What Does The Ending Of Fight Club Really Mean?

Tyler's/Fincher's Wake-Up Call To The World

Fight Club ends with literal destruction, with the towers of business toppling to the sound of Pixies's "Where Is My Mind?". Here, in the closing scene, is Tyler Durden's ultimate statement of resistance, a middle finger to the world that will soon make newspaper headlines and be played across news stations around the globe. The film argues long before then, however, that there's nothing much left to destroy - it's already been wrecked by the proliferation of corporate power, trash television, celebrity magazines and unachievable ideals forced upon society by the media. Tyler wants this final act of destruction to be a wake-up call to a world of people as "docile as Hindu cows" - does director David Fincher, too? What if, like Tyler, Fincher's just using the biggest platform he can find - cinema - to spread the word?

Everything in Fight Club's world is regimented; as the Narrator puts it, "single-serving sugar, single-serving cream... single-serving friends" is the order of the day for the average worker. The people in Fight Club are detached, drone-like, treating death casually as though it would be welcomed - in Palahniuk and Fincher's universe, life has been reduced to nothing but automatic action and reaction. It's the death of humanity in the face of cold, hard capitalism. Fight Club is a pretty astounding example of biting the hand that feeds, in that it's one of the most nakedly anti-capitalist films ever made, part-financed by major companies like Apple, Pepsi and BMW paying for their logos to be used and their products to be advertised in the film. Could there be a sly message to the audience from Fincher in the fact that these corporate brands are so vacuous, so shamelessly desperate for promotion that they'll appear in a film that climaxes with their symbolic obliteration?