I was watching this excellent movie for the second time a few nights ago, and it struck me that it's actually a movie about male initiation. I haven't read the novel so it's possible that the film version is a complete reinterpretation of Chuck Palahniuk's original story, but after doing some reading on male initiation and the effects of its massive deficit in Western culture, I could instantly recognize some of the major themes present here.
I especially like this clip, where Tyler Durden gives the narrator an unexpected chemical burn and then goes on to explain why. WARNING! There is some strong language here.
"You don't know how this feels!"
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
One of my favorite authors lists the following as the five central tenets to male initiation:
1) Life is hard.
2) You are not important.
3) Your life is not about you.
4) You are not in control.
5) You are going to die.
More men need to figure this out. If they all have to have their condos blown up, get beat up night after night at underground fight clubs, get ceremonially burned, and face down their criminally insane alter-egos to get there, so be it.
Brilliant! Is this what is freaking missing in the world of namby pambies that I have so recently become aware of? There is a generational curse of namby pambyism, passed down through the ages, creating men who don't know what it even means to work hard, men who depend so much on being babied by confused co-dependent women. Men who are in essence not men at all, but underdeveloped, misinformed versions of what we call men.
ReplyDelete"More men need to figure this out. If they all have to have their condos blown up, get beat up night after night at underground fight clubs, get ceremonially burned, and face down their criminally insane alter-egos to get there, so be it"-ID
Amen, whatever it takes!