This afternoon, Fight Club was on TV. Even though I was trying to meet a deadline for a class assignment, I allowed myself to get distracted by it. I’ve seen it a number of times, but it always seems like I’m watching it for the first time. This time around my favorite scene was when Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt’s character in the movie) was giving a monologue before one of the fights. Read and learn, my fellow space monkeys:
Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential — God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; they’re slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit they don’t need. We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised by television to believe that one day we’ll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars — but we won’t. And we’re learning slowly that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling lately, although I’m feeling a bit more literal than figurative about our generation’s coming great wars and great depressions though. More gems from this one can be found by watching the movie, checking out the screenplay or reading the book.
I was once told by a chick that worked at a movie theater that this was “a guy movie.” You know the type — someone who works at a movie theater because they really, really like watching movies so they might as well be able to do it for free. And since they’ve seen every movie, they know all the behind the scenes details and can quite frequently recite long monologues verbatim, they are quite opinionated about what is a good movie. She was of the mind that Fight Club was not a good movie. Anyway as one of the pinnacles of gnosticism-themed cinema, I beg to disagree.
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