The philosophy of Fight Club
The 1999 film Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same name, was considered a flop at the box office despite making more than a hundred million dollars in revenue and a profit of roughly thirty-seven million dollars. How ironic that a film offering such a powerful critique of capitalism’s excesses and which made its producers so much money was considered a failure for not having made them even richer.
Fight Club challenges viewers to reflect upon the mindless consumerism of capitalist societies and the emasculation of men within them, as well as on their own mortality, the nature of identity, and the harms that can arise from both order and chaos. This last point is the genius of the film: it presents a critique of capitalism, which as an ordered system nonetheless leads to the apathy and nihilism of many, but in its final scene the film also rejects anarchy, a system of organised disorder, as the solution to the existential problems caused by capitalism. Instead, the film tells us that to find ourselves again we must reclaim our inner childhood innocence, which in turn allows us to hope for the future, to love another, and ultimately to love ourselves and life again.
A rejection of capitalism and flirtation with anarchy features prominently throughout the film through the character of Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. In a bar scene Tyler says to the…
