I Am Jack’s Realization That ‘Fight Club’ Was Garbage
The infamous late ’90s movie about male angst was wrong about what makes a man
I have probably watched Fight Club over 100 times. I am not proud of this fact. The reason I watched it so much is because, in the late ’90s and early ’00s, I didn’t have cable, was broke as fuck, and buying DVD’s was expensive, so I owned maybe five or six. My basic collection was like Fight Club, Gladiator, Trainspotting, Blazing Saddles, and Amadeus. What? I love Amadeus. Screw you, you philistines, that movie is pure art.
So because I didn’t have a lot of movies to entertain me, I would watch them on basically repeat, over and over. Okay fine, I was also one of those creeps who got way into the movies because I was an angry twenty-something male. Look, no one gets that into Fight Club unless they have something severely broken inside them, and in that period I was pretty broken.
All the young men who obsess over that film all share the same expression of their brokenness; they’re angry, all so very angry. Of course, people know the scene where Tyler Durden lays out the rules of the titular fight clubs, but those who worship that movie focus with the precision of a deranged lunatic on the lines that reinforce the things that have fueled their rage. They quote the movie…
