"Our
great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives,"
says Tyler. The problem that Tyler and Christianity react against is
man's self-deception.
The first thing I wanted to do after watching David Fincher’s Fight
Club was work out. Perhaps my inclination to pump iron with the camaraderie
of tortured grunts, raucous “Rage against the Machine” music,
and sweat-saturated benches revealed a latent desire to create my own
fight club: to be subsumed in a project greater than myself with the knowledge
that putting my body through intense physical strain leads ultimately
to its sanctification. On the other hand, perhaps I just wanted to look
like the dominating alter ego character, Tyler Durden. Most men, I think,
identify initially with Ed Norton’s character, Jack—the somewhat
wimpy, fastidious, and spineless corporate man who yearns for a new life
in which the material world, embodied by IKEA, has no bearing on his identity
or his spiritual reality. The messianic foil, found in Tyler, ushers in
a transformation that actively combats the corporate world while nurturing
the fragile male spirit with an extreme form of tough love. Male viewers
find a new role model in Tyler. But why is it, really, that men would
like to identify with Tyler? Moreover, should men emulate Tyler at all?
Today’s man finds himself entangled in a perpetual struggle with
an overwhelming corporate beast. The alpha-male marketplace of power
politics transforms man’s fragile ego into an over-confident veil
of tenuous self-actualization. In his ascent towards an emotional zenith,
man transfixes his eyes not on his own spiritual maturation but rather
on his material gain. He therefore perpetuates the dilemma of the post-modern
man: wrenched between his indefatigable craving for identity and fulfillment
and his inept groping for its realization, man finds a deceptively non-redemptive
solution in the pursuit of material things. He can now quantify his
worth, his identity, his completion by the measure of what he possesses.
In other words, the post-modern man asks the existential question “Who
am I?” only to hear “What do you own?” in response.
The way I see it, we have Tyler Durden on the one hand and Christianity
on the other, each embodying a distinct vision of manhood in the 21st
century. Each seeks sanctification through losing one’s self,
hitting rock bottom, and dying to the world (Colossians 2:20). Only
by putting to death, so to speak, the pride, arrogance, and egoism accompanying
the corporate hierarchy are we able to see our true spiritual state.
“Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our
lives,” says Tyler. The problem that Tyler and Christianity react
against is man’s self-deception: his identification with transient,
unreliable, material things for his worth. Entranced by the pursuit
of happiness which has become the pursuit of an iPod, a New York job,
or a better body, man objectifies everything he seeks. The “Other”
in his relationships becomes the “It,” the goal in his profession
becomes the idol, and the subject of his love becomes the object. Tyler’s
solution, though, is quite different from that proffered by Christianity.
Tyler represents the deeply-disturbed, hyper-sexual, beast-of-prey
man who feeds on and antagonizes the institutions of his society through
the destruction of all material things. He fights for the equality of
our property to expose the insecurity of our spirituality. But Tyler,
in the end, objectifies that which he seeks to humanize by turning his
friends, lovers, and cohorts into means. Being a Tyler Durden man means
subordinating those who matter most to an end which does not matter.
Therefore, Tyler Durden falls prey to the very problem he seeks to expose
and eradicate. The corporate culture is destroyed only to be replaced
by another decadent one which denies individuality, uniqueness, and
ultimately loving relationships.
Jesus, the Christian hero, is the veritable
sacrificial lamb who understands the importance of his role as a man.
He labors for spiritual freedom but a freedom that emphasizes the importance
of the Other in concrete situations. He is a healer, miracle worker,
and lover of the greatest kind because he is not deluded by an abstract
ideal but preaches and lives a gritty, realistic spirituality. Identity,
for the Christian hero, is not lost to some greater project; rather
his identity is necessary for the fruition of it. The Christian man,
then, becomes the prophetic voice and actor in the cause to transform
an unjust society into a righteous one. The Christian man’s life
is not characterized by rebellious corporate espionage but by a robust
sense of the sacrificial, tragic, but transcendent life of Christ. Not
in contradistinction to womanhood, manhood is not only the utter contentment
in one’s identity as a servant of God but also the deep unrest
that comes with the reality of sin. Manly living requires sacrificial
living. Manly living necessitates the William Wallace death-cry, “Freedom!”,
the Martin Luther trial-conviction, “Here I stand, I can do no
other,” and the Jesus Christ cross-exclamation, “It is finished.”
In the end, to be a man means to live in a fallen world, in a depraved
culture, in corrupt politics, and in decadent communities with the prophetic
vision of possibility through sanctification in Christ and the tragic
recognition that to lose is to gain, to die is to live, and to sacrifice
is to triumph. The true man in the end of Fight Club is not
Tyler, lying on the floor with a bullet in his head; the true man is
Ed Norton’s character Jack, clasping the hand of his beloved while
the world crumbles around him.
Andrew Matthews ‘06 is a philosophy major from Hatboro, Pennsylvania.