Good movies are like good friends. There are the friends you go to for a serious conversations, and they're not always the same ones you go to when you need a shoulder to cry on. Some friends inspire you, others allow you to indulge your stupid side. There are holiday romances too - wonderful at the time, but also quickly forgotten - caprices, one night stands, lifelong marriages. Fight Club remains very close to me, my right hand man. I could not have got through the Sixth Form without it. It and the Prisoner kept me sane - or kept me crazy, which is the next best thing.
I didn't really feel it on a first watch. Knowing the ending really bothered me. Once I'd seen it once, my mind relaxed. It's marvellous, start to finish, top to bottom, script, style, everything. it gets into your head. Tomorrow is our school Speech Day. I am going, because my inner Jedi Master thinks this will be good for my development. I'm not actually convinced, but there you go. There are other reasons too. But my condition for going was that I watch Fight Club the evening before. I'm toying with sticking The Prisoner on in the morning also. Films tend to anethetise my brain - I get stuck in their atmosphere, they influence me for days or more. It's always insane, usually enjoyable, and occasionally very, very useful.
It's one of my dad's favourite films, along with Excalibur and Lord of the Rings. I always thought this fact said a lot about him. Made me wonder what my favourite films revealed about me. To return to the first analogy, I wonder if the friends you choose/find/are left with also say something about you. My mum didn't quite get it - I'm not sure she hates the world enough, and I'm not sure she hates herself either. Now while I don't exactly subscribe to either of those viewpoints - a bit too all-encompassing for my liking - nevertheless, I believe the following to be true.
Humanity is not built to be happy. It's genetic. We've evolved from animals, and the the animals that lived to breed were the smart ones who were worried about every contingency.
Nowadays, broadly speaking, we don't have to worry about where the next meal is coming from, nor freezing to death if Za doesn't produce fire, nor being torn to pieces by dinosaurs. Yet we still have that hunter instinct, the same way we still have the right parts of the digestive system despite no longer needing to process grass. Actually, in a hunter-gather sense, there's not much we afflent Westerners need to worry about. And yet we are not living in bliss - even on days when everything is OK, compared to the myriad ills that one is not suffering, it needs to be really sunny, or good music needs to be on the radio for one to actually feel properly happy. I attribute that sense of disquiet, and the human ability to overreact and let the smallest thing spoil one's mood, to the survival of that "oh no!" instinct. If we're not worrying, we're not alert - and if we're not alert, we might get eaten by dinos.
That's my uplifting theory. And it is, when you think about it, optimistic. If my theory is correct then happiness is impossible, at least the type of happiness experienced by families in cereal adverts, or couples at the end of rom coms. Instead, we need to accept what we have as it is - continuing, endless (till you run out) it. There's a lot of peer pressure with happiness too - everyone else appears content, because other people's lives have a definition your own lacks. Like Monet paintings - the further away you are, the better sense they make, until you understand celebrities or historical figures perfectly, and your partner/family/friends not at all. Yet close up, there's no order or logic or art to it at all, and the more you analyse the more it simply reverts to splotches of lead on canvas. Your own life is so consumingly close
you can't even recognise it as artwork anymore. In short, I think this obsession with happiness
and visible contentment is making everyone feel worse because everyone else seems better. I think accepting that the world is uniformly unfufilled is not a depressive act. It's liberating. You no longer have anything to live up to, and can get on with simply living.
Or something. It's amazing the insights you get past midnight. In any case, Fight Club really taps into something most people feel. Though not my mum. The key to it's immense popularity is actually the insidious attractiveness of its central theories. Cinematically, too, the drama comes from agreeing with it all, buying into Tyler's nihilistic worldview and all but signing on the dotted line - and having gained your trust, the movie just runs with it.
When I found my Project Mayhem, one of the first things we're gonna do is make "Tyler Durden's Little Book of Life". It'll contain his choicest wisdom, interspersed with photos of kittens and sunsets, and slotted onto shop shelves besides "The Ways of Wisdom", "Poems for my Granddad" and other such platitude books. It'll be a scream.
Tyler Durden on Humanity: "You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."
Tyler Durden on God: "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don't need him." [capitalising the "h"s seems horribly inappropriate in this context]
Tyler Durden on Existance: "Our Great Depression is our lives."
I wonder whether I never thought of setting up a Fight Club at the Ladies College? It'd fit right onto their rosta, between Debating and Hockey.
I didn't really feel it on a first watch. Knowing the ending really bothered me. Once I'd seen it once, my mind relaxed. It's marvellous, start to finish, top to bottom, script, style, everything. it gets into your head. Tomorrow is our school Speech Day. I am going, because my inner Jedi Master thinks this will be good for my development. I'm not actually convinced, but there you go. There are other reasons too. But my condition for going was that I watch Fight Club the evening before. I'm toying with sticking The Prisoner on in the morning also. Films tend to anethetise my brain - I get stuck in their atmosphere, they influence me for days or more. It's always insane, usually enjoyable, and occasionally very, very useful.
It's one of my dad's favourite films, along with Excalibur and Lord of the Rings. I always thought this fact said a lot about him. Made me wonder what my favourite films revealed about me. To return to the first analogy, I wonder if the friends you choose/find/are left with also say something about you. My mum didn't quite get it - I'm not sure she hates the world enough, and I'm not sure she hates herself either. Now while I don't exactly subscribe to either of those viewpoints - a bit too all-encompassing for my liking - nevertheless, I believe the following to be true.
Humanity is not built to be happy. It's genetic. We've evolved from animals, and the the animals that lived to breed were the smart ones who were worried about every contingency.
Nowadays, broadly speaking, we don't have to worry about where the next meal is coming from, nor freezing to death if Za doesn't produce fire, nor being torn to pieces by dinosaurs. Yet we still have that hunter instinct, the same way we still have the right parts of the digestive system despite no longer needing to process grass. Actually, in a hunter-gather sense, there's not much we afflent Westerners need to worry about. And yet we are not living in bliss - even on days when everything is OK, compared to the myriad ills that one is not suffering, it needs to be really sunny, or good music needs to be on the radio for one to actually feel properly happy. I attribute that sense of disquiet, and the human ability to overreact and let the smallest thing spoil one's mood, to the survival of that "oh no!" instinct. If we're not worrying, we're not alert - and if we're not alert, we might get eaten by dinos.
That's my uplifting theory. And it is, when you think about it, optimistic. If my theory is correct then happiness is impossible, at least the type of happiness experienced by families in cereal adverts, or couples at the end of rom coms. Instead, we need to accept what we have as it is - continuing, endless (till you run out) it. There's a lot of peer pressure with happiness too - everyone else appears content, because other people's lives have a definition your own lacks. Like Monet paintings - the further away you are, the better sense they make, until you understand celebrities or historical figures perfectly, and your partner/family/friends not at all. Yet close up, there's no order or logic or art to it at all, and the more you analyse the more it simply reverts to splotches of lead on canvas. Your own life is so consumingly close
you can't even recognise it as artwork anymore. In short, I think this obsession with happiness
and visible contentment is making everyone feel worse because everyone else seems better. I think accepting that the world is uniformly unfufilled is not a depressive act. It's liberating. You no longer have anything to live up to, and can get on with simply living.
Or something. It's amazing the insights you get past midnight. In any case, Fight Club really taps into something most people feel. Though not my mum. The key to it's immense popularity is actually the insidious attractiveness of its central theories. Cinematically, too, the drama comes from agreeing with it all, buying into Tyler's nihilistic worldview and all but signing on the dotted line - and having gained your trust, the movie just runs with it.
When I found my Project Mayhem, one of the first things we're gonna do is make "Tyler Durden's Little Book of Life". It'll contain his choicest wisdom, interspersed with photos of kittens and sunsets, and slotted onto shop shelves besides "The Ways of Wisdom", "Poems for my Granddad" and other such platitude books. It'll be a scream.
Tyler Durden on Humanity: "You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."
Tyler Durden on God: "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don't need him." [capitalising the "h"s seems horribly inappropriate in this context]
Tyler Durden on Existance: "Our Great Depression is our lives."
I wonder whether I never thought of setting up a Fight Club at the Ladies College? It'd fit right onto their rosta, between Debating and Hockey.
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