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Heroic film deaths! (Might contain FILM ****SPOILERS*****)
Jedit:
--- Quote from: Tergon ---In the end, the narrator killed Tyler to regain control over his own life, and then consciously took over Tyler's role as leader of Project Mayhem.
Heroic?
--- End quote ---
You're forgetting that the narrator was Tyler Durden. People keep telling me that at the end of the movie he's killed when the building he was in explodes - thus the crumble-cut at the end - but I don't recall the bomb ever being reconnected.
qtownstegy:
The Brave Little Toaster when he jumped into the gears to save his master.
Querky I know, but still.
Tergon:
--- Quote from: Jedit ---
You're forgetting that the narrator was Tyler Durden. People keep telling me that at the end of the movie he's killed when the building he was in explodes - thus the crumble-cut at the end - but I don't recall the bomb ever being reconnected.
--- End quote ---
No, they weren't really the same person. They shared a body, but they had distinct seperate identities, which was what caused all the trouble. Being the dominant personality, Tyler was able to take control when he wanted to, but he and the narrator had different minds and personalities within the same brain.
Tyler's "death" was more of a symbolic death when the narrator destroyed the Tyler's persona. But for all intents and purposes, the narrator-personality killed the Tyler-personality.
Anyway, that's beside the point. As far as a heroic death goes, Tyler still fails. Either you're right and Tyler never died, or I'm right and he didn't die heroically. The result's the same, so far as this thread's concerned.
Jedit:
--- Quote from: Tergon ---Being the dominant personality, Tyler was able to take control when he wanted to,
--- End quote ---
Pitt-Tyler wasn't the dominant personality, or even a second personality at all. He was a dissociative hallucination.
Remember when Bob tells Norton-Tyler that people say Tyler Durden only sleeps one hour a night? It's absolutely true - because Tyler never stopped being an insomniac. What happened was that Tyler's stress-related insomnia drove him nuts and he became violent (if you think this sounds stupid, think again; I've been there myself). He then created an imaginary friend - Pitt-Tyler - to disassociate himself from the violent acts, and false memories of himself sleeping or observing Pitt-Tyler to explain to himself what he was doing at those times.
However, the conflict between what he was doing and his social programming only served to increase his stress and feed his insomnia. It became an endless and escalating cycle: he'd try expiating his stress through violence, become more stressed because of the consequences of the violence, and have to do something more extreme to try and get rid of the increased stress level. Eventually he reached the point of planning to blow up the buildings, and went into complete denial. That's when Pitt-Tyler disappeared.
This is all a lot more clear in the movie than it is in the book. In the book, "Pitt-Tyler" says they're not two separate men but also treats "Norton-Tyler" as a separate individual. In the movie he spells it out on two occasions:
"People do it everyday, they talk to themselves... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."
"All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look; I fuck like you wanna fuck. I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not."
Emphasis mine on that second quote. In other words, Pitt-Tyler not only looks like Norton-Tyler wants to look and fucks like he wants to fuck - he says what Tyler wants to say and does what Tyler wants to do. Ultimately, though, they are one person and Tyler is only battling against the demons of his own worse nature.
Tergon:
That's a good argument, but there's one important flaw in it.
Norton-Tyler saw himself as a seperate entity from Pitt-Tyler.
Norton-Tyler did create Pitt-Tyler as a defense mechanism, it's true. The existence of Pitt-Tyler was solely to justify Norton-Tyler's breakdown by "making it someone else's fault," as it were.
However, Norton-Tyler didn't consciously create Pitt-Tyler with that intention. So far as his conscious mind went, this was all new and confusing stuff. Furthermore, when called by the name "Tyler Durten" he became massively confused - suggesting that this was not, in fact, Norton-Tyler's real name.
What this gets into is the real nitty-gritty of existential crisis: "If I don't think I exist, do I really exist?" Norton-Tyler believes that he exists as a seperate entity to Pitt-Tyler. Furthermore, he was the original persona - Pitt-Tyler didn't create *him*. So, since he's the original and he believes that he is a seperate entity... well, for all intents and purposes within their shared head, he IS a seperate entity. That's the very basis of Multiple Personality Disorder - two or more completely seperate consciousnesses co-existing within the one mind.
Leading up to Project Mayhem's great plot, Norton-Tyler began to realise the truth about his relationship with Pitt-Tyler, and react to it. It quickly became obvious that he couldn't simply reject Pitt-Tyler any more; that persona had become far too powerful to be killed.
This is what I meant by Pitt-Tyler being the dominant persona. He was aware of their split-personality nature, and being aware of it allowed him to access Norton-Tyler's mind and forcibly take control of their body.
However, Norton-Tyler began to figure out how to do that for himself, as shown when he deactivated the bomb in the back of the van. By the time of the climax, Norton-Tyler accepted what had happened in his life and began to regain his role as the dominant persona. At this instant, he accepted who he was - and consquently, Pitt-Tyler was no longer needed. The defence mechanism wasn't necessary any more, which was what allowed Norton-Tyler to "kill" Pitt-Tyler and re-merge their minds.
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