[WARNING: SPOILERS.]

Watching Fight Club (1998, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton) with a friend the other night, I enjoyed myself by analyzing it with fresh eyes in light of a better grasp of postmodernism than I had the last time I’d seen it (at least a year ago).

In particular, the following. Insofar as Jack (Norton, the unnammed narrator) must imbue his world with meaning as the Everyman struggling to survive in light of a bleak and godless present, and insofar as Durden (Pitt) as the Nietszschean übermensch becomes a kind of antiheroic leader/god-figure among the men of “Project Mayhem,” the scene at Paper Street Soap Company immediately following Bob’s botched mission to “destroy a piece of corporate art and trash a franchise coffee bar” gives a biting critique of progressive theology—whether it “means” to or not.

When Angelface issues a stern edict to “bury him in the garden” in answer to a frantic cry that “we have to get rid of the evidence—we have to get rid of the body,” this god-figure expresses deep disgust and horror.

Jack: What are you talking about? This is not a f—king piece of evidence! This is a person! He’s a friend of mine and you’re not going to bury him in the f—king garden.

The objection comes from across the table on which sits this fresh corpse: “But sir, in Project Mayhem, we have no names.”

This dark figure rounds on him seriously, finger quivering indignantly, accusingly: “No, listen to me. This is a man and he has a name, and it’s Robert Paulson, ok? He is dead now, because of us, alright? You understand that?”

After a brief moment of silence, the dead man’s partner chimes in with quiet reverence: “I understand.” Turning didactically to his colleagues, as though having taken on a role of priest-mediator between this revelation so seemingly dripping for them all with gravitas, the scene recalls pagan sacrifice rituals on which scrolls of law would later be based. “In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulsen.”

The objector, now suddenly seeming as though recast as studious acolyte, quietly intones, “His name is Robert Paulsen.”

They all take up the cry for this the first true martyr of their gathering: “His name is Robert Paulsen. His name is Robert Paulsen….”

What do we see from this? A sardonic parody of the beginnings of tribal religion—and by extension, all religions, especially ones claiming progressive revelations (Christianity and Islam, e.g.). In the framework of postmodernism, Jack is only clinging to what he knows and is trying to make sense of the world around him; but as one of the founders of Project Mayhem, this everyman has taken on an incredible power for these men, his “followers,” who overinterpret simple statements and turn them into proverbs and parables.

This bleak picture of humanity seems characteristic of the late 1990s, now that we’re far enough from that decade to evaluate it at least a bit better in its historical context, with all its axioms, clichés, and presuppositions. In some sense, Fight Club is as clearly existential as No Exit or Edward Scissorhands, with an austerity of moral grounding that leaves man primal and with his own means of creating a meager truth for himself while he lives—and a bleak picture of the instinct to worship and sacredness that threatens to undermine this primal and paradoxically “higher” state of man.

[WARNING: SPOILERS.]

Watching Fight Club (1998, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton) with a friend the other night, I enjoyed myself by analyzing it with fresh eyes in light of a better grasp of postmodernism than I had the last time I’d seen it (at least a year ago).

In particular, the following. Insofar as Jack (Norton, the unnammed narrator) must imbue his world with meaning as the Everyman struggling to survive in light of a bleak and godless present, and insofar as Durden (Pitt) as the Nietszschean übermensch becomes a kind of antiheroic leader/god-figure among the men of “Project Mayhem,” the scene at Paper Street Soap Company immediately following Bob’s botched mission to “destroy a piece of corporate art and trash a franchise coffee bar” gives a biting critique of progressive theology—whether it “means” to or not.

When Angelface issues a stern edict to “bury him in the garden” in answer to a frantic cry that “we have to get rid of the evidence—we have to get rid of the body,” this god-figure expresses deep disgust and horror.

Jack: What are you talking about? This is not a f—king piece of evidence! This is a person! He’s a friend of mine and you’re not going to bury him in the f—king garden.

The objection comes from across the table on which sits this fresh corpse: “But sir, in Project Mayhem, we have no names.”

This dark figure rounds on him seriously, finger quivering indignantly, accusingly: “No, listen to me. This is a man and he has a name, and it’s Robert Paulson, ok? He is dead now, because of us, alright? You understand that?”

After a brief moment of silence, the dead man’s partner chimes in with quiet reverence: “I understand.” Turning didactically to his colleagues, as though having taken on a role of priest-mediator between this revelation so seemingly dripping for them all with gravitas, the scene recalls pagan sacrifice rituals on which scrolls of law would later be based. “In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulsen.”

The objector, now suddenly seeming as though recast as studious acolyte, quietly intones, “His name is Robert Paulsen.”

They all take up the cry for this the first true martyr of their gathering: “His name is Robert Paulsen. His name is Robert Paulsen….”

What do we see from this? A sardonic parody of the beginnings of tribal religion—and by extension, all religions, especially ones claiming progressive revelations (Christianity and Islam, e.g.). In the framework of postmodernism, Jack is only clinging to what he knows and is trying to make sense of the world around him; but as one of the founders of Project Mayhem, this everyman has taken on an incredible power for these men, his “followers,” who overinterpret simple statements and turn them into proverbs and parables.

This bleak picture of humanity seems characteristic of the late 1990s, now that we’re far enough from that decade to evaluate it at least a bit better in its historical context, with all its axioms, clichés, and presuppositions. In some sense, Fight Club is as clearly existential as No Exit or Edward Scissorhands, with an austerity of moral grounding that leaves man primal and with his own means of creating a meager truth for himself while he lives—and a bleak picture of the instinct to worship and sacredness that threatens to undermine this primal and paradoxically “higher” state of man.