How to Misunderstand Masculinity - The Matrix & Fight Club

[Music] the matrix and fight club are perhaps two of the most misunderstood films of all time i'm by no means the first person to discuss how they've been co-opted by incels and the alt-right the quote-unquote red pill code for breaking free from feminist thought obviously takes this name from the iconic scene when morpheus offers neo a choice to remain in the simulation or break free from it while tyler durden the nihilistic monologue reciting character played by brad pitt has been deified into the blueprint for the ideal alpha male one way or another both of these films have been turned into symbols for the concept of reclaiming one's masculinity in the current online climate yet the oddest part is that the creators behind both movies actually intended their stories to counter heteronormative masculinity rather than embrace it the wachowski sisters who both came out as trans women following the film's release have publicly discussed how the matrix was actually meant to be an allegory for being transgender and the simulation that is being broken free from is the binary of gender roles chuck palahniuk the author of fight club has said that his story was intended to be satire rather than encourage toxic masculinity paulo nick wanted it to caution against the neo-fascist reality of what happens when men feel that they have no other outlet for their anger than violent anarchy the self-destructive nature of fight club was meant to be obvious since the narrator and tyler durden spoiler alert share one body so when they fight our protagonist is quite literally punching himself in the face but nonetheless despite the best intentions of these creators fight club and the matrix have somehow been embraced as champion symbols of masculinity when i log on to youtube there seems to be a growing trend of videos that advocate for rejecting modernity and embracing masculinity these videos are basically all identical in format they start with a disillusioned loner who is seemingly broken down by the current condition of men then shifts into a montage of men doing some sort of conventionally manly activity like working out or playing sports or serving in the military this is usually accompanied by a clip of joe rogan or jordan peterson talking about how young men today are being feminized and somehow aren't what they used to be but the problem is in this society male energy male thinking male 1 is vilified so that's my idea of the patriarchy which is a system of male dominance of society yeah but that's not my sense of the patriarchy so what's yours well in what sense is our society male dominated when i looked at the comment section it became clear that for the guys who find solace in these kinds of videos this community means more to them than just self-help motivation something deeper is happening in this embrace masculinity movement in this essay i want to analyze what exactly is the void that these men are trying to fill with this red-pilled propaganda and explore how the matrix and fight club were inadvertently a catalyst for this movement in a way that extends beyond the realm of cinematic fantasy and enters the realm of spirituality before diving deep into these two films of 1999 it is important to go back even further the 1980s particularly the reagan era of american film following the introspection of post-vietnam films in the 1970s hollywood in the 1980s tried to appeal to the idea of the everyman with heroes that were meant to be normal yet also hyper masculine films like raiders of the lost ark and die hard convey to audiences that an ordinary off-duty cop or an archaeology professor could be just as conventionally manly as action legends of yore like john wayne or sean connery with big muscles and even bigger guns these action films of the reagan era displayed masculinity or more specifically white masculinity in all its glory and were able to appeal to the narratives of american exceptionalism that reagan advocated for however in the 1990s the landscape of masculinity began to evolve the country had a democratic president and our traditional notions surrounding gender roles were starting to change the brazen white masculinity that was expressed in films like 1980s wall street started to feel more antiquated than triumphant and the gordon geckos of hollywood looked more like an office employee with glasses and a briefcase the matrix and fight club perfectly represent this 90s version of the everyman character with the cubicle workplace being integral to both stories both neo and the narrator hate their corporate office jobs you believe that you are special but somehow the rules do not apply to you obviously you are mistaken make a managerial decision you find this what would you do inviting the viewer to not just share in their disdain for the corporate hierarchy but for the capitalist system overall when someone becomes just another cog in the machine it's easy to lose sight of a greater purpose in his theory on secularization sociologist max weber described secular modernity to be a corollary of the inevitable disenchantment of the world according to him the religious fantasy that once guided society is now replaced by empirical evidence logical deduction and bureaucratic rationality a key component of the late 90s office culture thus we are introduced to the idea of the post-secular coined by german philosopher jurgen habermas post-secularism isn't so much the return to religion as it is using religion as a lens to critique the flawed system of modernity it seeks to offer re-enchantment of some kind to an otherwise disenchanted culture and in the case of the matrix and fight club the re-enchantment that's being depicted is achieved through masculine transformation by applying this framework of the post-secular to these two films i think we can really begin to unravel what exactly is taking place in regard to how their depictions of masculinity are being perceived in the matrix thomas anderson is a quiet programmer for a software company in fight club the narrator is an introverted automobile recall coordinator who suffers from insomnia to cope with the monotony of their white-collar jobs both protagonists create an alter ego thomas anderson uses the alias neo when he commits cyber crimes as a hacker in his free time while the narrator subconsciously develops a dissociative personality called tyler durden who embodies everything that our protagonist wants to be all the ways you wish you could be that's me not only do neo and tyler durden represent the repressed fantasies of thomas anderson and the narrator but they also engage with the heteronormative fantasies of the male viewer watching these films this is what ultimately distinguishes these two films from the various other ones released in 1999 that are also about unhappy cubicle jobs though the male viewer may find relatability in the struggles of peter gibbons from office space or craig schwartz from being john malkovich at the end of the day they don't want to be these characters who they want to be is neo and tyler durden through an epiphany of some kind both the narrator and thomas experience a transformation that propels them into the lives they always wanted to live the manifestations of neo and tyler durden are appealing to the men who idolize them because these characters are framed as basically religious saviors who have found the path to spiritual enlightenment this is pretty clear in the matrix with neo's character being uh not so subtle representation of jesus christ you're my savior man my own personal jesus christ he's a prophesized messiah he dies only to be later resurrected and his name is literally an anagram for the one the matrix adds a gnostic christian twist to the classic hero's journey of the chosen one in gnosticism the ultimate problem for humanity isn't sin but rather it's our ignorance neo's journey is more complex than just destroying a ring or defeating an empire neo's mission isn't just to save mankind physically but mentally neo can't just tell us the truth because we have to be led to the truth this has become the main strategy of the manosphere where rather than trying to force their toxicity onto unwilling men they lure men to their quote-unquote truth by spoon-feeding toxicity under the guise of positivity but more in this later while definitely less overt in its religious themes than the matrix fight club also engages with the notion of god and enlightenment which on the surface one might chalk up to just shallow nihilism i have to consider the possibility that god does not like you never wanted you in all probability he hates you but when we begin to look more closely at the film there is undoubtedly a deeper connection to religious belief than one might assume while neo the hyper masculine messiah of the human race can be compared to jesus christ i would argue that similarities can be drawn between tyler durden and the buddha similar to the traditional story of siddhartha gautama the narrator starts his journey in a life of affluence and privilege only to wrestle with the lack of fulfillment that this life provides in buddhism the concept of duga or suffering is largely attributed to material attachment and the dissatisfaction that comes from it only through tyler durden and his ideology of anti-consumerism is the narrator able to free himself from this cycle of suffering it's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything framing these characters as enlightened religious figures offers better insight as to why their legacy has been so embraced by men's rights groups years later like i discussed these films are by no means the first to feature a hyper masculine leading man however the unique appeal of neo and tyler durden is that they are seen as the only men who know the path to spiritual fulfillment with neo being a quasi-jesus and tyler durden being a quasi-buddha we are shown that their eyes are open to a truth no one else but them can see they've liberated themselves from the literal and metaphorical simulations that they were both trapped in and achieved a spiritual state that men throughout history have spent lifetimes trying to reach their minds are free but the danger of identifying too closely with this obsession of freeing your mind is that for these fictional men freeing their mind is only achieved through masculine violence both films tell us that the thing standing in the way of our spiritual fulfillment isn't so much a single person as it is society itself therefore violence against society is justified if you want to find inner peace in the matrix morpheus explicitly says this to neo that system is our enemy when you're inside you look around what do you see businessmen teachers lawyers carpenters the very minds of the people we are trying to save but until we do these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy through these words we the viewer are led to believe that we don't need to feel any remorse for the killing of the ordinary people in this simulation because as innocuous as they may seem they are all a part of the system a system that must be destroyed by any means necessary and in today's world the idea of men embracing this mindset could not be more harmful in fight club the idea of violence as a tool that is both cathartic and necessary is even more central to the plot however the violence we see here serves a much different purpose than it does in the matrix the men in fight club aren't banding together to stop an army of ai machines or evil agents nor are there slow motion bullet time effects to stylize the action no the violence we see in fight club is intended to be somewhat realistic as the members of a club try to find purpose and reclaim their oppressed manhood by consensually beating one another up so in a paradoxical way they are trying to fight back against society by fighting themselves at one point in the film tyler durden delivers one of many monologues to the alienated men of the club and says for the middle children of history man no purpose a place we have no great war no great depression our great war is a spiritual war our great depression is our lives this speech perfectly encapsulates the optimistic complacency of the late 20th century where the neo-liberal models of democracy and capitalism were thought to be so effective that a notion of a war on the horizon seemed impossible as a result the members of fight club belonged to a generation of young men who felt aimless without a war to define their lives durden's philosophy of masculinity and violence offered spiritual purpose in an otherwise secular age devoid of any direction the spiritual war that durden is referencing is one where testosterone-fueled virility fills the void that was once filled by organized religion without it the men that he is addressing are left adrift until ultimately the sweaty basement of fight club becomes metaphorically their new church and of course rather than show their spiritual devotion to this quote-unquote new church through prayer they can only show it through brutal violence this is the false promise of post-secular masculinity as men we're told that the old world has failed us the systems designed by governments and world leaders have left us without a real purpose or mission for our lives they've buried something within us something that we need so if society won't give us back what we need then we as men are told that we have to take it back again i want to make it clear that i don't think either of these movies intended to condone this toxic message nor am i under the misconception that a search for a higher purpose is exclusively a white male phenomenon regardless of your race and gender identity it is likely that a part of you can relate to how thomas anderson and the narrator feel at the beginning of their journeys unfulfilled aimless and disenchanted many of us share an apathetic disdain for the secular late-stage capitalist system that defines american culture there is nothing wrong whatsoever with critiquing the system the system should be critiqued but the problem is that this critique is almost exclusively told through the subjectivity of white men there is a growing trend online of guys praising the films that depict the archetype of the downtrodden white male these men are misunderstood by society and their only escape is violence these films themselves are not at fault in fact most of them could be considered masterpieces of cinema just like i would argue for the matrix and fight club but what these movies do unfortunately perpetuate albeit in most cases inadvertently is the notion that for white men it is justified to find your transcendent purpose by violently taking out your anger on the society that is supposedly oppressing you with the number of mass shootings on the rise in this country there has never been a more relevant time to discuss what happens when masculine angst is left untreated that is why it has never been more important for us to truly dismantle the co-opting of these films into the manosphere to the young men watching this video who feel alienated and angry i understand the allure of viewing this notion of reinvention through masculinity as the key to somehow solving all your problems but i promise you tyler durden is not your savior neither is neo or joe rogan or jordan peterson or andrew tate or any man who spreads the idea that becoming an alpha male is how you find spiritual fulfillment though their co-opting of the matrix and fight club by toxic men operates under the pretense of trying to change the hegemonies of american society and rage against the system their misinterpretation ultimately does more to reinforce the status quo rather than dismantle it this is something we need to make more young men in this generation aware of only then may our minds actually be free [Music]

Channel: Objective Opinions

Views: 20,435

Keywords: joe rogan

Id: wigKAJke1Is

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2022