51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS
#24. TYLER DURDEN from FIGHT CLUB
Like some kind of message from on-high, FIGHT CLUB came to me at the right moment in my life. I was 28, wildly unsatisfied with my situation, depressed and adrift. Like Ed Norton’s insomniac, I wasn’t dying of a disease or besieged by parasites. But pain (any person’s pain) is always relative.
The first half of FIGHT CLUB speaks to a dead zone that was in many of us. We grew up as a generation that were told our basic genetic make-up, the very things that were ingrained in us for natural survival, were unacceptable. Violence and sexual desire are aggressively frowned upon, not knowing like everything in this universe, there are various degrees of grey. Society is telling us to become neutered, be politically correct, accept your fate. And most importantly, consume! Consume! Consume! If you disagree, then you’re a monster. It’s this part of the book and film I enjoy the most, where the curtain to personal alienation in our first world culture is torn down with vulgar abandon. Where the self-help movement is turned on its ear and the message becomes “self improvement is masturbation, self destruction is the real goal.”
The second half is where that message eats its own tail. As his antics gain momentum, Tyler goes from charismatic guidance councillor to revolutionary fascist. He becomes a cult of personality. His message magnetizes the disenfranchised, legend surrounds him (“they say he was born in a mental institute and gets only one hour of sleep a night!”), any enigmatic phrase he speaks becomes an epiphany or law. It’s a disturbing real life phenomena: give us a message and we’ll follow you despite our own common sense. Hey, I get it. I’m confounded by the masses who support Trump wondering how they can’t see past the misogyny, xenophobia, duplicity and stifling ignorance. But I was 28 once and understood exactly what Tyler was saying. If he was a real dude, there’s a chance I’d have shown up on a dilapidated porch with two pairs of black shirts and $500 cash in a shoe to cover burial fees.
The crazy thing about Tyler Durden (and most likely Trump too) is you don’t know where his actual loyalties lie. You don’t actually know if he actually believes in his own movement or if he just wants to see the world burn for shits and giggles. That’s the nature of the Trickster… and what makes him so damned dangerous.
Tyler: “You’re 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.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvtUrjfnSnA
