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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38810 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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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.

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