Originally posted by balla
ok so how about you tell me what I am appearently missing?
The movie is NOT about women. That's what you don't get.
It's not about money, it's not about women, and it's not about the generally accepted idea of "success". It's about reclaiming your masculinity, about being who you WANT to be and doing what you WANT to do. It's about a bunch of men who have been brainwashed all their lives into feeding into a society that gives them nothing back.
Here's what you "don't get". You say that the only person anyone gets with is Tyler with the "nasty chick". What you missed is that Tyler doesn't give a **** about what YOU think is "nasty." That chick's don't-give-a-**** attitude TURNS HIM ON. Meaning he has no trouble getting chicks that turn him on. You're one of these people who's still seeking women for validation...because the goddam TV tells you that you're sh!t unless you're laying women, and hot women. And not just women YOU think are hot, but women who THEY tell you to think are hot.
The other thing you don't understand is just how far Ed Norton's character (Jack) has repressed his masculinity and his sexuality and his anger and his dark thoughts until they just built up into this alter-ego that explodes out of him at certain times. We're taught from birth to push aside a lot of the things that are deemed socially unacceptable. Some of them are genuinely harmful to us as people. But some of them (our masculine, animal traits) are part of who we are as humans. Society is desperate to repress these instincts because they disrupt its harmony.
Also at the end of the movie, Tyler doesn't die. You're thinking Tyler's dead, but Tyler isn't dead because Jack IS Tyler. Instead Jack finally "opens his eyes" to who he is inside and finds the balance between the "Jack" side and the "Tyler" side. He acknowledges his own mortality, his masculinity, his anger, his sense of betrayal, his desires for a better lifestyle than society offers him...and thus Tyler no longer serves a purpose.
People "idolize" the Tyler Durden character because there's a "Tyler" in every one of us dying to get out. But it's something we've tucked inside and hidden away all our lives. We're afraid that there's something "bad" inside of us, that our sexuality, our arrogance, our anger, our dominance, our desire to fight...that they all make us bad people and as much as we try to hide it, it's still there.
Seeing all of those "dark" emotions embodied in a single character and displayed as a hero or idol makes us all feel vindicated...it makes us all PROUD of that part of us and more willing to bring that part of us out, to balance the other side of us that we put up to blend in with society.
Yes, people take it to extremes. But if you sit there asking yourself, "How will this help me bang hot chicks," you're missing the point completely.
