Every time I watch Fight Club, I can’t help but sense it is making an astute commentary on ideologies in general. It is not talking specifically about politics, or religion, or gender, or anything. All of these ideas can be equally applied and are referenced throughout the film.

Fight Club ultimately seems to be championing individualism. People who become trapped in ideology in this film end up being cast in an unfavorable light. The film does not so much hate all ideology, but instead suggests using ideas in mediation rather then being extreme on either side.

The narrator’s Dissociative Identity Disorder is a manifestation of his pull towards two opposite but extreme ideologies. On one side, he can be part of the system of consumerism without any identity or appreciation of self, but when he is pulled towards Tyler’s side, it seems to originally start with good intentions of being an individual and experiencing real pain and rejecting consumerism, but it soon lands in the same pitfalls as the society the narrator was originally trying to escape; everyone is stripped of their identity and blindly follows orders, and instead of living their own fulfilling lives, just wreak havoc on society. The film does not present either side of the coin as reasonable. The narrator’s ultimate struggle is to become a true individual by not adhering to any ideology, but following his own path. Fight Club seems to be an existentialist film in a way then.

These ideas of adhering to ideology without individualism can be easily applied to politics and religion, and the film makes these connections. The society that Tyler comes to represent becomes a clear analogue to fascism. Tyler is also viewed as a God figure which brings up religion, and their are other scenes in the film that conjure religion like when Tyler gives the narrator a chemical burn, the narrator tries to use Buddhist-like meditation to escape the pain, but Tyler urges him to receive and fully experience the pain.