Why Fight Club is a love story

Photo by Thais Do Rio on Unsplash

Now, I’m sure most of us know this movie, or have at least seen pop culture about it, but here’s something they may have missed.

I’m firmly of the belief that this movie is a love story, a different kind.

Told through a split personality/shadow done in a different way, sprayed with a bunch of lies both between both male characters and the male and various others, and embroidered with loads of capitalistic choices about working to live whilst also hating the man.

Ultimately, though, this is a story about how the shadow/ego/hidden persona takes control and tries to show that there is an alternative to living just for stuff instead of for the excitement of an experience.

In pop culture you have the following good vs bad in terms of own person, with Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, Stanley Ipkiss/The Mask, Bruce Banner/The Hulk, Stephen Grant/Marc Spector(from Moon Knight), Charlie/Hank (from Me, Myself and Irene), and generally, the wild man is the one that’s making the art form entertaining, exciting, and at times even exhilarating.
And while in some of these cases the shadow is mean, vile, angry, it’s not always the case. It’s a simple push-pull direction that takes ones boring life and makes it vivid.

And in the case of Fight Club, that vividness comes in full effect at the end, and I don’t mean when he’s holding Marla’s hand, but when he realizes that he’s pushed through this so that he could get away from his miserable existence of only buying Ikea furniture and watching TV, he sees things differently.

One might argue that his interior spirit took over to feel alive again, but also as a defense mechanism to protect him from going too far into depression.

Because living in a society that values loneliness and consumerism, how much is too much before we self-implode?