I am Jack’s personal responsibility

Ross Douthat, in his otherwise excellent post on V for Vendetta, drops this line about a film with a special place on my DVD rack, Fight Club:

If you want to see an anarchist manifesto that actually has something somewhat interesting to say, in spite of the flaws and adolescent posturing, you might go Netflix Fight Club. It's kinda like V For Vendetta, except that it's not . . . what's the word I'm looking for . . . brain-dead.

Now, not to sound too Harry Knowles here, but I have a Fight Club poster here in my office. I wrote countless essays on Fight Club during my tenure in college (ah, the tough assignments of English-Film majors), and count the movie as one of my three favorite films. Ever.

Ross is right to say that it’s not brain-dead—it’s one of the smartest social commentaries of the last decade—but he makes an extremely common mistake in counting the movie as pro-anarchy propaganda. I’ve encountered this quite regularly from both fans and detractors, and even a number of smart film critics that liked the movie (Peter Traverse, for one), hold that it’s essentially an anarchist tract about striking back at the modern capitalist system.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. As far as I’m concerned, Fight Club is about the need for personal responsibility. It’s about the way young men have whined themselves into weakness and tried to blame everyone—women, bosses, social conventions—for what they’ve allowed themselves to become without being willing to accept any of the difficulty that comes with change. It’s an evisceration of Hollywood’s image culture and the way consumer-lust has replaced real meaning in too many lives. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s also probably the best cinematic satire of progressive groupthink ever to grace multiplex screens.

I’ll agree that the movie does present corporate cubicle farms as being capable of some serious soul-killing, but the caveat is that this occurs only if you let it. Jack (Norton) becomes a drone because he’s repressed himself and allowed himself to be used; Tyler (Pitt) is his subconscious’s reaction to the repression. And, as is often the case with unconscious reactions, the manifestation is unruly, violent, but incredibly seductive. It portrays itself as a natural impulse (and therefore presumably good), as freedom from corporate (or whatever other societal) tyranny.

Even more, the end result of Tyler’s escapades is an even worse form of slavery, a supersocialist groupthink that trades in any conception of the self in favor of top-down order. That’s Tyler’s way—terrorism, anarchy, juvenile rebellion magnified a hundred times—and to my eyes, the film makes it clear that his influence is immensely dangerous.

Look at the final scene. The pivotal moment is when Jack says “I take responsibility for all of it.” It’s his willingness to own up to his mistakes, to not blame corporate overlords, succumb to the lure of consumerism, or accept the violently stupid authoritarianism of anti-corporate groupthink, that gives him power.

From then on, he understands that the power is his own, here symbolized by the gun he realizes he’s holding, and he makes a decision to accept that real change will require pain, courage, and self-sacrifice. He turns the gun on himself—not because he’s suicidal, but to symbolize that he’s willing to accept the difficulty that comes with taking control of one’s decisions—and releases himself of his last excuse, his last false master.

The buildings exploding at the end aren’t a sign of victory against the corporate elite; they’re the mess he’s going to have to pick up, the destroyed life he’s going to have to rebuild. No one else may understand—a Project Mayhem member commends Jack for being "tough"—but Jack does, and that’s all that matters.

UPDATE: To preempt the inevitable follow up question, my other two favorite movies are Blade Runner and Taxi Driver. On at least one day of every week you might be able to get me to include The Incredibles in that list as well.