Developing Durden Developing Resistance

Developing Durden: Developing Resistance

Developing Durden: Developing Resistance 2
Abstract
In this critical cultural rhetorical critique of the film Fight Club the pervasive
themes of resistance and anti-Capitalism are brought to light by the analysis and
development of key characters’ in the film. This paper finds that when Jack develops his
pseudo-psyche that is Tyler Durden, he is really personifying the resistive nature of man
in everyone. As the film develops and his alter ego develops much power we see Jack
becoming more and more disenchanted with the ideas of resistance and anti-capitalism
being presented and acted upon by Tyler Durden. Through the examination of the film
through this lens Marxist theories, along with other’s such as Foulcauldian and
Baudrillardian, the audience is offered a unique insight to the messages pertaining to anti-
capitalism that are intertwined throughout the entirety of the film. In analyzing all of this
the greater question we are seeking to answer is this: what do Jack’s thoughts on anti-
capitalism by the end of the film have to say about the effectiveness of the anti-
capitalistic actions acted out during the film?
Introduction
“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. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” This quote, coupled with
many, constitutes what is known as the beautiful, sagacious, anti-capitalistic Tyler
Durden, the protagonist of the film Fight Club; and almost completely encapsulates his
attitudes and beliefs concerning capitalism and power-structures, but for the sake of
argument these thoughts on capitalism and other cultural issues will be fettered out in

order to determine what the film Fight Club has to say about the power structures and
(anti) capitalism in a modern day setting.
In the film Fight Club we see what starts off as an underground fight club turn
into an all out pseudo-terroristic cell, named Project Mayhem, carrying out strategically
planned and increasingly detrimental acts of violence. Nietzsche was not speaking of
Tyler Durden when stated, “Most people are too much absorbed in themselves to be bad”
(p.35). Tyler’s lack of self-absorption and dedication to committing acts of violence in
the name of anti-Capitalism is pervasive throughout, fully embodying the thoughts of
Nietzsche above. In the development of the film we are also following along the main
character of the film, Jack, the antagonist. Namely, Jack is the real embodiment of the
assumed not-so-real alter-ego identity that is Tyler Durden. Throughout the progression
of the film we are not only tracking the progress of Jack as an individual, but also his
topsy-turvy relationship with his hidden psyche, Durden; and more importantly his
viewpoints and beliefs pertaining to capitalism and power structures.
In order to effectively critique the film and all of its happenings it is going to be
important to first define the role of the critic as it pertains to the field of Critical Cultural
Rhetorical Studies. In doing this the reader will better attain, not only a better grasp of
the critic’s role within this paper, but also the broader objectives and goals set forth by
choosing to critique this film. At this point a brief background will be given in order to
orient the reader with the basics of the film. From there the film will be critiqued and
assessed in a mostly chronological manner within regards to the characters and the roles
that they play concerning capitalism all the meanwhile their roles being contrasted and
compared to the thoughts set forth by previous power theorists and other modern day

scholars; all with the end goal of concisely and accurately assessing what is being said
about capitalism and power structures in the film Fight Club.
Role of the Critic in CCRT
In order to navigate the role of the critic and moreso in order to navigate the
purpose of critical cultural rhetorical studies, it will be pertinent to define and lay out
what this school of thought consists of. According to At the Intersection edited by
Rosteck, he states that, “…if reality is not given a set of facts but is the result of a
particular way of constructing reality, then rhetorical discourse does not merely
reproduce "reality" through the transmission of an already existing meaning but instead
constitutes an active process of "making things mean” (p. 241). This being the case we
can see that the role rhetorical studies plays at this intersection is the active process of
making things mean. Simply put, this requires sorting out the information that we are
given, and assigning it meaning. According to Borchers, “The study of rhetoric is
becoming increasingly ideological...rhetoric and rhetorical theory are used to manage
power relationships in a culture" (p. 307). And when talking about culture he states,
“Cultural studies, like Marxism, assumes that inequalities exist along gender, ethnic,
generational and class lines. Culture is seen as a way of dividing groups and as a site of
struggle between those groups over the meanings that exist within a culture" (p. 308).
From this viewpoint we can see how cultural studies offers a delineation within rhetorical
studies, insofar as it is the site of struggle concerning the context that is being analyzed.
With that being said, the site of struggle is that from which the critique and analysis of
power derives. In sum, rhetorical studies is the context in which all of the happenings, all
of the doings, the modern tick of the this world takes place, and consequentially the areas

where there are power struggles or discrepancies regarding the dispersion of power is
where the culture lies. As for the role of the critic it should be done in a fashion that is
neutral in order to portray a clear reality, that is arguable from both sides and, in doing so,
offering insight for critique as well as insight from a topic or a piece of material that is
arguable. Along these lines and in accordance with the objective of seeking out and
analyzing sights of struggle, we will be offered with a more comprehensive view of the
film Fight Club and the underpinnings of power that play out throughout the film. The
end result of this analysis, and positioning of the critique being a better understanding of
these intersections of power, rhetoric, and culture.
Film Background
The film is set in the late 1990s and focuses on Jack, portrayed as an insomniac
office worker who lives a drab life and is caught up in a whirlwind of monotony that is
his life. In the beginning of the film it comes to light that he has not slept in over six
months because he is wound up so tight. This causes everything in his world to be
surreal. He’s never really awake, and he is never really asleep. One might say that he is
just another unimportant worker bee that lives a modestly boring life. Things begin to
change for him when he starts going to support groups to relieve his insomnia. It is here
in these groups that he finds relief, by crying with complete strangers, which helps him to
sleep well at night. This provides him relief for a while until he has an encounter with
another ‘tourist’ someone who is just faking it, to enjoy the benefits of the group. Her
name is Marla Sanger and throughout the course of the film we see a very complicated,
intertwined relationship develop between the two. After this intrusion of Marla in his
therapeutic life, he is back to an insomniac state of being. But things quickly change

when he meets Tyler Durden, the antithesis of his boring self, on one of his many
countless flights. From this moment forward Tyler Durden and him become intertwined
in one another’s life, consequentially resulting in the narrator slipping slowly but surely
from the normalcy of his life. Slowly bit by bit the narrator begins to slip from reality
and into a dream-like realm with Tyler Durden: moving into a dilapidated run-down
house, becoming removed from work and his eventual hostile resignation, strange
trepidations with his lover Marla Sanger, and eventually the formulation of Fight Club,
and the consequential rapture from Fight Club and the movement towards and into
Project Mayhem. Throughout the process he and Durden form a strange pseudo
therapeutic group called ‘Fight Club’ where men of all backgrounds meet up once a week
to fight, in order to remove themselves from the normalcy of life, which eventually
evolves into Project Mayhem. By the time Fight Club evolves into Project Mayhem, the
social group has gone far beyond social fighting once a week, and has grown into a group
of anarchist men, committing well planned symbolic crimes in order to fight back the
system which has held them down for so long. All the meanwhile the narrator is
precariously walking the line in between reality and complete disillusionment, but once
Project Mayhem is up and running full force the narrator no longer straddles the line in
between reality and disillusionment, and completely steps into a world that knows no
constraints of a socially constructed normalcy. At this time the narrator has wholly
devoted himself and his group of men into carrying out crimes that scream at and lash out
against modern-day establishmentarianism and the social constructions surrounding
anything that follows a sense of hierarchy and order. All of this is done in the name of
and working towards a Utopia for all. The movie closes with the narrator and his

tumultuous lover holding hands, watching the financial buildings that they rigged with
explosives crumble to the ground, the narrator stating, “You met me at a very weird time
in my life.”
Getting Jack out of Isolation
In the beginning of the film the narrator is aching for something more. He is a
slave to his mundane life and through meeting Tyler Durden and formulating Fight Club
he is finally freed from the monotony that is his everyday life. At first the chance at
something different, something new is very freeing and he grabs onto these ideals whole
heartedly, fully accepting everything that Tyler proffers as a new way of looking at the
world. He finds freedom in Fight Club and in doing so he begins to find himself. Alex
Tuss who authored Masculine Identity and Success:  A Critical Analysis of Patricia
Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley  and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club states that,
“the brutal immediacy of destruction, like the brutal immediacy of the individual combat
in Fight Club, liberates the narrator and makes him an icon for all the other alienated and
angry white men who flock to be members of Fight Club and Project Mayhem” (p.97).
From this we can see that Jack is not the only white male who is aching for something
more. This is a further tick on the belt when it comes to the messages that are being
relayed to the audience about capitalism and consumerism.
In Walter Adamson book Hegemony and revolution: A study of Antonio
Gramsci's political and cultural theory he states, “The individual can never fully be
understood in isolation because he becomes himself in intercourse with his fellows as
they collectively transform the natural world” (p.149). In his dissection of Gramsci,
Adamson’s, own synthesis regarding the human nature closely parallels the truths we see

acted out in the movie Fight Club. Before Tyler Durden enter his life, Jack lived a
boring, monotonous, and simple life. However once he is introduced to Durden his level
of social involvement skyrockets and with that he and his companions collectively strive
to transform the world. This statement while applicable to most situations is moreso
relevant in this sense because what starts off as limited interaction with the spawning of
Fight Club turns into the evolution that is Project Mayhem, which in fact, as a group
actively seeks out to transform the surrounding world, especially in a capitalistic sense.
Simulacra: Is Any of This Real?
When examining Fight Club and the underpinnings of power and critical theory
backing the film one would be remiss not to touch upon the idea of Simulacra as set forth
by Baudrillard. Simulacra is the simulation or the imitation of an object that already
exists, and when it comes to the influences of power Baudrillard talks about those who
are in power or want to gain control of power and how they will efface a certain someone
or something, and then will recreate a simulation in order to trick the masses into the idea
that the simulated was the original all along. Baudrillard states, “In the same way,
Americans flatter themselves for having brought the population of Indians back to pre-
Conquest levels. One effaces everything and starts over. They even flatter themselves for
doing better, for exceeding the original number. This is presented as proof of the
superiority of civilization: it will produce more Indians than they themselves were able to
do” (p.11). From this we can see that the idea of simulacra is powerful when it comes to
the maintaining and controlling of hegemonic powers that dominate our society. In his
work Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism, Fredric Jameson finds that,
“…no doubt the logic of the simulacrum, with its transformation of older realities into

television images, does more than merely replicate the logic of late capitalism; it
reinforces and intensifies it” (p.46). From this we can see that the idea of simulacra can
be very powerful when it comes to reifying and reiterating the hegemonic powers that
encapsulate capitalism. Fight Club is a shining example of how simulacra can be used to
perpetuate this theme.
We see themes of simulacra throughout the film Fight Club, one that begins
relatively early on with our introduction to the narrator. He is standing over the copier
machine explaining to the audience, saying, “With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything's
far away. Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy.” From this and the fact that this scene
is placed at the very onset of the film we can see that the entire film serves as what
Baudrillard calls a simulacra; which isn’t too far fetched seeing as that most of the film’s
events possess a certain amount of surrealism. However Martin Lister, who authored,
New media: A critical introduction against applying the concept of simulacra incorrectly,
stating, “since not all simulations are imitations, it becomes much easier to see
simulations as things, rather than as representations of things” (p.38). This is important
to remain cognizant of because when watching the film it can seem as if a scene depicted
is merely a scene, however hiding beneath it is always a representation of something or
the imitation of something; all of which serves as a purpose to either reify or reiterate a
theme pertaining to some certain aspect of a cultural site of struggle. Thus the entire film
is in it of itself a simulacrum. Elizabeth Kinder and Patricia Pender pick up on the
simulacratic aspects of the film in their critique Framing the Double in Fight Club
stating, “He tells the viewer that with ‘insomnia, nothing’s real ... everything is a copy of
a copy’ and as we see him at his workplace, a photocopier reinforcing the copy motif, a

brief flash of Tyler Durden is visible” (p.459). This brief ‘flash’ of Tyler Durden, is the
audience’s first introduction to the narrator’s alter-ego. With this insertion we can see the
starting line of the ensue insanity that takes place throughout the film.
As the film progresses and Tyler Durden becomes a more integral role of the
narrator’s life, insanity becomes a more integral role as well. The more Tyler Durden is
present, the more insanity ensues. At one point Tyler Durden states, “You have to
consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you, in all probability
he hates you. It's not the worst thing that could happen.” But can we not interpret that
Baudrillard himself may argue that God may be a simulation when he states "But what if
God himself can be simulated, that is to say can be reduced to the signs that constitute
faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer itself anything but a
gigantic simulacrum - not unreal, but a simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the
real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or
circumference” (p.5). And we can see that the narrator experiences some of the
weightlessness Baudrillard talks about when stating in the film, “You had to give it to
him. He had a plan. And it started to make sense in a Tyler sort of way. No fear, no
distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.” In this we can see
that slowly bit-by-bit the narrator begins to buy into the thinking that is so uniquely Tyler
Durden.
Ultimately, however in a simulated world one can only derive so much
satisfaction and this begins to show, as the author becomes more and more disconnected
with reality. By the end of the film he is flying from city to city frantically searching for
Tyler Durden (namely himself). Lynn M. Ta backs this up in her scholarly article Hurt

So Good:  Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism by stating,
“Jack’s search for truth in a culture run by imitation will only result in futility, for there is
no original, no distinction between the real and the imaginary” (p.272). That being said
we can see that by the end of the film, the simulated world, as outlined by Baudrillard is
not enough for Jack. This all comes crashing to a head when the author realizes that
Tyler Durden is in fact himself and he then tries feverishly to end the terroristic attacks
on the credit card buildings. He fails in foiling the devious plot; however, he does
succeed in reaching self-actualization, by ironically enough shooting himself in the
mouth and consequentially killing Tyler Durden. In this moment of self-actualization he
destroys the simulacra that is Tyler Durden, and truly begins to realize who he is. As
soon as this happens he holds hands with his lover and watches the literal and figurative
economic collapse occur.
Development of Durden
The underlying theme of Tyler Durden’s insanity throughout the film is in no way
hidden. His madness can be seen in each and every single scene that he occupies. But
Michael Foucault demonstrates that we can view the narrator as the one who is mad. In
Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason, Foucault states,
“There is no madness but that which is in every man, since it is man who constitutes
madness in the attachment he bears for himself and by the illusions he entertains.” (p.26).
In the film over and over again we see Tyler Durden’s dissatisfaction when it comes to
the narrator’s attachment to life as he knew it. In challenging the narrator to become
what he is destined to be, what were once seemingly ungrounded and unrealistic demands
upon the narrator actually become backed by the work of Foucault. Take for instance the

scene in which Tyler Durden pours highly potent lye all over the narrator’s hand and
forces him to live through the pain. We see the narrator trying to escape the madness by
visiting the happy place he formed in the self-help groups, but Tyler Durden jerks him
back to the reality that is his burning hand yelling, “Without pain, without sacrifice, we
would have nothing.” In this he reinforces Foucault’s belief that the only madness we
experience in this world is the attachment we have to ourselves.
As the film progresses we see the role of Tyler Durden, grow and progress as
well. He begins as the protagonist outside of the bar coaxing the narrator into hitting
him, but by the time the movie is in full-swing he is successfully proliferated Fight Club
into the pseudo-terroristic cell that is known as Project Mayhem. Robert T. Schultz who
authored White Guys Who Prefer Not To: From Passive Resistance (‘‘Bartleby’’) To
Terrorist Acts (Fight Club) recognizes this shift in Durden’s role into something much
bigger stating,
“He becomes much more: a militant leader of rebellion who, after first organizing
the fight clubs and then developing them into gangs of merry pranksters who
carry out lurid, humiliating acts against wealthy Americans engaged in decadent
acts of conspicuous consumption, transforms the gangs into paramilitary cells.
The purpose of these cells is not merely to engage in random acts of terror, but to
carry out an organized assault on corporate capitalism and the institutional history
of the American society that produced the conspicuous consumers, the immoral
auto company, and the meaningless lives of the blue-collar and white-collar
workers who join the fight clubs and become involved in Project Mayhem, the

nationwide and secret paramilitary organization under the sole command of the
protagonist” (p.593).
Through the development of Durden the Marxist ideals and values that he holds so dearly
are being developed as well. Even though Schultz likens Durden’s regime to that of a
Nazi commander, it is more substantiated to liken him to Marx, evidenced by Schultz’s
statement, “It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything,” which
closely echoes Marx’s statement regarding the proletariat which states, “Let the ruling
classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have the world to win” (p.34). In the juxtaposition of these two
statements we can see that Durden’s lose everything/gain everything attitude very closely
aligns with the themes set forth by Marx.
Not only does Durden lead Project Mayhem by appealing to Marxist’s approaches
but he also does so through the use of framing the alienated blue-collar and white-collar
workers as a victim to the injustices of a capitalistic and unruly society. Over and over
again we see Tyler Durden appealing to the victimage side of his followers. Not only
does he use it as a motivational force by way of appealing to his followers vulnerability,
but it eventually runs it’s course and becomes largely ingrained in each and every single
one of these men’s identities. One of Durden’s more prolific speeches is as follows,
“Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see
all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation
pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us
chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no

Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great
depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day
we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. And we're
slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
In this speech not only is he appealing to the victimization of the current generation but
he is also sharing beliefs that very closely align with the beliefs that Marx shared in his
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 in which he states, “The more he
produces, the less he can consume; the more value he creates, the less value he
has...labour produces fabulous things for the rich, but misery for the poor, machines
replace labour, and jobs diminish, while other workers turn into machines" (p. 79).
Taking both of these into consideration simultaneously we can see that the “white-collar
slaves” Tyler Durden is harping about closely relate to the injustices that workers serve at
the hands of the rich.
Victimage, the kind that Tyler is allocating to middle-class mainly white men,
also happens in everyday life too. In her scholarly article, Fighting Words Labor and the
Limits of Communication at Staley, 1993 to 1996, Dana Cloud finds that victimage can be
very compelling in a real-life sense stating, “The images featured in the January 1996
overview of the struggle are univocally those of victimage: Three arrested workers hold
signs that read, ‘Punish corporate criminals, not their VICTIMS!’ Small children hold a
union sign, under a caption reading, ‘Our children are victims too.’ The repeated
language of victimage is striking here” (p.532). This is a very interesting tie-in to include
namely due to the fact that Marx believed the way for workers to seize power is to
protest, form unions, form multiple unions, incorporate those unions, and then organize a

working class political party (Rius). Given the bleak outcome of the Staley strike, it is
hard to argue that this is an effective way to seize power. It is difficult to analyze from
the perspective that Durden proclaims, due to the fact that these men aren’t protesting
anything in particular, that is except everything about their lives. Nonetheless we can see
how Tyler Durden’s beliefs and appeals to his audience closely mimic not only the
thoughts of Marx but also echo the real life scenario depicted by Cloud.
It is not until later on in the film that that the true source of Jack’s insomnia is
revealed. In the beginning of the film he is pictured laying in bed eyes wide awake,
fighting for sleep. However, we gain true insight into the root of Jack’s insomnia when
Tyler Durden holds a senator hostage, in an upscale bathroom, telling him to call off his
rigorous investigation of Project Mayhem’s most recent sprees, stating, “Look, the people
you are after are the people you depend on: we cook your meals, we haul your trash, we
connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Do not
fuck with us.” the fact that while Jack was supposedly struggling for sleep, as we were
led to believe in the beginning, was in reality many sleepless night’s spent working the
various odd-jobs listed above. This portrayal of Jack as tirelessly working odd-jobs for
no other reason than his love for Ikea further fixates him in a role that saliently depicts
the plight of all blue-collar workers. Omar Lizardo recognizes this in his scholarly article
Fight Club, or the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism stating, “Jack therefore is
not really a “character” in any meaningful of the term. He is the symbol of a collectivity, a
collective that can only be defined in class terms: Jack is the ‘everyman’ of the service
society.” (p.233). From this it is transparent that the underpinnings of capitalism and the
power structures thereof are interlaced throughout the entirety of the film, due to the

delicacy of portraying that information more than halfway through the film. Turning our
attention again to Tyler’s quote referring to the fact that the Project Mayhem members
“Haul your trash, and guard your house,” we can see the close alignment with the ideals
set forth by Marx in his Manifesto. Marx states, “The development of Modern Industry
therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces
and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its
own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable”
(p.21). What before were subtle Marxist undertones, are now highly accentuated in
comparison to the ideals set forth by Marx. When Tyler Durden is threatening the
senator, expounding upon his integral role in society, it is as if Marx couldn’t have
intonated it better himself.
The Smoking Gun/Jack’s Mouth: What it Represents
Two contemporary scholars of our day who appear to take a heightened interest to
the controversial film Fight Club are Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus.
These two scholars pick up on some very interesting themes surrounding this film’s
surrounding heteronormativity and the subtle undertones of homoeroticism peppered
throughout the film, which to these critics suggest the parallel of a homosexual
experience. Even though their critique of homoeroticism is not helpful in terms of this
paper they offer some interesting insights into the delineation and the shift from Fight
Club to Project Mayhem, in their scholarly article Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain View:
The Fight Club DVD as Digital Closet stating, “Marla, however, is not Jack’s only threat.
Tyler begins a new form of Fight Club called Project Mayhem, in which members engage
in petty acts of vandalism. Over time, the number and severity of these acts increase as

does the number of club members. Jack and Tyler’s home become filled with young men
who make claims upon Tyler’s attention and strain his relationship with Jack” (p. 32).
From this we can see that Project Mayhem in this sense is threatening in so far as
interrupting Jack’s affection and amount of interest returned from Tyler; however, there
is something to be said about the double parallel between the spawn of Project Mayhem
and the decreased happiness the narrator is experiencing. They also authored the
scholarly article At the Unlikely Confluence of Conservative Religion and Popular
Culture: Fight Club as Heternormative Ritual, which offers some interesting insights into
how Jack views the onset of terror that has been caused by Project Mayhem. They state,
“Toward the film's end Jack comes to realize that Tyler is merely a projection of his own
psyche. In a desperate (and unsuccessful) bid to stop Tyler and Project Mayhem's plan to
blow up several skyscrapers. Jack places a gun in his own mouth and fires it, annihilating
Tyler” (p. 311). From their critique we can see that the narrator, Jack, is distraught over
the direction that Project Mayhem has taken, clearly evidenced by him shooting his own
self in the mouth in an attempt to try to stop the encompassing insanity. However, his
attempts are futile, wherein he and his estranged lover Marla Sanger, interlock hands and
watch the “Credit Card” buildings tumble to the ground. Many contemporary scholars
have critiqued this scene as reinforcing heteronormativity, the towers crashing down
symbolic of Jack’s end in pursuing homoerotic desires, however, there is a lot that can be
said about the towers crashing down purely from a capitalistic standpoint as well. In the
end Jack becomes very disenchanted into what Project Mayhem has evolved into, which
is nothing less than a terroristic cell carrying out acts against the capitalistic structures of
society as a lashing out of towards post-market consumerism. Even though he is clearly

not onboard with what Project Mayhem has evolved into, it will now be instrumental in
appropriating whether or no the acts carried out are effective when it comes to a power
struggle standpoint.
Throughout the course of the film the narrator has slowly but surely succumb to
the beliefs and values system that Tyler Durden so nearly holds. In falling off the grid
and working to embrace the lifestyle that Tyler Durden has so hastily thrown on him he
begins to understand the mind of Tyler Durden. The more he is exposed the more he
begins to understand his hidden psyche and in doing so he at first begins to align with it,
which can be seen in the scene where he runs into Bob from “Men Remaining Men” and
proudly owns up to the fact that he is the co-creator of Fight Club. However as things
move along, and Tyler Durden begins to ramp up the activity and production of Project
Mayhem the narrator slowly begins to fall out of alignment with the beliefs and ideals
Tyler is setting that forth. But he can’t go back to the person that he used to be, living in
his “beloved condominium,” and this transformation becomes very salient by the end of
the film. Whether it is the fight that he has with his hidden psyche, shooting at a van full
of explosives, or shooting his own self in the mouth, we can tell that Jack has been
transformed by radical ideas such as anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism. Claire Sisco
King notes this in her work It Cuts Both Ways: Fight Club, Masculinity, and Abject
Hegemony as well, stating, “As the explosive results of Project Mayhem suggest, the
damage to the Narrator’s subjectivity has already been done; having been torn asunder,
he can never truly become ‘himself’ again” (p.378). Evidenced by this we can see that
the process of forming Fight Club and Project Mayhem has been a transformative process
for the narrator, and in being exposed to the antidisestablishmentarianism precepts that

Tyler so dearly hold he has been transformed. But that’s not to say the he fully buys into
it, or that he is all the better for it. Because in the end we have to remember that at the
end of the film he is the one who puts a gun in his mouth in order to end the insanity that
is spewing from his alter ego run riot. Ultimately, in a very symbolic sense of fashion
Jack is rejecting the anarchist ideals and theories that Tyler has so ardently been
preaching to him throughout the entire movie. In killing Tyler Durden he is in reality not
only killing a part of himself, but he is also killing the rebellious Marxist protagonist that
is Tyler Durden.
Near the end of the film, in the moments leading up to Jack killing Tyler, Tyler is
explaining the latest and greatest plan of Project Mayhem. He explains how leveling the
credit card buildings will, “establish economic equilibrium” and how it is one step closer,
“to a clean slate from everybody.” Foucault states, “In madness equilibrium is
established, but it masks that equilibrium beneath the cloud of illusion, beneath feigned
disorder; the rigor of the architecture is concealed beneath the cunning arrangement of
these disordered violences.” (p. 34). Through this we can see that the equilibrium
Durden is trying to establish is really just and illusion covered in chaos. Jack sees
through this, and thinking about the destruction he and his alter ego is about to cause,
pulls the plug. It is the final straw, the act of anti-capitalist resistance that took it too far.
Keeping in mind the concepts of simulacra set forth by Baudrillard near the
beginning of this paper, we can see now that Jack’s escape from Tyler Durden and the
simulated world, ironically enough is shooting his own self in the mouth. As the gun
falls we see Tyler Durden reach his moment of clarity and the simulacra ends. The
simulacra of course, as alluded to in the previous pages, entaila Tyler Durden’s ever

progressing radical beliefs representing and depicting the resistance of power through
multiple lenses such as Marxism, Foucaultism, and other modern day power theorists.
With the simulacra ending and the narrator’s moment of self-actualization we see his
moment of clarity closely representing those of Neo in the Matrix, as Cloud notes in her
scholarly article, In addition to the spiritual, a prominent metaphor for agency in The
Matrix is the technical, stating, “Neo’s ‘hacking’ allows him to see through the code that
constitutes the Matrix. Poststructuralist theories offer similar metaphors of sporadic and
limited interventions at the level of discourse” (p.335). Similarly Jack blowing a hole in
his mouth allows him to see through the madness that is Tyler Durden and actualize his
moment of clarity. But what does this say about capitalism? Well through the killing of
Durden, and consequently the killing of his Marxist beliefs, we can make the connection
that not only is the narrator denying Durden a voice in his head, but he is also denying all
of the concepts of resistance to power along with him. This argument is further
strengthened by the fact that leading up to this, the narrator does his best to foil the plots
to take down the buildings that he himself set up. Through this end scene we can see that
Jack is actually rejecting the ideas that revolve around resisting power. Now that is not to
say that all of Durden’s beliefs as aligning with Marxism and Foucault were for nil,
because we still see these played out through the entire film. However, the fact that Jack
kills Tyler, and ultimately kills a part of himself, the part of himself that is anti-
capitalistic, speaks volumes when it comes to the his own personal beliefs surrounding
resisting power.
The first rule about Fight Club is that it is actually a simulacra from beginning to
end, the scenes not only simulating reality but underneath it all perpetuating undertones

of resistance to power through a Foulcauldian/Marxist/Durden lens. The second rule
about Fight Club is that the narrator ultimately rejects these ideas, as evidenced by the
killing of Durden in the final scene. What was once the smoking gun that Tyler is
holding, transforms into the gun that Jack is holding. Staring madness in the eye, and
coming to grips with the actualization that his psyche run riot has caused complete and
utter mayhem, he pulls the trigger; ultimately killing Tyler and along with him his beliefs
pertaining to resistance of power.

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