Set as it is at the start of the first Gulf War, you would think that “The Big Lebowski” would be dated by it’s context. Fortunately this is not the case, for as a man who fits his time, The Dude is timeless. Not so much for “Fight Club” which has passing references to such anachronisms as *69, cutting edge at the time and no longer existant. Does it? I don’t know, because I don’t have a land line anymore. Haven’t for 5 or 6 years. When you say “Fight Club,” I think “bag phone.” (“Fight Club” … “bag phone” … “Fight Club” … “bag phone.”) There are other anachronisms like the conspicuous consumption of clothing and home fashions. Not that this has totally gone away, but we still have enough economic angst to keep the full court marketing press at bay on the khakis front. You could say that’s a flat front. The khaki front is flat.
And if this rage against large corporate interests found its fullest voice in 2008 and 09, it seems to have yelled its self out. Meanwhile, and eerily, the words of Tyler Durden now seem to be coming out of the mouths of Tea Party Protesters. Government, rather than corporations, are their target but the root of their unrest is the same shocking realization that Andy, Dag, and Claire have in Douglas Copeland’s 1991 novel Generation X. We are waking to the reality that our country seems destined to be less in the future than it was in the past. The weight of this realization and the agony of coming to terms with the fact that we have done this to us is enough to split a personality.
Which is where Tyler Durden starts to become relevant despite his late nineties timestamp. He is, of course, a figment of the imagination — or perhaps a straight up hallucination — of the film’s unnamed narrator (referred to in the script as “Jack”). Jack’s whole world is built on illusions: the illusion that his purchases make him whole, the illusion that the company he works for makes safe cars, the illusion that he is dying of testicular cancer. Or blood disease. Or alcoholism. Or whatever. Being a misery tourist makes him feel better because it is the only thing that seems real, even if he is faking it.
Until Tyler comes along. What Tyler, or Jack acting as Tyler, creates is real. The members of Fight Club and later Project Mayhem can feel it is real even if they don’t truly know what it is. In a world that is filled with false promises (whether they are made by a car brand or a political brand), Fight Club is transformative because it’s promise is simple and real. And it may seem anachronistic that the promise of Fight Club is spread in the movie by a guy who gets on planes and flies around setting up groups.
I think that part of the point is that a person, delusional though he may be, is out there laying hands on his acolytes. Tyler Durden is devious and creative enough to splice porn into a reel of Bambi and render liposuction waste into high end soaps. Given that discussion groups and streaming video and messaging and photo galleries existed by 1999, the idea of Fight Club forming over the Internet would not have been a stretch. Yet it would not have made Tyler Durden any more or less successful in his aims.
If an idea, or a promise, or a product is good, it will find a way to be so on the Internet. A virtual bad idea is still a bad idea. In the end it is about how well the soap cleans blood from a pair of banker’s plaid pants. Esse quam videre. It’s entirely possible to formulate a transformational tie based on an apparent fiction provided the underlying promise is real. Tyler promised to take the hit, and he did. He’s a questionable character for sure, but he had a personal integrity that should inform our relationships, wherever they are made.