By Scott Dierdorf
July 2000


"...it was now like walking among the matrices of a great digital computer, the zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left, ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would be either transcendent meaning, or only the earth...another mode of meaning behind the obvious, or none."

        - Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965)





The films Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) and The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999) both use conspiracy to give meaning to the lives of their protagonists. Both films feature a main character at odds with his environment. Neo in The Matrix and Jack in Fight Club exist outside any identifiable community, and each film is essentially the story of their attempts to belong.

Both films accept as their basic premise one of the two possibilities expressed in the quotation above: 1) that a vast conspiracy exists underneath the surface of our everyday existence, and that the revelation or infiltration of this conspiracy will bring meaning to the life of the protagonist; or 2) that life is exactly as it appears to the protagonist - empty and meaningless - in which case the protagonist must invent a conspiracy in order to create a community to which he can belong.

The Matrix considers the first idea. Thomas Anderson hates his "normal" life. He doesn't fit in, and he doesn't understand why. He spends all of his time seeking the existence of another world, The Matrix, in the belief that finding the truth will explain his unhappiness. When he finds it, the truth is even better than Thomas could imagine. Not only is there "another mode of meaning behind the obvious", there is also a community of people who are seeking the truth, just like him. To join this group he takes on a new persona of his creation. His new friends want him, and they want him on his own terms. Neo even turns out to be a Messiah, not only for his new friends but for the entire world of enslaved, lonely people trapped in The Matrix. The qualities that made him an outcast in his original existence turn out to be the same qualities that make him accepted and worshipped in his new life. The "real world", although horrifying, confirms Neo's self-worth. Part of the fun of this film is watching this transformation take place; for lack of a better phrase, we enjoy watching Neo go from zero to hero. In the end Neo defeats his enemies, but more important is the fact that he has found a community to which he can belong. The film's tantalizing message is that a community is out there for every person, right around the corner, just waiting to be uncovered.

Fight Club explores the second possibility. Jack finds himself without a community, as symbolized by his insomnia. As his condition worsens, his relationship to society becomes more and more tenuous. He solves his problem by forcing his way into the community of support groups. This works temporarily. He is able to make connections with people, and we can assume his insomnia disappears for a while. He knows these connections are false, however, and they do not provide a lasting solution. Instead of trying to find a community to join, he invents his own - Tyler Durden and Fight Club. Through Tyler, Jack finds himself elevated to a position of leadership and, eventually, worship. Like Neo, he uses his community to struggle against the system that oppressed him. In the end, Jack does find his community, but it is not with Tyler. On a symbolic level, Jack finds commuity with Marla, who represents the population of the disenfranchised. On a literal level, the final destructive act of Project Mayhem creates a new community - by destroying everyone's financial identity, Jack has caused all of modern society to become disenfranchised. Instead of finding his own community outside the mainstream, Jack takes catastrophic steps to make the population at large into a community of his liking. The movie's message seems to be that we must create our own communities; in a meaningless world, meaning is what you make.
     Interestingly, the ending of the film is ambiguous on the moral implications of Tyler Durden. Like Morpheus, Tyler is the agent of change that brings about salvation. Unlike Morpheus, however, Tyler is Jack's own invention. Although his influence on Jack is arguably a bad one, resulting in a gunshot wound to the face and the presumed destruction of the entire Western banking system, it is through Tyler that Jack takes control of his life and comes to understand himself. With its "happy" ending, the movie refuses to make a judgement about whether or not Jack's ends justify his means.



Appendix
Some other similarities to consider:

1) In both films the protagonists work from the inside to destroy an oppressive system they find hostile. 2) Neither protagonist (Thomas Anderson or Jack) can rely on their own persona to fight their systems; each must assume an alter ego (Neo and Tyler Durden) to do so. It is also interesting to note that both identify more strongly with their alter ego than their original persona. Neo gets angry at repeated attempts to refer to him by his given name ("My name...is Neo!") and Jack's real name is never even mentioned in the film.

3) Both protagonists rely on a surrogate father/teacher figure to guide them on their quest, and each character must surpass their father/teacher in order to fulfill their ultimate destiny. (Neo has to use the "Chosen One" skills that Morpheus does not possess in order to rescue his mentor, while Jack has to use his newly-discovered ability to take action in order to kill Tyler).

4) Both protagonists have a female counterpart (Trinity and Marla). This counterpart is strikingly similar to the protagonist in many ways but cannot follow the path as far as the protagonist can. In both cases, the protagonist ends up in a romantic relationship with their counterpart.

5) Both films use twisting, labyrinthine plots to mimic the disorientation that the protagonists feel in the world they find hostile.

6) Both films use muted and manipulated color schemes to simulate the dehumanizing effects of the controlling systems. (It is interesting to note that the famous greenish cast used in The Matrix is also found in the office scenes in Fight Club.)

7) Both films use violence as a catharsis for their protagonists. It gives the main characters' alternate personas a means of putting into action the feelings they were unable to express in their real lives.

8) Both films use changes in name and hair style to symbolize a character's journey from the old world into the new. In The Matrix the characters discard their given names and assume single-word hacker aliases. In Fight Club the characters are required to surrender their names altogether in order to join Project Mayhem. Interestingly, characters in both films have shorn heads when entering the new world.



There are also some important differences between the films:

10) All forms of media are called into question in The Matrix. Computers, televisions, and telephones all assume characteristics of the enemy system. In the majority of Fight Club, however, the media are depicted as objective third parties. Because Jack's state of mind is in question, the viewer must rely on media such as newspaper clippings, security cameras, and TV news broadcasts to provide concrete proof that certain events actually happened. Of course, this trustworthy portrayal of the media is subverted by the self-referential edits and single-frame insertions supposedly performed by Tyler Durden. (This is carried further on the DVD, which has a surreptitious FBI warning and other messages inserted by Tyler.)

11) The violence in The Matrix is much more fantasticn than in Fight Club. Although the body count in The Matrix is high, the killing is very antiseptic. The violence in Fight Club is much more graphic and personal. Although only one person dies in Fight Club, it is a much more violent film.

12) The Matrix follows a much clearer and more traditional ethic of "good versus evil" and reaches a more definite conclusion. Although Neo is technically fighting an entire system, it is embodied by a single villain, Agent Smith. Once this enemy is dispatched, the film is over. Although Fight Club shows a conflict between Jack and Tyler, whose death marks the conclusion of the film, the conflict between Jack and the system is never really resolved. It is unclear if the destruction of the credit card companies will have its intended effect. It is also unclear what effect the film's events have had on Jack. He claims that he is "fine", but whose definition of "fine" is he using? In addition, Tyler Durden's final "modification" to the film raises the possibility that he might not really be dead, which further contributes to the film's ambiguous ending.