Essay: Analysis of Fight Club by David Fincher

David Fincher’s Fight Club uses a color scheme within the mise-en-scene as well as subtextual meanings within the dialogue to depict the contradiction between an anti-consumerism lifestyle and a consumerism lifestyle to give the audience a sense that our society needs to grow out of our materialistic world in order to live more of a minimalist lifestyle, like that of which is portrayed by Tyler in the film. Over the course of the film, the narrator (Edward Norton) and Tyler (Brad Pitt) begin to become more and more like the same person, even though they represent the complete opposite of one another in the beginning of the film. Their personalities and lifestyles clash through the film which forms the clashing of the materialistic and anti-materialistic behaviors. The film reaches its climax at the point in the movie when the audience realizes that the narrator and Tyler are actually the same person and that Tyler is made up by the narrator’s subconscious in order to represent what the narrator truly wants – to find a way out of his materialist world in order to create a new beginning.
The movie Fight Club opens inside the human body, showing the neural passageways and such of the main character, through the use of computer-generated images, who remains unnamed throughout the film. As the opening credits come to an end, the film rises out of the character’s body to show a gun being held in his mouth with explosives set to destroy the surrounding buildings. The film then flashes back to begin the story about how the main character got to this point. As the film progresses, you soon come to find out that the narrator is an insomniac who works his life away at a job he despises in order to buy materialistic things that make him feel successful. Yet, he soon meets the man named Tyler who co-creates the Fight Club with him. However, Tyler is portrayed as the exact opposite of the narrator – the epitome of anti-consumerist and anti-materialist lifestyle.
Throughout the film, the narrator seems to be followed by bluish colored lights which come to represent this cookie-cutter, drone-like lifestyle and personality of his. In the beginning parts of the movie, the narrator’s apartment is shown, along with the price tags of all the items within it. The walls in his apartment are painted blue and most of the objects within it seem to take on a bluish shade. While it is being shown, the narrator also describes how he flips through catalogs in order to find what objects he believes defines him as a person, showing that he is a materialistic person. On the other hand, Tyler is always surrounded by a yellowish-green color which comes to represent this rebellious, anti-capitalist lifestyle and personality of his. His house is always portrayed in this yellowish-green color and is always in disarray as well. These two characters come into contact with one another after the narrator’s apartment explodes, resulting in the loss of all his possessions and subsequently everything he has worked his life for.
After the narrator’s apartment is destroyed, he calls Tyler to ask if he can stay with him. They then go out to a bar and the narrator explains to Tyler that his life was so close to being complete because of all the possessions he owned. Tyler responds by saying, “The things you own end up owning you.” This statement takes on a large subtextual meaning. Because of his matter-of-fact like tone that Tyler is speaking in when he says this, I believe he is saying that there is no need for extra material possessions in your life. If you look at your life from a basic survival standpoint, what is the point of having multiple cars or multiple apartments or having the most expensive products? This can be supported by the minimalist way in which Tyler lives as well. He lives in a run-down old house that barely has filthy running water which is basically falling apart at the seams. Tyler is saying that we should stop being consumers and take the time to be present in the moment, rather than work our limited time away in order to buy materials in which we don’t need.
Another point of subtextual meaning within the film occurs the same night that Tyler and the narrator meet up after the narrator’s apartment explodes. After a night of drinking they leave the bar and Tyler decides to tell the narrator to hit him. While trying to convince the narrator to do so, Tyler says, “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight. I don’t want to die without any scars.” The narrator doesn’t want to do such a thing, but Tyler finally convinces him to do it, ultimately leading the narrator to take his first step outside his structured, plain life. However, I believe the scars Tyler is referring to take on a deeper meaning that what he just plainly says. Ultimately, the scars that occur in our lives result from our failures. I believe Tyler is saying that it is okay to get out and try new things, just like their fistfight which they both state is a new experience, just as long as you get to feel something. Within the film, there are many examples of scars occurring on the characters. For example, during a later scene in the movie, Tyler takes the narrators hand and pours chemicals on it causing a serious burn to his skin which results in a scar. Even though the narrator pleads to make the burn stop, Tyler doesn’t let him neutralize it until he faces the reality and is okay with the fact that he will someday die. After the narrator comes to terms with this, Tyler neutralizes his burn and states, “You’re one step closer to hitting the bottom,” or, in other words, one step closer to leaving behind his materialistic lifestyle. It is only when we leave behind our material possessions, get out and take action, and sense these feelings that we will finally find what it is we are searching for. However, only by receiving these “scars,” or experiencing failures, will we be able to find what it is that we truly desire, which will lead to our ultimate source of feeling alive in this world.
In a later scene within the movie, Tyler decides to take a clerk of a convenience store hostage, which is something we can come to expect within the film from his cold-hearted, insensitive character. While Tyler stands over the top of him with a gun during the darkness of the night, the narrator stands behind him, afraid of what is happening. The blue and yellow/green colors play a large role within this scene. It can clearly be seen behind Tyler that the light shining off the wall is yellow while the light shining off the wall behind the narrator is blue. In addition to this, the narrator is wearing a blue shirt and Tyler can be seen wearing a yellow shirt. However, within this scene, Tyler basically tells the clerk to follow his dreams to be a veterinarian or he will kill him. The colors in the background can be seen as a clash between the two personalities of Tyler and the narrator. Because Tyler didn’t want money or possessions from the store but instead wanted nothing more than to have Raymond, just a random store clerk whom he didn’t even know, find his purpose in life and set him on his journey towards achieving it, it can be understood that Tyler is ultimately sending a message that nothing in life matters besides finding and following your true dreams and that material possessions have no importance. After Tyler releases the hostage, Raymond runs away into the night, yet the light from the light poles that he is running towards emits a yellow glow. These clashing colors represent the clashing of their personalities and lifestyles, ultimately describing that we should edge away from the blue (materialistic lifestyle) and run towards the yellow (anti-consumerist/unmaterialistic lifestyle). Some may argue otherwise, but if we are to stay in this same consumerist lifestyle that the narrator is stuck in, we will ultimately be left with nothing to feel good about in our lives, which is also a statement the narrator makes later in the film about his own life.
The scene directly following this hostage scene consists of an explosion of a corporate store, which dissolves the flames of it into a view of Tyler standing in a basement. He then breaks the fourth wall by directly talking to the audience saying, “You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.” All of these things mentioned by Tyler are material possessions, which he is ultimately trying to convince us do not matter. Tyler also states within the film that, “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” To see what is meaningful in your life, you have to see past all of the material possessions that you’ve worked for and this will lead you to find the true purpose of why you’re here. However, he finishes his statement by saying, “You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” This quote from the film takes on a subtextual meaning as well. To me, this quote means that the people of the world are influenced by meaningless societal norms, which leads them to judge their own self-worth based on their material possessions. This leads a society made of narcissistic, self-centered people that only care about praising materialism, which is ultimately what the film is trying to convince us not to do. The fact that Tyler breaks the fourth wall in order to state this directly to the audience, along with the fact that there is no other characters within the scene, helps convince us that this statement is meant specifically for those viewing the film.