1999 & the mundane oppression: An exploration of masculinity across three films
***Spoilers for The Matrix, Fight Club, and Office Space***
As a person born three years after the 1990s ended, that relatively small pocket in time looks to be a completely different planet, but three unforgettable films came out that year—The Matrix, Fight Club, and Office Space (1999)—all of which shared a similar theme: Escapism, specifically escaping from the confines of the mundane present, commonly represented through a bleak and sterile office setting. At the epicenter of these three films is a similar protagonist: a man who feels kept down by those in positions of authority over him, each sharing a feeling of oppression and having a narrative that deals with a distinct type of masculinity—all being shown as remedies to an issue at hand.
In The Matrix (1999), Tom “Neo” Anderson is suppressed by his mind-numbing life as a programmer at a corporation until he discovers that his world and way of existence have been an illusion created by the nefarious machines that conquered humanity. Additionally, the film uses the setting of Neo’s job—before he escapes from the eponymous simulation—to explain the machines’ influence over humanity; everything is bleak due to their interference. Alongside this world-shattering revelation, he’s told he was prophesied to save humanity from the machines. Throughout the film, Neo grows into the traditional idea of a male hero, embarking on the “hero’s journey:” He is strong, capable, and can save his love interest from harm.
Yet audiences misconstrued what was meant to be an allegory—the violence—and focused on the inherent masculine traits in the piece. Due to The Matrix’s (1999) runaway financial success, many individuals began idolizing Neo and his fight against the perceived mundane oppression of their jobs in a capitalist society.
These individuals, who subscribe to a form of toxic masculinity, are satirized in the next film I’ll talk about: David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), which follows a nameless Narrator whose insomniac lifestyle and dissatisfying job lead him to develop a second personality, named Tyler Durden. Through this alter ego, he orchestrates the titular fight club, which escalates into a nationwide urban terrorist organization that seeks to destroy office buildings inhabited by consumer credit corporations as their method of disrupting perceived social order.
The character of Tyler Durden and the group of characters who follow his commands at the newly dubbed “Project Mayhem” are meant to satirize the practitioners of “toxic masculinity.” These people believe they are acting as members of a righteous cause in a similar vein to Neo from The Matrix (1999) when, in reality, they’re causing more harm than good. The followers of Durden’s principles don’t practice love and compassion for their peers—they only want to fight to achieve meaning in their lives or an idyllic version of themselves based on those same toxic ideas. As such, their goal is achieved in destroyed buildings, while with good intentions from their perspective, they just killed numerous innocent people…the hero’s journey in Fight Club (1999) is the repudiation of that same archetype.
Finally comes Office Space (1999)—a film released before both entries —following the familiar protagonist: a man in a similar situation to Neo and Fight Club’s (1999) Narrator before their journeys begin, named Peter. He’s dissatisfied with his mundane life working in a cubicle and, after a meeting with a hypnotherapist, finds himself not caring about his horrible job. Strangely enough, this leads to him making more money and getting a promotion in his job, but things soon spiral out of hand, and he must escape from his oppressive job. From here, the story differs entirely from that of Narrator and Neo, diverting into its unique take on embracing what life gives you.
The commonality holding all three protagonists together is that they want freedom, each taking unique paths to achieve it. While Neo’s classic form of “hero’s journey” masculinity and Tyler Durden’s heightened toxic masculinity both embrace violence in some way, Peter offers a more relaxed and pacifistic approach to the matter. Peter’s closest encounter with violence is when he accidentally steals thousands of dollars from his place of work—when he only intended to steal fractions of a cent—but he realizes this mistake too late and tries to fix it.
Where Neo and Narrator’s character arcs follow them discovering a new path and completely moving toward it, burning the world they once knew at their feet, Peter’s is about forging his path away from societal constraints while still upholding the structure of society. Where Neo and Narrator escape their world by setting it ablaze, Peter escapes his job by quitting and becoming a construction worker. In terms of what this means in the exploration of masculinity, Peter’s arc does not follow any specific sect of masculinity but makes one of his own that works best for him. He’s not focused on being a “hero” or a hyper-masculine combatant, and rather, he just wants to focus on what is best for himself, not some predetermined style of existence.
If these three things can tell us anything about masculinity in the late 1990s, it’s that it was in a great amount of flux. The general concept of mundane oppression allowed for three distinct explorations of masculinity and how each would face it. The Matrix (1999) established that the classical “Hero’s Journey” idea of masculinity still existed, Fight Club (1999) established how easily it could get corrupted, and Office Space (1999) shows that a new breed of masculinity was evolving.
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