The
Beats were not the
first and they will not be the
last group to show that the
everyday humdrum of "
the worlds"
straight jacket plan is not the only way to
live.
Far from it.
The
Beats were just another in a long line of
out of the box thinkers whose
works and
words grabbed a few
headlines and made a
splash as
media darlings. Beyond that though the thrust of the
beat movement was taken up by the next wave of
headline heroes/
scapegoats, the hippies, soon to be replaced by the
punks for a short time, the
church of the sub genius and then various other labels.
Before them were the
dadaists,
Bauhaus,
spancofigan,
naturalists and countless other
movements in the early 20th century.
To see the
beats as an
ends rather than a
part of many ongoing and
interwoven threads is to miss the
forest for the
trees. Studying much of their words shows that the
label is not the
movement, the
obvious not the important.
This is also the case with
Fight Club. While the
obvious messages and
images were the
reported on ones the
subtle and
sublime were
overlooked for the
sensational headlines that could be got. Once again, as with
beat,
dadaist,
punk, etc works, what you get out of the
experience of
reading or
seeing Fight Club will have very little to do with how
mass media or
society as a
whole sees it and more on how you as an
individual sees it.
In the
end to
grow we all must pull the
trigger of the
gun we have firmly
placed in our own
mouths.