Fight Club

We are a nation obsessed with materialism. In the words of Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, “We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern [us]. What concerns [us] are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”[1] Tyler is sickened by the name brand, possession oriented society in which we live. As a result, he suggests that we all “Fuck off with [our] sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns,”[2]: things that truly don’t matter. Yet, it is unlikely that we as a culture will ever let go this consumer way of looking at life and its conflicting affects. Material possessions give us both a quantifiable way to measure success and superiority, as well as the sense that we can never have enough—we must constantly be keeping up with the Joneses, yet all that results is the urge to get more. More money, more expensive shit that you don’t need, more compliments, more beauty, because you aren’t, and never will be, good enough. 

NOTHING GOOD EVER COMES OUT OF TRYING TO KEEP UP MATERIALISTICALLY WITH ONE'S NEIGHBORS.

This point is illustrated when Pecola finally gets blue eyes. Instead of being satisfied, she can’t stop from asking if they are “prettier than Joanna’s”[3] and “bluer than Michelena’s”[4]; her reply to the responses of “yes” is simply and self-consciously, “are you sure?” [5]There is the constant thirst to make more money, so that one can have more things, so that one can somehow be dominant over their neighbors. It is a never-ending cycle that ultimately leaves its victims unquenched. 

CONSUMERISM: THE ANTI-GATORADE.

However, materialism is not the only negative obsession in America.

There is a constant quest by both male and female to achieve a cookie-cutter type of beauty, one that is fed to our population by every source of media: television, music, magazines, and the Internet. Our senses are constantly bombarded with people who we are told look beautiful; we inevitably begin to feel as if one must look like these people—these movie stars, athletes, musicians—if we too are to be considered beautiful. Toni Morrison notices this trend in culture, and tells it through the eyes of  “an ugly little girl asking for beauty.”[6] “The Bluest Eye focuses on how what Morrison called the ‘universal’ love of ideal beauty commodified in such dolls enforced by the ‘glazed separateness’ that Pecola saw.”[7] Pecola wants to be beautiful and have blue eyes like the dolls she plays with and white girls, just as people in our society “look in the mirror and see that they are not as beautiful as a movie star, not as beautiful as the television, magazine, and billboard ads tell them they should be, they feel the fear of rejection and abandonment.”[8] 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBpavNnPWY&feature=related

"IS THAT WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE?"

This idea of wanting to look like famous people brings to mind an MTV show that was on the air while I was in high school called “I Want a Famous Face.” The subject of the show was true to the title—it documented the story of people who wanted to resemble or have the same features of someone famous, and they got plastic surgery to achieve this. 

TWO PARTICIPANTS ON "I WANT A FAMOUS FACE." THEY WANTED TO LOOK LIKE BRAD PITT.

Ironically, about half of the time they ended up looking completely ridiculous and unnatural; there were also always short segments on the show about plastic surgery gone wrong. This show completely encapsulated our society’s obsession with achieving a standard of beauty, to the point that they would be willing to mutilate their bodies to achieve it.

This obsession can’t possibly continue if people are to have any sense of self-esteem. Plus without all thousand dollar makeup artists and hair stylists, famous people aren’t that attractive.

CASE IN POINT.

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[1] Fight Club

[2] Fight Club

[3] Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 201

[4] Morrison, 202

[5] Morrison, 202

[6] Morrison, 174

[7] Jerome Bump, “Racism and Appearance in The Bluest Eye: a Template for Emotive Criticism,” X338

[8] Bump, X341

The Other Side of the Railroad Tracks

Let me tell you a little bit about where I grew up. The town where I lived out the first 18 years of my life was called Crosby. Now, Crosby consisted of three subdivisions: Lake Shadows (the up-scale white neighborhood), Newport (the middle-class white neighborhood, which I grew up in), and Barrett Station (where 90% of Crosby’s African-American population lived). As if this didn’t make my town segregated enough, the layout even echoed of times when racial tensions were high. Newport and Lake Shadows reside on one side of the railroad tracks, with Barrett Station being on the other. 

THE RAILROAD TRACKS SEPARATED TWO PARTS OF TOWN: TWO WALKS OF LIFE.

In fact, the parts of town are so separate that there was a time when Barrett was not a part of Crosby ISD. Crosby was even one of the last schools in the state of Texas to integrate. Needless to say, this dichotomy made for an interesting environment to grow up in.

            I don’t want to give the impression that blacks and whites didn’t get along in Crosby—they did. However, it was very easy to observe the different cultures and lifestyles led by the different races. The greatest example of such contrasts that I can think of was my good friend Qualan Bolds.

            I have known Qualan since about the fifth grade. From that time on, I had Qualan in at least one of my classes every year, as we were both in the accelerated or AP classes. Interestingly enough, Qualan was one of 3 black kids, out of about 60, to be in these classes (he eventually graduated in the top 10%). When we were younger, Qualan didn’t get teased all that much. He was pretty much left alone, and just accepted as a peer, an equal, and a friend by all. However, that all changed once we got into high school.

            Ironically, the teasing didn’t come from any white kids; rather, all the mocking came from his black friends. And the comments were always the same: something along the lines of “white boy” or “college boy.” 

FOR SOME REASON, BEING SMART IS ASSOCIATED WITH BEING WHITE.

And it is something that I never understood. He was ridiculed by his black peers for being smart, as if that was a bad thing. It was a situation very much akin to the one found in The Bluest Eye, if Pecola instead of “Each night, without fail, pray[ing] for blue eyes”[1] she prayed for no one to ever have blue eyes—for no one to ever be different or stand out. Personally, I just don’t get it. “Jealousy [I] understood and thought naturally—a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was strange.”[2] 

THIS WAS ESSENTIALLY THE ATTITUDE OF SOME OF QUALAN'S PEERS.

For some reason the blacks at my school associated intelligence with skin color, and for that Qualan was made to feel like he was betraying his roots. At first, he acted as though the constant pestering didn’t faze him. Yet, by the end of senior year, it was apparent that the remarks were taking a toll on him. He took fewer AP classes, and the ones that he did take he made Cs in. He pretty much stopped doing homework, and slept in class quite a bit. Though he still decided to go to college, his choices went from UT and Texas A and M to Prairie View A and M.

            To me I can’t understand why he was treated the way he was. It’s not like he was a real bookworm, aloof, or didn’t fit in with the black kids. He did, but he was always resented for being intelligent. On the other hand, none of the white kids in the top 10% were ever made fun of. It is negative attitudes such as this that hold the black culture back, at least that is the case in my town. As long as such opinions persist, as long as being educated is a reason to be ashamed rather than to be proud, the residents of Barrett Station will continue to, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “live on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”[3]

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[1] Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 47

[2] Morrison, 74

[3] Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream”, 325