Respect Authority

I knew a kid in middle school with a Fight Club T-shirt. The back of the shirt, which included the rather redundant list of club rules outlined in the film, proved a valuable distraction in the midst of eighth grade science, but I always thought it was a bit disingenuous. After all, I knew this guy—he got A’s in school and probably played a lot of video games. Presented with an actual fight, I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t wind up stuffed in a locker with a bloody nose.

Today’s revelation that Kyle Shaw, the 17-year-old arrested and charged in connection with a small explosion outside an Upper East Side Starbucks, only proves a theory I’ve retained since those adolescent years: Fight Club really appealed to losers.

Shaw, who reportedly bragged about his role in the explosion to friends, told police that he was inspired by Tyler Durden, the fictitious alter ego of Edward Norton in Fight Club, and had even started his own version of the eponymous community in Central Park. Starbucks was even an identifiable target of the movie’s Project Mayhem.

There are a lot of things wrong with this picture. For one, the Project Mayhem crew rolled a multi-ton corporate art sphere into a coffee shop, while Shaw only managed to destroy a sidewalk bench and shatter the store’s windows. Moreover, the effect of even one Starbucks outlet’s destruction in the great borough of Manhattan is borderline negligible—I’m pretty sure the location’s patrons would have to walk less than a block to get their morning coffee at another Starbucks.

And most importantly, Shaw got caught. Fight Club ends with the destruction of a half-dozen high rises, an explosion that, if my suspicions are correct, ranks just a little higher than “fucked up park bench” on the scale of domestic terrorism. Had he really wanted to effect some sort of anti-corporate-America change, Shaw might have at least dragged a few friends along.

I guess at least in a juvenile detention center, where the teenager is undoubtedly going to be spending a significant amount of time, “fight club” meets every day.