Life Through a Queer Lens
EP34: Deconstructing Fight Club: Masculinity, Queer Identity, and the Allure of Tyler Durden
Step back into the raw, unflinching world of "Fight Club" with us, as we strip back the layers of its powerful narrative to reveal the tangled threads of identity, mental health, and societal constructs. This episode isn't just a trip down memory lane; it's a deep-dive analysis that will challenge your perception of masculinity, consumerism, and the search for authenticity. As we recount our visceral reactions to the film's iconic moments and discuss Chuck Palahniuk's personal journey, including his coming out, we invite you to confront the unsettling implications of violence and scars as more than just plot devices, but as symbols of struggle and self-realization.
Feel the tension as we scrutinize the complex character dynamics within "Fight Club," particularly the enigmatic relationship between Marla Singer and the narrator, and the explosive persona of Tyler Durden. Our conversation delves into the intersection of societal violence with queer identity, examining how these elements manifest in the film's characters and their interactions. We dissect the paradox of Tyler's allure and the destruction he leaves in his wake, urging a reflection on the costs of self-discovery and the toxic pressures of societal norms. Let this episode be your guide through the film's labyrinth of psychological twists and the harsh critique of a materialistic world.
Ending with a look at the unexpected influence of "Fight Club" on real-world dialogue, we reveal the irony behind the term "snowflake" and its cultural evolution. By examining the film's impact on existential crises and the quest for genuine self-expression, we promise to leave you with a fresh perspective on how fiction can shape our understanding of reality. So join us for an episode that's as thought-provoking as it is enlightening, with discussions rich enough to satisfy long-time fans and newcomers alike, and maybe—just maybe—you'll emerge with a newfound clarity on the enigma that is "Fight Club.
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Step back into the raw, unflinching world of "Fight Club" with us, as we strip back the layers of its powerful narrative to reveal the tangled threads of identity, mental health, and societal constructs. This episode isn't just a trip down memory lane; it's a deep-dive analysis that will challenge your perception of masculinity, consumerism, and the search for authenticity. As we recount our visceral reactions to the film's iconic moments and discuss Chuck Palahniuk's personal journey, including his coming out, we invite you to confront the unsettling implications of violence and scars as more than just plot devices, but as symbols of struggle and self-realization.
Feel the tension as we scrutinize the complex character dynamics within "Fight Club," particularly the enigmatic relationship between Marla Singer and the narrator, and the explosive persona of Tyler Durden. Our conversation delves into the intersection of societal violence with queer identity, examining how these elements manifest in the film's characters and their interactions. We dissect the paradox of Tyler's allure and the destruction he leaves in his wake, urging a reflection on the costs of self-discovery and the toxic pressures of societal norms. Let this episode be your guide through the film's labyrinth of psychological twists and the harsh critique of a materialistic world.
Ending with a look at the unexpected influence of "Fight Club" on real-world dialogue, we reveal the irony behind the term "snowflake" and its cultural evolution. By examining the film's impact on existential crises and the quest for genuine self-expression, we promise to leave you with a fresh perspective on how fiction can shape our understanding of reality. So join us for an episode that's as thought-provoking as it is enlightening, with discussions rich enough to satisfy long-time fans and newcomers alike, and maybe—just maybe—you'll emerge with a newfound clarity on the enigma that is "Fight Club.
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Want to see the video? Check us out on YouTube.
I re-watched the movie because the first time I'd seen it I think I was 20. It came out when I was 19 years old and I remember at the time I don't think I finished watching it in its entirety, cause I remember when they were in the basement fighting, kicking the shit out of each other and the blood started going, and then you see like the teeth falling out and all that, I was like I can't watch this. My stomach turned upside down. So I actually don't even think I finished the whole thing, because when I rewatched it the other night I was going yeah, this doesn't look familiar, but there were other parts of the movie that looked really familiar, and so I got through the whole thing and just been processing everything.
Speaker 2:Well, that's fair. I had a super similar experience. I watched it when I was like 16 or 17 years old and my friend came over for a sleepover and was like hey, want to watch Fight Club Because we were fucking edgy teenagers. And I was like fuck yeah, let's do it. And in rewatching it had no recollection of the Bob scene being that visceral. I felt nauseous watching that, and I've seen gore.
Speaker 1:I'm a horror fan I've seen gore.
Speaker 2:I'm a horror fan, I've seen gore, I've seen. But there's something about how human they make that moment and how just it. Obviously we're going to get into that more, but oh, that moment hit like a truck. I literally so. For anyone out there who doesn't know, I a part of my, my mental illness plethora thing. I experience hallucinations, auditory and visual, and sometimes I will see something hella horrific and my brain will just go oh, we're gonna stick that in the vault and pull that out later as a hallucination, peeking around a corner. You know what I mean. It happens a lot with scary args I see online it'd be like that. As soon as I saw that, like when he pulls the tarp off of bob's head and like that I was like, oh, that's going in the vault without any consent. I am not consenting to this, but that's going in the vault.
Speaker 1:I can feel it in my blood yeah, like that, one's gonna take a little bit to unpack, a little bit to process and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was, oh yeah, dense let's just say it's been an interesting about two weeks since I've seen it again going through the house late at night, and oh yeah, the brain has fun, especially when it's stressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, touche.
Speaker 2:By the way, anyone listening, if y'all have not watched Fight Club first off, what are you doing with your lives? Go watch it. Secondly, watch it before you listen to your lives. Go watch it. Secondly, watch it before you listen to this episode Spoilers.
Speaker 1:Lots of spoilers.
Speaker 2:It's a 20 something year old movie. If you haven't seen it yet, I don't know what else to tell you. Spoilers incoming yeah, incoming. Spoilers in the past and spoilers incoming Whole episode. Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1:And speaking of unpacking and just processing everything I didn't remember the movie's actually classified as a thriller, which I was like. I don't remember it being a thriller but, like I said, I don't have recollection of watching the whole thing. But after I re-watched it again a few nights ago, I said to myself this should be categorized as a psychological thriller because really there was all those layers of mental health but they very directly tie into what we're going to talk about like that, those underlying themes, but, yeah, very dense I, I think.
Speaker 2:First, it would probably be be nice to go into a little bit of the backstory of the author, because because this Fight Club, while being a movie, is also a book that was published in 1996 by author read Chuck Palahniuk, I believe, is how you say it I butchered every time. I'm so sorry, sir, you have my deepest respects as an author, but I can't pronounce your name. At the time of publication he was not publicly out as queer, but he would end up coming out as a gay man in the coming years. I believe in 2003, he was outed and then in 2004, he publicly came out himself. I could be wrong about that, though there were some back and forth in the different articles that I've read as to whether or not he was outed or came out of his own consent.
Speaker 2:He's a very private man, even to this day. He's only done a couple of interviews in his life. The longest one was about an hour and a half long, and it is available on YouTube if anyone's interested in listening to it. He's described his work as transgressional fiction, which I find to be very cool. He has so many books. A lot of them are fantastic. Another one of my favorites is. I think it was called Damned. It's basically the Breakfast Club, but in hell it's great.
Speaker 1:Love that. It's fantastic. That's another great movie. Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2:But yeah, the Breakfast Club in Hell Damned is a great one. Yeah, just all of his books are fantastic. Chuck was born in 1962. So he lived through not only the Stonewall uprising but also the HIV AIDS epidemic. And while writing Fight Club, he wrote it during the height of deaths from HIV AIDS During the mid 90s. That was the height of the death wave from AIDS. While that wasn't the height of infection, that was when the majority of people who had been infected in the 80s had begun to succumb to the illness.
Speaker 2:These facts alone definitely highlight the way that violence in Fight Club, in the Fight Clubs, is directly tied to queerness. Through the author's eyes, the only way he viewed queerness throughout his young life was through a lens of violence. Even in 1994, the Matthew Shepard murder happened right before this book was published. Throughout his life, there was this intersect between being queer and having violence committed against you by an illness, by the government, by homophobes, by the people around you, by your family, and that connection is something that I feel like is so important to understand before stepping into the queer theming of Fight Club, because that is the pinnacle of it the connection between violence and queerness.
Speaker 1:And also the anger right. You have all these things going on around you and as a queer person who's not out yet, you see all this violence being committed against queer people. What do you do with that anger? You can't talk to anybody about it. You can't take it out on anyone, not legally, not without unintended consequences or repercussions. So it makes sense that a lot of this stuff comes out in the movie, because I feel like through his artistic lens, it's a cathartic way to just put the anger somewhere.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. Today's episode. We are mainly going to be focusing on the film that came out a couple of years later, in 1999. It was directed by known surrealist director, david Lynch, who was also responsible for classics like Blade Runner 2049 and Eraserhead, which are both phenomenal films. He's just known for that style of no one really knows what's coming until it comes. That's very much a David Lynch style film, very unique, if you will. Twin Peaks is also one of his works. So if you're familiar with Twin Peaks, are we ready to go into the film? Synopsis? Because, holy shit, we should probably give a little bit of synopsis for people who also haven't seen it in 10 years but, don't really feel like rewatching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can go into the synopsis. Do we want to go over the cast members? I think that's really important because Brad Pitt super queer. Hello.
Speaker 2:That was why I wrote down the yup yeah, oh, yeah, so the main cast. Then it's narrated by edward norton. Yeah, so he plays a character called the narrator. This is an unnamed. He's the unnamed protagonist. He is the main character we follow throughout the story, but he himself has no name. There are some articles online that like to refer to him as jack due to certain things he says throughout the film in the book, but he himself has no name, which is very important thematically later.
Speaker 1:Right, he has no name in the movie, but then yeah, Even in the book he has no name. And then we find out he is Tyler.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, spoilers yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Tyler Durden is played by Brad Pitt, then we have Marla Singer, who's played by Helena Bonham Carter. Brad Pitt, then we have Marla Singer, who's played by Helena Bonham Carter, and then Robert Paulson, which he's referred to as Bob or Bitch Tits Bob.
Speaker 2:He's played by Meatloaf, and then Angel Face who's played by Jared Leto, which also just I just need to say. I know Meatloaf has a lot of problematic stuff. Please don't come for me audience. He is an artist from my childhood who I will always hold near and dear. I cried so hard when I found out he died. I was actually a little bit of a wreck because my father got me into him. So don't come for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, meatloaf is very nostalgic. Yeah, same Very nostalgic for a lot of people, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had an uncle who passed in a motorcycle accident before I was born, so that in a hell was like a thing that, like my father, struggled to listen to and it became my favorite thing as a child, to the point where, as my grandmother lost her memory, she used to start accidentally calling me by my uncle's name. There's so much connection between me and my uncle and it really started with meatloaf. We have same favorite liquor. It's very weird that me and my uncle, who I'd never met, are like this and I could have never possibly known each other. He died two years before I was born, but there's so many things that make me feel like there's a soul connection. That happened.
Speaker 1:I love it plus the music, just great I just had to.
Speaker 2:I had to mention that. You know, yeah, synopsis I, I swear I will try to be as quick as physically and humanly possible with this, because this is like a two and a half hour movie. Again, if you haven't seen it, this synopsis is not going to be enough. Please go see it. Literally, my mom was like I'm just gonna listen to the episode and I was like you've never seen, no, watch the movie. So, mom, if you're listening to this and you haven't watched the movie, watch the movie. So, mom, if you're listening to this and you haven't watched the movie, watch the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, plus there's so many different interpretations, like individual interpretations you can't possibly just listen to somebody else's interpretation and then, unless you're really just not interested, but yeah, I agree. Check it out, if you're listening to this episode.
Speaker 2:Clearly you're interested enough. Go check out Fight Club. Go check, check does the dog diecom. If you need trigger warnings, everything that needs a trigger warning from that movie is on does the dog diecom. So if you require trigger warnings, this movie does not give them to you at all. Go to does the dog diecom and and look through the trigger warnings that are available there. I just wanted to add that also before we get into the synopsis because that is very important.
Speaker 2:The unnamed narrator is suffering from insomnia and he's extremely discontent with his materialistic life that his career as an auto recall specialist affords him, so he's unable to sleep. I think he doesn't sleep for four months. It is an ungodly amount of time. It is the point where clearly there weren't scientific studies done about sleep at this point, because he'd be dead.
Speaker 1:Anyway, and nobody can function like that.
Speaker 2:Watch out. Yeah, he is completely unable to sleep and, in seeking rest and some form of vulnerability, he starts going to support groups for people suffering from terminal illnesses such as testicular cancer, different types of cancers, diabetes, illnesses that he does not have. Here he can cry, he can feel vulnerability and he can finally sleep, until another imposter, marla Singer, shows up to the same group. She shows up to the testicular cancer group, making it very clear that she is most likely pretending to to. She's a voyeur similar to him, a voyeur of support groups, if you will, as they describe each other. The narrator cannot handle this unbearable mirror for his own deception, so he is completely starting to lose it. After some time of going to the same groups and the narrator no longer being able to sleep, they divide up their attendance but still trade phone numbers, which I found very interesting. On a flight home from a business trip, the narrator then meets Tyler, a magnetic, energetic soap salesman, who is quick to point out the narrator's entrapment into the capitalistic cycle and systems around him. The narrator returns to his apartment completely destroyed it has been exploded. He calls Marla, does not speak into the phone, hangs up and immediately calls Tyler. They start living together.
Speaker 2:Shortly after in a dilapidated Victorian home. The narrator and Tyler start fighting each other in the bar parking lot, attracting other men, and soon they start the fight club. The club ends up moving from the parking lot to the basement of the same bar. Tyler and Marla start engaging in frequent boisterous sexual relations, fraying Tyler and the narrator's relationship. As it starts to happen, fight clubs start popping up all over the country really soon after it's actually insane becoming more and more violent and causing more and more chaos in their local communities until Project Mayhem begins, which is just absolute anarchy, basically Between Mayhem and Marla. The narrator soon feels sidelined by tyler, who admits to blowing up the narrator's apartment after a car wreck. Tyler vanishes, leaving the narrator to grapple with the men they sent to die, truly dying in the expansion of project mayhem through every fight club nationwide. In trying to stop project mayhem, the narrator learns that he is tyler durden. They are the same person. Still actually really explained how the fuck he did everything he did without just saying. There's some things about that.
Speaker 1:100 still have me like I don't know about that, but it's a very fun twist yeah, I still woke up this morning thinking about the movie and processing different parts of it, trying to put logic behind it. But I think to one of the sub theming. Things I'll call it with mental health is that sometimes you just can't put logic to it. It's just part of somebody's expression because they're not very mentally healthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the point where sometimes it's not intended to make sense.
Speaker 1:Right, there is no way to make it make sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, and that is entirely valid. One of my favorite things to say is that we know only 3% about the machines that keep us alive and functioning. We know nothing about this fucker Right. We know nothing 100%. I feel like that's part of the point. Is it's meant to not really make sense. Yeah, he finds out he is Tyler Durden, having invented a version of himself he wishes he could present to the world, losing himself almost entirely in the process, to the point where he doesn't even really have a name. Marla thinks his name is Tylerler. His name isn't tyler he. Whether or not he is tyler, his name isn't actually tyler. He. Just he made that name up.
Speaker 1:He made this person yeah, tyler's his alter ego tyler is the person he wishes he could be exactly even says at one point I look how you want to look.
Speaker 2:I fuck how you want to fuck. There it is. I have that later in the. It's a very prominent point of the film. Tyler plans to blow up several credit card companies to erase the debt. When the narrator confronts him, the only way to stop Tyler is to shoot himself. The bullet does not kill the narrator, but does kill Tyler from him, leaving the narrator with a wound through the cheek. Marla is brought in by Project Mayhem for the point of killing her, but instead they hold hands while the buildings explode around them. The narrator says you met me at a very strange time in my life and then credits just start to roll and it's a very cool moment. It's a moment that has been memed in the thousands of movies, like girl go watch fight club. But yeah, that is the basic synopsis of Fight Club.
Speaker 2:We're going to start with the themes of being closeted and being outed and the moments in the film that highlight this specific aspect of queer theming. The entire crux of the narrator's sleeplessness, I feel like, is in and of itself symbolic of the act of heterosexuality. He can never relax. Throughout the whole beginning of the film he's talking about the fact that he's painting a facade of himself through his furniture, through his whole apartment, through his clothes, through the way he presents himself to the world and how it's all just fake. Every aspect of it isn't real, none of it is actually him, and a lot of closeted queer people can 100 empathize with that feeling of the person they are portraying to the world is not who they really are, is not their genuine self. They want to be able to portray themselves as they truly are but, for whatever reason, they do not feel safe to right, and that is something that the narrator, throughout that whole crux of the beginning of the film, is just dwelling in he's uncomfortable in his own skin.
Speaker 1:It's this whole thing of I can't actually present to the world how I want to present. So I am living in this facade, I am presenting how I think people want to perceive me. And because I can't live into my truth, there's like an energetic kind of conflict inside of him and it's like he can't function at work, he can't function in his relationships, he can't function in life, just because he's at odds with himself and that just it keeps him up all night.
Speaker 2:It's a constant act. It's a constant act that he feels like he cannot put down. He cannot stop the act. Because of that act, he cannot even sleep. You can't even drop the act enough to rest in your own home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just also nothing is safe, exactly, and with with marla when she comes into the picture, I think the reason obviously she mirrored him as being an imposter and he couldn't really deal with that because he felt like somebody saw him or saw through what, that he was a fake as well, a fraud. But then at the end of the one meeting where they decide to split up the meetings, it was like this obligatory act of I feel like I should give her my phone number, but I don't really want to. But it's this thing I feel like I should do to keep together this facade so that she doesn't think I'm a weirdo and I don't get found out even more.
Speaker 2:I think he even says something along those lines, not quite so deep, but he says something like I give her my phone number because I think I should Right. Like it's something like he asks to trade phone numbers and she's like why he gives a very like, relaxed, bullshitty response, but yet the act of giving her his number is very strange.
Speaker 1:She maintains that role throughout the entire movie because, in a way, from the moment he gives her his number, she is helping him to maintain the facade, because if there's a girl coming over to the house, nobody's going to question anything.
Speaker 2:She's basically the representation for a beard. The old 90s idea of a beard is someone who a gay person marries, that's of the opposite sex, so that they can appear straight to the public world.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for the audience members who are of my generation that may have never heard that word, because that word has definitely fallen out of like public vernacular in the past few years since the legalization of gay marriage specifically, I feel like no one really uses the word. Few years since the legalization of gay marriage specifically, I feel like no one really uses the word beard anymore when it comes to that. Yeah, but yeah, she definitely represents, even like when he holds her hand at the end and you met me at a very strange time in my life as the world around him falls down the fact that it was marla who really solidified to the narrator that he is tyler durden. It was marla that spilled the beans. It was tyler specifically told the narrator do not talk to her about me. That was like a specific rule that tyler gave the narrator throughout their early interactions with marla was do not mention me to her. Yeah, you don't know me and I don't know. You.
Speaker 2:Don't say my fucking name to her yeah and it's very much like the gay affair and the beard. It's that idea that was very prevalent in the the early 90s, the late 80s, even the early 2000s yeah, it's interesting too how it culminates.
Speaker 1:I was actually thrown by that, because they're holding hands, the buildings are falling down around them. You met me at a very strange time in my life and in the end it was like he was okay with himself. But then he trusted her enough to come through for him and she's always been a solid in the relationship, even though she outed him. I don't know, there could be different interpretations, but it definitely was a twist for me.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I would consider her a solid, considering a lot of the things that happened throughout the film with her. She's definitely goading him a lot of the time you can tell that, but also she kept coming back though. It's not like he isn't using her Right. Exactly, he is using her. It's to the point where, a lot of the times, it's they're using each other.
Speaker 2:She's using him for companionship and he's using her for a sense of of stability and of a mass to fulfill their own separate, in a way, selfish needs yeah, exactly, it doesn't make either of them evil, but it doesn't make either of them good either it just makes them fucking human, yeah yeah, totally, it just makes them people right. Yeah, but even sex with marla. Every time the narrator thinks about himself doing it. It happens in this very strange drugged out haste.
Speaker 2:He's not really seeing her. He not even really her face. He's hearing her, but more than anything he's hearing himself and he's hearing like more masculine sounds, more than he's hearing hers. It's a very strange, very few moments throughout the film where the narrator and Marla are coupling and it happens very bizarrely, in a very strange way.
Speaker 1:And he's also very detached from her when they're having sex.
Speaker 2:I mean, he thinks it's Tyler Right. He's so detached that he thinks it's not him doing it. That's how detached tyler right. He's so detached that he thinks it's not him doing it. That's how detached he is. Yeah, it's so detached he thinks it's a different dick yeah that's the definition of detached right it's yeah, it's like a rejection I'm a little too proud of that joke, by the way. Yeah, I'm a little too proud of that. It's so detached that she thinks it's a different dick.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, it's just everything with Marla and with the idea of having sex with Marla. At one point Tyler asks him if he's interested in it, or Marla flirts with him and the narrator rejects her. And in that moment of rejection he thinks to himself I am Jack's raging bile duct. He is disgusted with her.
Speaker 2:He is disgusted at the thought of being with her sexually again to the point where he thinks it's Tyler doing it. He physically can't imagine it being himself doing it. Even when he does imagine it being himself doing it, it's in a haze. It's not clear mind. He's definitely disassociated. It's like another level of disassociated from it is he is actively disgusted by her. As I am jack's raging bile duct.
Speaker 1:It's very powerful line to describe how much you don't want to fuck someone exactly, but at the same time using her like as an outlet to get out his rage and using her as a mask yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's like this cyclic thing because, as enraged as he is, he keeps taking it out on her, but then he engages with her and he gets more enraged. But also, I think it's in conjunction with all of the other anger and aggression and the fact that he just can't like what was the theming of the movie. It was like tyler kept saying you need to fucking let go, like you need to surrender and let go, stop trying to control everything, let go. That was one of the themes that kept recurring in the whole film and he just wasn't able to let go throughout the course of the film. So he was in the cycle of aggression, anger. What do I do with it? I'm gonna take it out on her. And then he just found himself on this wheel yeah, the movie is a fascinating look at psychology.
Speaker 2:I think that pretty much handles marla as a character and her connection to the ideas of being closeted, being outed, being queer in general, stepping into the fight club, the rules of fight club, in and of itself, the first two rules being very stirred and very prominent do not talk about it, don't talk about Fight Club. Don't talk about it, don't mention it. It doesn't exist. That again, when looked at through a lens, is very queer coded. Don't talk about it, just don't mention it. You hear that from homophobes all the time. Oh, I'm fine with it, but just don't shove it down my throat, just don't talk about it, or just I don't want to see it, and the fact that Fight Club was underground, like this underground movement.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, there's the rules, or like an underground gay club Right, or just an underground thing that's shoved. It's just shoved somewhere. A lot of gay clubs were.
Speaker 1:a lot of gay clubs were in the basement of bars that allowed them during the walls, they were owned by the mafia, they weren't out in the open.
Speaker 2:And I find it very interesting because the first time the rules are being read out, tyler reads first the first two rules and this after reads the second rule. He says do not talk about Fight Club. It immediately pans from his face to a man removing his belt and the men in the room stripping to prepare to fight, which, again, is just a direct correlation to this idea of we do not talk about it outside of this room. Now get naked and pair off.
Speaker 1:Right, like it's okay because you're in a safe space.
Speaker 2:Yep, we don't talk about it outside of this room. It's safe here. You can do what we need to do here. You can be vulnerable, you can get it out and even like the whole idea of vulnerability. The only time these men are able to be vulnerable is fighting or crying in support groups, where people are expected to be crying because, yeah, they're dying. Of course they're going to cry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think it's this representation of a need for connection, a need for meaning in life, to feel alive. The narrator is so bored with his life. It's just so monotonous is the word I was looking for. His life is very monotonous, he's just existing, basically, basically because he's not actually living into who he really is.
Speaker 2:so he's just going about life, like, yeah, going through the motions any of those whole ideas that he can't feel vulnerable anywhere because of that toxic masculinity making him feel like he cannot have any sense of vulnerability outside of punching another person's face in or crying with a man dying of testicular cancer Because that man thinks he's dying of testicular cancer.
Speaker 1:So it's socially acceptable when Fight Club first was built, in the beginning, when it was first put into action or whatever. It was symbolic of the narrator's struggle with his life, like we we said, and he was searching for meaning and for some kind of identity, which I think he knew what it was, but he just was in this purgatory with it and accept it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and so I think, as the film progresses, he feels increasingly disconnected and alienated, because you see him start to unravel and it's crazy, like even when he went to talk to his boss about working remotely and his boss was like are you fucking kidding me? You want what?
Speaker 2:for some reason I thought of my first fight with tyler, when he's beating the shit out of himself oh, my god, oh my god, that's such a cool moment. No, I love that second where they freeze frame on him flying backwards and, for whatever reason, I thought of my first fight with Tyler. That's such a good fucking moment, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's such a good piece of foreshadowing to just writers. That is such a good piece of foreshadowing because you would never guess on first watch through that it's because that's exactly how his first fight with tyler went. On. Second watch through, you're like yep oh shit it just. It boggles the mind.
Speaker 1:I love that moment, as the movie is progressing, you can feel his unraveling and I think the insomnia helps create that contrast between his intense dissatisfaction and his deeper longing for something enriching and fulfilling. And the contrast is in the beginning. He's dipping his toes in it. He was a straight laced, wearing his tie to work and everything behaving in the eyes of what was expected Right. And then, little by little, it's like a little contrast. I'm going to dip my toes in beating somebody up, I'm going to dip my toes in creating this or doing this, and then he just gets more and more brazen. He just starts to unravel. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely the moment.
Speaker 2:at the back of the convenience store, I feel like is a very powerful moment also when it comes to being closeted and being outed.
Speaker 2:Tyler literally holds a convenience store worker at gunpoint by the head, asking him what he wanted to do with his life. And the man says he wanted to be a vet, but for whatever reason it was too much work. That's what he said. So he ended up dropping out of vet school. And Tyler takes his ID, which has his place, he lives on it and says in three weeks you had better be on your way to becoming a veterinarian or I'm going to put a bullet in your head. So he basically threatens this man's life to make him start living his truth. That's the whole thing with that scene is threatening to take someone's life unless they start living their life the way they want to life, unless they start living their life the way they want to. And he even says at the end of the scene that the narrator opens the gun, realizes that the gun was completely empty of bullets, there was never any risk of death. And tyler says, before handing him the empty gun, tomorrow is going to be the happiest day of his life yeah I mean it was all projection and just kind of not wrong yeah exactly you know
Speaker 2:it's the idea of being forced again, the idea of being outed, the idea of very suddenly being forced to handle the fallout of a decision that you didn't consent to being made, which is horrific and should never happen. I'm not saying that. But at the end of the day, there is a freedom to finally being out. There is a release to finally being out. Right, there is a release to finally being out, whether or not that happened without your consent. There is that final weight being lifted of the secret no longer existing, mm-hmm. It no longer being a secret. At the end of the day, that's kind of, I feel like. What that moment really signifies is, even though the consequences, sometimes that jump, becomes the best thing that could ever happen to you, even though it could lead to some of the worst things that ever happened to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean in a way that guy who worked at the convenience store was another version of Tyler. If you think about it, it was-.
Speaker 1:A version of the narrator, even tyler. If you think about it, you know it was tyler, the narrator, even. Yeah, exactly, but yeah, that's yeah. But if you think about it it was like a projection he was projecting onto him. He was basically saying why aren't you living into your truth? And it made him angry. And he was projecting his own anger onto this convenience store clerk because he himself wasn't living into his own truth.
Speaker 2:So even in that moment when, trying to force someone to live in their truth, he himself was not living in his truth. He himself was not out, was not? Yeah, even still, in that moment of that force, he was lying to himself.
Speaker 1:But it could have acted like a sort of foreshadowing or forecasting, like, hey, the convenience store is willing to let go and go enroll in vet school, so it's okay, like it's okay if I do it too, and eventually maybe I'll get there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think, too, it's important to recognize that Tyler does represent the narrator's repressed desires, his aggressions, his frustrations and basically a life that he felt like he couldn't let go but also live into at the same time tyler literally says to him I look how you want to look.
Speaker 2:I fuck how you want to fuck. I'm everything you can't be. I'm everything you want to be. That that is the whole thing with tyler. Tyler is everything the narrator wishes he could be, a person who is far more free than the narrator can ever even imagine himself being.
Speaker 1:So, at the end of the day, I wouldn't expect him to be a nice person because he's figuring his shit out. Not that's an excuse, but it's a valid part of the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's mind. You, tyler, is straight, a domestic terrorist. That man needs to go to prison. That man needs to go to jail. I love the narrator, don't get me wrong, but honey, you fucked up.
Speaker 1:You went too far On your soul search journey.
Speaker 2:You went way too far Way way too far. Yep Agreed. Mind you, this do be a domestic terrorist, but yes, absolutely. When going through your own self-discovery journey, your own, any journey, there are going to be fallouts. There are going to be people who get hurt. There are going to be things that you can't take back. One of my favorite song lyrics is if you want forgiveness, you want to go see a priest, because forgiveness from those that we hurt in this world never was guaranteed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just because you're not guaranteed a forgiveness. It's. It's the whole idea of of yeah, hurt people, but that doesn't give you the right to hurt people exactly yeah, and fight club is described as this incredible story of toxic masculinity and mental health well, and and anti-capitalism, yeah I way to throw that in there If there's one thing this book is it's an anti-capitalist story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does. Now, that's another one of the sub-theming things. In conjunction with those two things is like the deep dive into the societal views of what men are supposed to be like. They're supposed to bottle up emotions, they're supposed to have hatred of women, or oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Again the whole idea of men and masculinity and vulnerability. The only time they can be vulnerable with one another is when they are beating the shit out of each other or dying and underground. Those are the only two instances. Yep, that's the whole thing with this, that that whole idea of masculinity and vulnerability 100. But again, the anti-capitalist themes cannot be ignored. There's a lot of anti-consumerist messaging. There's a lot of anti-consumerist messaging. There's a lot of anti-corporation messaging and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And just greed.
Speaker 2:Establishment and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Credit card debt accumulation.
Speaker 2:The whole thing is they're blowing up credit card companies in hopes of erasing the debt, because the book was written in a time when it actually would have done that. Fun fact for you, by the time the movie came out, that wouldn't have worked, but when the book was written, that would have actually worked because it was prior to off-site uh data even all the shit they got away with in the movie.
Speaker 1:When I watched it the other night I was like there's no way that they would, he would get away with that in today's society. Just because of post 9-11, all the securities and all the different measures we have in place now, there's no surveillance. Oh yeah, yeah yeah, no, literally I was saying the same thing to dylan when we were watching it together.
Speaker 2:I was like there is no. I was like it was so easy to commit crime back then. What the fuck? I think I literally said it like that. I was like why was it so easy to commit?
Speaker 1:crimes back then. Those people are the. Those generations are the reason why you can't do anything today, like they're the reason why we have plexiglass at the gas station now.
Speaker 2:Y'all motherfuckers are the reason why we can't have anything fun, but y'all blame us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all your bun runs and you're ordering drugs and McDonald's drive-thru and shit.
Speaker 2:Come on. Oh my God, yeah, no, but I'll just go fuck myself. Oh God, no, yeah, it's so real. Oh, holy shit. So, yeah, Tyler and the narrator both say this line, and I find it to be very important again, since both of them say it at different points in the film it's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything, and that is a very powerful line for, again, the idea of being outed, the idea of outing yourself, the idea of risking losing everything for the set, for the idea of freedom, exactly, of self-actualization, being who you are, yeah.
Speaker 2:Again the general theming of vulnerability. Men are only allowed to be physically or emotionally vulnerable with one another when fighting or crying while dying. The other form of vulnerability among men is entirely dismissed throughout the film as being womanly or even or gay and thus wrong. It's highlighting that not only societal troubles around these things, but then authors probably most likely own struggles at that time.
Speaker 1:Being reflected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those things where I, as an author myself, I know that, specifically books with, or even poetry, things like that with very heavy theming there's a lot of myself in it. There's a lot of myself in everything that I write, and I think the same can absolutely be said for just about every author, every writer out there at least the good ones. There's pieces of themselves in every word.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a safe place to put it, because then you can just chalk it up as art.
Speaker 2:Exactly, art is a safe place to put your vulnerabilities Again, the whole idea of safety and vulnerability, masculinity and vulnerability. Chuck felt safe to put these vulnerabilities in a book because it can just be oh, it's fiction. Right, that's a fictional character.
Speaker 1:Or even if there's a question around it, it's still not A definitive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the next set of themans we got going on here because holy shit, is Tyler and the narrator's relationship, because, oh my god it's so gay. From the moment they meet, the narrator's life just starts to unwind, like you were saying, from that moment he dips his toes in the water. Ie meeting tyler. Yeah, I definitely think that moment of meeting tyler is the toe dipping in the water and then calling him and going to the bar and that's when the foot starts to go in and tyler's so flaming literally I.
Speaker 2:It is insane. The narrator imagines himself in tyler. Right, tyler is everything he wants to be. Tyler is hyper masculine, he's he. He fucks how he wants to fuck. He gets any girl he wants. He's. You know, he fights. He never loses a fight. He. The only time he loses a fight in fight club is when he wants to. Right, the only time he ever loses a fight is to eventually gain the upper hand. He is smart, he is crafty, but he dresses like a twink. Yeah, he is everything that the alpha man would imagine himself to be, but dresses in fishnet crop top. And it's very interesting because again, throughout the film, with the fight clubs specifically again the fight clubs are they're meant to simulate the idea of gay sex. Right, right, there's this idea of topping, winning, bottoming, losing, and anytime we see the narrator lose, ie bottom, tyler is just fucking, watching Like a haw, full blown, like smoking a cigarette, walking in a circle, watching. Anytime that Tyler is fighting, he is topping, he is winning every time.
Speaker 1:But it's not only watching. He's like completely mesmerized, just completely engulfed and enraptured by it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again it's the idea of, even though in both these instances it is the narrator fighting. When he's Tyler, he has to talk when he's himself. It can go either way, depending on who he wins against and who he loses against.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's just very often fighting against Tyler he does not have the upper hand. Very often when he is fighting himself, when he's fighting Tyler, he is bottoming. He is losing that fight Almost every fight in the parking lot. He doesn't really have the upper hand for Anytime they fight in the fight club, which is very rare, as it gets later into the movie he doesn't have the upper hand for anytime they fight in the fight club, which is very rare. As it gets later into the movie he doesn't have the upper hand. Even once he realizes he is tyler, almost immediately knocks him out with the phone. He doesn't even get a moment even after realizing that he is tyler. He's still a bottom bitch to Tyler. There's definitely yeah, there's a lot of queer theming in just that whole thing with the fight clubs that whole thing with Tyler.
Speaker 2:I went off on a whole tangent with that, but that's just.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love when he gets off the airplane and his apartment's blown up which toward the end he realizes he blew it up because he's against people being greedy and consumerism and all that. But he calls Tyler and then Tyler comes and meets him and he's talked about oh, I'm going to get a hotel. And Tyler's what are you talking about? He's just cut the foreplay and just ask it's fantastic, fantastic, yeah, but there's a lot of that.
Speaker 1:The scene where he's naked in the bathtub, or Tyler's naked in the bathtub, or tyler's naked in the bathtub.
Speaker 2:Just reading the newspaper, smoking just chilling there's a moment where someone and we cannot tell as the audience if it is tyler or the narrator speaking is even by the tone of voice it's very difficult to tell who it is that's speaking in this moment. They say I don't want to die without any scars. And while this can very well be connected to the theming of mental illness, which is extremely prevalent throughout this film, I can definitely see the the innate connection between again the author's own view of the connection between queerness and violence right the that whole idea of as a queer person, if I'm going to be out, I'm going to die with scars, so I don't want to die without any scars right because I'd rather be able to be myself I love that.
Speaker 1:That's quintessential theming in the movie I just I love that moment I love that moment.
Speaker 2:I would not gonna lie, I would get that as a very small tattoo, but I feel like that would be construed in the very wrong way the scar no, I don't want to die without any scars.
Speaker 1:No, I know I'm teasing you Because you could technically the gnarles. Yeah, that hand was pretty gnarly, not for nothing those prosthetics were insane yeah. They were very well done.
Speaker 2:That was very cool prosthetic work Because you know it's a David Lynch film. It was going to be prosthetic work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are some amazing makeup artists too.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, after their first fight in that parking lot, which is after the narrator agrees to move in with Tyler, they're sitting in the parking lot passing a beer back and forth while Tyler smokes a cigarette, which is, extraordinarily, again beat by beat to a sex scene if you just replace fighting in the parking lot with fucking in a car.
Speaker 1:Right and the post sex scene, with smoking a cigarette, kicking back with a beer, passing the beer back and forth yeah sharing a beer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sweat beads rolling down their chests exactly, even like sometimes the way, and again this is this might be reaching, but let me just reach my little gay hand out there. Sometimes the way the blood spatter and like the blood lines look on the narrator's face, specifically after he fights people like tyler it almost looks like cum. It almost looks like a cum shot. Yeah, and again I might be reaching my little gay hand all the way out into the abyss and grabbing at nothing, but just it'll be like a splotch here, a splotch here and nothing else. And it's just I don't know like I watched him get hit in so many other places. Why is there not blood there? Why is that blood so placed as if, right, someone came on his face?
Speaker 2:as if it was just like a messy cum shot, like very symbolic I don't know exactly like there's something to that symbolism, especially again when you think about every fight in the fight club being symbolic of some type of sexual yeah exactly type of repressed sexual thing or yeah, coming out and fighting, yeah, for sure exactly
Speaker 2:yeah, makes sense the, the house they're living together in.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's definitely it's symbolic of that whole idea of almost being domestic, but it looks like shit, it's falling apart, it it's barely clinging together domestic, which again symbolic of tyler and the narrator's relationship being like so close to domestic, but it just can't. And then to go back to that moment you were discussing of tyler being naked in the tub with the narrator sitting there, which I find to be a very interesting scene altogether tyler's bathing narrator's just vibing in the bathroom with him cutting his nails, something you can do in literally any other room of the house. I think he was even biting his nails or some shit, something he could have been doing in any other room besides, in the same room as a naked bathing friend. He's just sitting there and they're just having a conversation. And at one point during this conversation they're discussing getting married and the narrator says I can't. A lot of coldness throughout that shifted from boyhood to teenagehood to manhood and I understand that a lot of boys could definitely feel left out in the cold A little emotionally neglected.
Speaker 1:That's what I was saying earlier about Bob being symbolic of we had this big bitch tits that they're calling him bitch tits bob, and the narrator's nestling his head in between those bosoms like, oh, almost like he never had that or it was something like bob is extremely symbolic yeah of yeah.
Speaker 2:I literally had a note in my phone while drunk watching this movie that said it all comes back to bob with four question marks. And then I worked that out. So we will definitely get into that one, because, oh my God. But yeah.
Speaker 2:And then Tyler says something very interesting right after that. He says we are a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need. Woman is really the answer we need. And then immediately the scene shifts to them doing domestic tasks, tasks that would societally be considered womanly. The narrator is preparing breakfast. As Tyler's getting ready for work, the narrator turns around and goes up to him and fixes his tie and gives him something to eat before he leaves for the day. Almost as if the narrator is stepping into that role of just being the wife without even really putting the label to it, the name to it. There's no need for a woman, I'll just step into that. Societally there's a lot to that moment and I don't feel like I at this point have the time or the capacity to really dive into that moment specifically, but that moment deserves a destructation written upon it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that was very well done.
Speaker 2:Fascinating scene shift. Very well done, wondering if what we really need is another woman to two men doing the tasks that at the time would stereotypically, societally, be seen as tasks for a man and a heterosexual couple yeah, like it's, even like the way they fight is very unhealthy heterosexual couple.
Speaker 2:It's what you would imagine from your parents and shit if your parents didn't get along. You know what I'm saying? It's very oh. This is an old married couple that should have never gotten married to begin with. Why didn't get along? You know what I'm saying? It's very oh. This is an old married couple that should have never gotten married to begin with. Why didn't y'all get divorced when you had the chance? Oh, religion, okay, cool, it's one of those interactions. That's how they interact with each other and it's very strange.
Speaker 1:Very strange.
Speaker 2:In the hospital. At one point the narrator needs stitches from one of the fights in the fight club and, quoting the narrator, tyler speaks for me in moments like these. Tyler is sitting off to the side in the doctor's office as his face is getting stitched and Tyler says he fell down some stairs. And the narrator just repeats I fell down some stairs. Very akin to what you would see an abuse victim do, what you would see someone in a domestic violence situation, an abusive relationship, do in the hospital, where they're told by their abuser what to tell the doctor and they just repeat it.
Speaker 1:As a cover up.
Speaker 2:It's very symbolic. And then we have the Lou scene.
Speaker 1:I'm there, yeah, the owner of the bar, the owner of the bar in which Fight Club takes place in the basement, and had been taking place in the basement for weeks and probably months before they got found out and Lou comes down. What are you doing in here?
Speaker 2:He shows up with an armed guard, which I feel, like is very important, because this armed guard is then forced to witness everything that transpires and that, in and of itself, just feels very like he was. He was in a non-consenting witness to what? Yeah, it's very oh yeah. So, yeah, he comes down and he's. What the fuck are y'all doing here? Get out.
Speaker 2:Tyler lures Lou into fighting him, which, again, I find to be very important and interesting, because there's that whole idea, especially at the time mind you, we're dealing with old stereotypes audience was this idea at the time of gay men luring straight people or queer people in general, luring straight people into our life and tricking them into being involved with us. And even now you'll see that with trans panic defenses and shit like that. You see it even now, sometimes with hateful people where they will say that certain aspects of the community are luring vulnerable people into the community and into things that they may not understand. Tyler lures lou into fighting him. He basically antagonizes, entices him into punching tyler in the face and lou just starts hitting and hitting, and hitting and beat the and until Tyler was just blood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, beat the shit out of Tyler. Tyler was like a bloody pope, until Tyler was. He was, and Tyler purposefully stops everyone from intervening, specifically the narrator. There's a specific moment where Tyler holds his hand up to stop the narrator and it like zooms in on Tyler's hand and then zooms in on the narrator more than anyone else in the room, which I found very powerful. Cinematography, um, and as lou is, beating the shit out of tyler, tyler is laughing and he's saying things like oh lou, yes lou, like he's making sex sounds. He's literally making sex sounds, while he is getting the absolute hell beat out of him, which I mean. If you don't see the symbolism at this point, we can't walk your hand through it for this entire episode. Come on, guys, like we said, it's right there.
Speaker 2:After Tyler is down for the count, it would seem, lou goes to turn around and basically demand that everyone get the fuck out. Goes to turn around and basically demand that everyone get the fuck out. In this moment, tyler tackles Lou to the ground and spits a mouthful of blood into Lou's mouth before screaming in his face you don't know where I've been, lou, you don't know where I've been, you have no idea where I've been, and then begging him to let them keep the space and obviously lou does at this point he is petrified and he and his guard leave. Yeah, they immediately run out of the room and just that I'm gonna cry. That moment of you don't know where I've been at this point in time.
Speaker 2:Again, it was during the height of deaths from the aids epidemic. This was a point in time where phrases like that, everyone knew what a phrase like that meant. After spitting a wad full of blood into someone's mouth, saying something like that, that is a direct call to HIV AIDS. That's exactly what that moment is. And again, the queer theming of that can't be. It can't be denied. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Lou was so scared he was like I don't even want to deal with that. You can have whatever you want. Take it, the basement's yours.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and it's one of those things where you know the homophobia at the time, the it's just there's that one scene is so powerful, it is sickening to watch. Mind you, it's a very difficult scene to. I would say, sit through. Oh yeah, that's one of those scenes where you're not enjoying the watch, you are sitting it you are sitting with it and through it actually I had a visceral reaction during that.
Speaker 1:I actually was laying down in bed watching it and I crunched up to sit up because I and I even think I said out loud I don't know if I could watch this like finish the scene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that, that moment is is rough and it's meant to be. It's it's meant to hit your core. That moment is meant to make you stop, and it makes everyone in the room stop and look around for a second. Wait, we don't know where any of us have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're all swapping blood and shit out of each other, yeah strange moment and it's one of those moments that an entire districtation could be written upon. When it comes to the homophobia and the fear, stigmatization of HIV and AIDS that existed at the time, that's still prevalent to this day. When it comes to the, just the whole idea of that scene being representative of again a sex scene, tyler is bottoming, but only for the psyche of people at the time period. It's that's one of those moments that will live in my brain.
Speaker 1:rent free for very long parts of the movie, so it's, yeah, very strong it's guttural, it hits you like a truck. It does. It does that's the probably the reason why I didn't finish it when I watched it when I was 20, because it was so visceral for me and there was so much to unpack with that that I was just like I don't, I can't process all this right now.
Speaker 2:You're valid, I totally understand. I definitely shouldn't have watched that at 17. Yeah Is what it is, but yeah, and even like with the guard and everyone being forced to watch that moment, they couldn't intervene. They couldn't. There was nothing that could have been done. They just had to stand there and watch. We're going to move on, but ah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That moment, that fucking scene.
Speaker 1:Shit is dense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that scene is thick. Yeah, the whole training process for Project Mayhem. It's just a process of very much becoming entirely submissive to Tyler, to entirely losing yourself, your own identity, who you are as a person, who you are as a soul on this planet. Literally, tyler has their IDs pinned to the back of his door and he calls them human sacrifices. These are not people to him.
Speaker 1:And the theming behind that was basically he was punishing them and emasculating them, which is yeah, no, you know the, the punishments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically anyone who betrays project mayhem, anyone who goes against project mayhem, even, uh, the police commissioner. They end up threatening with this. They end up threatening people who try to work against project mayhem with castration. Which is fascinating, because it is it is the idea of completely and totally demasculating and taking away something that isn't really that important. You know what I mean. At the end of the day, they're not a super necessary organ for a man's survival.
Speaker 1:A man can live without his test Right.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You can live without, just like I can live without my UVs. You can live without your testes, but it's still. It's not one of those things where we'll kill you, we'll emasculate. It's a power thing which, again, a lot of sexual related crimes are just power things. That's why you hear about horrific things occurring. It's a lot of the times it's about power. It's not really about sexual satisfaction.
Speaker 1:And also how men have their masculinity wrapped up in their identity and it becomes entangled with the ego, almost. So it's like that threat of not having your testicles is like it is.
Speaker 2:that it's not, yeah, it's not. Having your testicles leads to not having your masculinity, which leads to not having a certain or part of your identity. It's like a domino effect.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you're right. It is interesting how that in those scenes they were threatening the testicles and it was like they just reacted by doing OK, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? You got it. You got it. Please don't take my testicles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the police commissioner was literally willing to put the entire city at risk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's how ingrained that is when you think about the patriarchy and men and how they're raised and how it's stupid to be weak and kind and vulnerable and effeminate. That was just that symbolism to drive home the point of how that's what's wrong with the world. We're just more talking about the symbolism, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. During one fight, though, tyler says forget what you know about life, forget what you know about friendship. And you and me which I found very interesting Cause that whole idea of again it could just be hinting to they are the same person, but I think it could also be hinting to there.
Speaker 2:There is more than a friendship between us, and I need you to see that Absolutely the latter, yeah, and again I see how it also hints at the mental illness aspect of it. They are the same person. That can't be denied as being something that's hinted at in that moment. But I think it could have a double meaning as well, especially considering this is the fight that happens right before Tyler wrecks the car and that's basically what he says right before letting go of the steering wheel and letting the car veer off the road and just careen into a fucking river. When that does happen, tyler immediately goes for the narrator and pulls him out first.
Speaker 2:And I just wanted to point out something that I personally noticed in that moment.
Speaker 2:When he pulls the narrator out of the car and the narrator is laying across his chest, the first thing that I thought of that it reminded me of visually is the statue in Italy of Mary holding Christ's dead body after taking him down from the cross, and I again couldn't even begin to pick apart the symbolism in that, but I just found it to be very interesting that it was a very similar body position. The narrator is laying very splayed out, unconscious, just tilting back, akin to how Christ is laying in Mary's lap, and Tyler is holding him almost upright, but not really, and has a hand on his chest and basically talks about the fact that, like, this has been a rebirthing, this has been a reawakening, a re which, again, when connected to that symbolism of mary holding christ's dead body, that would be right before the rebirth of christ, three days later. So again there's, there's some symbolism in there that I again I'm not smart enough to pick that apart, but there's something to that and I wanted it to be noted because that was.
Speaker 2:The first thing that came to my mind was that statue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that whole scene was just that threw me for a loop. I was like wow, I really didn't think the car was going to go off into the woods the way it did. That totally caught me by surprise, but I guess you know they were driving down and, like I said, the theming this thing that keeps coming up is let go, surrender.
Speaker 2:Let go, because he was so into trying to control every aspect of his life and hide and just go out of his way to conceal everything the moment he finally does go, and it leads to not only a further unraveling but eventually the outing, the outing of him being tyler, which again could be symbolic of just in and of itself being outed as queer. You met me at a very strange time in my life.
Speaker 1:The building's falling down, that nothing is what it seems, yeah yeah yeah I am not who you thought I was. I'm sorry, he's probably thinking I'm not even who I thought I was no really, which, like I don't even know who I am, same like the same.
Speaker 2:I get it. How does it do me like that? I also think that's just being in your late 20s slash early 30s. How old's the narrator? Yeah, 30 ish I need to know for personal reasons stick that in the back pocket for a minute yeah, just in case, oh god, yeah.
Speaker 2:So after the car wreck, tyler just fucking vanishes and for a second he's at the narrator's bedside and he leaves very soon after and he's just gone, like the house is completely empty. He's just gone and as the narrator is walking around, realizing that Tyler specifically is gone, he says to himself my father dumped me, tyler dumped me. I am Jack's broken heart.
Speaker 1:So he's equating himself with a visceral organ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he does that throughout the I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection. I am Jack's raging bile duct. I am Jack's yeah, even it starts when he finds that book, the I am Jack's colon. I get cancer. I kill Jack. It starts with that in that book and it's just something he uses throughout the film as like a motif to describe himself, but again in a disassociated way. He is describing things about himself in a way where it is as disconnected from himself as he can be, while still talking about himself.
Speaker 1:What I find is really uncanny and cool about this particular quote is that when you have emotional trauma, there are sayings that correlate or pertain to three different organs in the body, and so one is the brain, one is the heart and one is the gut. And when you witness somebody going through a trauma, they could say I feel like I'm losing my mind, like I can't think straight, I'm losing my mind, so that pertains to the brain. When they talk about the heart, or refer to the heart, it's God, my chest feels like it's caving in on me, or my heart just shattered. Or you could say man, that feels like a blow to the gut. Like we have all these sort of what do you call them? Like just ways of idioms? Yeah, idioms. Like ways of referring to how we feel viscerally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know and this is, yeah, this is basically his way of doing something. Along those lines, I just I really appreciate the. My father dumped me, tyler dumped me. Yeah, there there's this equation between masculine love, fatherly love, and then later we'll touch into divine love being loved by God, being loved by your father, being loved by another man, vulnerability, affection, desire. You know it's in the narrator's life.
Speaker 1:he desires for a god to love him, he desires for a father to love him and he desires for a man to love him yeah, it's almost symbolic too, like you talk about the trifecta, and in certain religions you have the father, the son, the holy spirit, which is the divine exactly.
Speaker 2:And again, one of those things in the narrator's personal thing is the father right it's both his father and god the father. And then it yeah, not that I just, but yeah again, after he realizes he and tyler are the same. I look how you want to look. I fuck how you want to fuck. We've brought that up a few times, but come on, y y'all, that's really gay, it's really gay.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times too, with gay men very concerned about how they look and present to the world.
Speaker 2:And again, just Tyler. In general, he looks how he wants to look, he fucks how he wants to fuck and he is everything the narrator wishes he could be. He acts dominant. The narrator wishes he could be. He acts dominant. He seems to be dominant in the bedroom. And again, he dresses like a twink. He dresses extremely effeminately, he wears the kind of shit that I would have in my closet and I am a twink. He's got the fishnet crop top and the low rise jeans. There's literally a point where he's trying to sell soap to a department store and his suit pants are hanging real low and his shirt's riding up and you can see the crotch v and we literally paused it and I was like that is the gayest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:Okay, we are going to talk about bob robert paulson, aka bitch tits. Bob angel face, who is played by Jared Leto, has no other name. I don't even know if he's named in the film, but in the book his name is Angel Face and the narrator slash Tyler and how the three of them, their relationships, connect and are, in and of itself, very queer coded. So we're going to start with Bob. I love me, my Bob Robert Paulson.
Speaker 1:Me too. I was devastated when he died.
Speaker 2:I know I cried so hard, I can't.
Speaker 1:That wasn't fair.
Speaker 2:It really wasn't. It really truly wasn't. It was so not fair. Especially since he was, but that's the thing is, it had to be Bob.
Speaker 1:Right, I know, I know it had to be, but I just he was the one that befriended the narrator in groups and just really reciprocated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one that befriended the narrator in groups and just really reciprocated. Yeah, bob, when the narrator starts going to support groups, the first person he is able to cry and experience vulnerability with is robert paulson, who he refers to as bitch, bitch tits bob, due to the breasts he grew from hormone treatment for testicular cancer. Bob is single. Bob's kids don't really talk to him. Bob is or he doesn't have any kids. I can't remember which it is, it's kind of a loner Bob is sad and he is doing his best.
Speaker 2:We love Bob very much. Bob is very much the fatherly, affectionate type of character and just as his natural character he is the foil to Tyler. You know how they talk about like character foils. He is Tyler's character for that makes there is no other way around it. He is meant to be the complete and total opposite of Tyler. He is emotionally open. My sweet baby processes a lot of emotions with food which like same bitch.
Speaker 2:I get it. Get your Krispy Kreme donuts. I love him and he's just. He's extremely openly communicative. He communicates very. He's not one of those people where he hides the way he's feeling throughout the film. He's the only member of project mayhem that when he shows up and they tell him to leave, he actually leaves, and then the narrator has to be like no, bob, we're testing, yeah this is your initiation.
Speaker 2:Come back he's the only one that's like, follows the rules. They don't want me. Oh yeah, he's very exactly. He was not meant to be there and it was very obvious from step one, from the moment he entered the fight clubs. It's very clear that he not even necessarily isn't meant to be there. Like he fits in perfectly, fine. Fine, but he is very much the foil to the entire situation, to the chaos without order, to the anarchy without consequence. He feels like that foil character.
Speaker 1:And even he is the one who experiences the consequence he didn't fit the prototype or the agenda.
Speaker 2:Yeah, after the narrator finds out that Bob is going to the fight clubs, they start talking about it, because they never actually listen to the don't talk about fight club rule. I've noticed. Yeah, they don't actually abide by that rule. No one does. Bob is attending fight club and the narrator and him are talking about it, and Bob thinks that it is Tyler who started the fight clubs completely on his own and talks about Tyler as though he is some like mythical, otherworldly god. The narrator clearly gets jealous of this and goes to the same fight club that Bob has been going to, which is a different one from the one he usually goes to. It's in a different setting, it's in a different location and Tyler isn't there. This is one of the only fights that I believe occurs without Tyler there to oversee it and watch, which, again, I find very interesting.
Speaker 1:And his need to want to fight Bob too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he has a need to fight Bob, specifically after learning that Bob thinks that Tyler started all this on his own, which, again, is that whole idea of needing the credit that you're owed, of wanting to be included, wanting to feel important, wanting to not feel like a nobody, even though you are nameless. During this fight with Bob, he only gets one good square punch in on Bob's face before he is immediately turned around facing backwards from Bob and his back is pressed to Bob's front and Bob starts choking him from behind, which is again in and of itself a very sexual position. And when you look at these fights as symbolisms for sex, almost immediately the narrator ends up in a bottoming position against Bob.
Speaker 1:Which means he drastically lost that fight.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he lost that fight big time, but Bob was cool about it. Bob was real cool about it. There was no issues between the two of them in the aftermath. Bob was chill about it and he was chill about it too. And again, I think that has a lot to do with the fact that he saw Bob as a fatherly.
Speaker 1:There was nurturing in that fight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, even again, the my father dumped me, tyler dumped me. He says that right after Bob dies, it can connect back to that whole idea of even though Bob didn't choose to leave, he still again lost a fatherly love figure. His own father abandoned him, and now he's lost Bob.
Speaker 1:And when he died his eyes were completely wide open, which added another layer of haunt and just devastation to that whole scene.
Speaker 2:And even in that moment, the members of Project Mayhem are very much talking about Bob. Oh, he was just. He died to, to the cause, that this is fine, he was a sacrifice. This is how it's supposed to be. And the narrator snaps. The narrator fucking loses it and he just starts screaming this is Bob. His name was Robert Paulson. He was a human fucking being. He was a person. He was a man. Yeah, he had a family. He was a man. Yeah, he had a family. He was a person, he mattered. And then it literally becomes a chant throughout I'm going to cry throughout almost every fight club of his name was Robert Paulson. And it becomes this idea throughout the members of Project Mayhem that the reason for this is because once you die, you become human again. That's what they think it is, but for the narrator, it's so much more than that he's lost a father figure.
Speaker 1:This was.
Speaker 2:Robert Paulson and he meant a lot to me. Yeah, exactly, it's another level to him than it is to anyone else and it really does start his path toward completely and totally unraveling. Bob's death is what sends him on the path to trying to stop Project Mayhem and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he snaps. His death is a catalyst. Yeah, exactly, he snaps back to reality a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he starts to realize there are consequences. These aren't just actions, there are ramifications to all of this, more people are going to die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't just live in this self-contrived world and not think about anybody else as you're coming into, anybody else matters, right?
Speaker 2:yeah?
Speaker 1:just because you have internal shit and conflict to work through, it doesn't mean it doesn't affect anybody else or doesn't make you a good human being exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:at one point Tyler says we are God's unwanted children, so be it. Which, again? How is that not the gayest line in cinema? We are God's unwanted children, so be it. Come on, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:That's a vibe, even Angel Face, the fact that they called him Angel Face. He has the face of an angel, meaning he's so beautiful, and that's the reason why he was specifically named that way in the book. It's just more symbolism there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's yep, exactly, it's fantastic. So this is a quote directly from the book. If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about god? This should be my favorite part being held and crying with big bob without hope. Damn, that's the narrator thinking to himself as he is being held by bob during one of these therapy sessions, during during one of these support group sessions.
Speaker 1:Bob is. His conduit to the divine is basically what that is.
Speaker 2:Through being a conduit for fatherly love. Exactly, bob. Being a connection to fatherly love by proxy makes him a connection to divine love, because there is that direct root between God, father and self. And if you are lacking that, then what is it that? You know, about the guy at the top. Yeah, that's fascinating shit I can't.
Speaker 2:Yes, and now we get into angel face, played by fucking jared leto. Listen you method acting motherfucker. This was like the last good role you did and I will die on that hill. I'm just saying Requiem for a Dream is also fire and I'm mad that you're in that one too.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say another great movie.
Speaker 2:No Requiem for a Dream is also fire, but those are probably the only two good movies you've been in that I can name, and I missed 30 Seconds for Mars, and I wish you would release more punk music, but it's fine no hard feelings over here so, yeah, no hard feelings, it's fine.
Speaker 2:Angel face. Again, the fact that he is named angel face, like you were saying, it not only connects to the divine but connects to the, the fact that the narrator and tyler think he is beautiful. These are names that they don't give themselves, like bitch tits bob. He didn't name himself that, the narrator named him. That, right, he, angel face, didn't name himself angel face, the narrator named him that, tyler named him, that these are men who look at him and say, oh my god, he's beautiful and they name him Angel Face because of that. It's a connection to the divine and it's also just this idea of I find this person very beautiful hem and fight club and all of this, you know, fucking chaos, nonsense.
Speaker 2:Tyler starts showing him preferential treatment. Tyler starts clearly favoring him at one point after threatening the commissioner actually with castration. They're running out of the hall and angel face runs up to tyler and they're interacting and the narrator is standing off to the side and watching and tyler takes angel face like this on the cheeks and then ruffles his hair in a very affectionate. I'm really proud of you. Good job, fatherly loving. It could be looked at either way. It could be looked at as a form of fatherly affection.
Speaker 2:It could be looked at a form of affection or just the courage to be out with how you feel and act on your feelings, exactly like this very physical touch, vulnerability moment between angel face and tyler, and the narrator is watching and he becomes very clearly jealous. In this moment he says I am jack's inflamed sense of rejection. In this moment, as angel face runs away and and tyler heads the opposite direction, he he says I am Jackson flames sense of rejection, before then running after Tyler. In the very next scene, the narrator and Angel Face are fighting and this is, I believe, one of the only fights that we see the narrator win. I think this is the only time he tops the fight. Every other time he's fighting, he's like struggling to stay in control, but like am I wrong there?
Speaker 2:there, I don't think so now yeah, I think this is the only time he's really got it in the fucking bag yeah, he beats angel face to basically a dismangled pulp yeah.
Speaker 2:So he starts fighting angel face and he takes it way overboard. He ends up knocking out I think it was the first seven of angel's teeth in the top and then four in the bottom or something like that. He completely disfigures Angel's nose, his eye, basically his entire face is completely disfigured by the end of this fight. Tyler just watches. Tyler just watches, smokes a cigarette, spits on the ground, tells them to take Angel to the hospital, kind of thing, smokes a cigarette, spits on the ground, tells them to take angel to the hospital, kind of thing, but doesn't actually intervene to stop this, even when it is clear that angel face would have tapped out if he was physically able to right. You can even see his hand lift to try to tap out and then it falls again because he just can't tap out and and the narrator just keeps hitting. After the fight the narrator goes to walk away and Tyler asks him where did you go, psycho boy? And the narrator responds I felt like destroying something beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what.
Speaker 2:Again. The queerness of that moment cannot be denied. He, bob, is the pinnacle of his fatherly affection, his fatherly attraction, right, angel, is the pinnacle of his sexual attraction. He wants to fuck Angel Face. He wants Angel Face to fuck him. He wants to be with him sexually and cannot accept that within himself. Because, mind you, when I say thatler is favoring angel face, it's the narrator favoring angel face.
Speaker 1:He's doing this to himself yeah, and if you think about how fighting and fight club was used as a vehicle to parallel sexual aggression, really what he wanted to do is like fuck the shit out of this guy. But instead he has to beat the shit out of him because he can't, like you said, step into who he is and have him in the ways that he wants to have him exactly angel face is the center of his sexual attraction.
Speaker 2:He finds him so beautiful, he wants to be with him and he can't accept that. So he has to destroy something beautiful. He has to destroy it. That can't be that beautiful anymore or else I won't be able to stop myself from doing something that I can't do. And again, you parallel that to him losing the fight with Bob so quickly. Like I said, he got one good hit in and he went fucking down. He lost that fight so fast and with Angel Face he didn't even give him the chance to stop. He didn't give anyone the chance to stop him, he just kept hitting, and it very much. Again, it parallels that sexual frustration that he cannot act on. So he will act on it in the only way he can, which is through violence, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, and where did you go? Psycho boy that plays into that whole mental health. You know theming throughout and how it's interweaved with what he's going through and that he really did have a psychotic break, maybe in that moment, like he just couldn't stop hitting angel face in the face yeah, and it's again.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things where you think about, when bob dies, how much he just had a meltdown narrator cares how yeah, how much, how viscerally he reacts, and yet he himself brings angel to death's door and couldn't give a shit less. I felt like destroying something beautiful Doesn't matter to him. As long as I no longer feel sexually attracted to him, my work is done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, almost like a survival.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because you don't want to out yourself by pursuing the person that you feel like you can't stop yourself from pursuing, you got to keep that facade intact. And even from that moment on, he struggles to look at Angel Face, he struggles to reconcile with what he ended up doing to Angel Face, so he just doesn't really interact Because it reminds him of his own unresolved conflict.
Speaker 1:Look at him. Yeah, it reminds him of his own unresolved conflict. You know that he could do something so horrible to somebody because that's how the conflict inside of him is. Just, it's that intense exactly, yeah, it's it takes over him.
Speaker 2:So it turns him into a monster, turns him into into someone who, like I said, literally brings angel to death's doorstep right he looks like shit.
Speaker 2:He's literally just blood yeah yeah, uh, that covers basically the large swaths of the queerness and fight club. Uh, there are some random moments that were way too queer, not to mention early on in the movie the narrator says he doesn't want another man's name on his underwear. About three-fourths into the movie they're on the subway and they see a calvin klein ad. And the calvin klein ad is in and of itself extremely sexual. It has a a man's front in very tight calvin klein underwear and then the other side of the ad is just the man's bare ass holding the calvin klein underwear to cover his genitals, kind of thing it's. It just connects to that earlier moment of not wanting another man's name on his underwear and then that hyper homoerotic Calvin Klein ad, the idea of having another man's name on your underwear If they could fight any celebrity. Tyler says Hemingway and the narrator says William Shatner.
Speaker 2:And I'm sure you all know about the queerness around Star Trek as a whole and how Sulu's secret kiss, which we've spoken about in the past, and just the origins of shipping culture and specifically queer shipping culture can be found in Star Trek, in Kirk and Spock, which William Shatner wanted to happen. I found it very interesting that he said William Shatner and then for Hemingway. I found that interesting because there are some speculations that Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald were maybe a little besties, if you will. At one point they had a bar bet to see who had the bigger penis, and they went into the bathroom to solve the bet and then never told anyone what the results were. I don't know. That's pretty gay in my eyes, and I found those answers to be pretty gay.
Speaker 2:At one point I think it's either after Tyler leaves the home or it's while he's fucking Marla. I can't remember which, but the narrator walks up to the door and says Tyler's door is closed. I've been here for two months and his door has never been closed and he's very frantic about the fact that Tyler's door is closed, which I'm sorry, but that's gay. And then, last but not least, tyler and Marla are having sex. The narrator can hear every word and he mentions that he could move to a place where he can't hear them, but instead just decides to vibe and even moves closer to try to watch.
Speaker 1:A little voyeurism he wants to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't blame a man. It'd be like that. I would want to see Brad Pitt and Helen Potter.
Speaker 1:True, it might be wrong of you to say, but like I think inherently we're curious, right Like we're the only culture that really like clothes up, covers up, doesn't talk about sexuality, doesn't talk about sex, doesn't talk about intimacy, doesn't talk about sexuality, doesn't talk about sex, doesn't talk about intimacy, doesn't talk about anything. We don't talk about even the mental health stuff that in this movie, the theming and stuff. This movie came out in 1996. It's 2024 and there's still no conversations around mental health or psychological issues and stuff, except, oh, go see the psychologist and get a medication and that'll solve all your problems.
Speaker 1:Nobody's having open conversations about any of this stuff exactly, and just so you know I want to watch came out in 96 the book came out in 96, the movie 99, yeah, but but even we're talking like 90s and it's 2024.
Speaker 2:Come on now and we're still just yeah, we're still completely unable to have these conversations. So so I think one of those things were I think inherently, we're just curious.
Speaker 1:We're curious about I. I remember going to a seminar once and they had a sweat lodge and everybody got naked and there were some people that were melting down over that. Wait what we're taking off all this? And the facilitator was like, well, if you're not comfortable, you can wear a towel or whatever. But it was like this freedom of let's go in the sweat lodge and nobody cared about anything. But what do you call that afterward? A round table or whatever, where the facilitator is like hey, describe your experiences. And everybody went around the room describing their experiences and when it got to me I was like I might be like the weird one in the group, but I was fascinated by other people's bodies, like their physical temples, because we don't see that.
Speaker 1:You see the person, you see yourself, that you see the person, you see yourself, you see the person that you're dating. But like shit people are. You can't even not wear a bra without people staring, because it's like shit that you don't see, you don't see every day, so like when you're in a sweat lodge with 30 other people and they're all naked. I'm curious and it's innocent curiosity, but still, that's not to go off on a rant or on a tangent, but I still, I think about all the time.
Speaker 2:It's fair, I think about all the time. I went to a concert festival in indiana when I was like 19 ish, give or take, and while out there there was a group of girls who got there at the moment. They got there, they just got naked and it was incredible. It was just really. It was really nice to see how safe everyone felt. I think that was the big thing that made me so happy about it, because there was even a point in mind you, this was like after my assault.
Speaker 2:This was at a point in my life where I was extremely closed off. I was very nervous, I was very untrusting and I, after one of the concerts, ended up completely taking off my whole whole shirt, my bra. I just laid there topless and I didn't feel the least bit uncomfortable. I was surrounded by by, by men, by by men, women, whatever, and I didn't feel the least bit uncomfortable, unsafe on anything. It was one of those environments that I would give anything to be able to like have another weekend. Yeah, replicate, because it was, oh my God, it was amazing. Yeah, it's called Planet X Fest. It was such a good time.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, so you want to jump to that fun fact, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:This is probably one of my favorite fun facts about Fight Club. The first time the word snowflake was used to describe someone who sees every human being as unique and special was by Tyler Durden in the 1996 publication of Fight Club and again in the movie. But a lot of conservatives you will see calling people liberal snowflakes. That term was created by Chuck, that's his word. That term was created by Chuck, that's his word. He created that term to mean people who think they're unique and special from the perspective of Tyler Durden. So I think that's gay, thank you.