Why the movie Fight Club is so popular within the Self help / PUAs / Red pill crowd ?

[Enigma]

^
one of those movies is not like the others...

American Beauty is a homo's version of the world, replete with a grown man "finding himself" by working in fast food and smoking pot, a family torn asunder, and (of course) the masculine man being secretly gay. Topped off with the whip cream and cherry of faux insightful/artistic plastic bags flowing in the wind. No clothes for the emperor on that one.

But otherwise, it was a great year for films.

Let's put Bringing Out The Dead and Eyes Wide Shut on there instead of AB.

The "masculine man" is completely over the top. That's the whole point. He's repressed any sense of feeling or femininity in his personality that he connects to neither women nor his son.

He's not being presented in a vacuum, he's being presented alongside the other masculine character, Lester.

Lester is the old man without passion and becomes child-like and without responsibility, before seemingly balancing it at the end (but too late).

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

^
one of those movies is not like the others...

American Beauty is a homo's version of the world, replete with a grown man "finding himself" by working in fast food and smoking pot, a family torn asunder, and (of course) the masculine man being secretly gay. Topped off with the whip cream and cherry of faux insightful/artistic plastic bags flowing in the wind. No clothes for the emperor on that one.

But otherwise, it was a great year for films.

Let's put Bringing Out The Dead and Eyes Wide Shut on there instead of AB.

While the acting and cinematography in American Beauty was good, it was clear pro-divorce, anti-family, pro-gay, anti-masculine men propaganda. And he did not even get to fuck that 18yo girl who turned out to be a virgin, because what? It would have been much better if another 18yo boy had fucked her a week before, then could he do it? There are now 18yo girls doing porn who lost their virginity 10 days before the shoot.

The movie was lauded because it showed the "toxicity of family relationships and toxic masculinity". They did not like Fight Club.

And I agree that the ending was off, but the ending in the book is not much better to be honest. If anyone of us would have written it, then we would have reunited both personality streams and become a stronger, but saner masculine man. But that is what the globalist elite fears the most - that men would actually do that.

 

[Atlanta Man]

Sorry but fuck American Beauty. The sexual fantasy scenes with the flower pedals were bullshit, not fucking the hot cheerleader, and the homo erotic overtones were stupid. It was just not a good movie, it did not express anything I could identify with.

 

[TooFineAPoint]

^
one of those movies is not like the others...

American Beauty is a homo's version of the world, replete with a grown man "finding himself" by working in fast food and smoking pot, a family torn asunder, and (of course) the masculine man being secretly gay. Topped off with the whip cream and cherry of faux insightful/artistic plastic bags flowing in the wind. No clothes for the emperor on that one.

But otherwise, it was a great year for films.

Let's put Bringing Out The Dead and Eyes Wide Shut on there instead of AB.

The "masculine man" is completely over the top. That's the whole point. He's repressed any sense of feeling or femininity in his personality that he connects to neither women nor his son.

He's not being presented in a vacuum, he's being presented alongside the other masculine character, Lester.

Lester is the old man without passion and becomes child-like and without responsibility, before seemingly balancing it at the end (but too late).

Everybody in the movie is over the top. Fabulous, you might even say.

The only redeeming quality about that movie is the cinematography by Conrad Hall. Thank god he has a nice long resume of actual good films to his credit that we can watch instead.

 

[Leonard D Neubache]

Looking back on American Beauty the movie is like a long joke with a punchline that falls utterly flat.

The RVF ending would obviously be that Spacey bangs out that little bitch, rents another house and makes her his main. His entire story arc is about rediscovering masculinity and game only for him to snap back to white-knight in .5 seconds flat, and it's presented as some sort of liberating and "spiritually correct" moment of clarity. The ending is merciful in a sense.

 

[Paracelsus]

Looking back on American Beauty the movie is like a long joke with a punchline that falls utterly flat.

The RVF ending would obviously be that Spacey bangs out that little bitch, rents another house and makes her his main. His entire story arc is about rediscovering masculinity and game only for him to snap back to white-knight in .5 seconds flat, and it's presented as some sort of liberating and "spiritually correct" moment of clarity. The ending is merciful in a sense.

The reason it comes out like this is because, just as with Fight Club and The Matrix, the film's driving force is the narcissism of the main character. I can now extend my thesis: American Beauty, Fight Club, and The Matrix are all the same film.

The Last Psychiatrist:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/12/if_you_liked_the_descendants_y.html

"This is the first movie review I've ever read that attacks not the movie but the people who liked the movie." I'm not attacking you you if you liked it, only if you identified with it. "That's not really fair." American Psycho was an amazing movie, but I wouldn't date anyone who identifies with it. How is it different? Again, the point isn't that movies tell you who you are, they tell you how to be.

Here's an example: with 100% certainty I can predict that if you liked The Descendants, if you think you would like The Descendants, then you thought American Beauty was "amazing." That movie was, indeed, an outstanding reflection of a kind of a man and a kind of a life, but at some point before your divorce or rehab you have to consider that if you identified with the main character there is something wrong with you.

Louis CK:

Kevin Spacey playing the man... he's fantasizing about fucking a cheerleader in high school. And the way they represent this, in this gay movie, this fucking bunch of cum through a projector-- according to this movie, when you fantasize about a cheerleader, you lie on your back and rose petals fall all over your body. Instead of her hot, sweaty ass, and the confused look on her face as you cum in her stupid eye... No, it's Kevin Spacey with a sweet look on his face, and flower petals, and jazzy music.

[And at the end of the movie, the ex-marine] is the one who's really gay. 'None of us are gay, it's actually the one hetero guy, he's the gay one.' No one else is gay, Kevin Spacey's not gay. He's straight as an arrow, he lifts weights, listens to Zeppelin, drives a Firebird-- and thinks about fucking rose petals. And then when he actually sees her tits he almost vomits....He finally sees the 18 year old tits and says, what have I been doing all this time? I forgot I like men....

Louis CK takes the gay angle for the comedic effect, but he understands this isn't about being gay but about a kind of American self-delusion exemplified by the Kevin Spacey character: everyone else is broken except me. My only problem is I am surrounded by these people. And everything gets projected onto them as both defense of the ego and as confirmation that it is, indeed, everyone else who is nuts. "Look, she's a crazy bitch."

When he throws the plate of food against the wall you're supposed to cheer his rising manliness; you're not supposed to notice that it's infantile narcissistic rage, i.e. foreshadowing: this isn't going to have a happy ending.

The problem for the audience is that there isn't an American Beauty II, the one where he gets the rose petal girl of his dreams and inherits a billion dollars and has a perfect life in Hawaii only to discover that within 5 years everything has regressed to the mean, I mean mean, and everything happens all over again. "Jeez, why do I attract these crazy bitches?" Because you're crazy, dummy. The one universal constant in all of your failed relationships is you.

 

[Enigma]

RE:

^ Yes, you're not supposed to identify specifically with characters like Lester, just like you're not supposed to identify with characters who live in abandoned buildings and make explosives out of human body fat.

Going back to what I said earlier, Nietzsche believed that modern man was too Apollonian and must become more Dionysian, balancing the two.

Dionysus was associated with sex, music, drunkenness, and, wait for it... roses.

What are the things that people remember about Lester's story arc (based on the last few posts in this thread)? Him listening to music, lifting weights, smoking weed, losing his temper, and imagining sex on top of roses.

There's a reason that Nietzche considered the tension between the Apollonian and Dionysian the source of all tragedy and that these archetypal stories go back thousands of years.

Does this sound familiar?

The interplay between the Apollonian and Dionysian is apparent, Nietzsche claimed in The Birth of Tragedy, from their use in Greek tragedy: the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make order of his unjust fate, though he dies unfulfilled in the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian

To be clear, I'm not saying American Beauty is my favorite movie -- or even a particularly good movie -- I'm just offering an alternative to the "roses are gay, bro, I want to see sweaty assholes" or "if you enjoy watching millennia-old stories you're a narcissist" interpretations of the film.

 

[Philosopher]

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.

Watch "300" when feel down and need inspiration. If one does not fear death, than nothing can stop him.

 

[Teedub]

I echo everything QC has said in his response.

The first half of that film is one of the most important things for young men, intelligent enough to understand it, to watch.

 

[Dan Woolf]

RE:

The original "pillow talk"-scene had Marla saying "I want to have your abortion". When this was objected to by Fox 2000 Pictures President of Production Laura Ziskin, David Fincher said he would change it on the proviso that the new line couldn't be cut. Ziskin agreed and Fincher wrote the replacement line, "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school". When Ziskin saw the new line, she was even more outraged and asked for the original line to be put back, but, as per their deal, Fincher refused.

The layout of The Narrator's apartment was based upon an apartment which director David Fincher lived in when he first moved to LA. Fincher decided to model the location on this apartment because he claims that whilst he was living there, he always wanted to blow it up.

When the Narrator hits Tyler Durden in the ear, Edward Norton actually did hit Brad Pitt in the ear. He was originally going to fake hit him, but before the scene, David Fincher pulled Norton aside and told him to hit him in the ear. After Norton hit him in the scene, you can see him smiling and laughing while Pitt is in pain.

The absolute fucking madman.

 

[nomadbrah]

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.

Tyler is not supposed to be the "hero".

The Narrator was too much of a pussy, and Tyler is his polar opposite, his shadow.

Neither is a fully healthy individual, which is why the Narrator becomes schizophrenic and later tries to kill himself. Rather than accepting both parts of his personality and psyche, he splits them in two.

That's why the movie is worse than the book.

For one, it glorifies Tyler, when he's too destructive. You're not supposed to take everything he says seriously. He's just the opposite of the main character.

Second of all, it turns the ending into some kind of love story, rather than the (attempted) suicide that it's supposed to be. The main character is supposed to be killed by his unwillingness to accept the dark side of his unconscious.

And third, it kills off Tyler. He's a part of the Narrator's personality; he wasn't supposed to be killed.

The healthy masculine character would have been the Narrator and Tyler integrated, with both the light and dark elements of his personality.

Instead he kills off the dark side of his masculinity to hold hands with some crazy drug addict.

Good interpretation, A+. I think you're right. Makes a lot of sense, a lot of sense, when you see the movie as the problem of integrating modern nice guy with classic masculinity. I actually remember this movie coming out and there was no big discussion over the deeper meaning at the time, mostly it led to a bunch of people taking up martial arts.

I think it's time for a rewatch of Fight Club. I watched another doomsday film - 12 Monkeys - recently and that one is also awesome. It's interesting that all these gloomy but prescient films got made just a few years after the collapse of the Sovjet Union and supposedly in the "end of history" with freedom and democracy for all.

The Waichowskis and Matrix, they probably had no idea what they would set in motion and judging by their newest "work" would probably object. Still, it seems many artists of that time were able to sense the zeitgest without intellectualizing it.

 

[Icarus]

My favorite scene of the movie is the chemical burn scene:



I first watched the movie in early 2012, when I thought I had hit rock bottom. I was still far from it.

Looking back, the "burn" did free me. However, I quickly realized that, generally speaking, I can no longer stand being around people who were never "burned", especially those of the male gender. Unspoiled adult females have their charm, whereas unspoiled adult males are still boys in my book.

 

[Teedub]

I watched Fight Club again last night. It's so good (particularly the first half - yes, I like the friendship between 'Jack' and Tyler), however I always wonder where it sits politically. I read an interview with Chuck Palahniuk and he opined that Durden would probably be rocking a MAGA hat were he to be around today.

It's as relevant today as it was then. Maybe more so, with 21 year olds getting full sleeve tattoos in an attempt to purchase an identity in an age of mass-conformity via false-rebellion. Both antifa-types (I mean the proper marxists, not the hipster kids) and guys here identify with it, which is notable. The biggest target of the film is metro-liberal urbanites, which is exactly the class of people who HATED the film 19 years ago - film critics. Starbucks and soy essentially.

I doubt neither us nor antifa are advocating for Durden's pre-agricultural anarcho-primitivism (maybe some do), but there's obviously a deep malaise across political spectrums, particularly with men — but the left are infested with anti-male identity politics which prevents any bridges being built.

 

[Thot Leader]

RE: Why the movie Fight Club is so popular within the Self help / PUAs / Red pill

Good insights here re: the significance of Fight Club:

 

[Teedub]

I really like Joe Rogan for introducing me to guests and subject matter I'd never come across normally. However, there's a great irony with people like him (and his avid fans) — they identify with Fight Club without realising they're what's being critiqued. Joe Rogan's entire being is basically mocked and torn apart by FC and he can't see it. Rogan THINKS he's some kind of zen individual, yet he's the full-sleeved consumer that FC targets mercilessly. We're all guilty of it to varying degrees, because consumer-capitalism is incredibly difficult to resist.

Gym memberships and protein shakes are my bug bear at the moment (I work in marketing in a related industry - you do not need anywhere near as much protein as you're being told), you can get in great shape at a fucking park eating a standard diet. And carrying heavy household items if you want to replicate lifting. Bodybuilding to look as close as genetically possible to Arnold S is a different story, but you get my point — especially if you're a fan of FC. I'm sure if Cernovich was still posting he'd launch a tirade against me, but meh — he'd swiftly change his tune, as would others, were they to be offered lucrative sponsorships by protein supplement companies.