The Hallmark Channel’s programming line-up left me with a lot of questions. Thankfully, their card store answered all of them.
“No Fear, No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter, truly slide.”
One of the films that’s made the most impact on me is Fight club. There’s a lot of reasons it’s in my top five favourites, but mainly the message spoke to me.
You may wonder how a story of anarchy and anti-commercialism and male identity speak to a girl from South Carolina? Those are definitely important pieces to Fight Club, but there are fragments of the story and characters that resonate with a broader audience.
What is so compelling about Fight Club, and Tyler Durden himself, is his unabashed drive for purpose. Tyler Durden is a charasmatic character himself, drawing the modern man into his cult circle of The Self. The film is really about a revolution of nihilism, similar in breadth in meaning to V for Vendetta and many films to follow.
However, there’s a story, hidden beneath the guns, blood and corporate destruction about and fighting for the self…basically, fighting FOR YOU.
The scene that strikes this point the best is one entitled “Human Sacrifice”. Tyler and the narrator go to a run-down little convenience store, one that every town in America probably has. He pulls the store clerk, an insignificant man by the name of Ramond K. Hassell, into the alley behind his store, then proceeds to ask him some odd questions.
Fight Club from Joon on Vimeo.
The whole exchange seems completely insane, but really it’s the genius of Durden’s approach; by threatening the store clerk with death as the only alternative, the man’s ultimately pushed to pursue what he really wants to do with his life.
I often think of this scene, and wonder… if someone put the gun to the back of my head and gave me the same ultimatum, how much more would I accomplish? How much daily life garbage, second guessing, and self-defeatest bullcrap gets in the way of what we can accomplish as people? We may think what we want to do most is survive; we must keep our nose to the grindstone and make a living.
Although it’s admirable and rational, I honestly believe most people wish to make an impact in the world, an impact that is solely yours, before dying. People that sacrifice convenience, human comfort, are often the greatest examples of human beings. Tyler knew that, and he knew the most visceral way to illustrate the value of life is to put it in danger (even tho it was a bluff).
The next time you put aside your goals and dreams for the status quo, for the sake of the immediate and the comfortable, ask yourself this: “Would you rather be dead?”
As an anime nerd, I have spent a good part of my life trying to pull fellow nerds into my own fandom. Sometimes it works, but often-times fellow nerds are put off by the odd taste you must acquire in order to enjoy the genre. Sweatdrops, panty shots, etc, etc. It can be extremely off-putting and alienate most notable comic book nerds.
In turn, anime has flirted with the superhero genre, but not in the full American form. I could rattle off a score of “heroes” in anime… Sailor Moon, Guyver, The Big O, but the American tradition, the superhero’s altrusitic mission and moral highground, are often built upon a solidly Japanese foundation.
This year, the japanese animation studio Sunrise released a summer series entitled Tiger & Bunny. Although the name conjures images of PBS-friendly cartoons, the actual show is a successful marriage of anime and the American superhero archetype.
I’m bummed out that Halloween is going to be on a Monday this year. Although it’s been a long time since I was (legally) able to trick-or-treat, Halloween parties and the like have given me more reasons to celebrate this holiday I once considered reserved for kids.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack, a date we would like to put away as a capsulated horror.
Even ten years ago, we lived in an era of complete media immersion. Fragmented memories will be brought back to life today with replayed footage, fleshing out the gruesome images that weren’t suitable for the oldest of Americans at the time, let alone children who couldn’t escape it.
In a way, I wanted to skip today and stay in bed and keep those memories as faded as possible. However, I can’t turn away from the fact that September 11th, 2001 was a day that affected me, my life, and my choices.
On September 11th, 2001, it was a Tuesday. I was doing homework in the administrative lobby at my high school. Between reading lines of Beowulf, I heard the vague words, “a plane crashed into a building” from the front desk. The event didn’t really register until the other counselors and teachers began repeating the same thing, now more urgent, louder. I asked what was going on, but the information hadn’t broken into a public experience, merely people talking to one another about the same event in isolated conversations.
A girl came into the lobby. I don’t remember her name, but I did know she was a classmate. Crying, she ducked into one of the counselors’ offices. A few seconds later, out again, back into the recesses of the principal’s office. I overheard the lady at the front desk say that her father worked in the World Trade Center.
What had happened still didn’t register until I left for my class. Every room had a TV propped in the corner of their rooms, but rarely were they ever put on unless it was to watch reruns of Bill Nye The Science Guy or some other educational programming. The TV’s in every room were lit up, showing the same broken geometric image; two buildings, smoking, still, panicked voice-overs.
My math teacher let us watch it for only a few minutes before class started. He shut off the TV and, somehow, taught us algebra. At the time, maybe he didn’t realize the severity of what was happening. Maybe he just wanted to keep us calm. I’m really not sure.
The rest of the day is wiped out by TV images, and the birth of the crawling ticker text we find normal nowadays. Later I felt overwhelming fear; I would wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, mistaking the sound of my table fan for the roar of plane engines.
I would feel helpless and isolated in England a few years later when a sudden terror alert questioned my safety in returning home.
…and then there was the choice I made to take Intro to Islamic Civilization in college, to learn just why all this happened. By the end of the class, I didn’t have an answer, but I at least understood the Middle East a little better than the fragmentary education the nightly news gave me.
There are probably other countless tremors that September 11th ran through the course of my life; the economic, political, and social ramifications will be contested and argued for a long time to come. However, in this instance when the United States, and even the world, struggles to understand how to mourn and what to take away from what has happened and what we’ve accomplished in 10 years passing, these are the only truths I can really offer today.
Let us never forget, but also be willing to learn.
-Em
Earlier this week I recieved an e-mail featuring a plethora of freaky shoes. I thought they were well worth sharing… enjoy!
Happy birthday to my one-and-only big sister! Names have been redacted to protect the innocent, but it is her 30th birthday!
Happy birthday, sis! I hope it’s a great one.
-Em
Nearly two years since the sting of the September 2009 recession, the government released a jobs report with mournful news; we’re not out of the woods yet, and we probably won’t be for a long time.
September 2009 sticks out in my mind like a sore thumb; at the crack of the US economy, I was busy writing relevant articles about what clients and agents could do to fight personal effects of the stock market plunge. The Theorhetic became reality when I myself lost a job.
For a long time, I felt like a complete failure. Not a year earlier, I was fresh out of college with a bachelor’s in English and the road before me was free and clear. It only took a few months to land the perfect job that would surely lead to my lifetime career.
Less than a year after that, I dragged my feet back to my hometown, packed all the things from my North Carolina apartment into a 5×9 storage unit, and picked up residence at my parents’ house. I hadn’t lived there since I was in technical college, but thankfully my parents are wonderful, supportive people, and did everything they could do to help me get back on my feet.
It wasn’t until I returned home that I began to realize everyone my age was back living at home. Suddenly the taboo stereotype of living in your mom’s basement was a reality for 90% of my peers. These people weren’t sponges either; all of us had recieved some type of education past high school, wheither it be a 4-year or technical college.
