Featured Image Credit: 20th Century Fox
Topics: Film and TV
Stewart Perrie
There's no denying David Fincher's incredible film Fight Club has been popular with audiences all over the world.
The 1999 psychological thriller followed Edward Norton's character as he meets soap salesman Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt).
The protagonist gets drawn into a hectic friendship and they start a fight club for people looking to reject their current lives.
Things really escalate when Project Mayhem kicks into gear as it seeks to erase debt records from consumer credit companies.
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More than 20 years since its release, the film has apparently become a big hit with incels and those on the far-right.
Incels are men who describe themselves as 'involuntary celibate' and they say they are unable to sleep with women for a variety of reasons outside of their control.
The New Yorker said online incel message boards are filled with quotes from the film 'and offhand worship of Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, all the time'.
While an article in The New Statesman says alt-right people have also aligned themselves to the movie because it shows a rejection of the 'material world' and illustrates how they could 'immerse themselves in a sort of proto-fascist egalitarian project in which enlightenment is achieved through violence'.
"The so-called alt-right has fully adopted these themes: being 'red-pilled' is the moment your eyes open to the real world, where women have subjugated men and emasculated them," Yiannis Baboulias wrote for the outlet.
"The rejection of this false world is paramount, and the reclamation of hyper-masculinity the way back to enlightenment."
However, the director behind the movie says this reality is definitely not on him.
He told The Guardian: “I’m not responsible for how people interpret things…Language evolves. Symbols evolve.”
Fincher added: “It’s one of many touchstones in their lexicography...We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica."
The filmmaker explained that he was surprised that anyone would interpret Brad Pitt's character as something worthy of following.
“It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence,” he said.
“People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know how to help them.”
While everyone will have their own interpretations of the film, it's clear Fincher wasn't trying to recruit people onto the ideas perpetuated by Durden or Norton's character.