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.
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?
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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.