The Riot Club was less on-the-nose.
Disclaimer: probably shit opinions, I am no cinephile.
It’s a cult classic but what is its cultural value now, almost twenty years later?
I still like the film but I see things in it recently I cannot ignore.
I can’t fully love it anymore. This, in spite of Peak Pitt.
TLDR: You go, emo guy!
Kinda like 500 Days of Summer but if Tom was gay and masochistic.
Also, does it piss anyone else off that Tom learned nothing at the end of that?
Is it supposed to piss me off? Well, it does. Nine years later.
Fight Club is a satire of rebellion. It’s completely safe. Even the punching has no real risk of death or serious injury. They become more drone-like in a combination of terror cell, monastery and military, but they’re too chickenshit to actually risk being shot at. They’re cowards hiding in versions of masculinity that never existed. Men didn’t go around punching a tiger to death, they raised a family. None of them do.
Imagine if (spoiler)
Tyler were real but Marla Singer were the imaginary one?
Imagine how much more sense that movie would make.
That’s the best theory I have. If you didn’t bring a cup of tea, you can leave on that thought. I won’t expand much on it because it is perf.
Are we ready? O.K. Pointing-out similar to The Last Psychiatrist, for time.
As it is, the control the narrator has is an illusion. The house wouldn’t exist, it’s very 90s, like the Friends apartment. There’s no way anyone involved could afford that apartment and the literal mansion wouldn’t be vacated, but it might, however, hold the Narrator’s delusions of grandeur.
He hates bosses so much he becomes a Mafia boss.
He is a sadist that enjoys listening to the pain and suffering of others. Support groups for male cancer, what a sick fuck.
He hates himself but has no self, no purpose in society.
He feels useless because he is useless.
He contributes nothing to the world that couldn’t be automated in future.
He has middle-class problems because, sorry, poor people don’t shop at Ikea.
It’s a teenage boy’s idea of rebelling, you all live in a commune (political, yes, it’s a commune) and hit your feelings out.
Er, you’re still expressing your emotions in a safe environment. It’s therapy.
You could just have got a gym sub and taken up boxing. – things a woman would say
Ah, but then he might be defeated. This is key. The Narrator refuses to take risks or they magically pay off.
He’s a Gary Stu, everything makes him more powerful and works out. For example, he isn’t caught stealing human tissue, which requires permits. There’s no regulation of his ingredients. Taxes aren’t mentioned. Now I’ve seen the tax thing, it looks like a missed opportunity for a monologue.
The locals would notice a building full of skinheads making a racket, come on.
He survives more shit than Jesus but says edgy macho tough guy stuff that would Schwarzenegger blush at how cliche and 80s it is. The fact he looks incapable of lifting an especially heavy bucket with that stringy figure makes this remarkable. He looks about 15 but talks tough. He threatens to shoot people and nobody reports him.
Really?
Look up the personality traits of male borderlines.
Marla has the female version, they’re not soulmates; they’re both crazy.
Narrator clearly has anhedonia, but only in the beginning. He isn’t an insomniac. Yet his anhedonia magically switches off in the antisocial kind to become a leader (because you can just up and decide one day) and the sexual kind (that isn’t how libido works). The guy works all hours of the week and has energy to make a toddler jealous?
It’s a parody of a revenge fantasy. The Matrix worked because it was sci-fi, the robots aren’t real either. The world knows it’s fake. The Fight Club universe doesn’t know how fake it is.
They claim to know but not a single person acts uniquely. Narrator sells shit and talks shit to hit other men.
It’s not about the women. It’s never about the women. The only woman we see is also batshit.
Where are the women? Kids? Where are the normies? Where are the happy people he hates so bad?
It’s his jealousy of other men. Wait, envy. Envy of other men. Real men. Men that are living in his head (the Cave Man as a false God of pagan freedom) and he doesn’t care if they never existed (fantasy prone but if the concept is impossible, he should care).
https://namimc.org/male-borderline-personality-disorder-know/
Complaining constantly about hypothetical abandonment is the ticker. He makes no effort to keep people in his life and secretly believes them inferior. That isn’t self-loathing, more a feature of narcissism (inferiority complex).
“Other males will “scare” their spouses away with their quick tempers, argumentativeness, and sometimes even physical aggression. An interaction with a male with BPD may include the individual saying any and everything to trigger their spouse’s anger.”
They’re not heroes, they’re the bad guys.
BPDs are a big ball of emotion. In women, it becomes internal. In men, they’re too grandiose to commit suicide so they take revenge on the world, a lot like psychopaths. They value nothing and lie to the contrary. What does the Narrator value? Only himself. Nothing else. He stands for nothing else. It’s a brittle figure of strength.
The control freak aspect is externalized. Narrator does nothing. The money he makes isn’t saved like a normal person with a brain, he spends all his time talking to himself (was Tyler’s plane seat occupied by a terrified person?) and if he can’t be happy, he’s such an omega he would rather take the whole world down with him (Savior complex) than watch someone else be happy (common in narcissism, envy triggers rage outbursts but BPDs can have rage episodes and violence triggered by envy of the happy too). If they can’t be balanced, they’ll fuck with your head too. That’s where gaslighting comes in. Narrator does indoctrinate Mayhem members like a cult.
“I’m the only one who’d have you” type of lines. Faking the moral high ground as a cover for their double standards.
Stonewalling and random requests of assistance.
BPDs can’t self-soothe, they are the original attention whores.
Narrator hates the world but responds to this by spending more time in it? Makes no sense.
Re-watching this film and actually thinking from his position, it’s insane. There’s a snowflake attachment to reality, where he expects it should be designed for him (well, that’s capitalist, so it is).
Sorry God/Daddy let you down. Setting things on fire and thinking you’re a pagan isn’t the answer.
Fuck you Dad! is not a credible life philosophy. Who will sell your Viking horn mugs?
“Do you know a male who has been with tons of women? Did this guy feel guilty or did they feel admired?”
In the latter case, either they have psychiatric immature issues / are a minor and glamorize how ‘cool’ this makes them (attention) or they’re an r-type. Out of school, nobody decent admires the impulsive, the attention dries up, gloating at how they got away with all the ‘resources’. The out-of-control aspect is common among cases of brain damage.
http://gettinbetter.com/casanova.html
I can’t think of anyone who envies the bestial, but they must imagine themselves envied to cope.
“self-sabotage in personal and professional realms”
Where was Narrator’s ambition in his old job? He’s still working. He could’ve got a better job or moved company.
Where did the magical ambition fairy pop up?
The black-outs seal it and fact he’s literally Unreliable Narrator.
“an incapacity to want you unless they can’t have you”
Peter Pan.
“A colleague who works almost exclusively with male borderlines, has told me that they generally present as commitment-phobes and sex addicts”
Imagine the film without Marla. She’s far more interesting than he is, isn’t she?
So even in a film all about men, their lives are hollow until a Manic Pixie in black comes along.
“Casanova makes sure you know how grateful he is to have finally found you, because you’re “like no other woman” he’s ever known. His enthusiasm and glee seem authentic: One of my ex’s would initially remark how great it was, that he’d finally met a female who was his “intellectual equal.””
Not that they’re writing checks on themselves they cannot cash.
Do you know how many men literally claim an IQ of 170, thinking we cannot tell?
It’s like claiming to be 7 foot tall. We’re fairly certain you’re lying.
And if Einstein was around 150, what the hell have you done with your life? Ah, degeneracy. Sleeping on couches and clubbing. Sounds more like an IQ of 70, lower IQs are more aggressive. Men who talk and talk and talk and talk, do not have anything to say. Let alone 170 in IQ points material. You wouldn’t be telling some random woman in that case, you’d be submitting it to the Nobel committee.
BPD is one of those conditions with negative self-awareness, they are among the greatest losers of society but dat
grandiosity, they claim to be the best. You know — secretly.
Otherwise their awesomeness might explode the world or something.
Random: The remarriage thing sounds like Elon, now that combustion would be entertaining to watch. It’s part of the control where they trap a woman, intending to cheat. They don’t ‘mean’ the vows but you better uphold yours! (not how it works? very stupid men)
“The brunt of his unhealed pain concerning the loss of other attachments was transferred onto me”
The BPD will deliberately cause suffering in those stupid enough to stick around them.
They vent out the pain and enjoy seeing the result of that pain in others. In a padded cell, with nobody to hurt, they’ll kill themselves rather than cope with their own emotions.
When caught, they play wounded, cry victim, gaslight the victim that they’re the ones being abusive. Look at the honest comments in any story on the topic. It’s what they do, it’s their game.
“Tears streamed down his face” imagine an adult with the brain of a toddler
that’s literally it
At least they tend to attract other shit-tier people.
Again, omit Marla because at minimum she’s female and Tyler isn’t actually there.
All of them are pathetic specimens of men. Narrator’s leadership is never challenged despite superior men physically, it’s weird.
“Borderlines thrive on crisis, drama and chaos, which contribute to their sense of aliveness--it’s the main reason why many are treatment resistant.”
Lol, nothing about Fight Club reminds me of that.
“The Chase is intoxicating for Casanova–outside of that, he gets bored. Borderline females are the only ones who are better at this game than he is~ and in truth, they can hold his attention indefinitely.”
Marla.
Your parents’ issues are not yours.
That’s an excuse, isn’t it?
“Aside from any sense of empowerment he may have derived from adopting the role of surrogate mate for Mother, replicating his father’s antics helps him identify with the dad he never had, and minimize his pain from the missing paternal bond. Stealing another man’s woman enables him to punish/shame other men, as he might have relished doing to his father, as an abandoned little boy. This pattern compulsively repeats, as he’s acting-out unresolved rage from childhood neglect and betrayal.”
Maladaptive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion
“Apparently, he’d needed me to desire him, to fortify his self-image.”
ah, the sad specter of the aged playboy
“Many are determined to tell me how much younger they look than their chronological age,
that’s a tell
what great lovers they are, and how every female they’ve been with sexually, has declared them “The Best!”
Ask for their social media names to check. Watch the color drain.
A confident male doesn’t need to talk about his sexual prowess, or anything else he feels sure of for that matter; income, job status, athletic superiority, good looks, academic achievements, etc.”
What does Marla say?
It isn’t a threat to you?
“Too many females are easily taken in by the Borderline’s apparent brilliance and base of knowledge. In direct contrast to the instability you’ve observed in this male, there have been times you’ve glimpsed what seems to be his wisdom, his spirituality and his incredible knack for stating things that make him sound like the absolute authority on health and well-being. Borderlines are usually plagiarists and copycats.“
It goes on about their Guru Complex. Isn’t Narrator trying to be a secular Guru?
Feeling dead inside is ill, full stop.
Poor Jewish men (there’s a section).
Narrator points out his father abandoned his mother… but he hates his mother.
The father would deliberately set up multiple families (think Bruce Jenner), classic r-strategy.
The emotionally disturbed are strong projectors, don’t even need a lightbulb in there.
Combined with hazing, it’s like the military but for pussies who fear real discipline, since they lacked that growing up.
Apathy isn’t a motivation, here in the real world. They fuel themselves with spite and hatred. Of the good.
Tyler the Tyrant, worst father figure ever (with the hand burn to prove it). Self-destructive people are one thing, but to wanna destroy the world? …Like there’s no good in it, ever? Classic narc. Tough love is not repeatedly punching another man in the dick. It’s called sadism.
Fight Club is a homoerotic (men only) S&M club and I dare you to prove otherwise by definition.
Wiping out all debt is a kiddy solution to adult problems. It doesn’t change the shitty characters that got into debt.
It’s the hipster love of authenticity, via anti-authenticity. Ironic authenticity, via cookie cutter.
Like the Gary Stu of James Bond, they parody masculinity by needing to do something to prove they’re a man, and that thing is materialism. Prove it to who? Long lost Daddy. Maybe after twenty years he’ll come back. So instead of working for the Man they pay for the Man’s approval. Smart.
Nobody in Archer is likable either. All of them are trash people.
That film is far more hostile to men than it ever could be to women.
How many years are you working off the clubbing debt? Did you add up the whole shebang? Aren’t hookers cheaper? Yes, of course you’re in control, now hand over your credit card to the nice bartender for some shitty, shitty vodka.
PSA
Modern men are stupid and it makes me sad.
