You do not talk about Fight Club

The movie Fight Club is a postmodern masterpiece in many ways. The movie's surface premise is quite shallow; two men start a fight club, where men can go to vent their frustrations by beating the crap out of each other. It features three highly recognizable Hollywood actors, one of whom is Western Culture's biggest sex symbol in decades (Brad Pitt). Based on this information alone, one might guess that Fight Club is filled with vulgarity, senseless violence, and irrelevant sex. In reality, the opposite is true.

Yes, the movie does have violence and sex, but each and every part of the film (offensive or not) serves a specific purpose in the story. The film's opening scene shows the main character with a pistol in his mouth, while he retrospectively narrates the events that are occurring. He rewinds, starts, stops, and rewinds again before finally settling on a suitable starting point. The point of view is the first way in which Fight Club is postmodern. Traditional sequence is forgotten and the fourth wall broken, as the main character addresses the audience repeatedly.

Fight Club's most profound example of postmodernism is its ending. Those who haven't seen the movie should stop reading here and experience the movie and its ending for themselves.

Fight Club's ending is genius. It shatters your understanding of the movie and almost forces you to re-watch the entire thing. Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, is the polarizing character that drives the movie. Tyler shows the main character how to let go of order and accept chaos. His logic is twisted, yet somehow accurate. He disregards laws and morality as if they don't exist. What gives them the right to tell me what I can and cannot do? Tyler eventually plots to blow up several skyscrapers, and kill thousands of civilians. Viewers spend the entire movie trying to understand Tyler Durden as the main character is trying to do the same. The main character also knows what will happen as the retrospective narrator, which complicates things more. He gives us hints and acts as if the answer is so simple. Why don't you understand this?, he conveys. Finally, it is revealed that the main character is Tyler Durden. Tyler lay in a corner of the main character's mind, and sometimes took control, without the main character's knowledge. It shouldn't make any sense, yet it does. Only upon the second viewing, does one begin to understand the film. It's so post-modern, that it's impossible to describe accurately in writing.

Everyone is the main character, and everyone is Tyler Durden. That's why the main character's name is not mentioned once in the entire movie (his lack of name is so subtle that I didn't notice it until I started to write this blog post). Everyone has a part of their mind that wants to destroy the social restrictions that plague our society. Fight Club shows what could happen if we let that part of our minds take control.

I didn't talk about most of the postmodern examples in this movie because there are too many. You just have to watch and rewatch the movie yourself.