I saw this last week and loved it but didn't have time to post.
From Slashfilm:
My favorite thought-piece about Ferris Bueller is the “Fight Club” theory, in which Ferris Bueller, the person, is just a figment of Cameron’s imagination, like Tyler Durden, and Sloane is the girl Cameron secretly loves.
One day while he’s lying sick in bed, Cameron lets “Ferris” steal his father’s car and take the day off, and as Cameron wanders around the city, all of his interactions with Ferris and Sloane, and all the impossible hijinks, are all just played out in his head. This is part of the reason why the “three” characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day — Cameron is alone, just imagining it all.
It isn’t until he destroys the front of the car in a fugue state does he finally get a grip and decide to confront his father, after which he imagines a final, impossible escape for Ferris and a storybook happy ending for Sloane (”He’s gonna marry me!”), the girl that Cameron knows he can never have.
What do you think?
slashfilm article
11 comments:
I really liked this. Anyone else?
Does this mean that Cameron is actually fucking Sloane?
And what about Cameron's "catatonic" period late in the movie? Does that correspond to the narrator's insomnia episodes in Fight Club?
Love it! To make it more Fight Clubbish, Sloane should actually exist and Cameron should be fucking her, just thinking that he's actually the third wheel. But it works out okay.
What about Ned Rooney? After the series of existentially miserable disasters he suffers, is the crowning humiliation that he doesn't actually exist? Zing!
That's how the three of them fit into the two-seater car. When Cameron's "hiding in the back," it's the equivalent of the scenes when Tyler's talking to the fight clubbers and Ed Norton's just standing there (or the scene where they attack the dude in the men's room and suddenly Tyler's face comes into the frame).
The reason that I have to keep calling the narrator Ed Norton is because the character doesn't have a name in the movie. He's called "Narrator" in the credits, and the narration refers to him as "Jack," but he's not named "Jack" (that's just a lift from the magazine article he's reading early in the movie). His real name, of course, is Tyler Durden.
Similarly, I don't know how to handle the Rooney business. Remember that he's on the phone with both of them at once!
Also we follow Jeannie & her series of misfortunes. Like the police station and her encounter with Rooney. What's Cameron's deal with her?
Okay, going out on a limb:
Cameron's real (unseen) family is his weird dad with the Ferrari and his wife.
Ferris is a mental projection a la Tyler Durden.
Ferris' family is a FURTHER mental projection: the idealized doting parents that Cameron wishes he had.
So Jeannie doesn't exist either. It would be like if you had "Fight Club 2" and saw Tyler's hyper-romanticized "family" (presumably Angelina and a bunch of adoptees). So Jeannie represents the doubting part of Ferris' mind; the part that wants to stop the fun.
(I love that Cameron is "actually" sick while Ferris is faking, by the way. It adds to the theory.)
Alternatively Ferris' family is the real family and Cameron's weird, deserted modern house with the Ferrari is the mental projection, but that sucks -- it ruins the whole idea.
I think you have to accept the entire Bueller family as an extension of Cameron's mind. The scenes where Jeannie tries to overcome Ferris' influence are a presentation of the mental struggle in Cameron's mind.
I have NO idea about Charlie Sheen.
omg you guys can push a metaphor lol. *said in David Spade voice to Chris Farley in Tommy Boy "you have derailed". :)
Hey, that's my bread and butter, man.
I love it!
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