Fight Club IKEA catalogue scene analysis

From watching the film, I can give the background knowledge that the Narrator of the scene is without identity. He’s without friends or family, works a job he despises, and he sleeps so little that he fears he might die of insomnia. What he does have is an apartment overgrown with items from IKEA Home Furnishings. Things that take the place of relationships, laughter, and love. Early in the film, director David Fincher employs CGI in brilliant fashion to show the Narrator’s apartment being populated by IKEA one item at a time. Using editing and CGI we are taken on a tour of his apartment and it is as if time is sped up as we see the items slowly filling the room as the camera pans showing the narrator on the phone purchasing his next item of furnishing. It’s also perhaps the most important scene in the entire film as it establishes the film’s cynical take on consumer culture and how we are brainwashed into purchasing things we do not need and practically throwing wages away.

Skipping now to the end of the film the Narrator’s loyalty to and identification with corporate brands such as IKEA has been replaced by his loyalty to Fight Club, to Tyler, and to the primal, simplistic version of manhood that they represent. But Tyler is the ultimate hypocrite. He may talk of rejecting brand identification ("You are not your latte. You are not the car you drive."), but he’s really just a brand himself, as Fight Club represents violence and promotes the branding and socialisation of terrorism. The Narrator, now influenced by Tyler simply "setting up franchises," none of which are built to create or sustain what the Narrator is missing in life as discussed earlier (family, friends and love). In the end, the Fight Club is simply another ‘brand’ that contributed to the Narrator’s false sense of completeness. To conclude in my opinion when watching Fight Club for the first time I was unaware of the sharp turns and twists it would make throughout. The hidden messages the director send through the film leave a lasting impression. Therefore, in my opinion, the film relates to such a wide range of audiences, everyone can relate to the identification with corporate brands males and females of all ages.