Now that does make sense

[BikerDude]

http://www.psmag.com/media/scholars-and-the-big-lebowski-deconstructing-the-dude-33596/

Although its political message is far from overt, The Big Lebowski is a highly subversive film. At least, that?s what Paul ?Pablo? Martin of Grossmont College and Valerie Renegar of San Diego State University argue in a 2007 article in the journal Communication Studies. Referencing the work of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, they call the film an example of ?carnivalesque humor,? a genre that encourages audiences to ?reflect on, and ultimately reject, their fears of power, law and the sacred.? This particular type of surrealism, they write, features grotesque situations, inverted hierarchies and ?structural and grammatical experimentation.?

All three elements can be found in abundance in the film, which features multiple dismembered body parts, an outwardly wealthy and successful character who turns out to be neither, and an ?intentionally confused? plot interrupted by occasional dream sequences. ?From the disjointed opening scenes through its anticlimactic denouement, the film pushes viewers to be aware of the constructed nature of society,? Martin and Renegar write. In this way, they add, it ?encourages viewers to question the norms upon which we base our lives.?

In their short book The Big Lebowski, Stanford University?s J.M. Tyree and journalist Ben Walters pick up on that point, noting that the film specifically subverts traditional notions of masculinity. Set in 1991, just as President Bush (?I am not a wimp?) was leading the nation into war, the film celebrates the habitual passivity of The Dude, whom they note is ?consistently averse to confrontation.?

In contrast, his best friend Walter, played by John Goodman, has ?a line-in-the-sand mentality of picking fights over the broaching of more or less arbitrary boundaries and working himself up into apoplexy simply to prove his intransigence.? In other words, he represents a cultural type we?ve seen more and more of in the years since the film?s release ? a ?60s icon who feels awfully familiar to anyone who watches current-day cable news.

Tyree and Walters note the term ?dude? was coined in the 1870s ?to denote a man conspicuously concerned with look and dress.? While admitting that hardly describes the disheveled Jeff Lebowski, they add that the term traditionally had ?pejorative connotations of effeteness.?

So a ?dude? wasn?t a ?real man.? For traditionalists, the same can be said of The Dude, who has no interest in power, influence or conquest. ?Excused from the tired, vain, arbitrary business of being a man,? Tyree and Walters write, ?he can concentrate instead on being human.? And, of course, on his bowling game.