Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

Meditating on the Trickster: Tyler Durden in Fight Club

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Matt Stone

2005-11-03

Lately I have been meditating on the archetype of the trickster and today it brought to mind one of my favourite trickster characters – Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club:

I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

Excuse me for quoting profanity but I very much identify with this rant. When I first saw the Fight Club some years ago with a couple of Christian mates I was blown away. Tyler Durden seemed to channel both Anton LaVey and Jesus Christ all in the one conflicted paradoxical character: a maverick who upends society and shatters our sophoric superficiality. I don’t know whether to love him or fear him.

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3 responses to “Meditating on the Trickster: Tyler Durden in Fight Club”

Andii Bowsher

2005-11-04

They say that as you get older you get less radical. Reading that quote made me aware that while I would have intellectually agreed with it 20 years ago, now I viscerally agree with it! Thanks. I see why one of my mates is so impressed with fight club. I must get to see it, obviously.
Btw. thanks for adding AbbeyNous to your Christian Protestant links. I should say that, as an Anglican, I only recognise ‘protestant’ as a self designation if it means non-RC! 🙂

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Whitewave

2005-11-13

Oh, bless you! Now the Trickster has been redeemed for me. I never understood him until now. Thank you, thank you!
“Tyler Durden seemed to channel both Anton LaVey and Jesus Christ all in the one conflicted paradoxical character: a maverick who upends society and shatters our sophoric superficiality.”
ROFL
And in a very subversive move, I say, God, bless Anton LaVey. Like Nietzsche, he was a necessary correction. And I’m totally okay with no one being happy about me saying that. Totally.

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Matt Stone

2005-11-13

If you want to explore the trickster archetype more you may find the wikipedia article of interest then. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
As it states, the trickster is a rule breaker, and somewhat ambiguous, but can take on heroic dimentions in many folk mythologies.
Of course, one disappointment I have with the wiki article is it fails to mention Jesus as the Christian trickster character par excellence. Some of the earliest christus victor atonement theologies featured Jesus as ‘tricking’ the devil into over extending himself by way of the cross. And of course you can’t go past the way Jesus interacted with the sages of his day, showing up their pretentions by playing the fool.
Speaking of which, are you aware that A E Waite, the creator of the Rider-Waite tarot, noted that The Fool card out of the major arcana represents a prince of the other realms who goes unrecognised in ours. There are some deep symbolic reasonance between the fool in the major arcana and Jesus of Nazareth.
As for Anton LeVey, you may want to check out some of the articles of my mate John Smulo at Sacred Tribes. You’d be hard put to find a more authoritative source such Nietzschian Individualists. I think I know where your coming from with those comments even though they’re very loaded.

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