"The Big Lebowski": of course! It's all about -

[Gaith]

So I saw The Big Lebowski for the first time a while ago, and loved it of course, but I couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was some running subtext going on that I wasn't quite grokking. Something deeper than the surface comedy of errors, and affectionate parody of the LA noir myth.

Then I saw one Rob Ager's youtube analysis, and while the whole thing is well worth watching, it really picks up in the third part (I think; can't access the site from here), where he reveals that...

It's all about men's sexual emasculation, man!

From the print version:

The theme in question is the modern gender role crisis. Since the 1960’s the feminist movement has brought much greater freedom of personal choice to the lives of women, while at the same time demolishing the male role as family breadwinner. This social change is now so ingrained that, when taking declining wages into account during the same time period, the option for a woman to devote herself full time to the motherhood role has been ironically removed. In most families now, both husband and wife must be employed to maintain a viable income.

For men, the sense of self-importance and masculinity associated with the breadwinner role has been lost....

In comparison to the tough females, the men in Big Lebowski are weaklings. Dude, Walter and Donny are all single guys with nothing better to do than go bowling, which isn’t the most masculine sport. Donny and the Dude’s landlord are especially passive, while Walter is crippled by an obsession with his ex-wife. He even pretends to be Jewish so that he can still see her socially.

But what of The Dude, you ask?

Dude himself is an interesting paradox in terms of gender role. He doesn’t seem to suffer the same masculinity crisis as the other characters, yet he seems to abstain from relationships, Walter: “First of all Dude, you don’t have an ex”. When Maude asks him if he likes sex – a line which would bring most men to full attention – he replies: “I was talking about my rug”. When she shows him the Loggjammin’ porn film, Dude is disinterested. Maude: “You can imagine where it goes from here”, Dude: “He fixes the cable”. On the other hand he succeeds in getting Maude pregnant, but when she presents herself to him half naked with the line: “Jeffrey, love me”, the first words out of his mouth are: “That’s my robe”. Dude also constantly wears shorts and sits with his legs spread wide open, which is the opposite of the wheelchair bound Lebowski, who keeps his groin covered. The script makes several references to this, including the following description of Lebowski in his office: “… he wears a suit and his hands clasped in front of his groin”.

The Dude gets laid (albeit a meagerly once), in other words, because he's accepted the futility of trying. To quote from the Dude-like Flynn of Tron Legacy, unlike the other men of the picture, he's stopped fighting the conclusion that when it comes to pursuing sex, "the only winning move is not to play."

Funny stuff!

 

[Shurik]

I've always thought it was simply a case study of what can happen to someone who actively seeks trouble by doing really stupid things. Sort of like "Burn After Reading" ...

I love Big Lebowski.

 

[Gaith]

^ Well, that too, but that's part and parcel of the above-mentioned noir parody scheme. Burn After Reading was amusing, but apart from being an obvious satire of the Bush years, I never sensed any sort of subtext the way I did with TBL even before seeing Ager's review.

 

[Trekker4747]

To be fair, The Dude was a boozer and a stoner, two substances that I don't think are known for giving people much of a libido.

 

[Gaith]

Ah, but why was he that way? Could it be because the failed pursuit of women broke him?

 

[Shurik]

Ah, but why was he that way? Could it be because the failed pursuit of women broke him?

I think he was that way because he liked being that way. The 60s never ended for the Dude ...

 

[Captaindemotion]

He didn't look very happy when that rodent went for his nards in the bath.

 

[Trekker4747]

He didn't look very happy when that rodent went for his nards in the bath.

Well, he's still a human being and to have a disease-filled rodent going after your sensitive areas is hardly an appealing situation.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ Some might like it.

 

[Gaith]

Ah, but why was he that way? Could it be because the failed pursuit of women broke him?

I think he was that way because he liked being that way. The 60s never ended for the Dude ...

Come now. Sure they did - he used to be somebody, one of the Port Huron Seven - him and six other guys. He was probably idealistic, and, with all those newly-liberated free-love hippie chicks running around, doubtless got laid all the time without even having to try. But by the start of the movie, he's just a loser bum with loser friends. Sure, he's content, but why is he content? Perhaps because he's learned to repress his lusts? Dig deeper, my good Fleet Captain; dig deeper...

 

[Trekker4747]

^ Some might like it.

Sure, if you date Lindsay Lohan.

Zing!

 

[Nowhere Man]

There is an unspoken message here, the unspoken message is fuck you Walter.

 

[Trekker4747]

Hey, what are you guys talking about? Who's that?

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ Some might like it.

Sure, if you date Lindsay Lohan.

Zing!

She can go after my sensitive areas any time.

 

[LitmusDragon]

I would agree that Walter and The Dude are emasculated characters in a sense but I'm not sure the story is about that, necessarily.

I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that Donnie is a passive character either. Disinterested I think would be closer to the mark. I think Donnie is meant more to be a mystery- the only time we see him is when he's bowling with the Dude and Walter, and even then he's not fully invested in their situation. So we never see what the character is about, really. Except that he's a good bowler.

 

[Joe Washington]

Gaith, I have never thought of The Big Lebowski like that. To be honest, I never took the time to explore the themes of the movie. I was pretty much focused on the characters and the comedy of how things keep going wrong for the Dude. I kind of saw The Big Lebowski as a movie version of the concept of the Seinfield show which was "a show about nothing."

And LitmusDragon, there is another thing about Donnie that's noticeable. Out of all the characters, he's the one who seems the most at peace with himself. Walter has his issues. The Dude is a plain old slacker with no direction in life who indulges in weed and laying around doing nothing outside of bowling. Though we don't know much about Donnie, I get this feeling that the reason why he seems so disinterested in stuff is because he's genuinely happy with his situation in life and doesn't seem to bother having much focus on the stuff outside of it like the Dude's rug problem.

 

[LitmusDragon]

^ Good point.

On giving it a bit more thought one thing I noticed about the movie is that these characters either engage reality or avoid reality to a varying extent and that the world does not necessarily reward one or the other with any consistency.

I think also the Dude is supposed to represent the "average" American man of his time (or maybe just the average Californian): he's lazy, his opinions are poorly informed (he mostly just quotes sound bytes), he's hedonistic, he's rarely paying his full attention to the topic at hand (we never even see him bowl). This is underscored by the opening speech "there's a man ... he's the man for his time and place". The one true bowler on his team, the guy who is actually paying attention to the game and trying his best (Donnie), dies senselessly and is then mourned by the clueless people who somehow survive him. There are nihilists in the movie, and I think the movie itself is kind of nihilistic, showing that however you approach the puzzle of the modern world the results are ultimately unpredictable.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^I wouldn't describe it as a movie about nothing - there's actually a pretty intricate Chandler-esque plot going on.

 

[LitmusDragon]

^ Well, true. I don't mean that the plot is nihilistic, I just meant that it expresses a nihilistic point of view in that there is not a traditional "moral" to the story. Or if there is a moral, it's that the most passive and clueless character has somehow won out in the end. Which makes it a comedy, I guess.

 

[Gaith]

I would agree that Walter and The Dude are emasculated characters in a sense but I'm not sure the story is about that, necessarily.

By "about", I was referring more to theme than narrative. Though if you examine the plot, pretty much everything is driven by the old Lebowski, who, while seemingly rich, is... emasculated.

Also, I can't recommend the video analysis enough; there's some great stuff about castration-related imagery.