Fight Club (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts 7.1 extract: Fight Club (1999)

Having looked around at other peoples' reviews for a while, it seems quite apparent that Fight Club is a widely misunderstood movie. Yes, it's cool, yes, you're not supposed to talk about it, yes, yes, yes, yes... 

What is so often overlooked is the irony of Fight Club and the fact that this isn't a commentary on society and consumerism - at least, not in the respect that many outline. Fight Club is best seen as a romance, the irony wherein a conscious critique of self-consciousness, rebellion and all the other elements that have 15+ year-olds jizz in their pants. In the simplest terms, Fight Club is about mummy and daddy issues being projected onto the world and the self-proclaimed disenfranchised wanting to strike out at it for that very reason. Fight Club is about not being able to stop pushing the destruct and self-destruct buttons. Moreover, it is about the infectious nature of this very predicament that The Narrator finds himself in. 

The ultimate goal of Fight Club is then the reconciliation of self-hatred as well as mummy, daddy and women issues within our protagonist. In such, this is a movie about growing up and being an adult instead of destroying the world. This then calls into question the final image and all of the garble that is spewed throughout the narrative. To not talk about Fight Club is to get on with your problems without palming them off to everyone else. To break that rule is to form Fight Club, to allow the external fight to be needlessly, perpetually and immaturely propagated. Adhering to the rules has you focus on the person close to you and, in The Narrator case, she who holds your hand through your needless destruction of the world. 

All in all, Fight Club is a romance, little more.