The First Rule of Fight Club is...

...you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is -- You DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.

Yeah, yeah, I know, we're not supposed to talk about Fight Club.But I watched this movie for the first time last night while I was trying to work off a coffee cooler I drank around seven pm and I realized something after the movie was over.

SPOILER ALERT!!! If you've never seen Fight Club, don't read the rest of this post! It will spoil the movie and this is not a movie you want spoiled for you. Stop reading this and GO WATCH THE FILM.







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Are you gone yet? Good.






Brad Pitt's character (We'll call him TylerSurreal for the purposes of this blog post) is a Mary Sue. Why do I say this?

"You could not do this on your own,"TylerSurreal tells TylerReal (Edward Norton) towards the end of the film. "All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck. I am smart, capable and, most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not."

Like MarySues, TylerSurreal was created by TylerReal for the purposes of personifying everything he's not, everything he wishes he could be. He uses TylerSurreal to do things he otherwise wouldn't have done, just as writers use MarySue to sleep with their favorite character (Something most younger female writers wouldn't do in real life if they had the chance) be brave and commit deeds of daring do (another thing we don't have the chance to act on in real life) and probably most importantly, realize our desires for physical perfection. (If TylerReal wanted to be Brad Pitt, I think MarySue wants to be Angelina Jolie or Megan Fox, or some other Hollywood dazzler, someone who stops traffic and makes cameras stare.)

Like MarySue, TylerSurreal is destructive. TylerSurreal destroys by blowing up buildings and created an army around his cultish personality becuase he's a disconnected half of one person, trying to become fully realized, taking over the whole brain. MarySue destroys because she too is disconnected. She is aloof from her creator, who neglects to put essential humanity, essential imperfection, into the way she interacts with other characters. And we hate her because of it, just as we hate TylerSurreal for making TylerReal shoot himself. But in the end, we have to metaphorically shoot ourselves to make MarySue go away. Earlier in the movie, we remember TylerSurreal putting a gun to Raymond K. Hessel's head and asking him what he wants to be. At the end of that interchange Raymond runs off screaming, and Tyler Surreal calmly reminds TylerReal, "Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted."

By shooting himself, TylerReal recognizes the same thing. The next day of his life will be the most beautiful day he has ever experienced. His breakfast will taste better. Why?

Because he knows he's not perfect, he knows he never will be, and he's glad of that fact, because perfection is dangerous, and the only thing that makes life worth living is getting to fix the mistakes we make.

Now You Understand Me

Let me begin this post by saying there is nothing I enjoy more than sharing with others a story that I have already taken pleasure in reading , and in turn having them delight in it as much as I have. These past two weeks I've been watching the BBC drama Cranford with my parents, and I think that they've enjoyed watching it as much as I've enjoyed sharing it with them.

How do I know this? Well, for starters both of them were righteously indignant on Frank Harrison's behalf at the end of episode four (He's wrongfully accused of proposing to three different women and the rest of the town begins shunning him) which amused me to no end. And the second thing was that tonight, after we finished watching the fifth and final episode, we had a rather curious exchange about the ending. I said something to the effect of "See, it ended rather well, didn't it?"refering, of course, to the fact that Frank does indeed get to marry the girl he intended to, long lost brothers are returned home, and most everyone ends the story a little happier than they began it. But my parents weren't satisfied with this. "No," my mother said. " Mr. --- died. That wasn't very happy. And there were lots of unresolved things. What happens to Harry? Does he get to go to school? And what about Miss Pole and Peter Jenkins?"

"Yeah!" My father said. "Where's the fanfic?"

Yes, readers, my dad used fanfic in a sentence. I have trained my parents well. Finally they understand why I write what I write -- to tie up the loose ends and tell parts of the story I think should have been told. I assured him I would attempt to find some or, if I did not find any that suited, I would endeavor to write one myself. (I was thinking of doing that anyway.)

And of course, I reminded them that the BBC will be making another Cranford series to air this Christmas. I don't know when it will be on PBS in the US, but they're fairly good about putting things on at about the same time.

(I've also convinced my mother that next week we should start watching "Jane Eyre." Huzzah!)