Lacan's Theory in Fight Club

Lacan's theory suggests that during our early years, between 6 to 18 months old, in which our younger selves see our reflection as a perfect being and from then constantly try to achieve the perfection that is 'lacking'.



A nameless first person narrator (Edward Norton) attends support groups in attempt to subdue his emotional state and relieve his insomniac state. When he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) another fake attendee of support groups, his life seems to become a little more bearable. However when he associates himself with Tyler (Brad Pitt) he is dragged into an underground fight club and soap making scheme. Together the two men spiral out of control and engage in competitive rivalry for love and power. When the narrator is exposed to the hidden agenda of Tyler's fight club, he must accept the awful truth that Tyler may not be who he says he is. 


Fight Club shows how easy it is for people to become so engrossed in ‘bettering their lives’ that it leads to destruction of some sort. The Narrator feels he is living an empty live with no personal identity or purpose where was Tyler Durden is living a full life with the soap business and a lot of personality. The Narrator feels as though something in his life is missing so tries many different things to try and fill the gap from buying all the new furniture from the Ikea catalogue so that he can feel like his life is the way it should be, but when that doesn’t help he buys something new until his condo looks like the Ikea catalogue itself. During this scene text flashes up onscreen in the font and format used in an Ikea catalogue. The text takes up the majority of the screen showing that it’s taking up the majority of the Narrator’s life because he’s trying to make his life the perfect life he sees in the catalogue.

 

As well as the catalogue lifestyle he starts to attend self-help groups for the terminally ill/dying in attempt to fill the void he’s feeling. He goes to the self-help groups to make himself feel better by being surrounded by people who really have it worse than him, like Bob, Bob has lost his testicles due to cancer and because of the hormone imbalance in his body he grew breasts, he’s lost part of what makes him a man and gained a womanly asset; his life is a lot worse than what we know of the Narrator’s. When he realises that the groups aren’t working he moves onto the next thing because they aren’t giving him what he wanted. The next thing being his condo blowing up losing his ‘perfect Ikea’ lifestyle leading him to meet Tyler and fight club beginning. The fight club is giving the Narrator the fix of adrenaline and filling the space he thinks he needs only later for not to be enough kick starting project mayhem, all with the help of Tyler and him being the front man of both fight club and project mayhem. As project mayhem unfolds it loops back to the first scene of the film which gives the audience the impression that after everything the Narrator goes through to find what he thinks to be missing none of it was enough for him and he’s going to start all over again until he finds what wants to fulfill the void. Adding the character of Tyler Durden adds depth and dimension to the situation of the Narrator trying to find what he wants as it shows him as chasing what he sees as the perfect lifestyle for him, which is Tyler’s life. Using Freud’s theory of the self and seeing Tyler as just an aspect of the Narrator’s self shows that the Narrator is chasing a life of someone he thinks to have what he wants when in reality its himself he’s trying to be, just what his mind sees as the ‘perfect’ him.