Fight Club

FIGHT CLUB

WALT DISNEY--not to be confused with the 20th Century absurdist of the same name--had initially not wanted to see the film Fight Club. From the reviews he’d read, it seemed like just another Hollywood celebration of a couple of its favorite pretty boys roughing it up in an exhibitionistic display of testosterone.
Who needs that?
But after the initial hype had settled, after the previews had been aired in the theaters and the ads had disappeared from the newspapers, he began to hear from people who had actually seen the film--some who had simply walked out; others who had stayed but hated it; and others still who had said that there was something compelling about the film, something perhaps even very important going on. What he heard was always a little vague, often sketchy, evasive at times–-certainly inconclusive--but the comments piqued his interest nonetheless.
But then something else happened: his own son, 20 years old and aging, saw the film and raved about it--couldn’t stop talking about it. All else paled, he said, to the experience of this one movie. He went to see it over and over again. And then–-and this is what alarmed Walt--he began to act it out: three times in a week–-at Christmas time just before the turn of the century--he’d gotten into fights down at the mall. Over nothing.
Walt thought it was time to check it out for himself.
At first he had wanted to go alone. But at the afternoon matinee, he bumped into a friend, a colleague from work--Daisy Duncan was her name--and they watched it together. Afterwards, they went out for pie and coffee and tried to talk about the film. But Walt just mostly listened. He was unsure what to think. Daisy, on the other hand, had a lot to say: she saw the film as a deconstruction of the American myth--about complacency and spiritual death, about the acceptance of and even the lustful craving after mediocrity; about fear. About America.
But again Walt wasn’t so sure; he wasn’t sure that analysis was even the point. And so he went home and to bed. At first he had difficulty sleeping, but eventually he drifted off into an unusual sleep, a sleep in which he found the film moving around in his head, wandering about in his dreams–-not visually, not aurally; just dark and silent inside his skull. It wouldn’t go away, and it wouldn’t let him go away; it stayed and grew and moved and took him deep into places he did not know. And then finally, after the dream had ended, he fell asleep, a restful sleep: the best sleep he’d had in years.
The next day, however, after a stale breakfast and then an even staler day at work, he kept thinking about the film. Images and scenes kept turning over in his mind; lines of dialogue kept splashing about in his consciousness; themes and ideas rolled across his brain, interrupting his work, disturbing his thoughts, and spilling into his vocabulary and the way he walked.
By the end of the day Walt knew one thing: Fight Club was not about fighting. He suspected that it was a love story; he suspected that Brad Pitt was a genius; he suspected that he needed to see the film again.
And so that evening, after talking with his best friend Minnie, he--and she--went to the seven o’clock screening. Walt sat riveted for the two hours; Minnie sat beside him, engaged, responding, enjoying, but not quite riveted. Afterwards she said that she’d liked the film all right, but added that it hadn’t worked completely for her. For Walt, however, it was beginning to speak to him very directly.
* * * * * * *
Walt Disney had never in his life gone to a theater two nights in a row to see the same show.
He had never before gone to a theater three nights in a row to see the same show.
But the following evening he called up another friend–-male this time, Donald--and together they went and watched. Walt was barely aware of his friend’s presence in the seat next, his mind was so captured by the film. Afterwards, walking back to their separate cars in silence, each thinking his own thoughts--Walt, oblivious to the world outside; Donald, unsure of the world outside--they exchanged a quick good-night, before Donald, attempting to explain and justify his outward lack of emotion, said simply, almost apologetically, that he would need more time to think about the film.
For his own part, Walt had been unable to think of anything else the past three days. He believed that he was falling in love.
* * * * * * *
For the next three nights Walt took three different friends to see Fight Club. Each time the film was different; each time the film was the same. Each time the film built upon the previous night; and each time it destroyed the previous night. It became a new experience, tearing down the preceding one--a new being, a new creature, a new life, yet still rooted in the earlier thing.
He was tempted to interpret, to analyze:
It was a Jungian film about archetypes;
It was a Marxist film;
It was about Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey.
But he stopped himself and let it go at that--and just kept returning night after night after night.
At work, word was getting out that Walt was becoming obsessed with the movie; and so he no longer went with friends. Or told them that he was going; or that he had gone. He went alone now--on the sly--to the late show where, to his surprise, he found large crowds. The theater was packed: young and old, male and female, groups and individuals, quiet and loud; a club of its own, a community unto itself. Every night he went--for a week, for two weeks, for two-and-a-half weeks--never tiring, never failing, always nourished, always there.
He realized now--and without the need to analyze--that the film was indeed about fighting; but it was also about race, about class and gender.
It was about the ego, the superego, and the id.
It was Freudian--Oedipal.
It was about beauty.
It was about ugly.
It was about art.
It was about aesthetics.
It was a comedy.
It was existential.
It was about freedom.
It was anger.
It was about chaos and anarchy and violence and discipline.
It was about crime.
It was about poverty.
It was about property.
It was about order.
It was about madness, insanity.
Poetry and haiku.
It was about monkey-wrenching.
It was about hope.
It was about pain.
It was about sacrifice, about self-sacrifice, about human sacrifice.
It was about self-interest, about self-serving self-interest.
It was a self-help film.
It was about redemption.
It was about enlightenment.
It was about God; it was about anti-God.
It was about God’s hated children.
It was about materialism; about consumers.
Darwinian in scope.
Survival.
It was about life, about being alive.
It was about the Ideal.
It was about identity.
It was surreal. Kafkaesque.
It was absurd; it was about the absurd.
It was about corporate capitalism.
It was about decadence.
It was about love.
It was about lying.
It was about friendship.
It was about the earth.
It was a film about the environment.
It was about sensitivity.
It was about health.
It was about friendship.
It was about power and mayhem.
It was a feminist film.
It was about experience; it was experience.
It was about happiness. . . .
* * * * * * *
And then one evening, walking out of the theater after the midnight show, pushing through the crowds, bumping into folks, making his way, Walt Disney realized that he would not need to go to the film anymore. He could get back to his own life--his other life: the real life, the fake life.
He could face it. And he did just that. He went to work; he cooked his meals; he slept in his bed; he kept going out with Minnie. He mowed his lawn, raked the leaves in the fall, shoveled snow off the sidewalk in the winter; he trimmed the hedges; he planted a garden. He fed the pigeons. He washed his car; he walked the dog; he went to school board meetings; he paid his taxes; he voted. He did everything he should. He spread dandelion seeds all over the golf course. He did his job diligently and hardly ever missed a day of work. He read the newspaper; he went shopping for food; he bought clothes; he trimmed and cleaned his fingernails; he vacuumed the carpet; he did the dishes; he canceled his subscription to the newspaper; he scratched single word obscenities into the plexiglass at movie theaters. He made soap.
When Fight Club came out on video, he checked it out from the public library with a stolen library card and dubbed a number of copies and gave them all to friends. All but one, that is, which he kept for himself--for his own use--which he would watch periodically--at random times--sometimes all the way through, other times not--sometimes just watching certain passages to refresh his childlike mind of the complete irrelevance--no, let’s not get carried away--of the almost complete irrelevance of a liberal arts education in the United States of America.