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Just rewatched fight club with a more philosophical eye than the past couple of times (it’s great cinematography porn, like a M. Night movie but with a good plot and script, just ignore the serious abuse it does to the Moe Movie Standard and you’re laughing), and what occurs to me is that, rather than being some sort of social commentary, the plot works as a sort of religious allegory for the N-Fold Path, sort of like a Zen Anarchist’s version of LW&W, but with less random pointless violence, of course.

Spoilers ahead, so if you’ve not seen the movie yet, go get it, watch it, then come back here before reading further, seriously, ignore the assholes who admire Tyler Durden because it’s actually a good movie, and the twist is very well done, plus there’s a naked cock in it, which is always a good thing.

There’s a well known Buddhist saying that goes: If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him.

Now this saying doesn’t literally mean that we should kill enlightened higher beings, well not unless you can get away with it, but instead is all about not falling into the trap of believing that you’ve attained enlightenment prematurely and thus getting stuck because you’re so certain that you’ve got enlightenment that you stop striving for anything greater.

Now, Fight Club is all about the gradual killing of Buddhas, the movie starts with Durden (I shall refer to the Brad Pitt character as Tyler and his creator as Durden for clarity’s sake) who, feeling detached and strung out from the combination of insomnia and frequent business flights, starts to attend meetings for people who wish they didn’t feel because they’re dying or recovering from some deeply traumatic event.

It is in “Men Staying Men Together” (a testicular cancer survivor group) that He meets Marla, who interrupts Durden’s gentle self anaesthesia and forces him to actually feel something real rather than the stolen pathos of the various sickies and victims, even if it’s just irritation and confusion at this point.
It is also about this point when Durden’s Jungian Psychopomp/personal savior Tyler makes his appearance, now that to me suggests that Tyler is created by a subconscious urge he has to get together with Marla and break out of his white collar prison made up of the twin Buddhas of bullshit social conformity and Ikea furniture.

But first Tyler needs to blow up his apartment with dynamite. Say bye bye to the first two Buddhas Durden.

Say hello to Fight Club instead.

Now the only trouble is here is that Fight Club and project mayhem are both koans rather than actual solutions to any of the fight club attendees’ problems, they’re a question who’s answer leads to a greater understanding of their personal universes, and provide the first step alogn which eventually lies a resolution to their problems.

Of course Durden and certain Whiney Ass Titty Babies have decided that it’s actually an answer in and of itself.

It’s a way to conform while at the same time not conforming, you see this in Durden’s hatred of his job, co-workers and everything, he hates this life, and so delves more and more into this alternative community of grown men beating each other shitless to escape that life, while not actually escaping the life he hates and now looks down on, because he needs the corporate monoculture to exist for him to rebel against, and to give the Fight Club meaning.

“Yes, it’s from a fight, yes, I’m okay with that, I… am enlightened” Durden says, who now has a devil may care attitude towards saving money for his bosses and his company, who he hates fiercely, but won’t actually stop saving money for them until Durden grows the proverbial genitalia orbs necessary to get all Tyler on his boss’ ass, after he is basically backed into a corner where he’s going to get fired anyway and doesn’t have anything to lose.

Which gets to the nub of the whole “backlash” hoo-haa really, whether it’s the “Politically incorrect” backlash or the “anti-feminist” backlash, it’s all the same seinfeldian rebellion, a rebellion against nothing, that exists to do nothing more than give people who are getting screwed over by modern life a socially acceptable (i.e. doesn’t threaten the establishment) ways to vent at people who could actually help them if they’d just put their super-ego down for two seconds and thought about it.
And unsurprisingly this backlash, which has by and large been a by-product of the gradual corporate buy up of social movements (I’m sure GAP has a nice range of “Anarchy” Tees, no doubt stocked next to the Che shirts), has been aimed squarely at giving the white male populace targets to gun for that aren’t the other white people in suits who screw them over, but are in fact the various downpressed people who are trying to pull those be-suited white folk down so they can’t stomp on anyone’s face anymore.

A group that talks loudly about rebellion and challenging some tyrannical social order, yet only actually further aids the corporate lifestyle the members really hate, is perfectly mirrored in the eventual purpose of Tyler’s Fight Club: Project Mayhem.

Now Project Mayhem is completely useless, yeah yeah, they destroy lots of things, and vandalize stuff in many largely symbolic ways.

And if we look at what they destroy and vandalize for a moment, as well as, more importantly, what the potential results of these acts will be it becomes clear how pointless all those “sticking it to Teh Man” bits of the “homework” are…

1: Electromagnets being waved over videos in a video rental store
The point of this is that the VHS’ (remember VHS?) will be wiped clean (assuming of course that the videos are actually inside the cases, which they generally aren’t but anyway…), so the people renting the tapes will take them home and find their mass produced magnetic taped crap useless and empty of substance as well as meaning. Hah, take that corporate America!

Corporate America: 1, Project Mayhem: 0

2: Leaving loads of birdseed over the roof of a car depot so that the pigeons will crap all over the cars in the morning
Oh dear! Now someone will have to clean those cars! Somebody like… one of the service industry guys who go to the fight clubs!

Corporate America: 2, Project Mayhem: 0

3: “Two birds with one stone” AKA throwing a giant corporate art based bowling ball into a Starbucks
Finally! Now destroying the corporate art actually forces the corporation who owns it to pay for a replacement, no trouble caused for the sort of people Project Mayhem is ostensibly fighting “for”, aside from the total destruction of their workplace for some of them.

Corporate America: 2, Project Mayhem: 1

Compare this to watching and reading “Politically incorrect” stuff produced by that great hero of the people, corporate media millionaire, Rupert Murdoch and buying the anti-feminists books in Borders or off Amazon.

And strangely enough saying nigger to a black guy or calling a woman a cunt doesn’t seem to really make these WATBs happy in their frantic backlashing antics, nor does it really stop the Vast International GLBT, Female and Ethnic Minority Overlord Government oppressing these white guys and their GLBT, Female and Ethnic Minority corporate enablers, because it’s not saying nigger or cunt that the backlashers want, it’s to be in control of their life away from the constant pressure of the mass culture telling them to consume what they’re told to consume, when they’re told to consume it, how they’re told to consume it.
They want freedom from socially accepted (”politically correct” in backlashspeak) oppression, just like the homosexuals, trans/cisgenders, the feminists and the ethnic minorities tehy’re tryingto backlash against.

Because feminists aren’t giving the backlashers a set uniform, ethnic minorities aren’t telling them how long their hair can be, homosexuals don’t care what chemicals they pump into their body, nor do you find the transgendered asking them to pee into a cup to verify what chemicals they do put into their body. I think they’ll find, if they actually looked at their lives are like instead of merely listening to what they’re told their lives are like, that they’ve been getting all of us confused with their white heterosexual male employers.

And They’re not even being politically incorrect.

Calling women cunts is not politically incorrect, there’s plenty of politicians who are more than willing to legally treat, let alone talk to, women like they were nothing more than cunts with uterinal lawns that the politicos get to play on or mow down as they please. Things like the Abu Ghraib photos, or calling the civil war in Iraq a civil war are politically incorrect, mentioning that we’re napalming babies in Iraq while mass murder carries on in Darfur for the umpteenth year running is politically incorrect. Mentioning that the dressing up of crass commercialism in the beard and robes of Jesus every solstice is actually a form of the most deeply ironic blasphemy imaginable, is politically incorrect.

Colburt and Stewart are the only politically incorrect comedians around, because they say the things that the politically correct media refuses to say, and does it right to the politically correct politicians’ faces.

“Politically Incorrect” Whiney Ass Titty Babies (WATBs) are aiding their own oppression by pissing and moaning about the feminazis who are stealing their testicles while they suck down the corporate sponsored impotence juice that gets called tap water in this country of deregulated industry.

But of course that’s all part of the Fight Club ethos, centrally controlled passive-aggressive rebellion, heh, the adverts say that real men dress in CK underpants, what sort of idiot would just accept that? But when Durden gets shoulder barged on the bus a few seconds later he doesn’t do anything about it of course, but still gets pissed about it because Durden is the King (or at least the prince in this little psychodrama of his) of the Whiney Ass Titty Baby Club, is in fact such a whiney baby that he had to create an imaginary ubermenschen so much greater than himself that he could look up to and take orders from before he could “rebel” against his stifling life and retake what he thinks is his manhood.

Even the finale doesn’t result in anything really happening that might actually constitute attacking the system project mayhem is supposed to be a challenge to, so you blew up the credit card company buildings? Now what? there’s no backups for all the credit data of course, and they won’t be almost immediately replaced by other credit card companies, so yay! The Fight Club attendees will have several days in which they won’t be overloaded by credit card debt before everything is returned to normal again. Time to spend spend spend…or something.

And it’d be the same if The Backlash succeeded, then what? Would all the WATBs feel less emasculated by the dehumanizing corporate culture if feminists weren’t fighting to rehumanize themselves? Would their bosses piss on them and then ask them for urine samples any less if the feminists weren’t fighting to reform the corporate lifestyle to better allow them to juggle the enjoyment and fulfilment of their lives with their jobs? Would the WATBs’ lives really be better if the people who their corporate masters allow them to piss on, as they in turn are pissed on, didn’t stand up for themselves when they’re insulted and spat on and turned into a butt of the oldest joke of our civilisation, Like the WATBs refuse to stand up for themselves against their real oppressors; the corporations and bosses and rich bullies who bought this country out from under its people, who they now consume with the consumer culture.

I don’t think so, because feminists aren’t the problem are they? The WATBs fear of taking responsibility for their own liberation from the oppressive culture they’re addicted to, is.

Bite that barrel guys, pull the trigger, kill that Buddha, ask yourself: What Does Tyler Durden Need?

Freedom to be an individual, not a member of a group, not an employ of some company, not a parent, or husband, or boyfriend, or a “playa”, or a “gangster”, or a “pimp”, or even a WATB, but an individual.
Tyler Durden needs to be Tyler Durden, the man who loves Marla, who hates his job, who is not happy conforming to the consumer culture, or the Cult of Tyler Durden, or corporate culture.

To be Tyler Durden, who is happy with Marla, who rejects mass culture, who rejects corporate culture, who rejects socially acceptable gendered behavior, who rejects sanity itself to a large extent.

What makes you WATBs happy? What really makes you feel like individuals? If you were going to die tomorrow what is it you would have wished to have done with your life? What did you want to be?
Just another tired old misogynist in The Cult of Backlash with it’s lazy group identity and socially acceptable rebellion against people even more oppressed than you are? Or did you want something more?

Take it, no one’s standing in your way but yourselves, take it already, and stop whining at us about how we’re not supporting you enough (not building your freaking shelters for you, not turning the shelters you make necessary in the first place into holding camps for your victims, so they’re easy to find again when you need someone to abuse) for you to utilise your privileged position for everyone’s benefit rather than their detriment, if you’re put off by a movement because someone was once mean to you, well boo fucking hoo, now you comprehend a fraction of the insult and anger that we feel whenever you WATBs use misogynistic language, whenever you insult us to our face and think that that’s admirable and brave behavior.

Yeah, downpressing the oppressed, real fucking brave, assholes.

Grow the fuck up already, move out of the basements, take off the uniforms and put down those slogans you photocopied at work on the company’s paper.

Grow the fuck up and get over your little backlash, because all you’re doing is making us more relevant, more necessary, and fucking yourselves up more and more in the process.

*Click the picture for a really funny review of Fight Club.