When we first get a glimpse of Jack’s apartment, the camera pans across the space and CGI fills in the rooms with furniture and tools marked by descriptions and price tags as if from some shopping catalogue. Jack’s obsession with material goods is reflected in the consumerist society of today. But while Fight Club itself does not address the consumerism, I noted that the concept of consumption and waste is present throughout the film. In nearly every scene, there is a Starbucks cup somewhere, for instance, and in multiple times the flicking of a cigarette is made extremely apparent.

But there is also a theme of carpe diem as found in movies like Dead Poets Society and Bladerunner. What really struck me was the scene where Tyler held the convenience store owner at gunpoint. He asked the owner what he wanted to be when he grew up, and said that he will kill him in six weeks if he wasn’t on his way to becoming one. “The breakfast he eats tomorrow will be the best breakfast he’s ever tasted.” While slightly comedically relieving and thought-provoking; after all, we are all guilty of taking much of our lives for granted. But the method in which Tyler brought this to his attention is certainly troubling: should we all be held at gunpoint and be forced to believe we’re living our last seconds? Probably not.

It’s still uncertain to me what the message the Fight Club had to tell, but at the moment I believe that the purpose of the film is solely cathartic. While the writers cannot (and probably should not) hold me at gunpoint, he can bring me into a film and put me in the victim’s shoes. In that moment, I feel like the convenience store owner. I feel that I’m being held at gunpoint, being entranced in the dear hope that I am not murdered by Tyler Durden. But in that way, the director gives me the benefit of being thankful for my life without actually making me kneel on the wet pavement grasping nothing but my life’s failed dreams.

Your life is precious. Don’t waste it. Don’t waste it like the huge heaps of used consumer goods you waste every day and forget about.