Satire wasn't dead (yet), but it was super easy for the intended audience (myself included) to miss it when they made Tyler Durden so. fucking. cool.
I didn't read the book until after I'd seen the movie, so I couldn't get Brad Pitt out of my imagination of the character. But...
They could have made some ridiculous, over- the- top Macho Man (tm) archetype. They could have leaned into the grime, made everything look dirty and like it smelled like piss. They could have done a better job showing the Narator as a disheveled man whose life was falling apart around him as he spiraled into a psychotic break. They could have made Marla truly unattractive, nasty and potentially sick and look like she was in the process of dying.
Instead, they glamorized all of it. Because they were making a fucking movie. And then (qoute) "they" were (quote) "surprised" when young men took the (quote) "wrong" message.
It’s like that for all these “you missed the point!” arguments. They made the movie cool AF, I mean can you even think of Brad Pitt in any role he’s done as not being cool? They put the hottest most stylized director at the helm.
Same with Natural Born Killers. People will say it’s a commentary on violence in the media. And sure, it is. It’s also a hyper violence that puts asses in seats at the theater because at its heart it’s actually an exploitation film. If you don’t like violent movies you aren’t gonna like that movie, regardless of the underlying message.
Wolf of Wall Street. The bad guy goes to jail and has a bender, but he spent most of the movie doing whatever the fuck he wanted and sleeping with beautiful women and gets out of jail still able to get a roomful of people hanging on his every word. Fucking over the poor looks like a lot of fun
I mean, yes. And no. Again, it was the fact that they glamorized how he acted, by dressing it all up in a stylish, attractive veneer that makes it toxic. He didn't look cool because of his actions; his actions were (mistakenly) legitimized because he looked cool. My argument is only that the filmmakers are as much to blame as the audience for the satire going over most heads.
Tyler was a depressed man's imaginary, idealized version of himself. Of course, he is going to be a cool and stylish. Why would the Narrator imagine himself as an unattractive and lame person?
Ya, like... wtf? The house they lived in was putrid. Literally everything, including the actors, looked like they were constantly dirty and they lived in utter squalor. Even Marla was far from traditionally "sexy" and all of tylers outfits were the sort of gaudy, ridiculous clothes that only a loser like the main character would think a "cool" person like tyler wears.
Like that was 90% of Tylers character: he was what a "loser" like the main character thinks some cool and powerful man looks like, a boys idea of manhood. The movie literally spells it out that Tyler "talks like he wants to talk, looks like he wants to look, fucks like he wants to fuck", he is the delusion of all the times he wanted to lash out against his stupid consumer lifestyle or job and actually did it instead of going along with it all, the fantasy of being a "strong" man made uo by a character that explicitly had no male role model.
Tyler explicitly is the force that tries to drag the Main Character to their lowest point, to Rock Bottom, who was a squatter skinhead that went to shitty dive bars and got beat up in parking lots, but a pretty face and some smooth talk made a bunch of kids think he was "so cool" and follow his bullshit which is EXPLICITLY THE POINT OF THE MOVIE like holy shit, how do people miss this?
I don't think Tyler Durden looks cool, nor does the world look glamorous. Everybody is strung out. They look exhausted and dirty. It's all washed out and dingy. Tyler Durden is creepy and clingy. He's also pushy and mean. There's nothing really cool about him except maybe his coat.
But even if that is your aesthetic, I would have to argue that it's just a shallow reading to think anything good is happening in that movie. Beyond the style, nobody is making good decisions. Like, he's holding soap made out of humans on the poster. How can that be cool?
I think for most satire you have to be primed beforehand to see it, it's not going to convince you on its own. The more the lesson is spelled out, the less it is satire and the more it's a lecture (like an after-school special).
Like with Starship Troopers it's obviously satire if you know anything about war propaganda, but otherwise it's a hero's journey with a happy ending for Rico.
I think making him cool actually helps the anti-toxic masculinity interpretation. Tyler is so cool that it's kind of impossible...and then we discover that it actually is impossible, because Tyler isn't real, he doesn't exist. The narrator is legitimately insane and he's pushing that insanity on everyone else in his club. So the masculinity that Tyler promotes is literally a delusion, and everything the club does is based on imaginary bullshit.
I... admitted that? I was in my teens. I'm now in my 40's. I see both the media and it's point for what they are, now. But the hyper- stylization really undercuts the "this isn't a celebration of the ideas" claim. They knew that it would be misinterpreted by the very audience they were sending the "message" to. They were trying to sell movie tickets, not put out a PSA.
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u/tdbourneidentity 23d ago
Satire wasn't dead (yet), but it was super easy for the intended audience (myself included) to miss it when they made Tyler Durden so. fucking. cool.
I didn't read the book until after I'd seen the movie, so I couldn't get Brad Pitt out of my imagination of the character. But...
They could have made some ridiculous, over- the- top Macho Man (tm) archetype. They could have leaned into the grime, made everything look dirty and like it smelled like piss. They could have done a better job showing the Narator as a disheveled man whose life was falling apart around him as he spiraled into a psychotic break. They could have made Marla truly unattractive, nasty and potentially sick and look like she was in the process of dying.
Instead, they glamorized all of it. Because they were making a fucking movie. And then (qoute) "they" were (quote) "surprised" when young men took the (quote) "wrong" message.