Nietzsche's Thoughts Portrayed in Popular Film and TV - Fight Club, Citizen Kane, The Lego Movie, and The Simpsons

Reasoning

Watching the Turin Horse and reading Spinks' comparison of the eternal recurrence to the film Groundhog Day significantly helped my understanding of the eternal recurrence, and made it much easier for me to articulate my understanding of it through comparison. After reading this article I want to watch Citizen Kane and Fight Club, two films I've never seen before, in the hope that watching them in the mindset of Nietzschean thought will help me.

Another film I want to watch is The Lego Movie, a film I have seen before, but one that I remember bearing relevance to the idea of the Ubermensch. I also remember a particular episode of The Simpsons which illustrates well how it can be difficult to follow religiously based over-simplified idealistic rules in real life.


Fight Club (1999)

• Edward Norton's character (the narrator) is weak, partaking in the spreading of pity in support groups and is thus rejecting his will to power.
• Brad Pitt's character (Tyler) embodies an Ubermensch who's come about having transcended Norton's characters weakness.
• Tyler shows a nihilistic impulse when he says "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything", and in making the narrator consider that God doesn't like him he's restating Nietzsche's claim that God is dead.
• Tyler's whole way of living is based on ignoring the accepted consumeristic way of living and self-fulfilment by accepting and embracing the circumstances that he is presented with, turning the "thou shalt's" into "I wills" through project mayhem. This isn't to say that the idea of the Ubermensch as a whole is against consumerism, it just so happens to be so in this case.

Citizen Kane (1941)

• Charles Kane is a strong example of a the will to power in action in that his life is lived in the pursuit of self-empowerment.
• By initially rejecting interest in his money in favour of taking control of a newspaper to empower and lead 'the people' (or the slaves, as Nietzsche would call them) in order to gain favour with them so as to gain further power through politics, he is rejecting the religious ideas goal of self-preservation (through initially rejecting his opportunity for wealth), instead choosing the Nietzschean goal of self-empowerment.
• Despite exercising his will to power, he falls short of becoming the Ubermensch by not leading the people in a selfless manner, caused by his desire to be loved without being able to love in return, which is caused by his inability to transcend his childhood emotions through the three metamorphoses described by Zarathustra.

The Lego Movie (2014)

• Emmet (Chris Pratt) wakes in a world where everyone follows the same routine every morning and 'follows the instructions' set by President/Lord Business (Will Ferrell) in a world where day-to-day life varies so little that it's symbolic of a dystopian eternal recurrence. 
• The master builders find creativity through re-appropriating existing lego pieces to make them useful to them, in a practice that is similar to pastiche. In this sense the master builders are examples of the Ubermensch.
• The examples the film uses as mast builders (Nietzsche's Ubermensch) are people who have transcended beyond regular humanity through either achievement, history or power, be they fictional or non-fictional, such as Shaquille O'neal, Cleopatra, Michelangelo, Superman and Professor Dumbledore.
• In the re-appropriation of these existing characters/figures is as an example of the film itself practicing it's teaching of the Ubermencsh, as are it's re-appropriations of scenes from other films such as Emmet grabbing his hat dramatically like Indiana Jones or Captain Jack Sparrow,  and Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) kicking a chair a long distance in a parabolic path to hit a moving object like Mick in Crocodile Dundee.
• The wise old character who guides Emmet in his journey to becoming a master builder, Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) has a strong resemblance to Yoda (Star Wars) in his wise words, walking with a stick, and reappearing after his death in a ghostly form, with his teaching of free creation he resembles Nietzsche's Zarathustra.
• Part of Vitruvius' prophecy is that he who becomes 'the special' (the leader of the master builders in the fight against Lord Business' eternal recurrence) will be "the greatest, most interesting, most important person of all times", giving Emmet reasons to strive for the individual success that is important to Nietzsche's thoughts.
• Vitruvius, when seeing a visual representation of Emmet's empty mind, says the following: "Master builders spend years training themselves to clear their minds enough to have even a glimpse of the man upstairs, and yet your mind is already so prodigiously empty, that there is nothing in it to clear away in the first place. With proper training, you could become a great master builder", showing his appreciation of values needing to be destroyed/cleared before new ones can be made, if indeed there are any existing values in the first place.

The Simpsons - Homer vs Lisa and the 8th Commandment (S2 E13 - 1991)

• After Homer acquires 'cable' TV illegally and Lisa gets scared after being taught in church that anyone who breaks one of the 10 commandments goes to hell, she questions Reverend Lovejoy about Homer illegally getting cable.
• "So, even if a man takes bread to feed his starving family, that would be stealing?" "No, well it is if he put's anything on it, jelly for example."                                             "I see."                                                                                                                        "Oh come on Lisa, now you're here for a reason. Is your father stealing bread?". "Maybe, I don't watch him every minute, but what I am sure of is, we're getting cable for free."                                                                                                                    "Well I'm afraid that is stealing Lisa, and I think you must do something". "Should I have my father arrested?"                                                                                        "Well Lisa on the surface that would appear to be an ideal solution to the problem, but remember the fifth commandment, honour thy father and thy mother. Lisa, I would like to see you set an example by not watching the offending technology yourself".                                                                                                                "Thank you Reverend Lovejoy".
• This shows how religion-based, simple idealistic rules can make for difficult situations, as also illustrated by Abraham being told by God to kill his soon Isaac, and similar to how the three laws of robotics end up contradicting each other in iRobot.
• After being questioned on the new locks on the door and railings on the windows, Homer says, "Marge we can't be too careful, there are thieves everywhere, and I'm not talking about the small forgivable stuff." which suggests that the religious ideal is no longer universally applicable.
• After Bart is caught watching adult TV with his friends, he says, "I wish I was adult so I could break the rules", exemplifying the hypocrisy of religious based society that teaches children it's religious based rules.

Next Steps

Before watching The Lego Movie, I looked online to see if there were any articles about it's resemblance to Nietzsche given that it wasn't on the article I first mentioned. I found this article, which, despite not mentioning Sartre in the article, tagged his name in the post, which has made me inquisitive and want to look into Nietzsche's relation to him.