Alienation & Resentment in Fight Club

The loss of faith in the unattainable ideals celebrated by commercial culture is the first principle of existentialist philosophy which challenges an individual to author the meaning in their own life. Promises of ideal solutions to contingent living are violently rejected by the characters in Fight Club (1999). Alienation and resentment become the direct consequences of placing faith in the possibility of an idyllic existence. These sentiments are continuously fostered by solipsistic attitudes and a conscious rejection of the meaningless commercial culture enveloping the main characters.

Alienation from society and a resentful view towards the flawless standards its people are expected to achieve are thematic motifs within the horror genre. While not explicitly a member of this genre, Fight Club embodies the essence of this spirit and provides a radical solution towards selfish and deceptive forms of commercial culture. Nietzsche claims that any cultural standards that impose control on human behavior are deceptive and destructive in that they promise ideal fantasy solutions, but are actually paths to alienation, nihilism and resentment against the actual world.

An individual's burning desire to fulfill perfectionist criterion for worldly success is soon transformed into despair and disillusionment when the futility of the chase begins to take its toll. The characters in Fight Club, once able to acknowledge the reality of their situations, celebrate these feelings of resentment and then use their negative energy to fuel a counter-attack against the cultural ideals that they can never attain. By destroying these idealistic standards, the characters are subsequently destroying human desire for them. By nipping the problem in the bud, they hope to create lasting change in society and the way people view their lives.

From the very start of the movie, The Narrator (Edward Norton) begins to express unhappiness with the loss of meaning in his life that he attributes to an over-indulgence in commercial culture. He mocks his own reliance on the products of this culture continuously: "I flipped through catalogs and wondered: What kind of dining set defines me as a person?

Clearly, he has used a very problematic method of constructing his identity to this point. Instead of creating meaning in his life independent of external authority, he has linked it directly to material possessions. Instead of defining himself, he avoids the responsibility by allowing his dining set to do it for him. Describing the "IKEA nesting instinct, it is clear the Narrator has recently become aware of his tendencies, and is preparing to do something about them.

He continues to critique a lifestyle centered on commercial culture, labeling it meaningless, and metaphorically comparing it to his refrigerator which is full of condiments, but no real food.The consumerist nature of society has also impeded his ability to form functional relationships with the people he meets. As an actuary, the focus of his job is to reduce and objectify the customers of his employer to mere units in an equation which determines profit. His profession deepens his alienation from society in that it forces him to view people as objects. He considers the people he meets during business travel to be single-serving, in that they are designed for temporary use and the easily replaced. His resentment of society is promoted by the fact that nobody seems intent on breaking free from the monotonous lives they are living. Nobody seems to share his disillusionment.

The Narrator has identified his problem, and soon begins to react. In a solipsistic fashion, he creates a second personality (whose existence he is unaware of) that helps him fill the gaps between his actual reality and his ideal reality. As Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) explains to his creator at the end of the movie, "All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not." This is a problematic solution to the Narrator's loss of faith in unattainable ideals. Instead of re-constructing more viable standards and probable goals, he simply creates an extension of his own personality that has the ability to attain utopian ideals; solipsism and the repression of contingent-life at its finest. Tyler becomes the physical manifestation of all of the Narrator's emotions of alienation, resentment, disillusionment, and inadequacy all combined with his solipsistic way of creating reality. Tyler takes the Narrator's sentiments regarding society's flaws and emboldens them, vowing to change the way things currently are. His mission is to help the Narrator and other disillusioned males to uncover their real identity and reiterates, "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet."

The solution proposed by Tyler Durden is radically different than the solutions (or lack thereof) traditionally presented by films that incorporate feelings of alienation and resentment. The Narrator and Tyler form Fight Club, an extreme form of therapy open to any males who share their desire for revolution and change. The core of their efforts centers around fighting due to Tyler's argument, "How much can you know about yourself, if you've never been in a fight?" Fighting is a basic and blunt force of survival, yet most people are unaware of their capabilities due to social conditioning. Fight Club incorporates fighting in order to re-connect its members with their primal skills of survival. The mission statement of Fight Club is summed up by Tyler Durden's speech during one of the club's first meetings:

"Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

Tyler and the members of Fight Club have come to terms with their alienation from commercial culture and society, as well as their overwhelming resentment of the ideals that are constantly force-fed to them. While it may seem counter-productive to indulge in these feelings, the characters are actually using them as a source of energy to fertilize their revolution. The first step towards making change becomes an effort to achieve economic equilibrium in which consumer debt is erased by demolishing the headquarters of several major credit card companies. Members of Fight Club begin to infiltrate every rank and professional position of society in order to facilitate the mission. It soon becomes obvious that the club has attracted a large section of the population all experiencing the same disillusionment in their lives. The solution offered by Fight Club is not a solution which teaches members how to subvert or reconcile their alienation and resentment, but rather, how to exploit the energy created by these feelings in order to make the changes that they desire most. Unlike many movies in the horror genre, Fight Club allows alienation and resentment to become the fuel, not the destination.

One of the most significant scenes of transformation in the film comes when Tyler Durden and the Narrator pay a visit to a gas station to change the life of the young cashier working there. Putting a gun to the head of Raymond K. Hessel (Joon Kim), he forces the man to reveal his dreams and desires. When the terrified clerk explains to Durden that he has always dreamed of being a veterinarian, Tyler offers Hessel an ultimatum: I'm keeping your license. I'm going to check on you. I know where you live. If you aren't back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead. Although Hessel is a random target, he is also a victim of commercial culture which has diluted his dreams and served as distraction from what he wants most in life. Hessel is an example of an individual who embodies a spirit of alienation and resentment but offers no productive response to these emotions. He lives in a cramped basement apartment working a dead-end job at the convenience store and offers no indication of any desire to take initiative and break away from this lifestyle. Tyler helps him by reducing the decision to a matter of life and death. If he does not grab the reigns and take control of his life within six weeks, then he is not deserving of the chance. He is forcing Hessel to do what he wants people to start doing all the time -- take responsibility. Although this is an extreme method of motivation, the audience can begin to understand the method behind his madness. This scene may cause audience members to start asking themselves about their own unfulfilled dreams and desire. Tyler helps people realize that life is not permanent, and most of us are wasting far too much time with things we don't want, while neglecting the things we do. Even the Narrator admits, "He had a plan. And it started to make sense in Tyler sort of way. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter, truly slide.

Turning emotion into action is a seemingly positive and productive course, but there are many problematic aspects of Fight Club's proposed solutions. The Narrator begins to lose confidence in the endeavor after the death of one of the club's members. The death of Robert Paulson (Meat Loaf Aday) makes the Narrator stop and put things in perspective. He has an epiphany in which he realizes that he is Tyler Durden, and the entire development of Fight Club has been built upon a foundation that never really existed. Fight Club's failure is foreshadowed by the fact that the Narrator never actually comes up with a reasonable solution to his disillusionment from the start; he merely creates an alter-ego that is more capable than himself.

Realizing his error, the Narrator reverts back to his original policy of blaming external sources for the events that shape his life. He tries to place the blame on Tyler, who responds, "Hey, you created me. I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility! With this line, Tyler Durden delivers the central message of the movie and the answer to unattainable cultural ideals: take responsibility for your own life and become the sole creator of meaning and value in it. Durden is the embodiment of this philosophy in that he views nothing as absolute or default. Everything that exists has been created by people and can be changed by people. When he chooses to fight against ideals that he does not hold sacred, he does it on a comprehensive scale. He assumes full responsibility for changing his life, organizes a revolution, and executes it without blaming others for his shortcomings.

Fight Club offers the possibility of social revolution to counteract impossible social standards. This solution is the most extreme of all possibilities, yet it remains rooted in the fact that in order to create any type of change, you must be willing to take responsibility. You must define what you want and acknowledge the fact that you will have to make an effort to get there, and then execute without blaming others for obstacles you experience along the way. Repressing elements of life that do not fit neatly into your world-view creates additional conflict while only appearing to be a solution. Indulging in alienation and resentment while doing nothing to rectify the conflict is self-destructive behavior. The only reason it works for characters in Fight Club is because self-destruction is their mission. Instead of blindly accepting the mission statement bred by commercial culture, it is important to create a set of standards based upon your own individuality and view of the world. Even if perfectionist ideals could be attained, they would negate the purpose of living beyond that point, since everything that can be possibly achieved, already has been. As Durden encourages the members, "Never be complete. I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.