Consumption of the Consumer

Consumption of the Consumer The movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, has had a major effect on the everyday movie watcher. Its plot is a very intriguing one in that it probably makes the viewer question his or her own way of living. The main character, who’s real name the viewer never learns, has insomnia, and is unable to find treatment for it. He finds solace in going to the support groups for different terminal diseases. It helps him sleep until a woman named Marla shows up. He knows that she doesn’t have any of these diseases either. Suddenly he can’t sleep again and needs to find something else.
At this point he meets Tyler Durden. Tyler was everything he wanted to be; he dressed well, had confidence, and didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought. When his apartment is blown up, the main character starts spending more time with Tyler. Together they start fight club, which consists of a group of men fighting in the basement of a bar. They make rules and talk about the negatives of consumer society. Tyler expands fight club into an anarchist terrorist organization called project mayhem. When it gets to be too much for the main character he tries to find Tyler, only to discover that Tyler was his own alter ego. Tyler was a figment of his imagination. He had created him in his mind to deal with his insomnia. All the time he thought he had spent sleeping was actually spent as Tyler. He had subconsciously hated his own lifestyle and Tyler was his channel through which he fought it. The movie is directly in opposition to the ideals of consumerism and capitalist society. It ridicules the idea of our dependence upon material possessions. This is obvious from the first few minutes of the film. Before Tyler is even introduced as a character the narrator starts talking about what will happen to society in the future. He says, “When deep space exploration ramps up, it’ll be the corporations that name everything: the IBM stellarsphere,