I was pleasantly surprised to see Trent’s return at the start of the episode, because his ending struck me as a definitive one. Were you also surprised to have a bigger role this season?
I found out that Trent would be featuring more in season three in between seasons one and two. You see, I had a really interesting thing happen with this role. After I finished my very first scene in the first season, I was walking through the car park and Jason stopped me and said, “Hey, it’s really good to have you onboard. I love what you’re doing with Trent.” And we had a three-minute conversation that changed the course of my career and Trent’s life.
Well, now I have to hear about this conversation.
I said to him that I felt the reason Trent was the way he was has to do with his father. He had a dad who really wanted him to be a manly man and be sporty, but Trent wasn’t that guy. So he hit the library and donned intellect as his shield and armor. Jason was looking at me sort of mystified, and he said, “Hey, I’m going to tell you something. This whole show is about bad dads.” And I said, “Really?” And he said, “Yeah. The reason Ted is the way he is is because his father committed suicide and he decided to embrace life and adopt that positive attitude.” And I was like, “Oh, wow. Well, this is really resonating with Trent as well.” And then I said, “I think he’s bored of sports journalism. There’s more in there. He’s not living the life he wants to live.” Jason just nodded and went, “Okay, yeah, great.” And that was it. It sparked something that was maybe already in Jason and it certainly fanned the flames for what’s going to happen in season three.
There’s a moment in the season-one episode “Trent Crimm: The Independent” when Trent is tasked with basically eviscerating Ted in the press. Of course, that’s not what happens at all because he realizes he’s dealing with somebody quite special and unique. During that scene in the Indian restaurant, Ted says something that blows Trent’s heart open: “It’s not about the winning and losing, it’s about these boys becoming the best versions of themselves both on and off the pitch, and it ain’t always easy, especially if they’ve had a tough childhood.” That spoke directly to me with Trent’s backstory. As a boy, he’d always wanted to hear something like that. He’s now looking at this extraordinary father figure, which really does change Trent’s perspective and sends him on a journey in the background.
[please click on the link for more of the interview, including the fact that Lance did in fact flinch like a motherfucker every time Roy yelled at him]
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Howdy jacksprostate can you give us some thoughts on the narrators father/upbringing? Im curious on how you interpret what the book/movie gave us in terms of his absent dad
Also i love ur posts btw and thank you for replying to like all of my fight club art 😭 It genuinely pushes me to make more for the community so i thank you
Howdy :)
The narrator's father is an important, ever present, and completely lacking figure in the book and movie. (Obligatory disclaimer I mostly focus on the book) Here's some things I've been thinking about:
The chapter detailing fight club, its start, its rules, is intertwined with fatherhood. As the narrator explains his first punch with Tyler, as he looks upon his new disciples, as Tyler reads out the rules:
"Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.
Tyler never knew his father.
Maybe self-destruction is the answer."
"Me, I knew my dad for about six years, but I don't remember anything. My dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years. This isn't so much like a family as it's like he sets up a franchise.
What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women."
You have the lines, Tyler’s in the movie, the narrator’s in the book, you have:
"My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college.
After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?
My dad didn't know.
When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.
I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."
You have:
"Tyler was fighting his father.
Maybe we didn't need a father to complete ourselves. There's nothing personal about who you fight in fight club."
And you have his boss; his boss he blows up, Tyler constantly tells the narrator how he could do it, Tyler’s words come out against his boss about how he could shoot up the office, begging to be punished, using the copy machines, begging for more than nothingness; you have:
“The problem is, I sort of liked my boss.
If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.
Except Tyler didn’t like my boss.”
You have:
“I am Joe’s Broken Heart because Tyler’s dumped me. Because my father dumped me. Oh, I could go on and on.”
You have, Tyler’s words in the mechanic’s mouth:
“"Your father was your model for God.
…
If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?
…
What you end up doing … is you spend your life searching for a father and God.
What you have to consider … is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen."
How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate was better than His indifference.
If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
We are God’s middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.
Unless we get God’s attention, we have no hope of damnation or Redemption.
Which is worse, hell or nothing?
Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved.”
And we have Tyler using paraffin, so the narrator can be in Heaven, chided by God.
So like, what does it all mean?
A generation of men raised by women. His dad franchises, he’s not sure if another woman is really what we need. Men with no male models. Men with shit fucking fathers who are fighting them with impersonal proxies. Men who know they're destroying themselves because they have no constructive examples to follow because every single man just fails every son.
And that IS important. It's important to note there is misogyny in the fact that men demand male idols and refuse to even borrow women, but can I condemn them for the same thing I know matters to myself? Can I condemn them for wanting to see men who aren't shit, when I want to see women who aren't shit, when I want to see both not fucking failing their children? Shit fathers fuck over everyone, I don't think it's wrong to see that problem. It's classic male to say it by implying women are lesser, so fucking classic, but it IS true — they're in large part like this because men fucking fail everyone including each other and themselves. There is a gaping, wide fucking asshole where decent men should be, and they’re throwing fits about it rather than stepping up, but I think it’s notable that the narrator DID break the cycle. He’s not franchising.
And man, the Christian thing. Your father is your model for God because that is the point. Patriarchal religion serves a damn purpose. The father anoints himself as God, tells his children to have unbreakable faith, then disappears. What a shit fucking father. Isn’t disillusionment inevitable? When you can’t find him in his petty figures, not in your father, not in your boss?
Truth is, he says it twice. He likes his boss. As a person maybe. He’s around. But he’s absent too. He doesn’t give a shit. Just like his fucking father, he’s putting him in shit situations, telling him that’s just how it is, and expecting him to, what, be happy with it?
He likes his boss, but a part of him really wants to kill him. He likes his boss, but he begs his boss to do something, anything other than indifference. And he doesn’t. So the narrator invents his own boss, his own father, his own God, and he kills his boss, and he’d kill God and his father if they weren’t already practically dead and gone.
Dead and gone, even if they're there, he could beg them to care and they wouldn't. Society is set up for them to be the ultimate judgement, the hallmark by which you can measure yourself, the ruler for your fucking life, especially as a guy. And you get nothing. Indifference at best. Be the best son, disciple, worker you can, your boss God father doesn't give a shit. Self improvement isn't the answer. Wouldn't it be better, to know God, your father, your boss cared enough even if it's just to hate you?
Wouldn't it be great to track him down, tell God, "I am stupid and bored and weak, but I am still your responsibility."
He externalizes all that violence, it’s always Tyler who wants to kill his boss, who says he wants to be God’s enemy. And Tyler is his stand in boss father God, so just like the others, he leaves him. Even his fantasies can’t imagine better.
And honestly, yeah. Myself, I’ve got a pretty good dad. He loves me. He’s been around. I still hate his guts. He abuses my mom and I hate his fucking guts for it. If you asked my brothers, maybe they wouldn’t have that “but”. What he does to my mom is so baked into society that he may as well be a five star father. He’s not beating us. He’s still here. Can it really get better? I have friends that love their dads. But I don’t have any friends that love their dads that don’t have shit moms. When it’s not the choice between bad and worse. The bar is so low. What does that mean for us?
It’s so easy to point at all this and be disturbed and angry about this pathetic fucking white man letting his daddy issues result in terrorism, and like, yeah. But god, fucking everyone has daddy issues, and we shouldn’t. He’s right that it’s a problem. What to fucking do.
Fight Club sits as a “how to NOT deal with several major crippling problems in society,” obviously. But what are we doing to do? It’s not up to me, obviously. I’m not a man, father, not even someone who could raise her standards for the man she partners with, because I don’t do that shit. And hell, you raise your standards and men say you’re killing them and shoot up all the women in an engineering class because jobs are making them too uppity. So. It’s up to them, whether they decide that the fallout of having such a shit father means they should, I don’t know, change something. But as it is, father as God, boss as father is baked into society, the paternalism is extensive and everywhere. It’s baked in.
The narrator is a product of so many issues. A little clown car of a vehicle for them. I don’t really need to consciously think about what his upbringing and absent dad was like, because really, as he accurately assesses, “if his parents weren’t divorced, his father was never home, and here he’s looking at me with half my face clean shaved and half a leering bruise hidden in the dark. Blood shining on my lips. And maybe Walter’s thinking about a meatless, painfree potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone or the Earth’s desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but he’s probably not.”
Most people, on an overwhelming scale, due to how the world is damn designed, do not need to consciously think about what his upbringing and absent dad was like, because damn if it’s not relevant even if your dad was home.
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