Let's Jam this Bog with Roasts

[Izak MD]

honestly if the film was what you're saying, it would easily be the most fucking retarded movie ever

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful society where everyone was happy. People had nice things! People were happy in their cubicles! Everyone smiled and pranced and danced. But then, a bunch of mean boys didn't like it, and they ruined it for everyone! For no reason at all!

[Bown]

it's about a messed-up guy with multiple personality disorder who manages to convince a bunch of other angry upset losers that the reason they're dissatisfied is because of SOCIETY and COMMODITIES and manages to start a cult of personality.

[Bown]

just because it's not saying society is terrible and the worst thing in the world doesn't mean it's saying it's all good and perfect either

[Izak MD]

ok, and from "society suppresses masculinity" you're getting "terrible and the worst thing in the world"

ok gotcha.

[Tony Clay]

Insecurities... they are just the worst.

[Dungeon Snake]

Originally Posted by Izak MD

nah sorry i don't really think you 'get' the film

they do turn dangerous, but it's clear that they're coming from a sympathetic place. good satire typically recognizes the flaws of everyone. i don't personally think Fight Club is good satire, but it definitely achieves that, at least

if the whole point of the film was that they're a bunch of idiots for beating each other up, then it wouldn't go so far out of its way to glamorize the violence and make it look cool. or is that the 'homoerotic' stuff you're claiming to see

fact is, men fight. it feels good to fight. it feels good to do traditional manly things. you should try it sometime. chuck pahlaniuk, the original author, knows it too.

yeah, izak is right. i was a big fan of the book & the movie (surrprise) and i've read a bit about palahniuk's intent (fplease god let's not into a debate about authorial intent tho plz)

anyway the homoeroticism thing is definitely there, Palahniuk described it as a love triangle between "Jack", "Tyler", and Marla Singer. Marla loves Jack - the sweet, fucked-up version of him that only sort of exists because she doesn't understand he's two people - Jack loves Tyler, because Tyler represents everything he wants to be (Patroclus & Achilles maybe-not-quite-platonic style), and Tyler just wants to fuck the shit out of Marla and ignore "Jack" most of the time.

as far as the space monkey stuff goes, Palahniuk says it's more about the seductive appeal of nihilism and the Male as Ubermenschian Warrior-God but how it eventually kinda destroys you and everything else. btw the book ends with their plan failing horribly because it makes absolutely no sense, just like in the movie how their plan makes absolutely no sense but then succeeds because of "Where is my Mind" by the Pixies

[Bown]

the last paragraph makes a lot of sense to me. i'm not denying that the film denies (augh my brain) that there is a certain appeal to fighting and the primal instinct jazz, but that with the third act and the stuff chuck p says in the final paragraph there it ends up condemning the entire idea.

[Izak MD]

yeah that last part is true, but the point seems to be in equal measure that the fight club concept is stemming from legit grievances

honestly i think the movie turns into a complete mess as soon as 'things get out of hand.' the ending swerve actually pissed me off when i first saw it, at like the age of 13. it's the perfect example of when unreliable narration becomes so unwieldy as to be completely pointless. if they were both the same guy the whole time, what am i supposed to make of all the shots where they're both clearly in different rooms or places, or when edward norton hears tyler fucking the girl upstairs? if i'm supposed to doubt so many parts of the narrative, why trust any part of the narrative in the first place? the whole conceit is about as bad as having the main character wake up in the last scene and realize that it was all a dream

[Dungeon Snake]

Originally Posted by Izak MD

what am i supposed to make of all the shots where they're both clearly in different rooms or places, or when edward norton hears tyler fucking the girl upstairs?

i am Jack's perverted libido

if i'm supposed to doubt so many parts of the narrative, why trust any part of the narrative in the first place?

probably shouldn't? it's the same as lolita or crime & punishment or whatever

[Izak MD]

nah like

i can understand the whole idea of the unreliable narrator. that makes sense to me. at the very least, you can suspend your disbelief enough to say "ok, all the stuff actually happened factually, but the narrator sort of colored his story to make the stuff seem different from how it actually was." ultimately, you have the same point-of-view throughout the whole book, the same perspective, all that. like in nabokov or poe or whatever. the story's just sort of colored differently through a lens, or whatever. but when you introduce multiple personality disorders, then you've got a guy who's totally batshit crazy and he's seeing or hearing himself do stuff in the next room, or wherever else, and you're forced to start questioning even the factual information being reported, because it can't possibly be consistent. i can maybe see it working in a novel (although i have my doubts), but when you throw onto all that the fact that it's a film, it just stops making any sense. because a film uses its own lens, and it carries its own point-of-view, and now you're looking at the story through the camera lens, watching a guy who has his own fucked up point-of-view, and you're supposed to kinda "see things" through his perspective, but you really can't, because you're watching him in the third person. it's just kind of a mess in the end

[Bown]

hey Izak you gonna add Dr Luke to your list of unfairly persecuted people

[Izak MD]

dont know enough info

i gotta say, the whole james deen thing was pretty funny. i dont pity that guy at all

he basically signalled that he was an SJW as hard as he could, the media bought it and lionized him, then his batshit crazy ex accused him of rape (and keep in mind, he's probably batshit crazy as well, as anyone in porn probably would be), and then all his ex-coworkers were like "he sexually harassed me during our porn shoot!" and then the media was like "boo! boo! boo!"

that whole thing was just comedy gold i gotta say

[Bown]

hahaha I did enjoy that actually. although I never heard about his SJW-ness until after the allegations came up. shame cause I liked his work

[Izak MD]

well it's like the cosby thing. you can't really pity a guy too much when he presents himself as this great moralist and then it turns out that he's basically fucked

like i read through some of the accusations about cosby. some of them strike me as pretty silly. a bunch of the girls were like "he gave me quaaludes! and then he took advantage of me " and i'm thinking like, well ok, if you were in his dressing room doing drugs with him, wtf do you think would happen, dumbass

but on the other hand, he reinvented himself as a grand moralist ex-comedian, so if people are calling him out on not doing his job properly (ie, being highly moral), then the whole scandal makes sense. he's not exactly being fired from any company for political reasons. he's being called out on not doing the job he claimed to be doing, which is being a grand holy man

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Izak MD

if they were both the same guy the whole time, what am i supposed to make of all the shots where they're both clearly in different rooms or places, or when edward norton hears tyler fucking the girl upstairs?

they explain this.

When the narrator is interacting with other characters, Tyler's a simple hallucination. When Tyler is interacting with other characters, the narrator is disassociated and imagining he's watching Tyler, who is actually him.

examples:
-In one of many scenes where Tyler and Marla are having sex, we see the narrator on the floor below doing sit-ups. He's just imagining he's doing sit-ups. In reality he's using his abs as Tyler to have sex with Marla.
-Another scene where Tyler and Marla can be heard having sex, the moans stop when the narrator answers the phone. That's because in reality they paused their sex session to take the call.
-When the narrator comes home from work and hears more sex, he's either having auditory hallucinations of Tyler and Marla having sex or his entire workday was imagined. One or the other because the movie doesn't tell us, but it's pretty inconsequential.
-When the narrator is peaking through the door of Tyler's bedroom, Tyler opens the door and they talk briefly. The narrator believes he is in the hall talking to Tyler, but in reality he is Tyler talking to his disassociated self.
-The narrator sees Tyler leaving the airport in a red car. He later asks Tyler about the car and Tyler says, "what car?" because the narrator imagined the whole thing.
-When the narrator and Tyler are in the basement of Lou's, and Lou punches Tyler in the stomach, the narrator just stands there idly and looks at the floor. That's because he's not really there.


It's important to note the narrator is always alone when he is disassociated. There are no scenes in the movie where Tyler and the narrator are apart and are both interacting with other characters.

And when together, the only times the narrator and Tyler simultaneously interact with other characters are when those characters aren't in a position to ask questions or simply don't care. ex. Raymond K Hessel with a gun to his head, and space monkeys who are taught not to ask questions. There's one scene where Tyler and the narrator are fighting each other in the parking lot and the other dudes happen by. It's assumed they are seeing a single man beating himself up. How that segways into normal street boxing, we do not see unfortunately.

[Izak MD]

ok thank you

yes, the scene where it shows him beating himself up in retrospect just didn't really impress me. in fact, that was probably the moment where i was like 'ehhh wtf is this shit'

i'm not saying that it isn't thought-out or anything like that, i'm just saying i find it too silly to take seriously

if you're having all of these hallucinations, why isnt anything else a hallucination. why isn't the end of society a hallucination. maybe the girl was just one big hallucination and she didnt exist. maybe the whole movie is a hallucination. there's just too much left open for me to trust in the story. i guess the end is where we learn everything that REALLY happened, but why should i trust that? why trust anything?

[Samurai Clinton]

addicting

[Tony Clay]

It's bad

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Izak MD

if you're having all of these hallucinations, why isnt anything else a hallucination. why isn't the end of society a hallucination. maybe the girl was just one big hallucination and she didnt exist. maybe the whole movie is a hallucination. there's just too much left open for me to trust in the story. i guess the end is where we learn everything that REALLY happened, but why should i trust that? why trust anything?

The movie ends with a bunch of buildings collapsing while the narrator watches with a big bullet hole in his neck, having forgotten the police are still looking for him to chop off his balls. I don't know what kind of answers you expect to find. In the book, when he shoots himself to kill Tyler, he dies and goes to heaven and he's greeted at the pearly gates as Mr. Durden, so who the hell knows

[Bown]

'heaven' is actually an asylum though, right?

[Shaun]

I can't remember I don't have the book anymore

seems fitting tho

[Jesterfoot]

thank you 3dmm for all the debate practice and public online speaking experience, I might have become like most facebook users

[Izak MD]

Originally Posted by Shaun

The movie ends with a bunch of buildings collapsing while the narrator watches with a big bullet hole in his neck, having forgotten the police are still looking for him to chop off his balls. I don't know what kind of answers you expect to find. In the book, when he shoots himself to kill Tyler, he dies and goes to heaven and he's greeted at the pearly gates as Mr. Durden, so who the hell knows

hmmm the book ending seems better

that reminds me, i forgot to talk about novels in your novel thread

i should do that.

[Tony Clay]

Originally Posted by Jesterfoot

thank you 3dmm for all the debate practice and public online speaking experience, I might have become like most facebook users

Ten more years of this place and we'll all be posting only fucking baby pics. We're so fucked, lol.

[Dungeon Snake]

FUCK that. i REFUSE to raise any child before it turns five