technocrats." Giroux and Szeman identify Tyler Durden as a failed icon of the revolution whose public appeal is more due to his cult personality than any "strengths of an articulated, democratic notion of political reform." Durden acts instead of thinking and thereby fails to envision democratic movements; he is described as "a holdover of early-twentieth-century fascism". While the narrator represents the crisis of capitalism as a crisis of masculinity, Tyler Durden represents "redemption of masculinity repackaged as the promise of violence in the interests of social and political anarchy". In the film, Tyler Durden holds Raymond, a young Asian convenience store clerk, at gunpoint. Durden threatens to kill Raymond unless the clerk returns to veterinary school, a previous pursuit which Raymond had abandoned. The extortion is flawed because Durden treats choice as an individual act that can be willed through, ignoring societal dynamics. The critics write, "For Tyler, success is simply a matter of getting off one's backside and forging ahead; individual initiative and sheer force of will magically cancel out institutional constraints, and critiques of the gravity of dominant relations of oppression are dismissed as either an act of bad faith or the unacceptable whine of victimization." The two critics outline three main absences in Fight Clubs critique. First, the film assumes that capitalism and consumerism are "impenetrable", and there cannot be resistance or struggle against them. Secondly, the film focuses instead on defending "authoritarian masculinity". The fight clubs' violence are complicit with the system of commodification that it denounces because it ties into instant gratification, heightened competitiveness, and "the market-driven desire" to dominate and win in fights. Lastly, Fight Club ascribes to a world under the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes in which cynicism replaces hope. The critics write of this world, "The survival of the fittest becomes the clarion call for legitimating dehumanizing forms of violence as a source of pleasure and sociality." They summarize, "Fight Club appears to have no understanding of its own articulation with the very forces of capitalism it appears to be attacking. This is most evident in its linking of violence, masculinity, and gender. In other words, Fight Clubs vision of liberation and politics relies on gendered and sexist hierarchies that flow directly from the consumer culture it claims to be criticizing." Fight Club is a reminder to have discourse about ethics and politics but its failed critique suggests "a more sustained and