“In the world I see,” Tyler says in the film’s most important speech, “you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty carpool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” Tyler wants nothing less than a return to an agrarian society.
It doesn’t take a very sophisticated audience member to see “Fight Club” as a condemnation of ultra-masculine violence as a cathartic release. In the film’s early fight scenes, the punches and bruises do indeed provide Tyler and the Edward Norton character with the outlet they need to express their frustration, but it’s easy to understand that nihilistic destruction cannot be brought to any kind of logical conclusion beyond the apocalypse. There is, of course, a dark working-class fantasy in the film’s final scenes — when Norton witnesses the destruction of multiple banks and credit card companies — but Tyler’s means are twisted and incorrect.
In The Guardian piece, David Fincher seems exasperated by the far-right interpretation of his work. Eventually, however, he just had to step away, saying:
“I’m not responsible for how people interpret things […] Language evolves. Symbols evolve. […] OK, fine. It’s one of many touchstones in [far right] lexicography.”
When asked how he felt about that, Fincher said:
“We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or Guernica.”
Incidentally, Artsper Magazine did a great, brief rundown on Guernica for their website in 2019.
