Legacy of Fight Club; a big F*** U to marketers and consumers
Most of you have probably watched the Fight Club movie. While the critics panned the movie and the movie turned out to be a box office disaster, the movie has gained a cult status and is now equally cherished by the critics. This schism in how the movie was received reflects a mass schizophrenia that all of us suffer from. We can call this schizophrenic consumerist culture. The movie disturbs our very core, as it connotes and critiques the capitalist disorder we all collectively suffer from.
The movie is set in a narrative tone. The narrator/ protagonist is completely emasculated by the modern consumerism culture. He finds solace by going through various support groups. While the movie begins with a premise of an emasculated man, who seems to despise the consumerist culture, he ends up manifesting the very thing he despises- Tyler Durden( role played by Brad Pitt).
Tyler Durden represents the lifestyle personality that advertisers are trying to sell. He talks and f###s like an average consumer wants. If you think, your affiliation to a brand is based on product quality, you couldn’t be more wrong. When a celebrity endorses a brand, add to that an overall persona created for that celebrity, sub-consciously you connect the product as a step forward in embodying that celebrity. Ergo you see the narrator manifest- Tyler Durden who looks, acts and talk like a classical Hollywood celebrity.
The movie is disturbing precisely because it unnerves our very sense of being. It is, for sure, unsettling to think that our internal self is a mere aggregation of the object. The object takes over and thus the subject is forever lost. Tyler Durden is not simply an alter-ego of the narrator. In fact, Turner has manifested to subsume the narrator inside out.
Are we really that different from the narrator though? Do we really act out on our own free will, or are we chasing a lifestyle in the market too? Do you remember the trademark sunglasses worn by Balen Shah going out of stock? Why do you think consumers are so enamored by celebrity lifestyle? How far are we from manifesting our very own Tyler Durden?
Tyler Durden makes the narrator forego society and become an anti-capitalist radical, wreaking mayhem on the American capitalistic order. This shows the level of emasculation consumerist culture has had on us. Like Durden says ‘Everything is a Copy, of a Copy, of a Copy’. And while our culture has made our sense of identity based on our material possessions, the movie masterfully shows how this pursuit of false sense of identity and belonging has made us lonelier and sadder.
BrandGuff doesn’t think David Fincher’s Fight Club was meant to rouse violent riots and revolutions. After all, in the climactic scene, the narrator abhors the anti-social that he/Tyler Durden has become, just as much as he abhorred his consumerist grounding at the beginning. The character develops from one claiming that the apartment( material possession) is all he had to an anarchist to a one that finally rejects both.
Brands/ Businesses are ‘by default’ programmed to maximize profit. If selling a lifestyle dream helps them meet their sales target, they won’t give two cents about you. A movie like Fight Club, however, makes a much needed intervention in reminding you that your agency is not defined by material possessions. While it does not preach going about the gypsie/revolutionary approach either, it disturbs your very core enough to realize that you are the sole creator of your identity, not brands!
Wearing Balen Shah’s sunglasses does not make you Balen. Neither does buying products endorsed by celebrtities. Most of the brand ambassadors do not even use the products they endorse. We can’t and shan’t go back to the state of the nature. Our society is what it is. However, we seriously need to reconsider our obsession with celebrity lifestyle culture. The lifestyle brands’ projection of their products is often nothing more than an illusion. To let advertisers’ emasculate your sense of being a subject to that of an object undoes your very being. Like Tyler says, ‘ This is your life and is ending one minute at a time’.
