The suicide playfully expresses further contradiction from it's own message, which is further expressed with how strange it is that Norton survives it and that Marla is suddenly there. It's meant to poke fun at the "happy ending" notion that movies go for, followed by an edited in picture of a huge dick much like his edits into popular Disney films during his career as a projectionist. The placement of said dick for the movie wasn't meant to just be a reminder of a past scene, it's placement after said happy ending is intentionally related.
You ought to check the book. While I've yet to finish it myself from constant distractions forcing me to abandon it and start over at a later point, it makes elements of the movie seem far more blatant. The movie even references scenes in the book that they skip over from time to time, such as Norton skipping over some of Tyler's restaurant career with a single comment meant to tickle those who already knew it.
Interestingly, the movie chooses to display Norton's character as a calm, deadpan sort of character in an attempt to hide the reveal and push the notion of unreliable narration further, while the book shows how batshit he is immediately and repeatedly. The movie had to tone it down to get the message across in it's own way, while the book shows Tyler at points to be not too far off from a babbling madman who coasts on raw charisma whenever he's not focusing on something related to philosophical art. Remember, this is a guy who lives off of a single hour of sleep a night... at most.
There's some who believe that Marla is another figment of his mind much like Tyler, and I'm inclined to believe it based on her presentation. The only ones seen directly interacting with her are related to Project Mayhem, aka people who fully understand that he's insane and have been told that discussing it with anyone is against the rules. The only time that they even directly interact with her like she actually exists is right after he shoots himself in the head. Come on.
Much like Tyler, she lives in a place that isn't accounted for, eats food that doesn't belong to her, sells clothes that aren't her own, and appears at the times that are most inconvenient to him. She even crosses busy traffic and no one vears out of the way, beeps their horn, and she never even seems to be at risk of getting hit. Sure they mask that as her being confident in her own form of idealized englightenment from Norton's view of what that means, but the story also chooses to use the same style of dropping hints with Brad. No one even asks the obvious question of if she's in the wrong place for the "Testicular Cancer" meeting, in fact, no one talks to her at all besides Norton. She in many ways is as close as his fucked up brain can muster for a sense of conscience (as is expressed by her being in the self-help meetings as a means of making him disgusted with himself through mere self-demonstration), and the two are never present at the same time (Brad wants Marla ignorant of his existence since she'd aim to show him the truth). He even goes as far as to compare the two of them to his own mommy/daddy issues, a common indicator of crazy if I've ever heard it.
It also strikes me as no coincidence that the three of them reflect the same levels of intelligence and interests, while the rest of the setting are very different people who show less capability for thought and personal freedom. This story is through his eyes, not the world's.
i dont mean this as an insult or in reference to the jacking off into condoms thing, but i get the sense you relate pretty strongly to norton
which kinda then follows what youve read between the lines. i dont see it as anarchy 101, but i do think the comment on consumerism was more than incedental. your focus on the characters psychology seems a bit personal. but im open to being wrong
I relate to some of the disorders (schizophrenia, insomnia, and hyperarousal), the appreciation of others' sickness and suffering (his self-help phase), and some elements of the surface level philosophy, but the deeper shit I am thankful to say I am not interested in from being a similar sort of victim. The writing style also speaks in a language that I relate to more strongly with the movie being closer to how I speak normally and the book closer to how I end up speaking at times during episodes. I see the potential for me to devolve into something like that, which is haunting, but I wouldn't go as far as to say I'm projecting traits onto him. In short, I do relate somewhat to Norton's character, but the version of him that I relate to is simply who he is before Brad and Marla step into the picture. It's more about the traits he possesses and the presentation more than seeing him like some sort of long lost twin.
The story of Fight Club has been dug into by numerous people, and much of what I've found I saw further down the line was seen by more than just myself. It's a well written piece of work that I have down as one of my favorites, so I've spent a lot of time investing in it since it's shown itself to be worth the trouble. I am a big fan of stories with unreliable narrators centered around disorders from the amount of subtext and questions they carry, and Fight Club has shown itself to be a supersaturated, highly informative, and pleasantly crude variant of it when compared to something lighter and fluffier like Donnie Darko. When a story shrouds what's going on and chooses not to answer every question within it, while most people hate that lack of "completeness" I find myself somewhat obsessed with it.
He comments on consumerism because of what his job was, because of what his life was. He was in charge of insurance for a corrupt company, keeping quiet on awful things that served to shake the bottle that is his life, a restaurant employee who saw needlessly hedonistic behaviors that he'd subconsciously direct towards himself overtime, a projectionist who was made to sit through optimistic lies that magnified how fake the world appeared to him, and sold soap made from the fat of the very hedonists he hated. Give him a different society with different jobs and he'd have crafted his Anarchistic expression of Existential Crisis around that instead. For his core self at the start, he desired comfort, completeness, and some aspects of conformity (what he refers to has The Ikea Nesting Instinct, a common desire for people with disorders that's also expressed in films like American Psycho), so regardless of where he'd be he'd eventually lash out at society as a means of channeling his self-loathing at others. Consumerism is his excuse for his own poor choices, and Project Mayhem served as a way to convince himself that he was in the right through the affirmation and back pats of outraged, easily manipulated, trapped adrenaline junkies.
I also focus strongly on the psychology of it because I focus strongly on the psychology of everything. It's my lens of understanding that's formed collectively from all of my interests when combined. I can't avoid it since my entire skill set, base of interests, and understanding of how life functions is built around it.
A lot of it's a load of pseudo-philosophical crock that expresses more about the founder and somewhat the state of their little corner of society than his/her patients, but it still serves as a dictionary of sorts. I tend to err closer to Behaviorism, and I enjoy being a collector (and mapper) of other people's experiences and tendencies.
My interests stem into the psychology of art (the psychological impacts of color, focal point control, the power of expressions, how it can be used for advertising tactics, etc), how word choice and delivery impacts the reader/listener, both the forefront and behind-the-scenes of movies, games, and books to further attempt to understand the author's mind and why it affects it's viewers as it does, I've done a significant amount of theater, I enjoy micro-expressional studies, my philosophies tend to follow how people are more mechanical than spiritual, and my own abnormal psychology created a young age semi-desperate need to understand people so that I could function within society, which also paved the way for meeting a variety of other abnormal minds that down the line gave me an interest in them. Even when it comes to the bedroom, I am interested in the connection between personality and experience with the kinks they carry since they all must root from something.
Alongside psychology itself, all of my interests listed above (and the many others I'm likely forgetting) in some way root to trying to understand what causes chain reactions in people and what constitutes their inner schematics. What began as my means of trying to understand life has become passive enough to feel now like more of an obsessive hobby. It's fun to map the similarities and differences so that, given enough time, comparisons when made can both make it feel like I understand/relate to them and/or creep a person out for how well they are pre-understood. Theater has also helped at points with knowing what displays are more likely to get me what I'm after, and through that I've crafted much of my personality. I'm a creature of analysis and fear, so this sort of thing plays into my needs quite well.
"my philosophies tend to follow how people are more mechanical than spiritual"
not sure i agree with that. maybe at a really basic, template level, but we're all working with different wiring. expierience alters how people maneifest even fundamentaley human behaviors and emotions until theyre almost unrecognizable. like smiling when angry, laughing when sad etc.
and the way those are altered isnt mechanical eiether. that bein said, i dont think "spiritual" apllies any more than mehcanical. ive always seen people (and forgive the weird analogy but i dont have a better one) as starting out with a kinda cobweb of neural pathways that gets blown around and warped in the wind, so its adaptive to whatever turbulence a person has encountered in the past, but not so adaptive whhen things settle down. if that makes any sense. like how people with PTSD sometimes have reflex behaviors that might have saved their life in a traumatic situation, but are out of place when the trauma is absent. i kinda think everyone has a degree of that.
"Theater has also helped at points with knowing what displays are more likely to get me what I'm after, and through that I've crafted much of my personality."
never heard of anyone doing that haha. do you think you have an inate one underneath? i always kinda figured your stuck with the personality you were born with, but thats obviously a laymans understanding
no wonder you like this place, with a hobby like that :D
again, dyslexics nightmare, but i think i follow what your saying. and i think i agree with what the consumerism stood for beyond the blatant comment
gotta say though, im not sure i get the appeal of psychology. seems frustratingly inexact.
probly no more inexact than others ways of seeing the world, like taking everything more or less at face value. but at least you dont know thats inexact until it hits you in retrospect :D
"Somewhat, but at the same time there are some universal tells that stick around and flash into vision for a fraction of a second or longer. It's more that experience adds layers onto it as opposed to outright changing it. "
do you have an exameple? seems like conjecture otherwise
"It's who I am underneath for the most part since I learned theater during my formative years (plus the people around me were both smart and crazy, but older posts elaborate more on that so I won't bother with it here). Beyond that, people I date tend to see a little more of me than others, but I also don't really hide nearly as much of who I am from people these days."
that's cool though. any reason for the shit? (of hiding yourself less) or just never really did to begin with?