Hyperlot
Posts : 45 Join date : 2012-09-23 Age : 31 Location : Portland, OR
| Subject: Thoughts on Tyler Durden(Warning: Spoilers ahead) Thu Sep 11, 2014 7:09 pm | |
| I make no secret, either on Encore or in real life, of my love for the movie Fight Club. While the book was this stunning piece of artwork taking a very critical look at the American dream as peddled by corporations and what it means to be masculine in a society where our identities can be bought and sold, the movie was all that and something more. Add in David Fincher's amazing vision as a director, excellent cinematography, and a dark, trippy and, downright stunning soundtrack composed by the Dust Brothers, and you have something truly special - and underrated, in my opinion. If you haven't seen the movie, you certainly should. Like... Right now. Seriously. Don't read any further before you go check it out, because... So yeah, now that that's out of the way, I wanted to examine the character of Tyler Durden. Now, if you have seen the movie, you know that Tyler Durden is little more than the split, broken personality of our nameless narrator - a new persona crafted for himself as a way to break free of the confines of his life. Now, of course, because the Narrator would unwillingly take on the mantle of Tyler Durden himself, to many people, Tyler Durden was real. Far more real than the narrator himself must have seemed. I mean, think about this for a moment: The men working as part of Project Mayhem, at least SOME of them, must have known that Tyler Durden had this split personality. How could they not have? Living right in the same house with him, interacting with him when he's both Tyler, and the narrator. To them, respecting and admiring Tyler, the narrator must have been seen as the split persona -a mild hindrance to their great teacher. So is it possible that Tyler Durden is real? Is the narrator a split of HIS personality, instead of the other way around? What we're really examining here is which persona is more dominant - and this certainly is a matter of some debate. While Tyler himself, near the end of the film, states in regards to the narrator, "I didn't make some loser alter ego to make -myself- feel better, take some responsibility!" indicates that the narrator was the original, and more powerful persona, it's also important to note that the narrators own, personal successes, are always attributed to Tyler, instead of him. If you examine the movie closely, you will notice that Tyler -always- beats the narrator in a fight, and further, Tyler in fight club wins the two fights we see him partake in. We know that this had to have been the narrator actually fighting, while perceiving these victories as Tylers, instead of him. Meanwhile, each time the narrator loses in a fight in fight club, the failure is projected onto himself. Even his success with Marla, a woman who, ostensibly, the narrator is attracted to from the beginning of the story, he unwittingly projects onto Tyler Durden. Ultimately, I believe it is the narrators fear - the same fear and inhibition that spurned him to unleash his true personality - the persona of Tyler Durden - that caused him to expel Tyler from his mind. But Tyler Durden is who the narrator truly is - the person he was born to be. The persona of the narrator is the person that society forced him to be - quiet, content with his mediocre office job, with no real goals or aspirations beyond adding to his pile of material possessions. Tyler Durden lives, forever. | |
|
Piconoe
Posts : 18 Join date : 2014-04-21
| Subject: Re: Thoughts on Tyler Durden(Warning: Spoilers ahead) Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:32 am | |
| [insert obligatory overused meme of you breaking the 1st and 2nd rule of Fight Club here] | |
|