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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Brad Pitt was the mental image projected by the schizophrenic narrator of what he would be like if only he could bring himself to actually just fuck Marla the way he wanted to all along. Brad Pitt, within the universe of the film, doesn't exist, he's an idealization of the chaotic masculinity the narrator wants to access. (I'm using the actor rather than the character name "Tyler Durden" because whether Tyler exists is kind of complicated, the narrator is also Tyler)

Which taking the visual symbolism of the film seriously, presents us with two explanations.

Either the incel imagines that he must transform himself into Brad Pitt at his absolute hottest in order to have sex with a woman. Or the incel thinks that if only he could have sex with a woman, the act of doing so would transform him into Brad Pitt at his absolute hottest.

I think it's one of the best commentaries on male sexuality in film. Probably alongside Eyes Wide Shut.

I prefer my third explanation: the movie is not about an incel.

Incel is kind of a loaded term, but the precipitating event of the narrator's split personality is presented pretty clearly as his meeting Marla, and being unable to fuck her as himself, needing to become free to have sex. So incel maybe not, but I don't think the work can carry a reading that isn't centered on sexual repression.

Repressed sexuality is absolutely one of the themes, as an expression of the broader repression of masculinity and purpose; the narrator is not an incel, he's a very traditional manosphere conception of a beta male. He has a comfortable job, and a comfortable life, but has no vitality or ambition or ways to really actualize and express himself as a man.

He's castrated by society and his own fear of rocking the boat. Tyler's an escape not simply because he has sex (the narrator isn't a sexual tyrannosaurus but there's also no indications I remember of him being an eternally blueballed virginal wreck), but because he's free in all ways -- he's free to fuck, he's free to fight, he's free to rebel and claw personal meaning out of a peaceful and atomized suppression of the self.

I definitely agree Fight Club's message puts it firmly in the manosphere wing of gender politics, but I reject wholeheartedly the idea it's about incels. Ennui with modern society firmly predates them. Uncle Ted's crazy, but he's not incel crazy.