THIS IS

YOUR LIFE
Three Movies' Critique
of Modern Banality
It’s 1990: the twentieth century has entered its final decade. After forty-five
years of mutual hostility, the Cold War is finally over: the U.S. won;
capitalism triumphed. It was, American scholar Francis Fukuyama declared,
“The End of History.” Now, there was nothing left but for America and the
world to enjoy the free and bountiful ‘American way of life’, secured by the
victory of the free market. And we did. The 90s was the decade that gave us
the ‘extreme shopping channel’, the ‘dot com’ bubble, and an absurd orgy of
indulgence in ever more luxurious (and unnecessary) consumer goods. But
as the decade came to a close, cinema showed us that all was not well in this
world. In the space of a year, both Fight Club and American Beauty hit our
screens, and all of a sudden it seemed that the happy American family of
Father of the Bride or even American Pie belonged to a fantasy-land. With a
big, raw bar of Fight Club soap, Tyler Durden washed off the sparkle to
reveal the grime, “right in everyone’s hostile little face.”

Together with the more light-hearted OfficeSpace a year later, these two
movies eloquently but bitingly critiqued the triviality and mediocrity of life
in modern America. They focused on the new oppressed ‘common man’ –
the white, middle-class office worker – as an anonymous, powerless drone,
working in mind-numbing subserviance to the “soulless” and pedantic
henchmen (his bosses) of The Corporation: that bloated, incessantly profit-
hungry Queen.

Signs of instability in the system had already begun to show earlier in the
decade: in the 1994 flick Falling Down, Bill Foster, a former U.S. Defence
engineer, loses his job – he’s not “economically viable” anymore, now that
the Cold War is over and economic rationalism reigns supreme – and, in
desperation, seeks to return home to the one good thing in his life: his
daughter, estranged from him by a bitter divorce. On his way home, he vents
years of built-up frustration and disgust at an increasingly petty and uncaring
society: at the milk bar, where he is forced to purchase something in order to
break a note; at the ‘Whammy Burger’, where (arriving mere minutes after
the breakfast deadline) he is refused any options from the breakfast menu,
and so on.

Like Bill, the three heroes of Fight Club, American Beauty and OfficeSpace
are white-collar professionals, put under review to see if they are
“economically viable.” At the start of all three movies, they are self-
confessedly demoralized by the lack of meaning and authentic happiness in
their lives: nothing is ever good for them, just ‘Good for the Company’.
Lester Burnham, who works as “a whore for the advertizing industry” (as he
puts it), tells us at the beginning of American Beauty that: “Both my wife
and daughter think I’m this gigantic loser, and…they’re right.” He is a loser,
because he lives the life of one.

Jack, a jaded insurance adjuster for a big car firm, is in much the same boat.
However, he is liberated from his mundane job and shallow lifestyle by
Tyler Durden, who – by blowing up Jack’s beloved condo – destroys that
‘comfort zone’ where one can escape from the world, forcing Jack to wake
up to himself and his pitifully pointless life, which is “ending one minute at
a time” and which, so far, he has been wasting standing in front of the office
photocopier, sleeping on planes and watching late-night cable TV. In the
self-assured, leather-jacketed Tyler he finds salvation, and discovers a new
mantra directly countering that which previously dominated his life:

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture.

Deliver me from clever art.
May I never be complete.
May I never be content.
Deliver me.”

Lester’s saviour comes in the form of Ricky Fitts, an unusually confident

and deep-thinking teenager not unlike Tyler, who moves next door to
Lester’s house with his mum and dad. Ricky re-introduces Lester to the
carefree pleasures of weed, and – as the two share a joint outside a business
function (at which Ricky’s meant to be working as a waiter, and which
Lester has been brought to by his wife), Ricky’s boss comes out and orders
him to get back inside – upon which Ricky calmly tells him he quits.
Astounded by but admirant of the boy’s assertive, live-for-the-moment
attitude, Lester tells him “I think you just became my personal hero.” This
turning point takes place not long after a similarly significant meeting with
Angela, his daughter’s sexy and seductive best friend, who makes him feel
like an infatuated schoolboy again. As Lester fantasizes about her in bed
with a big smile plastered on his face, he narrates:

“I feel like I’ve been in a coma for about twenty years,

and I’m just now waking up.”

In OfficeSpace, conversely, it is actually a trance state induced by an

occupational hypnotherapist that makes Peter, who works for the “evil
corporation” Initech, see the light. Suspended in the trance state by a stroke
of luck (the hypnotherapist suffers a heart attack before he can snap Peter
out of it), Peter proceeds to live a carefree, existentalist existence,
unhesitatingly skipping work to sleep in, fish and spend time with his new
girlfriend, whom he tells on their first lunch together, as though it was the
most natural thing in the world: “I don’t like my job, and I don’t think I’m
gonna go anymore.”

In American Beauty and OfficeSpace, Lester’s and Peter’s companies

employ ‘efficiency experts’ to ascertain who’s ‘Good for the Company’ and
“who’s expendable”:

“They’ve hired this efficiency expert, this really friendly guy named
Brad, how perfect is that? And he’s basically there to make it seem
like they’re justified in firing somebody, because they couldn’t just
come right out and say that, could they? No, no, that would be too…
honest.”

Inspired by Ricky Fitts’ example, Lester decides that straight-shooting

honesty is the best policy, and – when asked to map out “in detail” what his
job entails – his description is unashamedly candid:

“…my job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes

in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men’s room so I can
jerk off, while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble
hell.”

Lester knows he’s going to get fired, but he has something up his sleeve:
knowledge of his company’s editorial director “buying pussy with company
money”, onto which he threatens to add an un-disprovable sexual assault
charge against Brad himself. When Brad tells him “You are one twisted
fuck”, he smiles amiably and retorts: “Nope. I’m just an ordinary guy with
nothing to lose.”

We see a similar scenario played out in Fight Club. Knowing that he is “up
for review,” but possessing highly sensitive knowledge of his firm’s
unethical car manufacturing practices, Jack enters his boss’s office and, like
Lester, calmly proposes an agreement whereby “in exchange for my salary, I
won’t tell people these things that I know.” When the enraged boss calls him
a “crazy little shit” and calls for security, Jack proceeds to beat himself up,
landing on his knees – bleeding and sobbing pathetically – just as security
barges in. At the end of both scenes, we see Lester and Jack leaving their
office buildings for the last time, the fruits of their blackmail in hand and a
triumphant smile on their face.

The successful termination of their despised jobs signals the start of a better,
more meaningful life for Jack and Lester. It is a concept preceded in –
among other movies – The Matrix, where ‘Mr Anderson’ is threatened with
redundancy for arriving late to work. Upon meeting Morpheus (liberation
always seems to be in the form of a wiser-than-thou mentor character), he
chooses to exit the world he knows – his dead-end job and loser existence –
and goes on to become the saviour of the whole human race. The dichotomy
between Neo’s realization of his potential and the thoroughly unproductive,
unsatisfying existence he was eking out before is striking (compare Neo in
Matrix Reloaded with the pallid figure being scolded like a schoolboy at the
start of The Matrix), and is essentially the same scenario depicted in Fight
Club and American Beauty taken to fantastical heights. Voicing one of the
tragic realities of our age, Tyler Durden sermons:

“I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever
lived – an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or
they’re slaves with white collars.”

Freed from his white-collared corporate leash, Lester seeks to revive the
happiness he knew in his younger years by working out, smoking weed and
listening to Jimi Hendrix. He buys himself a 1970 Pontiac Firebird – “The
car I always wanted and now I have it. I rule!” – but recognizes the
fundamental pointlessness of a life dedicated to material gain. In one scene –
showing far more devotion to her furniture than to her husband (on whom
she’s been cheating with the “image of success”–projecting real estate agent
Buddy King), Carolyn stops Lester from kissing her because he’s about to
spill beer on the couch – to which he retorts, echoing Tyler Durden: “This
isn’t life! This is just stuff! And it’s become more important to you than
living.” When Carolyn rushes out of the room, tearful and upset, he calls
after her: “I’m only trying to help you!” Liberated himself, he is acutely
aware that his wife is still in the ‘coma’.

In Fight Club, Tyler ‘helps’ Jack by destroying all of his “flaming worldly
possessions” and telling him, like a contemporary, goateed American Christ:

“The things you own, end up owning you.”

According to Tyler, “It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to
do anything.” And free is exactly what Jack becomes. Freed from his trendy
paper lamps, green-striped sofa unit and “glass dishes with tiny bubbles and
imperfections”, he stops trying to “be complete” and moves to “a dilapidated
house in the toxic waste part of town” to lead a new, raw, more human
existence. Advocating a return to our pre-brainwashed, flesh-and-blood
state, Jack sets up a network of underground fight clubs with Tyler, where
frustrated, inhibited men like himself – like Lester and Peter – can meet and
engage in bare-knuckled fighting.
 “Afterwards,” he tells us, “we all felt saved.”

The fighting does not offer a solution – “Nothing was solved,” Jack admits –
“but nothing mattered.” The fight clubs were a refuge from the ridiculous,
sterile world of memos, cornflower blue ties and ‘primary action items’; a
violent reaction against the paltriness and artificiality saturating America.
“This kid, Ricky, couldn’t remember whether he ordered pens with blue ink
or black,” Jack relates. “But Ricky was a god for ten minutes last week when
he trounced an actuary twice his size.” Interestingly, Chuck Palahniuk – the
author of the novel Fight Club – said that he wrote the novel as an
expression of rage. Originally rejected by the publishers, he took it back to
the throbbing subterrain of his mind where it fermented to become still
darker and more violent. Palahniuk’s anguished message, as proclaimed by
his Messianic creation Tyler Durden, was bleak and blunt:

“Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.”

What does Tyler mean by “spiritual war?” Quite simply, the War against
Consumerism. Possibly the greatest corruption in our society today is the
idea, endlessly sold through advertizing, that you can attain spiritual
satisfaction through lifestyle; that you can build happiness from the outside-
in by acquiring things. It is a recipe for spiritual disaster, resulting in a world
of people – blue collar and white collar – “working jobs we hate, so we can
buy shit we don’t need.” Edward Norton (who plays Jack) says about Fight
Club: “We tried to set up a mournful, almost Holden Caulfield–like inner
narrative in the film as my character talks about his life of travel and hotel
rooms with mouthwash and toothbrushes and single servings and mini-
everythings.” Jack, a thirty-something-year-old single yuppie, has nothing to
cling to; nothing in his life but a whole lot of “nice, neat little shit.” When
he’s not on planes or at his desk, slaving for his company, he is a self-
confessed “slave to the IKEA nesting instinct”, trying to bring meaning into
his life by “being complete” – through the acquirement of furniture,
silverware and suits.

This is mirrored in American Beauty by Lester’s wife Carolyn. At the start

of the movie, as we watch Carolyn tending her roses, Lester dryly asks us:
“See the way the handle on those pruning shears matches her gardening
clogs? That’s not an accident.” Lester watches Carolyn from a window as if
she’s a stranger, wondering how the woman he loved – the girl who “used to
fake seizures at parties” – turned into this shallow, phoney, petty housewife.
“She wasn’t always like this,” he informs us in a melancholy tone. “She
used to be happy. We used to be happy.” Even before his liberation takes
place, he makes the connection between the hollow pursuit of wealth and
status and his wife’s now “joyless”, “money-grubbing” character.

These movies hold up a mirror to the world’s contemporary sorry state, and
it is no coincidence that both were released at the end of a decade in which
consumerism reached all-new grotesque proportions. Through TV,
billboards and magazines, we are being constantly bombarded with the
message that You Are Not Happy. You Cannot Be Happy, Because You Are
Not Perfect. To Be (Closer To) Perfect, Buy This.

Condition your Hair.

Fake-tan your Skin.
Undertake Liposuction.

The beauty of consumerism is that, of course, no matter how hard you try,
attaining perfection is impossible. The media will always generate some new
flaw or insecurity, remediable only by purchasing this or that product. Tyler,
not surprisingly, sniggers at all of this: “Self-improvement is masturbation”
he mutters.

Fight Club’s critique of our ‘culture of consumption’ is satirically underlined

by Tyler’s self-employment as a soap salesman. This seems harmless
enough at first, but what does he make the soap from? Human fat, stolen
from a body sculpting clinic. As Jack puts it in one of the movie’s most
memorable lines, “We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to
them.” (And the symbolism of the fat to greed and excessive consumption is
all too obvious.)

In summary, for all their sardonic humour, pop culture commentary and
animated character portrayals, the overall message of the three films is plain
and simple: “We don’t have a lot of time on this Earth…we weren’t meant
to spend it this way.” They show the truth in Oscar Wilde’s assertion that
“Everything that is realized is right.” By standing up to their bosses, by
rejecting social expectations and ignoring the media’s calls for self-
indulgence and self-improvement, Jack, Lester and Peter all realize their full
potential; realize what they have been missing out on and try to get back in
touch with themselves: to “re-possess their souls”, so to speak. So that, at the
end of American Beauty, when Angela asks Lester how he is, he is able to
reply – finally, happily, and not without a tinge of pleasant surprise at
himself –:

“I’m great.”