Dewhitte H. DavisDanielsENG-1013 March 31, 2005 I Am Jack’s Paper The movie shakes the foundations of our democratic nation, spits on our capitalist society, and makes all who watch it look at the American way of life differently. In a country driven by consumption, one can imagine the movie Fight Club rubs certain people the wrong way. When Edward Norton was asked why he decided to take the role as the main character in Fight Club, he replied, “to piss off America.” Each American since childhood has been told repeatedly that democracy equals freedom, but is this true? The only difference between capitalism and socialism is that corporations own everything in a capitalist society.
In America “the things you own end up owning you.” Corporate America gives Americans a television in every home, a car in every driveway, and a Wal-Mart in every town. They call this freedom and freedom shall rain. This new breed of social democracy, an evolution of democracy where private enterprise controls Big Brother, is spreading through the world, infesting and exploiting every country and every government, from the sweatshops of Central America to the oilfields of Iraq; corporate America is slowly choking the world, one McDonalds at a time. Consumerism is the drive shaft of our generation, the fuel that pushes kids through college, and hope that one day we can have all the things seen in magazines and on TV. The dream of owning a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a SUV parked in the driveway. “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit that we don’t need,” all the while making people we never met very rich.
Tyler Durden wanted to change to this. He wanted to show everyone the truth, show everyone that we are slaves to our consumption. Advertisement shoves products and ideas down Americans’ throats everyday, showing everyone how great a product is or why they need it, and people go buy this lie. What ever happened to the days when you grew your own food? Now you go to the supermarket, isle after isle packed full of strangers and canned goods, all of them consuming to their hearts desire. Now other people do the growing and killing for us.
All we have to do is put it in the basket, and that’s what’s wrong with our society, we are not responsible for our own survival anymore. The film shows how consumer culture plays an important part in the modern male’s everyday life. When was the last time you bought something without subconsciously thinking, “which brand defines me as a person?” These days “the things you own end up owning you.” These days you ” re paying for an identity. These days everything is made for you. There’s no struggle in life like there was before. Man is slowly conquering nature, beating it into submission just like everything else.
Depressed? Take some Prozac. Hungry? Order a pizza. Thirsty? Get a glass of water. The hunter-gatherer is extinct and now all we have is a lazy, vulnerable society, one that has everything but knows nothing about everything they have. One that takes everything for granted then says they want more; thus I have decided to name our society of consumption enfant terrible because we are an embarrassment to any other society that ever lived. They had to make it on their own, but all we do is shop at Wal-Mart.
Fight Club is a step in the right direction. More movies should be made about the effects of modern American ideals on modern American males. America is slowly becoming a nation of boys, a nation of boys that can’t make it over the high point that marks true greatness. We are a nation of boys that wear pink and find pleasure in accessorizing. What are we if not men? Where does the man end and the women begin? That line that divides man from woman is slowly disappearing and we are slowly becoming a nation of men no more, but a nation lacking identity and greatness.
“In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You ” ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You ” ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you ” ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” This world Tyler tried to create in Fight Club is a better world and this world we should find our way back to.