I'm Jack's lack of sleep. Who's Jack here?

Those are sentences taken from the book/movie Fight Club.

They are not things that people would say in normal conversation or writing.

Background: There were a series of articles in the well known American magazine, "Readers Digest". In a effort to teach people about the functions of various human body parts, they would run occassional articles, using a fictional character named "Jack", suck as "I am Jack's ear", "I am Jack's tongue", "I am Jacks's lungs" etc. Then the body part would go on to describe what it does for Jack.

Here's the scene in Fight Club where the main character finds a stack of these articles.



The main character is having a mental breakdown during the entire movie, and thinks, and sometimes says things like "I am Jacks cold sweat", "I am Jacks utter lack of surprise" when he is experiencing these things and is separating them from himself.

I am Jack's smirking revenge...

I know.



Last night I went on a mini Fight Club jag, watching various clips, and reading some little known facts.


I found the following hysterical.
The powers that be kept trying to tone down the actions/language of the movie, much to David Finchers annoyance.

In one scene Marla collapses next to Tyler Durden in bed, after sex. Originally she was to say the line that came from the book "I want to have your abortion."
That line was deemed unacceptable, and Fincher was told to change it. Unfortunately (fortunately for the movie goer though) the replacement line was not checked out until it was too late.

Here's the revised shot.....I read that in the last frame before it cut, the camera starts shaking from the cameraman's laughter.

Yeah, I'd read about that before. Freakin' awesome ad lib. Made it all the way to final production. Heehee...

I see. So 'Jack' was taken for the sake of a better explanation,
and Jack doesn't refer to any particular person.

This reminds me of a kindergarten tutor who tries to teach kids with ease.
Interesting. Thank you Chai2.
I appreciate your comment.

Well no, it's more like what was said in the first clip.

He says. "Look at this, it's an article (a magazine article) written by an organ, in the first person.

A lung can't talk, a complete lack of surprise can't talk, smirking revenge can't talk.

He is anthropomorphizing these things. Giving human characteristics to objects, emotions, etc.

He is being ironically funny when he says these things.

What makes it funny to the audience is that the people he may be saying these things to, like the supervior, has no idea what he's talking about. We are in on the joke because we saw and heard him talking about the articles.
You'd really have to watch the whole movie or read the book to get the whole impact.

For instance, in the "I am Jacks smirking revenge" scene. This guy hates his boss. He would love to get revenge on the boss, get him in trouble. When the boss calls him into his office to fire him. The guy sees his chance. He says "I am Jacks smirking revenge, and punches himself in the face. Then he throws himself around the room, making himself a bloody mess. Of course, people are going to assume the boss beat him up behind closed doors, because no one would be crazy enough to beat themselves up, right? But this guy is crazy, or going crazy. So....he gets his smirking revenge.

In the movie, that characters name is not Jack. We never know what his name is through the whole movie.

If I were to walk up to someone and say "I am Jack's broken heart" they would have no idea what I was talking about.

But, let's say a friend knew I had recently broken up with a boyfriend, and was sad. If this friend and I had found these magazine articles called "I am Jacks spleen, I am Jacks left testicle" and later on I said to her "I am Jacks broken heart". She would know what I meant.

So no, it's not done for lack of a better explanation. "Jack" depending on the rest of the statement, is his lack of sleep, smirking revenge, etc.

In a different book, a character would occassionally fall into a state of depression, and during that time would to harmful things to others. He referred to those times as "the bad gunkies" I guess because these bad thoughts were gunking up his mind.

So, if he hurt someone, he could say "The bad gunkies did that"

I read last night that Helena was actually given that line. Being British, she wasn't familiar with the American school system, and thought that grade school was what we call high school.

Apparantly when she found out it referred to kids much younger, she was disgusted.

I for one was glad she didn't know. It was the perfect disgusting line for her character to say, especially with the matter of fact delivery.

Excellent!

In a way, that's even funnier.

I'm Jack's lawyer...