Tyler And The Jack Side example essay topic

Ryan Bateman 10/24/03 Intro to Film Paper #1 Can't Live With Them... Fight Club is a movie starring Brad Pitt (Tyler Burden), Edward Norton (Jack), and Helena Bonham Carter (Marla). David Fincher directs this film and the director of Photography is Jeff Cronenweth. Relationships are the basis of our world. We have relationships with everyone we know, whether it is our boss, teacher, authority figure, friends or family. But the most important relationship is with the one you love.

In "Fight Club", Jacks relationship with Marla represents his two-sided personality. He meets Marla at group therapy meetings where he goes as a means of dealing with his pain, he seeks out 12-step meetings, where he can immerse himself with people less fortunate than himself and find catharsis in their suffering. Marla also has no real reason to go but she stays because she gets free coffee and donuts. She spoils it for him because he knows she's not there for real help and he wants to believe everyone else's pain is real. He calls her the "root of all his problems". Throughout the whole movie, she is behind every action he does.

Both the Tyler and the Jack side have conflict and important interactions with Marla. She is a key character in this movie for she defines Jacks split personality, and represents his loving side and his anomalistic, primitive male ego. Fincher uses her character to show how men differ then women in their dealings with problems. Marla makes the Jack side come out more, and have him conquer the Tyler in him.

When the Tyler side first meets Marla, he takes initiative and instead of listening to her talk about suicide on the phone, he goes over to her apartment and sees her in person. That night Jack has a dream about sleeping with Marla, but in reality he did sleep with her, but his Tyler side took over his consciousness. The next morning when Tyler is talking to Jack about the past night, he finishes with "get rid of her". After that Tyler leaves Jack to the more personal side of the relationship.

As the movie goes on, Jack is the only one who talks to her or has any social contact with her, while Tyler just sleeps with her. Not only does Jack have problems handling his relationship with Marla but he has a hard time with relationships all together. When Tyler was sitting in the bathtub, and Jack was washing himself, Jack asked, "If you had to fight anyone who would it be?" And Tyler responds "My dad". Then he relates his story about his dad wanting him to go to college, and once he was done with that he didn't know what to do, so he advised him to get married which led to both Jack and Tyler saying they had no desire to get married. In "Fight Club", Tyler is the sex without a relationship, and Jack is the relationship without sex.

Jack has a sensitive caring side to him which is shown through in the end of the movie he tries to get Marla out of the way of the destruction. He takes over the Tyler personality and tries to explain to her why he has been acting the way he has and doesn't want her to get hurt. Jacks personality does want to be a good person, but has a constant teasing and devilish voice in him represented by Tyler. Gender difference is another one of the main themes of the movie.

The fact that Fight Club is guy only thing is because men need to be men, and they go there to solve their problems. Women in this movie aren't looked upon very highly. When the doctor tells Jack to go to a testicular cancer therapy meeting, because these men "are really in pain", their pain isn't because they are sore, but because they are trying to cope with the fact that they have lost their manhood. When Jack is living in his "singles" condo, he orders all the furniture and even the china, which in a traditional society; women are seen to do this sort of thing. When Jack lives the Tyler live style, everything he uses is bare minimum, he doesn't care about how much stuff he has, or what brand his clothing is, that is all women's concerns, not men's.

Marla helps Jack overcome his fear of the feminine side of him, and realize that all men have it.