mean, that scene is really pushing it!
- This troper has always seen those seens as nothing more than Rule of Funny and that any scene with Tyler and the narrator was really just "Jack" imagining it. For instace, if he and Tyler were drinking, then it was really just "Jack" sitting alone drinking and having a conversation in his mind.
- What makes you think the security camera footage is "objective"? This film has an impossibly uneasy relationship with the fourth wall as it is.
  - The whole film is seen through the narrator's point of view, so every camera is in a location that the narrator has been. Its probably not likely that the narrator made his way to the nearest security booth to watch the footage of him dragging himself in the parking lot. Even if he did, he wouldn't see anything, meaning the footage would be blank, and therefore useless to the film.
The narrator is absolutely batty. Besides just having a Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder for the rest of you), the narrator is a walking basket case if you try to apply the Axis 1-5 to him. He probably also has acute schizophrenia, one or two other personality disorders, and maybe dysthymic disorder. He's absolutely all over the place. It's a wonder he managed to hide all of those as well as he did from any doctor/mental health professional.
- As someone in the novel 'Salem's Lot points out, some people in Real Life go very quietly and virtually unnoticeably insane. Besides, the person with the most contact with Whatshisface, Marla, is if anything even farther gone than he is.
  - If Marla even exists.
- You can't really take the story as a psychological profile. The narrator's "symptoms" don't make any sort of consistent sense if we try to apply the usual DSM categories to them. It's meant to work on a broader level, as a social allegory. Society, in the movie's world at least, has hit a breaking point. Its materialism and vanity have emasculated men so completely from their true selves that, in the narrator's case, his inner self split off and revolted against the whole thing, and that rebellion resonated so deeply with other men that it spiraled into an apocalyptic backlash against the modern world. The narrator's problems are a reflection of society's problems and a reaction against them, not a realistic mental illness.

Ok, so I see the motivation behind Tyler's plot. You destroy the records of people's debts, thus destroying the cornerstone of the banking system, corporations fall, nations fall, and we all revert to Tyler's vision of an anarchic society. But wouldn't the bank have offsite backups? Surely they'd have emergency measures just in case they lost their servers! All that would happen is the buildings will fall, but the bank would revert to an computerized backup, stored offsite, and business would continue as usual. Tyler's act would accomplish nothing.
- Tyler doesn't strike me as a person who's good at considering the long term effects of anything he does.
- It wasn't just those buildings. Tyler spent weeks setting up the same plan in other major cities all around the country. Project Mayhem was a big enough movement that it probably included all the inside men it'd need to take down the backups.

This is minor but it does just bug me. In both the novel and the movie Jack cheerfully contemplates how much his life insurance will pay off if his plane crashes. But who would it benefit?? And for that matter, why should he even have life insurance? I admit I'm a novice with these things but think about it: who are his beneficiaries? His mom? He has a distant and strained non-relationship with his dad, he at that point has no girlfriend, he has no kids that we know of...who would the insurance benefit? Are we just supposed to assume that he doesn't think he needs an excuse to pray for death? If so, that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
- That's entirely the point. He has life insurance with no effective beneficiary just like he has a condo full of meaningless IKEA furniture he never uses. All because he has no point in life beyond needless consumption. Also, it may factor into his job as a cost-benefits analyst for car crashes.
- I always assumed the "life insurance pays triple if you die on a business trip" line was sarcasm and implying that he sees his whole life as just consuming until he's dead.

Another minor detail but something to be adressed. In the whole entire movie, the narrator's name isn't mentioned.
- He's not named in the book either. He just doesn't have a name.
  - This is part of Tyler's purpose. The Narrator feels that he has lost his identity in the shuffle of mass consumerism. He feels insignificant and meaningless, just another nameless face in the crowd. Tyler, his split personality is the exact opposite, he has goals and purpose and his name means something. The Narrator has no name because that name belongs to Tyler, who has worked to earn it in the narrator's mind, not to the Narrator.
  - This is a deliberate method that writers sometimes use to draw attention away from the main character's personality to focus on anothers; and in this case there's reason to since the Narrator is constantly focusing on his invention of Tyler. It also makes the character too identifiable when it's simpler to shrowd him in mystery so his purpose could be used as a metaphor. This trope explains in more detail.
This little ditty was always a point of interest for me when watching the film, but remember in The Matrix how Morpheus explains to Neo that how he views himself is considered "Residual Self Image". I actually applied that here to Tyler and the Narrator and I noticed something: After the Narrator wakes up to find that Tyler has gone missing, he goes around damn near the entire United States looking for him, but all the while he's still wearing the exact same outfit, then when we see Tyler again, Tyler has shaved his head, is wearing sunglasses and a big fur coat, orange fishnets, etc. When I noticed this radical change and factored in the fact that Tyler had been in control of the Narrator's body I realized that what we were seeing of the Narrator may have been what he assumed he still looked like, and the Tyler we saw sitting in the chair is what everyone else saw.
- You mean to say that the Narrator, at least by that point in the story, had shaved his head and was actually dressed in that fur coat and sunglasses and everything?
Tyler may believe he rejects society but looking at his way of dressing it kinda makes him hypocritical. He is wearing ridiculously flashy clothes, sunglasses indoors (hardly the shit you need) and so on. And in the end everything he hated. Yes, it probably is what the narrator wanted for himself but why wouldn't he have noticed it? If so did our narrator know Tyler didn't exist from the beginning?
- There's a difference between being deceived and being delusional: in the former case, you're being lied to by someone else, in the latter, you're lying to yourself. In a sense, the narrator always knew that Tyler wasn't real. The part of him creating the delusion was also the part of him that kept him from wondering about the inconsistencies surrounding it. As for Tyler's clothing, he's an idealized version of everything the narrator wishes he could be, so the flashy clothing and overall coolness probably just goes along with that. If Tyler has any reason of his own for it, it could be that he's deliberately being ironic, trying to bring the system crashing down while looking like something straight out of its fashion catalogues.

One thing I've never understood: On the flight where Tyler is introduced, he talks about the emergency oxygen masks on airliners. His claim is that they pipe pure oxygen to the passengers to sedate them and make them docile, so they "accept their fate." Even if this was true (it isn't-they don't deliver pure O2), why is this presented as something sinister? If the plane truly is spiralling to its doom, it seems like calming the passengers in their last moments would be admirable.
- It's a metaphor for the broader process by which society dopes people into accepting their lot as inevitable. Tyler the anarchist is all about raging against this process.
  - I can understand that in regards to his other stories, but this is a situation where people actually don't have any power. He probably should have chosen a story about airport security or something.
  - Doesn't it give us important information about Durden, though? That he would rather people scream and wail in chaos as their fate approaches rather than be doped into submission by those more powerful than them? I would imagine that he wouldn't exactly think that people in this situation have no power... they have the power to face their deaths openly, which is far preferable to artificially enforced order. Besides, consider the context of the scene -- Tyler is engaged in a seduction of sorts, so it makes sense for him to start with something small and seemingly inconsequential, but which hints at the larger workings of power.
  - That actually makes sense. Thanks.
- Also, Chuck Palahnuik really likes making up fake facts. Don't believe anything that sounds true that you read in any of his books, look it up first!
So... how exactly does the Narrator call HIMSELF after his condo blows up?
- *taptaptap-taptaptaptap* Narrator: "Hello, Mr. Durden? It's me, from the plane. [Explanation]." Tyler: *dial tone* Narrator: "Okay, I'll wait here until you get here."
- It's the phone number for the Paper Street address. No one answered when the narrator called and then he imagined Tyler returning the call via *69. Look closely and the pay-phone even has a sign saying "No Incoming Calls". As an added clue to the ending, the number he gave Marla before the Condo blew up was the one for Paper Street.
More about the plane: Was the seat next to Tyler/Narrator empty? Or was he talking to himself and ignoring all of his rowmate's annoyed and confused responses? Or did he not say any of it out loud, including the desperate laugh?
- I always assumed that he was talking to himself and that the seat next to him was empty. Either that or the conversation did indeed take place entirely in his head.

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