Jack and Tyler as Freudian foils of one another..and The Beatles

        Freud's Civilization and its Discourse and the film Fight Club initially seem to be two very distinct works, one a Hollywood cult movie, and the other a renowned psychological work. But when one takes the time to think deeply about the characters and plot of the film, some very obvious connections become apparent. The film intentionally allows the viewer insight into the personas of the two main characters, Tyler and Jack. Jack seems to live an incredibly depressing, mundane existence; he goes to work, battles insomnia, finds comfort in Ikea catalogs, and has this extremely bizarre coping mechanism of attending depressing sessions with sick people to help himself cope with his incredibly routine and uninteresting existence. Jack seems to be cut out of a mold, and not distinct from other humans. Jack is restricted by society and acts in accordance to what is expected of him. This is what makes Jack the superego as he balances his ID urges and morality from the ego. The ego is essentially the battlefield between urges and morality, and Jack becomes the ego at the end of the movie as he fights Tyler's influence and his own moral code. That is, until he meets his other half, Tyler, and it becomes like they are two halves of one whole.
         Tyler is the bad boy that our parents warned us about...times a million. He really lacks any moral foundation and has no real sense of whats good and whats bad. He has incredible amounts of meaningless sex with a woman who he met while she was overdosing and never interacts with outside of the bedroom. He steals fat to make soap, lives in an excuse for a house, creates this animalistic fight club, and burns down Jack's apartment (essentially his whole life) after meeting him on an airplane. Jack purely follows his instincts and inner desires, and is not restricted by societal norms (you do what you want to do and that's it). It's safe to say that Tyler and Jack are about as different as can be.

         This is where Freud's ideas come in: Jack is the super ego and later becomes the ego, and Tyler is the ID. Jack uses his friendship with Tyler to be the kind of person that he most certainly isn't and wouldn't try to be without Tyler. He fights, lives in a disgusting house, and acts in a way completely unlike his previous existence. Tyler essentially pushes Jack to do the things he otherwise would not have the inner strength to do. As people we show the world one side of ourselves, and often bury inside our inner desires. Tyler seems to be the most terrible influence on Jack, but yet his presence in Jack's life seems to liberate Jack and introduce him to a whole new world. Tyler lives this insane existence, but ends up teaching Jack more about himself than he ever could have learned if he continued living how he once lived.

"You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

        Freudian ideas are everywhere in popular culture. Psychologists still value Freuds work and we see it leak into books, movies, and art all of the time. I bet that if you think about it you can recall various Freudian references you had encountered but did not place as Freudian until you learned about Freud. I was fascinated by the ID/ego relationship both when I read this book and when I saw Fight Club so thats what I want to focus on in my comparison. It seemed too easy to go for famous foils in popular culture like Luke Skywalker/ Death Vader so I branched out a little more.

       For those of you who don't know Paul McCartney and John Lennon of the Beatles, here they are. They are a legendary songwriting partnership and an incredibly large part of rock history. But while musically they might have had great success, these two individuals could not be more different. John Lennon, like Tyler, is a rebel. Lennon was incredibly controversial throughout his career, he failed all of his classes and never really cared about education. In his art class, he sat on a nude models lap and almost got expelled and eventually did get thrown out of his school. Lennon was deeply involved in drugs throughout his career, musically did not follow any previous standards, and maintained this rebellious, bad boy image throughout his career.
       His fellow band mate and song writing partner was the complete opposite. McCartney adored learning, and first pursued the visual arts and later cinema. He did not do well in school, but chose to educate himself on a variety of topics because he enjoyed it. He was married for a long time, an activist for many good causes, meditated and musically did not wish to veer far from current trends unlike Lennon. McCartney was very serious about the music and the band when Lennon was not. I'm not going to lie, McCartney did smoke some Mary Jane and enjoyed his LSD a little too much but it was the 60's so i'm just going to breeze on by that fact...

       The point is this: McCartney represents Jack as the ego. Obviously Paul McCartney is awesome and not as boring as Jack was at the beginning of Fight Club, but Paul McCartney did follow societal norms and did not stick out like Tyler and Lennon do. Paul McCartney knew limits and followed them just like Jack did. Until he met Lennon. Lennon is like Tyler, disregarding what is expected of him and very impulsive. They are the Freudian concept of the ID. Lennon introduced McCartney into this world of fame, drugs, woman, and it changed who McCartney was, much like Tyler changed Jack. This is not to say that it was all Lennon's fault that McCartney was a drug addict for awhile, because we know that there were other factors at play, but he did play a large part. Tyler brought out the inner desires of Jack, and Lennon brought out a side of McCartney that was buried before he met him. This is Freud's work personified by two different sets of people, and countless other examples can easily be made.