Identifying Huizinga’s Characteristics of Play in Fight Club

Throughout the narrative in Fight Club the first person narrator actively participates in the story; however, he is never identified as the narration proceeds rapidly between different areas of his life. The constantly changing plot and setting enforce tension by stressing that the action being described is happening in the present. At that moment “you wake up at Love Field” then Tyler is in the projection booth, then Tyler is a banquet waiter, and “you wake up at Sea Tac” (26). The tension this narrative structure creates mirrors that of play because it holds the reader in the moment as the suspense of play focuses the player. As the story continues, it becomes harder to distinguish which area of the narrator’s life is real or ordinary life to the extent that the narrator’s real life is absent from the text. Instead three distinct areas containing various levels of Huizinga’s definition of play emerge in the narrative: work and traveling, group therapy, and Project Mayhem and fight club. These distinct areas of the narrator’s life are emphasized in the movie by three distinct uniforms the narrator wears. At work he is in a shirt and tie, at fight club he wears no shoes and no shirt, and at therapy he has a coat and no tie.

The essential play characteristics which can be applied to three areas of the narrator’s life are that play lies “quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life,” play absorbs the player completely by creating tension, nothing material is gained through play, it has a specific time and place, it promotes secret social groupings, there are rules, and events occur in an orderly matter (13). It can be assumed that when I refer to the narrator I am referring to the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, when I refer to Edward Norton I am referring to the movie adaptation of the book, and otherwise I will specifically mention or cite Huizinga.

Huizinga’s model applies most readily to group therapy because the narrator merely plays at dying, realizing that “If [he] didn’t say anything, people in a group assumed the worst” (22). Guided meditation provides a perfect example of how the tension created by play holds the participant in the moment. Also, nothing material is gained from these meetings. There are rules and the meetings tend to be orderly. Because the group follows the narrator to stop him from killing himself, the group demonstrates that therapy generates a strong community. Throughout this study of the varying levels of play within the different areas of the narrator’s life, group therapy remains the closest to true play. Because the other areas of the narrator’s life vary in their level of play, what allows therapy to remain consistent? With what respect does therapy differ from the other areas of the characters life and can this be used to define play more precisely.

“The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club” (48). This rule does several things to qualify fight club as play. It is a rule and it professes the need for the secrecy the social grouping. At first the text makes it clear fight club exists outside of real life with the juxtaposition of three paragraphs beginning with “Who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world…Who I am in fight club is not someone my boss knows…In the real world, I’m a recall campaign coordinator” (49). The level of tension within fight club compels the narrator to proclaim, “You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club” (51). Nothing material is gained from fight club. Finally, the boundaries of space and time are the ring under the single light bulb; “fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends” (49). Like therapy, fight club matches Huizinga’s description of play.

The third area of the narrator’s life which emerges as play, his participation in civilization in the form of his job and interactions outside of fight club, is not as easily described as pure play because Huizinga directly describes civilization as false play for it “is impossible to say where it begins and where it ends” (206); however, it is clear that civilization does have rules, nothing material is gained from it, and it promotes social groupings. Another problematic aspect of civilization as true play is that it is hard to say it stands outside of real life. At this point it is necessary to consider the different areas of the narrator’s life as containing different levels of play and not as either serious or true play. Tyler Durden tells the narrator, Edward Norton, “You are not your job.” If the narrator’s participation in civilization is deifined asas his actions at his job and traveling for his job, then Tyler’s proclamation distinguishes this part his life as play because suddenly the narrator’s identity as a recall coordinator, in the real world, is stripped from him; the loss of identity also provides civilization with a boundary for the time and space. When the narrator is at work he is playing a role, but when he returns home to the Paper Street Soap Company he withdraws from this play world. When the narrator describes how “everything in the real world gets the volume turned down” it demonstrates that he is conscious of his withdrawal from civilization. This also shows he is conscious that he is playing. Also, because his “word is law” the narrator is able to impose a higher order upon the play world (49).

While Tyler’s dogma allows the narrator to withdraw from what he once considered the real world, it also augments some aspects fight club such that of fight club becomes false play. The first rule of fight club forces the participant to break down the boundaries of time and space. By not talking about fight club in the real world the characters are still absorbed in the game and playing by the rules. This creates a community and an alternate civilization existing as part of ordinary civilization. This community bond is demonstrated in the movie through knowing glances cast towards the narrator by the man in the copy room and the waiter at lunch towards. Because this community perpetuates itself beyond its boundaries it becomes a false play like civilization. What was his real or ordinary life ends at fight club and then Project Mayhem takes over from there. When the community evolves into Project Mayhem it ceases to be even false play. While the all-black uniforms to disguise and distinguish members, rules are followed religiously, and everything in the Paper Street Soap Company is defined by perfect order, Project Mayhem does not have boundaries of time and space. The Space Monkeys and the narrator live at the house and carry out assignments during the day all over the community. This shows their actions as a community are no longer restricted to Saturday nights. The Space Monkeys deface skyscrapers and destroy corporate art to begin their war to return the world to a time before Ikea. Their assignments begin and end however their involvement in Project Mayhem does not. In this way Project Mayhem becomes real life. However, besides becoming real life for the narrator and the space monkeys, the anti-corporate, anti-civilization sentiment embodied in the terrorist acts the Space Monkeys carry out attach a moral value to Project Mayhem. This changes the community from a play community to one of true seriousness because “it is the moral content of an action that makes it serious” (Huizinga 210). The war of terror conducted by the Space Monkeys bears striking similarities to a holy war because it is conducted in order to achieve some “higher goal than the gratification of the self” (Huizinga 211). Their purposes are of high moral value because their assignments are not ends in and of themselves; they do not just want to destroy corporate art, they want to destroy it to demonstrate a point. A holy war is fought in order to protect a rite to practice or a holy land. It is the added purpose which transforms Project Mayhem and Holy War into seriousness, outside the sphere of play.

While Tyler’s influence over the narrator changes what was the real world into a play at civilization and what was play into a serious new reality ceasing to be play group therapy remains unchanged. Although the narrator stops going because “there’s a new group, but the first rule about this group is you aren’t supposed to talk about it”, he still reaches out to it in the middle of the text when he again is suffering from insomnia (Palahniuk 100). Fight club and Project Mayhem are “support groups. Sort of”; however, support groups do not vary in their play attributes in the narrative (119).

It is the conscious mental play aspect of the support groups which separate them from the others. In therapy the characters, although transported from their bodies are not sucked into a temporary reality that gradually replaces ordinary life as fight club replaced civilization. Therapy is a religious ritual or right in terms of the mental experience it invokes. The narrator follows Chloe into caves where “ice covered the floor of the cave, and the penguin said, slide” (20). The narrator is transported outside his body and similarly imagines his “pain as a ball of white healing light floating around [his] feet” (20). For the rest of the group, therapy works to assuage their fears associated with their illnesses. Through guided meditation Chloe is able to claim, “she no longer has any fear of death” (35). Therapy acts as to provide a “higher order than that in which they customarily live…A sacred space, a temporarily real world of its own…it continues to shed its radiance on the ordinary world outside” and thus matches Huizinga’s definition of a religious ritual, falling under the sphere of play (Huizinga 14).

The mental aspect of play present in group therapy is also present in the other areas of the narrator’s life. At fight club the narrator describes “There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved” (51). This direct comparison to Sunday Church shows perfectly how fight club can fit the definition of play as a religious ritual. However, because this exceeds the barrier between imagination and realty, unlike therapy, the narrator loses the ability to distinguish between his play and ordinary life. After planting explosives in his boss’s computer, he is unsure “if reality slipped into [his] dream or if [his] dream is slopping over into reality” (137). It is also shortly after at this point that Tyler Durden disappears from the narrative and temporarily play reality completely replaces reality. The narrator becomes fully conscious that he is merely playing a role at his job. With this knowledge he becomes a false player cheating the system, blackmailing his boss, and no longer going to work.

Similarly, Tyler Durden who is “funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him” is revealed as a actualization of impossible character traits (174). Huizinga describes a child at play who is convinced that he is the tiger he is imitating; he is “transported beyond himself” (14). Tyler is a “sham-reality as a realization in appearance: ‘imagination’ in the original sense of the word” (Huizinga 14). Therefore, anytime Tyler is present in the narrative, the narrator is engaged in a form of play. Tyler’s appearance for a split second in the film when Edward Norton is attempting to get sleeping pills, when he is at group sessions, and when the narrator is in the hotel room on a business trip reflects the play nature of these different areas which, at the time, may not appear to be play. Tyler’s boundaries of time and space are those of the imagination. Tyler cannot coexist with reality; not only that, but Tyler directly opposes what the narrator considers the ordinary life by seducing the narrator into blowing up the narrator’s apartment and office.

As a result of Tyler becoming a realization the narrator creates a new higher order that dominates the order to which the narrator is accustomed. Within the narrator’s imagination, “a sacred space, a temporarily real world of its own,” is created (14). The temporarily real world, however, takes over permanently until the narrator attempts to escape it. Tyler like group therapy, civilization, and fight club and Project Mayhem is reducible to play under Huizinga’s definition of the word. What becomes most important about play then is that it is a conscious mental state. Tyler as an imagination is present until the play community that is Project Mayhem ceases to be distinguishable as play. Also the narrator’s work only becomes play when he becomes conscious that he is merely playing a role as a beatification a productive and law abiding version of himself.

The conclusion that all these parts of the narrator’s life are various levels of play only holds under Huizinga’s definition if, and only if, they exist “quite [consciously] outside ‘ordinary’ life” (13). This conditional makes it necessary to pose the question what remains in the narrative that could be considered real or ordinary life? Where do all these different play elements fall apart? Marla is not able to coexist with the narrator’s most powerful form of play, the actualization that is Tyler Durden, she destroys the play aspect of narrator’s group therapy sessions by appearing in Edward Norton’s cave in the movie, and calls him away from work to give her a breast inspection. This last act physically pulls the narrator back into reality; however, it is interesting that throughout the text she has sex with Tyler, which must be considered play. What is the difference between these forms of physical contact? Why is there this distinction between sex as play and the desexualized naked female body as seriousness? And to further the focus of this essay how does the mental aspect of these scenarios differ and how does this distinguish one as play and the other as serious? It is beyond the scope of this paper to prove that Marla is what is real in the narrator’s life; however, it is merely a tool necessary to prove that the other parts of the narrator’s life are in fact forms of play in varying levels and a topic for further investigation.

Works Cited

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element In Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.