The Celtic Rebel

Continuing from where I left off with The Art of Revealing, I take the time to re-watch a film from long ago. Lately, I’ve also been inspired by finding a couple of serious researchers looking at movies and synchromysticism, Jake Kotze and Steve Willner. {*1} Tonight, it’s gonna be Fight Club (1999).

The movie begins with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, in front of a window over-looking the oncoming demolition of financial buildings. “This is it — ground zero. Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?”

Excuse me? Did he just say what I think he said? It continues, “For a second, I totally forgot about Tyler’s whole controlled demolition thing.”

A sycnhromystic reference to the upcoming 9/11 Mega-Ritual which was two years away? {*2}

The film then moves backwards in time to introduce the characters. Edward Norton, is the protagonist and narrator. He is working some well-paying, yet meaningless and spiritually unrewarding job. He is everyman. He is us.

The “Man” part of being human is the root of his unhappiness. We find him in a support group where men are sitting in a feminine circle. They are expressing themselves. They are crying! And, what kind of meeting is this? It’s a support group for men who have lost their balls due to cancer.

That’s a little over-the-top explanation for those watching, just in case they missed the first two subtler hints about what the problem with these men is. They have lost their way. They are out of touch with their masculine side. Society has effectively castrated them. The reason why it’s cancer and not due to some accident, is to reflect that the emasculation of men is a slow ongoing process.

We’re then introduced to the palindromic Bob character, played by Meatloaf. His man-boobs are intentionally way overdone, with gargantuan protruding nipples to reemphasize his femininity. I perceive this exaggeration as an unintentional hint that our effeminization is not just solely from a social process, but also a chemical castration of sorts. The synthetic estrogens that Procter & Gamble was putting into baby formula in the 50’s, could be but one agent.

Back to Norton. He has an addiction problem. But, it’s not alcohol or drugs, it’s support groups. His prefabricated life, like his prefab IKEA apartment has left him empty, and he is attempting to fill that void through absorbing the emotional outpouring and pain of others. Now, it’s time to meet the adversary.

Who is it? It’s Marla Singer. For one, she’s a woman, which speaks volumes that one of the primary reasons that today’s men are mere shadows of their their former selves is due to the rise of radical feminism. More important however, is the question: what is her biggest crime? Why does he hate her so?

She is someone who is doing the same exact same thing as he is. She is a threat to his sense of uniqueness. He had thought that by going to all these support groups and lying about himself to participate, that he was somehow “special.” In this era, where humanity is so lost in the great wilderness of false culture, many of us still define ourselves, by what we listen to, what we wear, what we drive, what we buy, or the type of movies we like to watch. {*3} No, he is not unique and as the movie is trying to tell us, neither are we.

I am hooked. We, the audience, can clearly see what he cannot. This is classic Greek theatre. Plus, I am experiencing the rarity of an offering from Hollywood that is just as good on the surface as it is underneath. Well, this is just sugar!

We then learn about what Norton does for a living. He is a “bean counter.” He explains it for us: he works for a major car company (my guess is that it hints at General Motors) and basically, tries to figure out whether the cost of legal settlements from deaths due to company negligence outweighs the cost of doing a recall. He surveys the grizzly accident remnants, complete with body parts embedded into the company’s product. All very cold and calculating, but to him, not “real.”

It’s a window into the corporate mentality conditioning, that any of us naive enough to believe that someone out there gives a f*ck about us, should probably consider. In relation to the movie, it also shows how our cookie-cutter cubicle white-collar world, is no different from the assembly line blue-collar world we , the middle-class of America, allegedly worked so hard to escape. More pay and nicer clothes are not antidotes to fill the empty void which still gnaws at us.

It’s time to meet Tyler Durden. Sitting next to the narrator/us, he asks, “So, how’s that working out for you? Being clever?”

What is he doing? He is feeding our ego. And, as we will learn before the movie is over, Tyler and Norton are one. Norton is the Ego. Tyler is the Dark Self in the shadows that lies beyond.

Instantly, Norton envies Tyler. We initially see Tyler through the narrator’s eyes. As Norton’s eyes have been blurred by media conditioning, he perceives him as glamorous, from the mind-controlled consumer perspective. He’s good-looking. He’s dressed sharp. He jumps in a Ferrari outside the airport. But, we the audience are shown Tyler for who he is, unconstrained by ego, and thus, not needing tacit approval from anyone. He chews while he talks on the phone.

He doesn’t care how others see him. And Tyler let’s us know why:

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

Speaking of Tyler, he mentions something that I personally learned many years ago after I began traveling the world, which led to my deciding to give up the luxury apartment overlooking mid-town Manhattan. I was forced to return to the states, only to find a place to put my things. Norton, didn’t have to contemplate such a decision, as Tyler took care of it for him by blowing them up.

For our benefit, he advises us: “The things you own, end up owning you.”

We learn that Tyler is a projectionist at a movie theater at night, and that his hobby is splicing pornography into movies. This is a small primer on subliminals and maybe a reference to Disney (which I addressed in a prior blog): “Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did.” We see the effect on the audience. A little girl starts crying. {*4} A couple start getting amorous.

And now we move on to the part of the move where the fighting starts and where my story begins. I had not been in a fight since High School, and can’t even remember what that was about. But, oddly enough, a week after I saw this movie, there I was outside a club, and some guy decided to attack me. We fought like men (well, him not so much). Afterwards, we hugged it out like brothers, drowning out the objections of his shrill ex-girlfriend who, still unsatisfied over some perceived injustice, kept rabidly insisting we fight further.

I woke up a little sore the next day, partly on the side of my face, where I was “blind-sided” and partly, on my ass. Yea, that last one was quite the mystery, until a few days later, when one of the witnesses came forth to tell me that some unknown effeminate man had come up behind me in the middle of the fight and kicked me. [Whoever that "man" was, you really need to watch this movie. Rule #4: Two guys to a fight.] Regardless, I don’t plan on making this a regular event in my life, but in a strange way, I actually felt good about the whole encounter. For just a few minutes there, I was a man.

Back to the movie, their Fight Club becomes a movement. Men, disenfranchised and disaffected from their lives, join in hordes, just for the temporary glimpse of freedom and rebellion the few minutes of fighting brings them. They are connecting with their primitive and archetypal selves.

Norton has an interesting conversation with himself, about who they would fight if they could fight any person, living or dead? Tyler, the aware one, our inner voice replies, “I would fight my dad.”

Is this a reference to Freud’s “Big Daddy?” Is he telling us, that rather than fight other human beings like we’ve been doing in these petty daily battles and all these pointless fabricated wars, we need to direct our masculine aggressive energy on our true oppressors? The Government? The fascist system of control that wages war on our minds and bodies every day of our lives?

On the topic of trying to fill our internal void through companionship, Tyler’s espouses more wisdom: “We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.”

Many of us spend our lives living under the programmed childhood charade that someone out there will make us complete somehow. Those with New Age leanings fall for the fairy tale that some “soul-mate” awaits us. To you men reading this, I’ll ask, “Has it occurred to you that the other half of your soul which you are so desperately seeking, does not lie at the end of the birth canal you came out of? {*5}

Another interesting and metaphysically revealing quote comes during the scene where Tyler/Norton burn their hand. “Fuck damnation, man! Fuck redemption! We are God’s unwanted children? So be it!” There are a few ways to analyze the statement, but I will leave that Gnostic path to you the reader.

I want to move on to THE speech of the movie, which pretty much, IS the movie:

Men, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

The movie continues … “Project Mayhem” begins. I also found it of interest that as the project’s recruits came to the house, the first thing Tyler/Norton did was to break down their egos. It’s the same approach undertaken by the military.

Norton, reacting to his growing confusion as to who and what he is, begins his Quixote-like quest to stop Project Mayhem. Led by his misguided instinct to save the old dead world he was trapped in, he eventually comes to the realization that he and Tyler are one and the same. Tyler explains to us, “All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”

This moment of blinding truth overwhelms Norton’s synapses. He goes limp. It’s the ego, devastated by the realization that IT ALONE is not who we are. The ego can’t handle it. It shuts down. For our benefit, Tyler adds, “People do it everyday, they talk to themselves… they see themselves as they’d like to be, they don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.”

It’s time to conclude Project Mayhem. We find the van, loaded with explosives and parked near the support columns of the basement. An eerie similarity to the 1993 WTC Bombing? {*6}

And now, we’ve found ourselves at exactly the same spot in the movie where we began. “This is it - ground zero. Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?” The Ouroboros serpent is eating its proverbial tail. We have revolved around through 360 degrees and find ourselves exactly where we were.

A little more synchromysticism: “In two minutes, primary charges will blow base charges and a few square blocks will be reduced to smoldering rubble.” It continues, “Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.” {*7}

Was the 9/11 Mega-Ritual the kickoff of the financial melt-down process we find ourselves in now?

Norton finally comprehends how can get rid of this dual-existence. He must kill his former self and be reborn as one. This is symbolic and not to be taken literally. The duality must become a singularity. The snake must eat its tail.

What does he say before he pulls the trigger? “My eyes are open.”

The sleeper has awakened.

A song by the Pixies starts fading in and grows louder. Icing on the cake. “Where is my mind?” The buildings begin collapsing onto their own footprints as the synchronized controlled demolitions charges cascade. So, the end is the new beginning…

“Where is my mind?” Where is my mind?

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Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned. {*8}

*1: Oddly enough, just as I had concluded in that same prior blog, others are looking at/researching the issue. Seek and you shall find. [LB]

*2: I’m under the impression that Steve Willner coined the phrase. If anyone knows differently, please let me know. Oh, and the first release of the film was on September 10, 1999 at the Venice Film Festival. [LB]

*3: If you wanna see what we’ve been reduced to, you need look no further than MySpace. Just look at how many individuals “express their individuality” with corporate logos, celebrity photos, fashion brands, music that others have written, catch-phrases from mindless movies and such. [LB]

*4: The little girl crying is a troubling image. I feel the implication is that she is the victim of child abuse. Why else would she start crying uncontrollably? Otherwise, the image would either go over her head or induce morbid curiosity. [LB]

*5: I’m not trying to burst anyone’s bubble, but careful analysis of the mythic archetypes and ancient wisdom involved in the idea of spiritual completion, lead one to conclude that what we are seeking is our higher selves. I’ll probably have to save the topic for another blog. [LB]

*6: Yet another staged event blamed on “radical Islam,” but brought to you courtesy of the FBI. Check the court transcripts. They (the FBI agents) were recorded on audio tape. They provided the actual explosives and the instructions on where to park the truck. Fortunately, for those present in 1993, the patsy driver failed to park in the right spot. [LB]

*7: If we go by the book, like Lieutenant Durden, minutes could seem like years? The 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Centers was also the result of controlled demolition. If you’re still holding on to the fairy tale that these buildings by sheer chance fell at free-fall speed neatly into their own footprint, then you may be as delusional as Norton was throughout a good part of this movie. [LB]

*8: The all too appropriate “Warning” was printed on the DVD of the movie. [LB]