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Fight Club Is Not Your Punching Bag
Why do people think Tyler Durden is the good guy?
Major Spoilers for Fight Club (1999) and Avenger: Infinity War (2018)
Fight Club has become the punching bag for so many articles on the internet. I have seen so many posts bashing on the terrible lessons that it teaches to angry kids. They emphatically declare that Fight Club is a “manifesto” to “angry, misogynistic Alpha Males.”
I want them to stop.
I side with those who state the lessons of Tyler Durden are wrong and violent. I agree with the posts declaring real men are those who act in love, not in anger. However, my appreciation stops when those articles begin to claim Fight Club is garbage because Tyler Durden teaches terrible things.
Tyler Durden Was The Bad Guy
Thanos murdered half the population of everything. He believed the answer to overpopulation and resource scarcity, legitimate concerns we have in the real world, was genocide.
This is a terrifying solution to a real problem, but I do not see many articles disparaging the Marvel movies due to Thanos’s teachings. Why?
Because Thanos is the bad guy.
While we all make jokes about it when waiting in long lines at Disneyland, no one believes that Thanos had a good point.
Tyler Durden is the bad guy, too.
The Narrator shot himself in the head to stop Tyler Durden at the end of the film. HE SHOT HIMSELF IN THE HEAD!
I don’t know about you, but that was a clear indication to my younger-self that I should not be like Tyler Durden.
However, some of what Tyler Durden says makes sense. His words ring a truth of sorts. It calls to us. It wants us to accept his thoughts and his solutions. For parts of Fight Club, you find yourself almost nodding to the revolutionary feelings expressed by Tyler Durden. You can feel yourself almost siding with him.
That is what makes Tyler Durden such a good bad guy.
Let me explain.
