I am warning you that I am hopped up on Harlan Ellison and Excel and am not to be trusted.

That said, here's the topic: Fight Club.

I am not much of a movie watcher. Life passes quickly enough without my sitting around adding to the drool content of the average theater. Consequently, I missed this movie when it was in theaters.

This was a mistake.

This is the visual equivalent of Spider Jerusalem's fuck-you journalism (and now that I think about it, Edward Norton would make a great Spider Jerusalem). It's a movie that you can just let wash over you, and it's a movie that you can participate in, that you can think about, and use to think with. You can use this movie to remove some of the misperceptions you hold about the world being a friendly, cuddly place.

But some people go to the opposite extreme, and use this movie (and, blatant plug, another in the same vein, American History X) to teach them that the world is really a violent, frightening place and that you must be prepared to beat the shit out of it at any time, because that is certainly what it will do to you.

Newsflash, folks: Only if you let it.

I remember that right after Fight Club came out - don't know if this happened where you live, but it was here - a lot of people suddenly were participating in, and encouraging their children to participate in, impromptu Fight Clubs.

Now, aside from the logical fallacy of parents who let their kids beat each other up and get beaten up in return, these people have let the movie wash over them like surf on sand. They have taken nothing from this movie except that Brad Pitt seemed to get a lot out of fighting, and really redefined his masculinity in ways that make a lot of sense for the current Modern Age, and looked stylin' doing it. Also that even if you go to the office every day looking like someone has wiped the floor with you, you won't get fired, because you can threaten your boss, who will back down and let you walk all over him.

These are people who we will refer to as "idiots". These "idiots" do not realize that the whole point of the Fight Club in the movie is, ultimately, to create a group of men who are brainwashed out of their identities. That they have no concept of self, of ego (except in death), of doing anything other than the will of their leader, unquestioningly.

That the men in the movie were not developing a new masculinity (one which, if they had, would not have been based on strength, but on fear, but I'll get to that) but were rather only one man's personal fantasy, his private army of people too stupid and sheeplike to realize that they were not being helped to a greater enlightenment. That they were merely Tyler's semen splattered carelessly around in pursuit of his ultimate orgasm, the destruction of modern debt-structure and consumerism.

That the end of the movie was not the victory of Tyler and his vision but the death of the Tyler-personality and the rubble of his final act, an act that Ed Norton's character was going to have to deal with. Tyler did not win - at best it was a draw, and one of the things that went down in flames with him was his vision of the future and of masculinity.

How do you miss that?

By not looking for the thing that the creator is trying to tell you, by not actively participating. All works of art, even ones that say they have no point, have a number of messages. It is up to you, the consumer of the art, to assume that you have to work to find the message.

Now, (she said, shifting gears with verve), back to the movie. You've already got that I believe that the consumer of any work needs to put effort into understanding it. Now to the movie itself, on the level of work that I am capable of putting in to it.

The masculinity that the Fight Clubs are touted as creating is a masculinity based on fear. There is no strength in tearing down society, in forcing it to exist on your terms. There is only fear of allowing society and you to part ways. Rather than destroying credit agencies, refuse to use credit cards. And refuse, unlike the protruding nail, to be hammered down.

If I feel that the machine is screwing me over - which it frequently is, the machine existing for its own purposes - it is my job to participate or not, as I choose. And if I choose to not to participate, I need to have the strength to do so in direct contravention of society's choice. It's as if I decided that I really wanted a purple car, but I was afraid that my purple car would stand out and get vandalized or stolen or mocked, so I painted every car on my street purple. There is no strength there. Just fear, mainly fear of being alone and the only one to do something.

The trick is to let the machine go to hell in its own way, and to allow Tyler Durden to go to hell in his. It's to not let them take you with them. Don't try to break the machine to your level, because that's division by zero and has no gain for you.

There's lots more to say here, and lots more to look at, but I'm gonna save that for another rant. Like the theology of Fight Club. The comparisons between Fight Club and American History X. Pulp Fiction. How the gimp fits into all of it.

In the meantime I leave you with my salient points. Participate in that which is presented to you. Smash your TV if you can't participate. Strength is bucking the trend, not bringing the trend to your level.

Betty Crocker from Hell,

Channon