By Two Courts

People are always asking me if I know Winter Court.

"Who are you? Cornelius? Rupert? Travis? Any of the stupid names you give each night?"

As a whole, personally, we're torn over Fight Club.

"If you wake up at a different time, in a different place... could you wake up as a different person?"

The opinion of the movie and book for the views of plural states of being are that it most certainly does not help. Although Tyler Durden is seen as taking over perfectly normal Joe Corporate's life, destroying his home and nearly his relationship in a quest to bring about chaos to the city. That's how it can easily be seen; Winter Court stands up strongly to repeat Tyler's phrases, namely that he only seeks to destroy the captalism of America, erase the debt record, and reset the classes.

Good for Winter Court, I say--that's not what your casual viewer of Fight Club might pick up, and that casual viewing is what matters.

"I'm six years old again, passing messages between parents."

On technical terms, Fight Club loses out on a few points. While it is hinted that Tyler Norton--what we'll call the physical body of Tyler Durden, as opposed to the Tyler Pitt blond version which romps about in sexual escapades--had a difficult family life, it is done in marvelously subtle ways. "My father dumped me. Tyler dumped me. I am Jack's broken heart." Tyler Pitt is on his own an enjoyable character. Rather than spending his time in endless whines or selling out to the corporations he detests, he instead chooses to move on with his life. Admittedly, he does so by a number of rather distasteful subterfuges, but at least he does something. It's for the determination to change that Winter Court applauds Pitt's version--the one who sits there and smirks and points out when his good-natured patience is worn down at last, "*You* decide your own level of involvement!"

They cheer when he roars, "Have I ever let us down? How far have you come because of me? I will bring us through this. As always. I will carry you, kicking and screaming and in the end you will thank me.

"You were looking for a way to change your life," Pitt explains patiently to his other half. "You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wish you could be? That's me. I look like you want to look, fuck like you want to fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not."

I don't know if I want to hate that speech for the implications that multiples are all wish-fufillment, or take it for my own.

But for both the movie and the book, the destruction of Tyler Pitt is seen as the recovery of Tyler Norton and the return to a sane form of life. The Tylers are considered to be dysfunctional even though they are capable of communicating--Tyler Norton envisions Tyler Pitt as a seperate person at times, and so from there naturally people may know that multiples all hallucinate their people as external and can't tell that they're noncorporal. Naturally.

Tyler Pitt apparently has the lifespan also of only a year before all of this and was cozened into life because Tyler Norton 'wanted to change his life and didn't have the courage to see himself as the one doing it.'

Marla, the somewhat debateable interest of the both of them, through this dynamic transforms herself from the initial impression of an indifferent tramp who would gladly sleep with either of them into the poor victim of a man who 'did not even know what he was doing to her', and a hero for tolerating what could be thought of as all the ups and downs that had been in the awkward involvement. Oh, yes, let's hear it again for multiples being naturally unable to have relationships lest they irrevocably damage the sane folks.

And naturally, there's the issue of violence, both in the fights themselves and in the Projects Tyler Pitt sets up to reset the classes. Winter favors the love of adrenaline; after a good, healthy tussle on a regular and informal basis without the pretty rules of clean rooms and padded mats, they say, you do indeed feel more alive. To take a phrase, "everything else had the volume turned down." We of Summer, though, do agree with others who do not want violence to be connected with plurality, particularly the idea that any multiples have people who are inclined to go about enacting mass bombings. We'd like to get away from the psychic flying toasters as much as the toasters probably want to get away from us.

"Look. The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us."

Winter Court is in massive favor of this movie for many reasons, a good number of them because they preferred the social and class implications and utterly ignored the issue of how plural minds were portrayed. Then again, I'm also told that they, along with a bouncing Ariel, also had the determination that Pitt and Norton's Tylers would be an utterly adorable couple together despite all evidence to het status of them both. (In fact, I'm also told that Ariel continues to refuse *to this day* to believe both Tylers share the same body because he was so enamored of the pair of them. So, at least there can be known that there's enough in Fight Club to entertain a group.)

They can watch the movie. I can write the review.

To sum.

Fight Club has its good points:
1. Anyone who thinks that people in the same household can't physically damage one another can get snarked at now.
2. The movie does a masterful job of dodging the issue of Tyler Norton's name until the final steps.
3. The movie does a good job of using cuts to leave the unaware viewer with the idea that they are only skipped-over conversations, and the aware to note when Tyler Pitt comes in without letting Norton have any memory.
4. For a commentary about the corporate life and how people treat those of lesser wages, you can't find a better reminder of why to remember that service people are just as human as you.

Fight Club has its bad points:
1. Anyone who thinks you can destroy another person permanently simply by blowing a hole through the side of your cheek and visualizing it as their head can get snarked at now, but it won't help.
2. The movie does a masterful job of portraying people as prisoners inside their own head of 'malicious alternate personas' until they decide to get rid of them because they realize they 'do not need them anymore.'
3. The movie does a good job of using its cuts, but if you pay attention then the plot is revealed early on. Very early on.
4. For a commentary about plural status, you couldn't find a worse reminder of how shallow participants in the media can easily come off with negative ideas of multiplicity.

Ed. Note: Billy Milligan coached Brad Pitt in the proper portrayal of a multiple who is aware of other selves but doesn't realize they share his body.