Sunday, September 16, 2012

Investigating More With Fight Club Soap

By Derek Fei


The film Fight Club was based upon the best-selling book of the same name by the author Chuck Palahniuk and it stars Brad Pitt as the anti-hero Tyler Durden along with Edward Norton playing the eponymous narrator. In this film you will also be able to see the iconic Fight Club soap which is pivotal to the plot. It is a motif to the central themes within the story as it has been constructed from the main characters.

It best that you do not spoil this film upon first viewing as it holds one of the biggest surprise twists at the end that has been known throughout cinematic history. The main protagonist lives vicariously through the exploits of Tyler Durden who acts as his Id. Much of the conflict that you then see onscreen is created from this outlet which is provided to the narrator from this relationship.

The central character's career is purported to be both a shallow and meaningless one when the film begins as it represses who he truly is. What happens then is that Tyler arrives and allows him to live out all of his more darker fantasies. This then sees Tyler Durden acting as a dual personality for the main character offering him the escape he requires.

Building a secret group around them both, Tyler Durden starts to act as a conduit for many of the other people in this film through the dual personality relationship he has with the narrator. It is not only Edward Norton's character he acts as a kind of second persona for, but for all of the people he comes into contact with throughout the film. What this enables him to then be is a mirror which reflects the desires of what people truly want to be.

The character of Tyler shows a representation of the masculinity that is sublimated and repressed by men within current society. The main characters have a penchant for fighting which reflects a more primal and anarchic nature through their character. Whilst the film starts to unfold you are able to view the nature in their dual personality kind of relationship as it exposes what they really are like.

The narrator seeks to reflect many of the darker desires of the film's audience as well as the other characters. This is about the process of duality not just in the main character, but human beings in general. Society constantly appears to restrict the protagonist whilst the character of Tyler seems to free him from these restrictions.

The protagonist then needs a type of cleansing. Here is where Fight Club soap arrives as a motif. What it plans to do is clean the impurities for the dual personality uncovering reality.




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