Fight Club: "Things You Own End Up Owning You"

1999’s Fight Club is considered one of the greatest movies of all time. Its style, story, and characters are all incredibly memorable. Its protagonist, Tyler Durden, is one of the most popular characters in film history. The film is about how Tyler and the film’s unnamed narrator create a fighting club that grows into something neither of them had anticipated. The movie is filled with ideas that are open to interpretation, but the one that is most important is the theme of the deterioration of man in society.

Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) explains to the club that modern men aren’t real men anymore. They are slaves to advertisements and a consumer culture. “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need,” he states in one scene. “The things you own end up owning you.” From Tyler’s point of view men have been emasculated by ads, their jobs, and culture. His fight club challenges that hegemonic status quo by making men beat each other to a pulp. It helps them released pent up anger from being manipulated and powerless. It’s just a form a therapy.

The film is also about masculinity in an every-changing world. Because men are no longer required to be the breadwinners or hunters that biology intends, they have lost their identity in the new world. Tyler proclaims: “We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place.” The narrator and Tyler have a discussion about how their fathers told them to go to college and get married, but they just do not see that as a viable option. It is similar to The Social Network in that it’s a movie about how masculinity is morphing constantly in the face of change. The only difference is how the men in the movies adapt their emotions to the change differently (Zuckerberg on his computer, Durden in a fight club).