Instead of tackling the whole subject all at once, let’s widdle it down to a few of my favorite characters and see what we can understand about them and what they represent.
Patrick Bateman - (American Psycho) - 2000
An existential psychopath, Patrick Bateman isn’t a character you’d expect many to identify closely with, or is it the exact opposite? The raging serial killer struggles to keep his mask of sanity in a seemingly insane world that corrodes his mind and sense of identity.
Conformity is the word of the day when it comes to this film and it is the biggest theme of the movie. Reflected through 80’s yuppie culture, everyone talks the same, walks the same, pretends to have the same values, and especially obsesses over their social status/materialistic prowess.
All of this creates a burning sense of hollowness in our main character along with alienation. His peers view him as a dork and he seemingly has no spot to fit in, which is what he wants most in the world.
While pretending to care about the homeless and world peace, Patrick simultaneously goes on a killing spree across the underbelly of Manhattan. This world reflects an automatized one with an obsession of image over individual.
Patrick wants to escape, he wants meaning in a seemingly meaningless world, he has no purpose, nothing bigger than himself, and no connections. All in all, he’s a true American Psychopath.
Tyler Durden - (Fight Club) - 1999
Like Patrick Bateman, Tyler Durden A.K.A the Narrator struggles with the monotony of post-modernism and the pleasures of conformity. In Tyler’s own words, everyone is a “copy of a copy”.
To fight against this, the Narrator searches for some form of connection to help cure him of his insomnia. He finds just that in various group meetings involved with testicular cancer patients, sickle cell anemia patients, and so on and so forth. Tyler feeds off their emotion like a parasite, something he lacks in his nine-to-five life until Marla Singer ruins everything.
In response, the Narrator creates Tyler Durden, a hyper-masculine version of himself which turns the focus on a crisis of masculinity in post-modernism. The men that join Fight Club are all struggling with-- y’know what, I’ll let Tyler explain; “I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, and advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy sh*t 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 is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've all been raised by 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.”
Most importantly, Tyler too deals with a sense of alienation, a meaningless world, and a lack of connection.
Officer K - (Bladerunner 2049) - 2017
A replicant who believes he is without a soul, Officer K tracks down others of his kind and “retires” them. K is especially looked down upon and alienated in his world, he is viewed as something other than human, more like a machine.
His world is completely artificial with mankind having completely lost its connection with nature, so badly that real trees are something of a myth. It is again this automatized and artificial world that grows a hollow emptiness in our protagonist.
He yearns for connection, to have meaning, to be “human”, and most importantly to have a soul. Joi, his artificial girlfriend is what he settles for in finding this, but a hologram that tells you everything you want to hear is far from an authentic relationship.
It’s widely known that male suicide rates have been on the rise for a long time. Can the popularity of these characters amongst an internet community of 99.9% Men give a better insight into what’s going on?
Probably not, humans are far too complex to ever truly understand, but I do think that these characters’ similarities are a piece of the equation.
Every single one of these characters shares the following traits:
Loneliness
Lack of Meaning
Conformity/Oppression of self
Existential dread
Depression
I think the rising popularity of these stories reflects a lot on the current state of men and their place in society. In today’s world of postmodernism, things are as comfortable and collective as ever. A lot of people have somewhat turned into drones for whatever political party they belong to and obsess over their public image via things such as social media.
Social media promotes the idea that having others view you as a good person is more important than actually being one. This is all proven in the countless scandals exposing politicians, influencers, and celebrities for what they really are; Psychos.
This creates a sense of nihilism and skewed meaning in the general public as they are told to sit down and shut up while others run rampant. Cancel culture reflects this pent-up rage in followers as they themselves struggle with their Carl Jung-like shadow.
A hostile wirl wind such as this creates a feeling of fear from being called out of the herd. In today’s world, it’s entirely normal for a teenager to lose a scholarship for saying a slur of some kind. Thus promoting a completely conforming mentality where those that think and act differently are to be banished.
The monotony of consumerism, schooling, and nine-to-five jobs ups the ante as you’re not allowed to make true human connections and must conform without conflict. This bubble of humans bumping into each other and not being able to truly connect is really what it’s all about. It’s like everyone is feeling the same thing but no one can put it into words.
All this being said, is there anything we can learn from how these fictional characters handled their situation?
Maybe don’t create a Fight Club cult, or become a serial killer and or mercenary. However, what lessons are learned in the end?
While Patrick’s story ends in tragedy, Tyler and K seemingly learn and change from their old ways.
Tyler does this by stopping a destructive counterculture that has become the antithesis of what it hated and finds an authentic relationship with Marla Singer. Just don’t shoot yourself to do it either.
Officer K chooses to abandon his childlike obsession with being special and choose his own meaning in life. Reuniting a long-lost father and daughter. This is what inevitably makes him a real human being. Brave in the face of adversity and fighting for something bigger than himself that promotes a loving human connection.
It seems that these two found their route to happiness by not continuing down the shallow path of the herd, but by choosing their own self-actualizing meanings and pursuing deeper human connections. And that, I believe, is what you should identify with as “Literally Me”.
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