Post: #1

Hello guys,

Don't get me wrong i love the movie but i don't understand why every self help / PUAs / Red pill guy is constantly hitting on it when there are a lot of movies referring to masculinity, red pill and strength.

I actually think that the more Red pill you get = The more Fight club makes actually sense to you.
When you are still plugged in = the movie just seems like a nonsense nihilism.

But there are at least twenty good movies referring to masculinity, male power, and strength. However for some reason this is a general consensus around Fight Club... i'm just curious of what you guys think about this ?

Post: #2

You do not talk about Fight Club.

Post: #3

Post: #4

Watch Clint Eastwood movies.

Post: #5

The Patrice clip is pretty damn funny. I wish he elaborated on "holy grail of whiteness" though.

Post: #6

The appeal of the movie is that it contains both the blue-pill character that becomes red-pill (though the process is bitter) and the guy that's red-pill from the beginning (spoilers aside).

So both masculine men and lost men can watch the movie and 'empathise' with at least one of the characters.

When I first watched the movie I empathised with Edward Norton. Now if I watched it I would empathise more with Brad Pitt.

Either way I'd find the movie enjoyable.

Post: #7

I like Patrice O'Neil, but he totally misses the point here. The movie went right over his head. I don't blame him for it; he's a great guy with precious insights on a lot of things. But this one is outside of his range of experience. He doesn't get it because, to be blunt, he grew up as a poor black dude from Roxbury in Boston with a different set of life experiences. I love the guy, but his one is just not his thing. He's not an intellectual and this is not his thing. Notice I did not say he is unintelligent. He is very, very intelligent, and very perceptive.

But, guess what, B? This one is not for you. Step aside, and let us, the real downtrodden, the real marginalized, the real persecuted, handle it. Sit your ass down and listen. We are the real oppressed, not you. Prepare to be schooled.

The existential angst, the repressed rage, and the seething anger that the middle-class, alienated drone of the 2000s has against the system is not something he can relate to.

Fight Club is a zeitgeist film, as Edward Norton has said. It's a film that speaks to a generation of young men who have been:

1. Raised by single mothers (Tyler: "We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer.")
2. Provided no coming of age rituals
3. Betrayed by the system
4. Given no way of proving its masculinity in a physical way.
5. Force-fed liberal guilt trash and tripe for its entire life.
6. Force-fed the idea that consumerist materialism is the end-all, be-all of life.

Fight Club is a complete rejection of the modern Western ethos. It is the greatest, and most subversive, film made in the US in recent history.

It communicates to the young generation the following doctrines, each of which flies in the face of the liberal, pussified shit that we are force-fed every day in the US:

1. Self-realization can come through the cathartic experience of violence.
2. A man must prove himself by bonding with a tribe or group.
3. Men need--and must have--initiation rituals.
4. Men must live by a code.
5. Men must have a leader.
6. A woman cannot complete a man.

Now, you can agree or disagree with these ideas. You can like them or not like them. It does not matter. But the movie does communicate a definite set of ideas. And for Patrice to fail to notice this makes me think that (1) either the movie scares him, or (2) he can't wrap his mind around it.

I think he just doesn't get it. Or doesn't want to get it. Because this is the thing: this movie really disturbs some people. They can't deal with it. Revealed on the screen, for all the world to see, is a bit of reality. It hammers home the point that those apparently quiet, unassuming young guys out there--whom everyone denigrates and abuses--carry with them the potential for revolutionary change. And this message terrifies the liberal establishment.

This movie flew under the radar and was lucky even to be made. It was a labor of love for David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton. And it remains the single best expression of the modern Western male consciousness since the 1990s. Ignore it at your own peril.

Post: #8

I love the movie, and QC did a great write up that I enjoyed reading ^

But... and it may have been for PR purposes to get the movie made... when it came out the entire promo campaign (including Fincher) went on and on about how the movie was a satire on a bunch of white guys who just read too much Nietzsche (I'm paraphrasing, but this is basically what they said).

And the author of the book is a wretched and degenerate queer. So it's not out of the question that he meant for the characters to be parodies.

Still, the movie somehow transcended this in a lot of ways. It's also just masterfully made, and we see such little craft in filmmaking these days. The reveal was consistent and not just a stupid M Night Shamamalamalooon whoopsie-doodle. The movie holds up to many repeat views.

But I kinda also get where Patrice is coming from. Fight Club is the white man's Scarface, where we ignore all the damage they do at the end because we really like where they are at the middle.

Post: #9

When it comes to "ideas," I'd say that I don't agree with every single thing the movie tells us. There is a nihilistic streak running through the film that doesn't match my own philosophy of life. I understand where it comes from (it springs from modern man's repressed rage at his marginalization in the face of feminism, egalitarianism, and modernity), but I don't think it's the answer. I have a different vision.

Think of the scene on the bus where Tyler and the unnamed Edward Norton character are looking at the ads on the walls of the bus. They see a picture of a well-muscled frame. Tyler says, "Is this what a man looks like? Self-improvement is masturbation...self-destruction, now that's an idea." Or something to that effect.

Consider also the scene where Edward Norton beats himself up in his boss's office. It's as if males are turning their collective rage inward on themselves, rather than outward against the weasels, parasites, and scum who sold them out. I don't believe in self-destruction as an antidote for our modern ills. I have a different prescription for our malaise.

But here again, even though I don't agree with everything the movie posits, I can still recognize that it is a supreme piece of cinematic art.

.

Post: #10

I have nothing to add to what Quintus said, bravo. I also think the film improved on the book by quite a bit.

Post: #11

^^^

I read the book afterwards and was profoundly disappointed. The film is deeper.

Post: #12

(05-20-2017 03:18 PM)Matsufubu Wrote:  ^^^

I read the book afterwards and was profoundly disappointed. The film is deeper.

Fight Club is one of the very few Hollywood movies that is unambiguously better than the underlying book (which is virtually incomprehensible.)

Post: #13

(05-20-2017 10:50 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  I like Patrice O'Neil, but he totally misses the point here. The movie went right over his head. I don't blame him for it; he's a great guy with precious insights on a lot of things. But this one is outside of his range of experience. He doesn't get it because, to be blunt, he grew up as a poor black dude from Roxbury in Boston with a different set of life experiences. I love the guy, but his one is just not his thing. He's not an intellectual and this is not his thing. Notice I did not say he is unintelligent. He is very, very intelligent, and very perceptive.

But, guess what, B? This one is not for you. Step aside, and let us, the real downtrodden, the real marginalized, the real persecuted, handle it. Sit your ass down and listen. We are the real oppressed, not you. Prepare to be schooled.

The existential angst, the repressed rage, and the seething anger that the middle-class, alienated drone of the 2000s has against the system is not something he can relate to.

Fight Club is a zeitgeist film, as Edward Norton has said. It's a film that speaks to a generation of young men who have been:

1. Raised by single mothers (Tyler: "We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer.")
2. Provided no coming of age rituals
3. Betrayed by the system
4. Given no way of proving its masculinity in a physical way.
5. Force-fed liberal guilt trash and tripe for its entire life.
6. Force-fed the idea that consumerist materialism is the end-all, be-all of life.

Fight Club is a complete rejection of the modern Western ethos. It is the greatest, and most subversive, film made in the US in recent history.

It communicates to the young generation the following doctrines, each of which flies in the face of the liberal, pussified shit that we are force-fed every day in the US:

1. Self-realization can come through the cathartic experience of violence.
2. A man must prove himself by bonding with a tribe or group.
3. Men need--and must have--initiation rituals.
4. Men must live by a code.
5. Men must have a leader.
6. A woman cannot complete a man.

Now, you can agree or disagree with these ideas. You can like them or not like them. It does not matter. But the movie does communicate a definite set of ideas. And for Patrice to fail to notice this makes me think that (1) either the movie scares him, or (2) he can't wrap his mind around it.

I think he just doesn't get it. Or doesn't want to get it. Because this is the thing: this movie really disturbs some people. They can't deal with it. Revealed on the screen, for all the world to see, is a bit of reality. It hammers home the point that those apparently quiet, unassuming young guys out there--whom everyone denigrates and abuses--carry with them the potential for revolutionary change. And this message terrifies the liberal establishment.

This movie flew under the radar and was lucky even to be made. It was a labor of love for David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton. And it remains the single best expression of the modern Western male consciousness since the 1990s. Ignore it at your own peril.

It didn't make sense to him because he spent a lot of his youth living a barbaric existence in a rather barbaric neighborhood during a turbulent era where he wasn't missing this stuff. His "fight club" was trying to get to and from school every day*. The idea of needing to find extra fighting to figure yourself out is absurd to him.

His "initiation" was him and his friends being sentenced to prison on a false rape charge before he graduated from high school.

* You guys have no idea what school was like in Boston back then. Neighborhood schools and de facto segregated neighborhoods meant de facto segregated schools. Big liberal push to eliminate it by suburban judges and such. Their "solution" was to kidnap the kids of the poorest whites and bus them to the most dangerous black school to be beaten and raped, and then bus the black kids to poorest and most violent white schools (where they would attacked by these student's brothers and angry mobs of their parents). Absolutely insane shit EVERY SINGLE DAY. People beaten with baseball bats and set on fire kind of shit, literally one of the worst social engineering errors in American history (which is saying a lot). You ever see that movie "The Warriors"? Imagine doing that EVERY DAY. You had to fight EVERY day, not just at some "fight club". You had to have a "warrior brotherhood" just to make it home every day.

If you have a kid's college roommate be black, it tends to make them less racist because they're in a healthy environment with a guy with (likely) good values that has his shit together and is trying to build a better life for himself. If your little brother is taken from you and is savagely beaten and terrorized every day, then you're not going to well disposed to the little brother of the guys doing it when he's at YOUR school. Perhaps the most efficient method ever devised for making people violent, hateful and racist. Of course, the judge that ordered this had the tony suburban school HIS children attended exempted. Diversity was only for the poor, those ignorant brutes needed to learn it...the hardest way possible. And the fallout just gave them another thing to feel superior about.

Post: #14

What Patrice says is actually pretty subtle, but it takes the form of the joke. The interviewers obscure that with their inane chatter, and don't follow up with him.

The comedy of his response is that, on a personal level, he clearly doesn't feel it. But he goes on to talk about "self-loathing, self-hatred"; about "guys that can't express their masculinity". So he clearly understands what it's about.

Despite how Patrice frames it, this isn't actually a race thing. It's a class thing. The predominantly white US middle class are neutered by their office jobs. As Patrice says, "they go to work and say blah blah blah". That's not true for the Black and Hispanic working class. So he views it indulgent.

The white middle-class recover their masculinity as a fetish. Hence the shirtless violence of Fight Club. It's an anomaly, and a fiction. None of us literally engage in this behaviour. But that doesn't make the problem any less real.

Post: #15

I enjoyed the fight club, and yes it's all about modern masculine disenfranchisement.

The move "300" also struck almost the same nerve amongst young men. "This is sparta" was their aroused catch cry for a few months before going back to porn and video games.

Post: #16

(05-20-2017 10:50 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  ...
I think he just doesn't get it. Or doesn't want to get it. Because this is the thing: this movie really disturbs some people. They can't deal with it. Revealed on the screen, for all the world to see, is a bit of reality. It hammers home the point that those apparently quiet, unassuming young guys out there--whom everyone denigrates and abuses--carry with them the potential for revolutionary change. And this message terrifies the liberal establishment.
...

Recalling it's release in the cinemas as I was heading into my 20s, the guys in my social circle all thought it was great but didn't connect with it on an intellectual level. None of the girls "got it" and in hindsight they obviously turned up to see Pitt shirtless (though none confided it).

Personally the movie didn't toss me all the way into the land of the red-pill but certainly gave me a violent shove in that direction. I really should watch it again but it obviously made an impression on me, because despite seeing it only once I can almost remember it word for word, scene for scene.

Post: #17

Yeah, I get that. But I think you need to remember a few things.

Just because some white kid didn't grow up in the ghetto doesn't mean that he didn't have a hard life, too. People don't choose their background. People don't choose where they came from. What's important to remember is that everybody pays their dues in their own way.

This is the thing. Because everybody out there thinks the other guy has it easier than they do. The black guy in the ghetto thinks the white kid "has it made." But he forgets that he himself gets a lot of help from programs and from society that the white kid doesn't. I'm not going to get into a big debate about who has it "tougher." Why? Because that's a debate that goes nowhere. The whites are going to say the blacks have it easier. The blacks are going to say the whites have it easier. The Chinese guy is going to say he's discriminated against, too. And the American Indian guy is going to say that no one understands his pain.

The truth? They're all right, in their own way. Because each man pays his dues in his own way. Everyone thinks his own struggle is the hardest. And they are right.

But this is the thing: I would never denigrate or minimize another man's struggle. This is what I'm trying to get at. Patrice was wrong to denigrate and belittle Fight Club's focus on middle-class (and lower middle-class) male angst. He was wrong to do that. Just because I didn't grow up in the ghetto doesn't mean that my experiences are any less valid or any less real than his experiences are.

Patrice O'Neil has a whole industry of voices catering to the pain of the black proletarian. It's been written about, filmed, discussed, editorialized, and rehashed for generations. And that's fine. It should be.

But who speaks for us, the average guy who happens to have a different background? No one. Who is there to chronicle our struggles? No one. Who is there to talk about our thoughts, our feelings, our fears, our desire for redemption? No one. The media suppresses the average working guy in a way that it does not suppress the narrative of the poor urban black.

It's politically correct and acceptable (even desirable) to talk about the struggles of women and minorities. But if you're a poor white guy, you are anonymous. You are invisible. You are the unwanted, the unloved, the downtrodden, the dispossessed. There have been tons of movies made, and books written, about the experiences of women and minorities. Before Fight Club, no one had been willing to touch the subjects that it touched on.

People needed to hear this message: We're the ones who keep this society functioning. Who will be there to keep things running if we don't? Who? So just you remember that. Do not fuck with us.

So I say: good for Fight Club for finally giving a voice to an experience that the media has been unwilling to give a voice to. It's about time.

And I'm kind of disappointed that Patrice O'Neil proved he couldn't step outside of his narrow little tribal mentality to try to see the world from the viewpoint of someone from a different background. He was the one that tried to introduce the whole racial angle into this movie.

And that's sad, as well as wrong. Because the movie transcends race. It's not about "white guys." It's about ALL MEN. Any guy living and working a job today in America is subject to the same, soul-killing pressures.

Patrice O'Neil was a good man, but he had his limitations. My guess is that once he made it big and became a millionaire, he didn't want to be reminded of the dark underbelly of life in America. Turning it into a racial punchline was his way of dealing with something he didn't want to talk about.

Post: #18

In my opinion, one of the best narratives that Fight Club takes on is how in contemporary American culture men's status, identity and happiness are derived through our consumer purchases and the importance of your job title/profession. This is also a foundation of the red pill mindset. Part of taking the red pill is about men realizing their identity does not come from what society and corporations deem it to be.

From the film:

Quote:You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Quote:Do you know what a duvet is? It’s a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then? We are consumers. We’re the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.

Quote:We’re consumers. We are the byproducts 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…fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns.

Quote:The things you own end up owning you.

Quote:Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

Post: #19

I suppose the rejection of the movies themes by a guy like Patrice creates a pretty ugly prospect for the future of race relations. Like QC infers. If someone looks on you as having no inherent struggles to deal with then they will invariably regard you as a lesser man. If they regard you as a lesser man then they will inevitably compare the average social status of their people vs your people. And if they then find that they "struggle more" and you "struggle less" yet you "have more" and they "have less" then the future is nothing but an endless bitchfest about 'the racism inherent in the system'.

My brother and I once got into a debate about race and privilege with my dear younger sister who is sadly quite progressive. She fucked up when blathered a boilerplate talking point about how as white men we never knew what it was like to grow up poor (and fuck, did we grow up on the bottom rung of society). She realised what she'd said the second it came out of her mouth and my brother and I just burst out laughing. She was so indoctrinated that her screed no longer had context based on the listener. It was just mindless regurgitation of social justice mantras that had automatically prescribed all white men as being inherently gifted with a carefree life of ease.

As for the rejection of consumerism, it's interesting to look back on based on where I am now, out in the sticks. Out here I can get around in scrappy work clothes in a beat up old 4x4 utility and nobody judges me based on those factors. They judge me based on how I behave and how I prove myself in my everyday life.

The soul-less life of the middle-class city dweller depicted in Fight Club is becoming more and more foreign to me as the years go by, though I remember it enough to recall why I'd never go back to it.

Post: #20

We all have to carry our cross. Its the same "argument", well its not really one, when people say, why do you complain? Look at X, they have it worse. Like someone who did not grow up in the Ghetto or a civil war has no right to complain? Nor to suffer? Even more, not express their opinion of things they dislike? Then you kill all forms of improvement. The therm first world problems fits in some way. Some people live in a bubble. Its good to understand the scale of problems, a broken phone is less worse then living in a war zone.

This film is about the ones that feel like robots. Especially the office guys. They go there every day, so some stuff but whats the deeper meaning? Where is the value? To let the net worth of the company grow put quite less to that list. I don't know anyone who feel proud when the company did rise the stock value. Our system is at a point where its run like a machine. Little steps for the bigger picture but whats the bigger picture? Young men grow up with no real needs and still there are family issues in the middle class as well. Broken homes, clashes. The normal stuff of adultery. But this never ends for us, there is nothing that give most men the feeling to be there. To be accepted full by the society, be a man of value. No, all we feel is we are drones. And so that feeling got hit by fight club. We live in a system that most of use provide everything for us, and still people miss something. The "real" life.

Post: #21

(05-20-2017 08:06 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  Yeah, I get that. But I think you need to remember a few things.
...

I agree with this. Just saying I understand where Patrice is coming from.

Have you never had that sensation of seeing someone upper class whining about some butshit you thought was irrelevant? Because you had it rougher? That's what he's feeling.

Now, maybe he misrecognises that there's an actual problem there, I agree. Because it's not just whiny bullshit. What Patrice and the SJWs need to recognise is that class alone divides man.

All the same, the great thing about this segment is that Patrice actually captures all of these truths in his few short remarks. Even though he doesn't spin them out, because of the shitty interviewers.

Post: #22

Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.

Post: #23

In concernt Chris Cornell said "this next one is about killing your boss. It's about coming to work early one morning cause you have a special agenda and you're going to shoot him in the fucking head."





Not mixing up threads, it's relevant!

Post: #24

Patrice O'Neal is focussing on the conflict between the character and society, and views it as a young man's Falling Down. He's not sympathetic because his challenges with society were greater.

He misses the challenge between the main character and himself. If you consider the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton characters, that is what the whole film is about. One is blue pill, one is red pill.

Post: #25

There are many reasons to like Fight Club.

+ Masculinity no matter what your place in life - all men are at least tough Sigmas with frame
+ against capitalist exploitation
+ resistance there, but actually not violent against people (compare it to Antifa or BLM thugs who don't see anything wrong with killing lecturers or cops)
+ excellent cinematography

Entire production crew got fired by studio boss later - one of those movies that slipped through.



Of course the reality is that you cannot remain in Fight Club "don't give a fuck" attitude forever, though it would be fun to do so. It is still a movie after all. But I love the detachment fostered and shown in it.