The Mental Mindset of the Modern Man in a Consumer Society - Essay Example

The Mental Mindset of the Modern Man in a Consumer Society The novel Fight Club written by Chuck Palahniuk quickly establishes the primary conflict to be man against consumerism as the narrator reveals his sense of drowning in his profession as a cost-benefit analyst in a car company. Not only is he engaged in placing a price tag on human lives to determine whether the company should proceed with its designs, but this position comes to define his entire identity prior to the opening of the story. He is so submerged into this role that his actual name is never fully revealed except through a few oblique references to his belongings as belonging to a man named Joe. While reasonably successful from a social point of view, as an individual he is lost and is only able to feel alive when interacting with the fight club and his friend Tyler Durden, who eventually turns out to be his alter-ego. As in other works such as Rebel Without a Cause by Nicholas Ray and The Destructors by Graham Greene, Fight Club stands as a metaphor for the sense of isolation and dissociation that becomes part of the mindset of the modern man in todays consumerist culture. The consumer culture started roughly at the beginning of the 20th century when social structures within the Westernized cultures underwent a rapid and significant shift due to the advent of new technologies and industries. Cities expanded as young people sought their own glamorous success and separated themselves from the warmth and interpersonal connections of family. A plethora of new products and devices were being created designed to make life in the home more comfortable and easier, thus freeing up the workers to spend more time consuming other products. It was this combination that gave rise to the consumer culture as each individual sought to acquire more of the best stuff in order to achieve love and approval from the greater world around them. “Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first – the story of our quest for sexual love – is well known and well-charted. The second – the story of our quest for love from the world – is a more secret and shameful tale. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first.” (de Botton, 2004). Frustrated feelings regarding independence, competence, and a lack of fulfilling relationships in an impersonal world lead to ever greater levels of material pursuit, a tendency psychologists have come to refer to as compensatory consumption or consuming more to feel better. “This is ironic because this additional consumption often stems from the culture of consumerism itself.” (Kasser & Kanner, 2004, p. 16). Within De Bottons research into the consumer culture, he found that the idea of mortality puts things such as status, careers, possessions, appearance, and even fame into a more reasonable perspective. Reacting directly to this consumer society and the eventual loss of meaning that results when making more purchases fails to provide fulfillment, Fight Club focuses on the cure suggested by De Botton (2004). According to Davis (2002), purchasing items we believe others will consider to be beautiful possessions helps us to feel significant and worthwhile - for a short time - and few things satisfy us the way cars do. Through careful design, cars present us with a kind of mechanized relationship that is much easier to control and gauge than with real people and frequently fulfill those relationship needs for us (Minkoff, 2002), unless your job is to expose and assess just how impersonal and uncaring those vehicles are. Joe’s job effectively dehumanizes one of the consumer cultures ultimate status symbols as even the people who drive or ride in them are reduced to mechanical numbers. Once hes placed a mechanical dollar value on the human life involved, he must weigh that against the cost of any good or bad publicity should design flaws or other issues become broadly known. You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don’t initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don’t recall (Palahniuk 30). Seeing the mechanics behind the magic is also what drives a character such as Trevor when he sees the beauty of Old Miserys house and all it represents regarding the consumer world of illusion he lost in "The Destructors" by Graham Greene. The sense of emptiness is amplified further as many of the characters in these stories find themselves isolated from the rest of their community. Trevor, in "The Destructors" is distanced by his sudden change in social status. Jimmy, Judy, and Plato in Rebel Without a Cause are isolated in their loneliness, lacking in meaningful relationships with their parents and having little to no control over where they go in life. Joe, in Fight Club, spends much of his time traveling from place to place. Constantly fighting jetlag and unable to sleep, he is alienated and dissociated from everything that should have brought him happiness. There is no one there to appreciate his acquisitions. For all of these characters, the world has become something artificial and meaningless, full of material goods but offering little or no true reward. It is only when they struggle against the system, creating on their own through destruction and establishing relationship bonds through violence that they begin to feel alive. This search for connection and a sense of being alive is illustrated in Fight Club through Joes quest for a solution to his listlessness and sleeplessness. Before Tyler is introduced, Joes deep dissatisfaction with his life is painted in stark detail. He feels empty and exhausted, but he is still unable to sleep at night. When his doctor refuses to provide him with the sleeping pills he requests and instead recommends that he attend some chronically ill support group meetings as a means of understanding what real suffering is like, Joe makes an important discovery. He finds that being in proximity to emotion, even the highly charged negative emotions of these meetings, helps him feel more alive. Driven by Marla Singers accusations that he is a faker at these meetings and unable to give up the thrill of the emotional shot, Joe meets Tyler Durden. He describes their meeting framed as almost a dream sequence taking place in another city. “How I met Tyler was I went to a nude beach. This was the very end of summer and I was asleep” (32). He even drops the first clue that this character is a more creative and more alive version of himself, “If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up a different person?” (33). Through Tyler, Joe is able to explore what he thinks of as appropriately masculine activities and begins to establish relationships with other men through the violence of the fight clubs they start. This same search for connection and a sense of being alive also emerge in Rebel Without a Cause and "The Destructors." Rebel Without a Cause opens with the main character, Jim Stark, falling down on a late night city street. Hes obviously drunk which allows his loneliness to come rising to the surface. This is illustrated by the sad action of tucking a small toy doll into bed in the gutter, using a leaf as a pillow and a crumpled up newspaper as a blanket. When hes hauled in to the police station on drunk and disorderly charges, he plays the responsible parent by taking the doll with him. When he meets Judy and Plato at the station, both experiencing a similar loss of connection, the trio create their own form of family. However, this family is again formed out of negative emotion as the impetus bringing them together. Violence remains a primary characteristic of their relationship as the film continues and they struggle against bullies and gangs. The group of boys appearing in "The Destructors" is described as a gang from the beginning of the story, but what truly brings them together is the lonely and misplaced boy, Trevor, and his desire to create through the destruction of Old Miserys house. At the opening of the story, the boys seem to play together at the site of a bombing simply because there is nothing else for them to do. They dont demonstrate any true sense of brotherhood as their relationships are mechanically ordered in a hierarchy that makes sense to them. The addition of a new boy doesnt trigger any need to defend the territory or even to initiate the new kid into the group. Why bother? seems to be the attitude, it isnt as if the gang is emotionally tied anyway. While the other boys dont seem to realize as much what is missing in their lives, Trevor reflects the same sort of unease shown by Joe in Fight Club. Like Joe, he uses violence as a means of creating a connection with other male figures and to make himself feel alive again. It is only in carrying out their violent plan to destroy something beautiful that they begin to feel the sense of living theyve been seeking as well as the sense of brotherhood they hadnt realized they were missing. The process of rejecting consumer culture to achieve a sense of being alive isnt complete, though, until something truly valuable is lost. In Fight Club, it is Tyler who discovers there is a rush of feeling to be found in being close to death after receiving a brutal beating from Lou, the owner of the bar above the fight clubs basement. He feels this discovery is significant enough that he gives all the men an assignment to go out and lose a fight, deliberately giving up their newfound sense of power gained through their participation in the club. Strangely, they discover that in making the choice to lose, they are able to embrace their emotions and reclaim their manhood while still remaining connected to other men. Eventually, the clubs develop a faction called ‘Project Mayhem’ dedicated to fighting against capitalism and its deadening effects. Jimmy learns how to lose when Plato is shot, an event that forces him to realize that violence can be taken too far. The boys lose the house next door, and likely their play lot, as a result of their destructive behavior, but they gain the ability to make their own mark on the world and a closer connection to each other. Consumer culture insists that we find our worth through the material things we surround ourselves with, but characters throughout these stories demonstrate the same kind of dissociation and emptiness many men feel in todays world. Unable to form meaningful connections with the objects were supposed to desire, the only safe connection with another man is characterized by violence. Through this violence, men are able to connect with their emotions and begin to see their way clear. By illustrating this process in their own unique ways, Fight Club, Rebel Without a Cause, and "The Destructors" all demonstrate something significant about the mindset of men in todays consumer culture. Works Cited de Botton, Alain. “Status Anxiety.” London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004, (p. 314). Print. Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter. Art Linson Productions, 1999. Film. Greene, Graham. "The Destructors." Print. Kasser, Tim and Kanner, Allen. Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2004. Print. Minkoff, Eddie. Cars as Humans: Why We Personify Vehicles. Stanford University, (June 5, 2002). Print. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print. Rebel Without a Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Perf. James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1955. Film. Read More