But I can't believe how many people watch Fight Club and miss the real message: that Tyler Durden's philosophy is not one to live by, because it doesn't bring you any joy or fulfillment. Too many people watch the movie and see a tour de force of machismo and stick-it-to-the-man ideology, but the movie is really about the negatives of extreme, prolonged toxic masculinity. The Narrator conjures Tyler Durden out of a misplaced idea of what he's "missing" in life, and he suffers greatly for it. Durden is a false prophet, and shouldn't be idolized in the slightest. But tons of people watch the movie and come away wanting to start their own fight clubs, or otherwise emulate the masculine charisma of Durden without ever understanding what it was really all about.
Also ironic that the modern use of "snowflake" (at least in America) originated with Fight Club but has become completely divorced from its intended semantics.
Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the book the movie is based on would disagree with you. For one, he has said he doesn't believe in the term toxic masculinity. He has said that Fight Club is "about empowering the individual and allowing the individual to make what they see as the best choice" and "about the terror that you were going to live or die without understanding anything important about yourself".
He has also remarked about how few cultural narratives there are for young men today, "I feel a little frustrated that our culture hasn’t given these men a wider selection of narratives to choose from. Really, the only narratives they go to are The Matrix and Fight Club".
As for the snowflake term being co-opted, he says, "once that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it. It will become the child of the audience and will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it. It would be insane to think that the author could control every iteration or every interpretation of their work."
For me, Fight Club was a very nihilistic (Chuck Palahniuk admits to being somewhat of a nihilist) and also very hopeful book (and movie), which is a tough combination to pull off.
> Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the book the movie is based on would disagree with you.
Palahniuk: “Throughout childhood, people tell you to be less sensitive. Adulthood begins the moment someone tells you that you need to be more sensitive.”
> For one, he has said he doesn't believe in the term toxic masculinity.
He criticized the term, for being poorly defined, not the concept:
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-conversation-with-chuc...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fight-club-2-chuck-palahniuk_...
In your first link, he is asked, "We hear the term “toxic masculinity” a lot these days. As someone who writes a lot about manhood, what does it mean to you?". He answers, "Oh boy, I’m not sure if I really believe in it".
Sounds to me like he doesn't believe in the term toxic masculinity.
In your Huffington Post link, the interviewer claims "It’s a book about consumerism, and an expressive, violent response to the cold fact of it. It’s also a book about toxic masculinity, even if its author never deigns to expressly critique or uphold controlled violence". I don't know why we would consider the interviewer the authority on the text in question here. Here is Palahniuk's take in the same interview:
Q: Would you say Fight Club is more of a critique of violent masculinity, a celebration of it, or both?
A: Boy. I wouldn’t say it’s a critique. I think that because it’s consensual, it’s OK. It’s a mutually agreed-upon thing which people can discover their ability to sustain violence or survive violence as well as their ability to inflict it. So, in a way, it’s kind of a mutually agreed-upon therapy. I don’t see it as condoning violence ― because in the story it is consensual ― or as ridiculing it, because in this case it does have a use.
Thanks for the HuffPo link though, here is another quote where he gives what he thinks the message of Fight Club is that seems to be in agreement with the other ones I read, "The central message of Fight Club was always about the empowerment of the individual through small, escalating challenges". It also has this quote about killing the father, "In a way, it’s like everyone rebelling against dad, and discovering their own power by killing the father, as the Buddhists would say". I've seen interpretations of Fight Club as a Buddhist allegory (https://web.archive.org/web/20090423020258/http://www.unomah...), interesting to hear him bring that up.
>We hear the term “toxic masculinity” a lot these days. As someone who writes a lot about manhood, what does it mean to you? >Oh boy, I’m not sure if I really believe in it. >Why? >It seems like a label put on a certain type of behavior from the outside. It’s just such a vague term that it’s hard to address.
Two great quotes came from it:
"Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life."
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."
:)
QUOTES:
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
“Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need."
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
"Getting fired is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives."