I fuck you in the ass next Wednesday instead. They’re both bowlers, on the same team in a competition, and they’re friends…though the friendship is rather strained over the course of the movie; for Sobchak’s bad temper and asinine impulsivity are a constant source of frustration and embarrassment to the Dude, who just wants to “take it easy,” and have Sobchak do the same. The Dude says he was also a member of the Seattle Seven (Jeff Dowd, on whom the Dude was based as a character, was an actual member of the Seven), a radical anti-Vietnam-War movement. Similarly, in the ‘Gutterballs‘ dream sequence, the dancing ladies–under and between whose legs the Dude enjoys floating, looking up their skirts with an ear-to-ear grin–wear hats of phallic bowling pins…more androgyny. The occasional acid flashback”, this is one of my favorite quotes from the amazing movie The Big Lebowski. ( Log Out /  He fits right in there.”. La réalité veut qu’on vive dans un monde rempli d’oiseaux qui n’attendent que de nous honorer. When Maude meets the Dude, she mentions how the word “vagina” bothers some men. Familiar, too, with the Coen brother’s tendency toward tales over stories, I shrugged when The Big Lebowski took the February slot for the monthly Dramatica Users Group. Indeed, the first Dudeist is like a Taoist, who teaches us: “Know the masculine, keep to the feminine.” (Tao Te Ching, 28…and, of course, Maude and Bunny reverse the sex roles of this wisdom.) (Were the Coen brothers just sneaking that into the movie, to see if anyone was really watching carefully, or am I overthinking the scene?). The big Lebowski gives the Dude a severed toe with green nail polish on it, the same colour Bunny had on hers when she offered to perform fellatio on him. Hence we can see a further association of the nihilists with fascism. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head. Across this line, you do not… Also, Dude, ‘Chinaman’ is not the preferred nomenclature. Bring it all together, and it’s apparent that the Coen brothers were trying to say something meaningful when it comes to abiding conflict—especially with the literal translation of “another generation” in The Dude’s progeny. Since yin and yang represent the intermixing unity of opposites, it should come as no surprise that Maude and Bunny are sexually aggressive women, coming on to a very sexually passive Dude, a stoner who doesn’t seem all that interested in “coitus.”. Of course he falls to the floor…though I can’t help suspecting–in the scene when the Dude explains to Sobchak in his van that he’s figured out how Lebowski never put money in the briefcase–that he’s actually standing in the dark, his body physically far from the back of his wheelchair, as he’s putting a phone book, etc., in the “ringer” briefcase. Do you see what happens, Larry, when you fuck a stranger in the ass?! Do the same with analyses in the Discuss Dramatica forums, and you discover hundreds and hundreds of posts debating a single film. Sobchak, a Vietnam vet obsessed with his years fighting “Charlie, eyeball to eyeball,” represents neo-con, US imperialism and Zionism, aggressively shoving itself into other people’s business and lives, as Sobchak does. The theme of shame is further developed in the form of the motif of Freud’s castration complex. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos” –Walter Sobchak, “You see what happens, Larry?! The Dude: [Dude turns his head back as Brandt escorts him away] ..Uh, I’m just gonna go find a cash machine. Brandt: Ah-hahahahaha! The Big Lebowski would have us believe that humans are as easily knocked down as bowling pins, and there's no way to know who or what is doing the knocking. Sobchak shuts up and corrects Donny, growling “V. His home is constantly broken into–fouled and ransacked. More importantly, for our purposes, it lights the way forward while writing stories with purpose. As soon as Smokey marks it zero, Sobchak calms right down and puts the gun away. Bunny Lebowski: Brandt can’t watch, though – or he has to pay a hundred. Characters in the movie can often be paired, based on their comparable and contrasting qualities and traits. When the nihilists fight Sobchak, the Dude, and Donny, Uli brandishing a phallic sword, the Germans shout “I fuck you!” over and over. A contrast, however, is Sobchak’s adopted Judaism versus the presumably lapsed Catholicism of “the Jesus,” for there’s no reason to believe that the “pederast” ever goes to church. But sometimes, there’s a man. Essays for The Big Lebowski. Step One complete. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Scene Analysis. The Big Lebowski star Jeff Bridges announces lymphoma diagnosis, says he has good prognosis Posted 5 d days ago Tue Tuesday 20 Oct October 2020 at 5:32am , … There is a Lebowski Bar In Reykjavik, Iceland located at Laugavegur 20a that offers multiple variations of the White Russian and other menu options named for the characters and phrases from the movie. © 2021 Narrative First, Inc. All rights reserved. Bowling is a pun on balling. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the Earth abideth for ever. In reference to the already-suspected faking of Bunny’s kidnapping, the Dude makes a reference to Lenin, whom clueless Donny confuses with Lennon. It turns out, abiding is merely a Biblical interpretation of the Unending element: The Unending characteristic sees nothing as ever coming to completion. Porn’s objectification of women is so obvious and oft-discussed that my elaboration on the matter would just be redundant; the fact that the “studs” of porn are every bit as exploited and shamed is worthy of note, however, since this shaming is a further developing of the theme of male humiliation. These two women aren’t thwarted by psychoanalytic sexism. Sobchak bites off Uli’s ear, another removing of a bodily appendage symbolic of castration; and the German played by Flea is hit by Sobchak’s bowling ball, and he buckles over as if emasculated. All I knew was that Jeff Bridges wore a slacker sweater, and for some reason, he wanted his rug back. Other parallels with Taoism are the themes of duality, dialectics, and the unity of opposites. The German nihilists threaten to castrate the Dude after dumping a marmot between his legs in his bathtub as he’s lying naked in it; he yelps as he tries to stop the animal from scratching at his balls. Actually, the severed toe (symbolic castration) was that of a German girlfriend of the nihilists, the only one of them in the restaurant scene who can’t speak English. I don’t fuckin’ care! Student ID: 52948216. Twenty-one essays inspired by the film are included in the drolly titled This Year's Work in Lebowski Studies, a 2009 collection edited by Edward Comentale and Aaron Jaffe. Bunny has come back unharmed, for she never even “kidnapped herself”; she just took off without telling anyone, in her usual carefree, irresponsible way. Remember the soft-spoken German woman without a toe, who also needed the nihilists to translate her pancake order into English. Keep throwing shit at your protag – Just keep throwing terrible things at your protag. Jackie Treehorn, as a pornographer who “treats objects like women,” consummately personifies capitalist exploitation. That the big Lebowski seems to have cut a deal with the nihilists to give him an excuse to move some charity funds, while hoping they’ll kill Bunny, suggests a symbolizing of capitalism’s habitual cozying up to fascism, while treating its victims as contemptible and expendable. The magic of Subtext lies in its ability to convert a Premise into a workable structure. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. But you’re not foolin’ me, man. He steals from his own charity, while hypocritically pretending it’s his generosity that helps his ‘urban achievers.’. The film takes place in the early 90’s and the central character is … Imagine being able to quickly plot out the critical logistical and emotional Beats of A Few Good Men with just those two options. In the twenty years since its 1998 release, Joel and Ethan Coen’s neo-noir buddy comedy The Big Lebowski has emerged as a cult sensation. The Big Lebowski is Slacker Noir—a subset of Film Noir where the central character exhibits bad attitudes, rather than finding himself caught up in an untenable situation. Personality is vital—a meaningful Element is essential (Step One, Step Two). The Dude is lazy and unemployed, possibly, if only temporarily, living off the welfare system that would continue to exist as such for another five years (the Coens’ original idea to have the Dude live off some of the wealth from a family invention, the Rubik’s Cube, wasn’t included in the movie); the big Lebowski is an “achiever”…or is he? Maude, in contrast, is clearly a pro-sex feminist and “vaginal” artist, though she throws herself at the Dude as blatantly as Bunny does. The interior is bowling themed and adorned with rugs such as the one from the movie. Determine the Personality of the story, Step 2. Instead of the conflict ending with the characters changing or growing in any significant way, everything just ends up more or less the same as it was in the beginning: the tail of the ouroboros at the end of the story finds itself in the biting mouth of the story’s beginning, with no sublation. The Dude. The three finger holes in a bowling ball can represent a woman’s urethra, vagina, and anus, thus making the testicular ball an androgynous sexual symbol, a union of yin and yang. Of course, he has the “reactionary” and “fascist” Malibu police on his side (two epithets the Dude has for the police chief who hits him on the head with a coffee mug), for capitalists can always rely on the cops to help them, no matter how questionable their business practices may be. The magic of Subtext lies in its ability to convert a Premise into a workable structure. Quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin’ for laziest worldwide.”. As it says in the Tao Te Ching, “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” (Chapter 48) Now, note what the Stranger says of the Dude: “And even if he’s a lazy man – and the Dude was most certainly that. However the Dude is able to provide for himself financially–whether it be from the Rubik’s Cube fortune of his family, as originally conceived by the Coen brothers, or if it be, as I speculate, from his receiving unemployment insurance or welfare benefits–his ability to have money while not working can be seen to symbolize the socialist ideal of a Guaranteed Basic (or Universal) Income. The Big Lebowski is a 1998 comedy written, produced, and directed by the Coen brothers, starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Julianne Moore, and with Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Peter Stormare, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliott, and David Huddleston. Step One: a Courtroom Drama. The film is both reassuringly familiar and noticeably different to classic film noir; watching it feels like walking into a familiar room to find it turned upside down. Incidentally, a large painting of scissors is hanging on a wall in Maude’s studio; after saying, “dick” and “rod,” she gives a brief, uncomfortable pause before saying “Johnson,” the very word the nihilists use when threatening to emasculate the Dude. Sometimes the vulva is perceived as a wound resulting from castration, as Freud noted; consider also Camille Paglia‘s comments on the subject of the–to men, frightening–mystery surrounding the vagina, which can also be the vagina dentata (Paglia, pages 13, 22-23, 47). ( Log Out /  all!the!way!to!the!Pacific!Ocean. Luckily I’m adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug regimen to keep my mind, you know, limber.” –the Dude, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.” –the Dude, “Careful, man, there’s a beverage here!” –the Dude, “Well, you know, the Dude abides.” –the Dude, “Nihilists! Peruse the decades of podcasts and videocasts from the Dramatica Users Group meetings, and you find a process of storyforming that lasts anywhere from two to three hours. “Oh, the usual. The Big Lebowski by Coen Brothers Movie Analysis Essay Coen Brothers’ Phenomenon. Contemporary movie industry presents a wide variety of films that cover different topics. The Big Lebowski is a 1998 crime comedy film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Yet apart from their shared name, the two men are opposites in almost every way. While an expert in story, I was not familiar with “abiding.” I had to look it up in Google shortly after watching the film—which meant I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of Ecclesiastes, political activism, and the fact that they changed the car in production because John Goodman couldn’t fit in a Chrysler Baron. The Dude, representing the left, sees his property destroyed, which symbolizes capitalist sabotage of socialist states; his home is his own private DPRK. Topics: The Big Lebowski, Coen brothers, John Goodman Pages: 5 (1508 words) Published: November 26, 2013. He may refer to Lenin angrily, but he’s most comfortable discussing Theodor Herzl…, Though born a Polish Catholic, he’s converted to Judaism, so he’s as much a lapsed Catholic as Quintana. Then there’s Maude in her Viking outfit, with the phallic horns on her helmet and her thrice-phallic trident. The Big Lebowski and the Unlamented American Dream; … Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. Sobchak points a gun at Smokey and yells at him for stepping over the line when bowling a strike and not accepting marking it zero for committing a foul; meanwhile the Dude keeps his cool, warns Sobchak that they’re calling the cops, and tells him calmly to put the piece away. Soiling its spin on Raymond Chandler with f-bombs and nihilistic pornographers, The Big Lebowski teaches us that regardless of the meaninglessness of it all—the Earth abides. After hearing the Dude yell, “Just take it easy, man,” Sobchak says, “I’m calmer than you are,” with perfect coolness. Furthermore, ‘nothing‘ (what the castration-threatening nihilists believe in), ‘no thing,’ or ‘an O-thing’ was slang for a woman’s genitals back in Shakespeare’s day. Wooo! Is his falling on the floor, after Sobchak lets him go, a kind of face-saving continuation of the pretence? Sure, one must connect “cut-rate” with an Element of Reduction in Dramatica—but the payoff learning those 64 Elements is more than worth it. Quintana is embarrassed at having to tell everyone in his neighbourhood that he’s “a pederast.”, A major form of this theme of male humiliation is expressed in the language of male-on-male rape, a making of the victim into a passive partner in sex, his anus made into a vagina, as it were. During the opening credits, when everything seems to be going well, everyone is bowling strikes. In the beginning a guy is opening a milk carton at the supermarket. More pairings: Maude and Bunny Lebowski (Moore and Tara Reid, respectively). 122 writers online. Finally, the whole twisting and turning plot, which has “a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you’s,” ends up as, really, much ado about nothing. Though the movie did poorly at the box office, it has since then grown into a cult classic, with fans of the movie dressing up as their favourite characters at Lebowski Fests; there’s even a Taoist-oriented religion based on the wisdom of the Dude (Bridges). But as things get more complicated and tensions rise, people start missing pins. The millionaire Lebowski's trophy wife is kidnapped, and he commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release; the plan goes awry when the Dude's friend Walter Sobchak (J… Though they lost Donny, the Dude and Sobchak will resume their bowling tournament. The threat of castration is a recurring potential humiliation for him, especially in the scissors dream sequence, reminding us of Maude’s painting. This spot reflects the crossover point between the Objective Story Throughline, and the Main Character Throughline—the resonance between the objective and the subjective. The meaning behind Hamlet encourages a narrative template vastly different from that of Kung Fu Panda. In addition to the Storyform, you'll also find any additional analysis or media related to the story in question. As he and the Dude leave the bowling alley and go into the latter’s car, the Dude gets increasingly agitated trying to get Sobchak to understand how excessively he reacted. Change ), Analysis of ‘Apocalypse Now’ – Infinite Ocean, ‘The Splitting,’ a Sci-Fi Horror Novel, Book I, Chapter Nine, Analysis of ‘Quartet for the End of Time’, ‘The Splitting,’ a Sci-Fi Horror Novel, Book I, Chapter Eight, ‘The Splitting,’ a Sci-Fi Horror Novel, Book I, Chapter Seven, Jesus Quintana…………….corrupt, abusive Catholic Church, Walter Sobchak……………neo-con, imperialist militarism and Zionism, Jackie Treehorn…………..exploitative capitalism. Watch trailers & learn more. I felt the leading character is a rebel because he does what he wants. We see that sexual aggression is a major theme in this movie, one in which the word “fuck” is used more than in most others. The Dude himself conveys personal conflict through a fixed—and somewhat unshakable—attitude. “Fuck,” incidentally, comes from (among other possible etymologies) Middle Dutch fokken, meaning ‘to hit,’ or ‘to strike.’ Bowling is full of sexual symbolism in this movie, the testicle-shaped ball knocking out all the phallic, penis pins in a strike; then the ball goes into a yonic hole behind the mechanical pinsetter. Symbolically castrated, the nine-toed woman had no English signifiers to express the meaning in her mind, to order pancakes. ..Fuck me. We’re all, we’re all very fond of her. She is in the political centre, in control of her parents’ money (her mother’s, actually) while doing her hipster art; she also exploits the Dude (to get her pregnant) every bit as much as her father does (to act as courier to pay off Uli et al). Bunny Lebowski: [takes off her sunglasses] I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars. Step Two: a cut-rate lawyer. View all posts by Mawr Gorshin. It don’t matter to Jesus. Step 1. The Big Lebowski takes these tropes and turns them on their head, mixing in a urine-stained rug, bowling, copious weed, missing toes, and nihilistic Germans. The nihilists are now as silent as their girlfriend in the pancake restaurant. This conversion to Judaism, constant talking about it, and his use of a spinning Uzi when he jumps out of the car during the hand-off of the money, all suggest Christian Zionism, which really is just another form of Western imperialism, rather than an inherently Jewish issue. He is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, then learns that a millionaire (also named Jeffrey Lebowski) was the intended victim. Dude agrees to meet with the "Big Lebowski", hoping to get compensation for his rug since it "really tied the room together" and figures that his wife, Bunny, shouldn't be owing money around town. Stifled and silenced by the three Germans, who represent fascism (as I’ll explain below), she has been subordinated just as women in Nazi Germany were. Going with the flow, and following the Tao, “the Dude abides.”, I'm merging the variety of topics I've blogged about--which include literary and film analyses, anarchism, socialism, libertarian-leaning Marxism, narcissistic abuse, and psychoanalysis--into a coherent philosophy centred on dialectical materialism, dialectical monism, and object relations theory. Sobchak’s “day of rest shit…don’t matter to Jesus” reminds one of Christ telling the Pharisees that “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), in response to seeing Jews working on Saturday (i.e., “to pluck the ears of corn,” Mark 2:23, presumably because of an emergency [an urgent need to feed the hungry], the only time breaking of the Sabbath is allowed in Jewish law). We hear male voices gently singing "Tumbling If the Dude represents the besieged socialist states and vulnerable Third World, she–in her seduction of him–represents the liberals who exploit such poor countries no less than those on the right do. Although The nihilists’ humiliation has driven them to “takes de money” in a desperate attempt to restore their existence to its pre-porn status, back to their former glory as musicians, hence the playing of their electronic music on a tape player during the fight scene. Both women are liberated and sexually aggressive in the extreme, though only Bunny is tainted with the label of “slut” for appearing in porn. Pssst... we can write an … Everyone in this kind of story encounters conflict through manipulations, scheming, and posturing. Pride and shame are intermixed, which makes perfect sense, since with Sobchak, pride goes before a fall…not that he really ever notices himself fall. What’s this day of rest shit?! The political meaning behind who is most brutally made fun of in the movie (the big Lebowski, Sobchak, the nihilists, Treehorn and his goons, Quintana, and the gnomish, dancing landlord) is that what they represent is a group of establishment ideologies that deserve our contempt and loathing. January 28, 2019 / General Snobbery big lebowski … Slacker Noir features an Overall Story Throughline of Psychology and a M… Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes, well, he eats you. Sam Elliot narrates the film, bookending the experience with thoughtful musings on The Dude and his story. I’m not Mr. Lebowski. Men, however, are constantly being humiliated in this movie. GE3401 – TB2. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Sobchak destroys a beautiful, brand new car, whose infuriated owner then smashes up the Dude’s; once again, Sobchak’s idiot impulsivity makes him lose face. This one line actually sums up the main character, appropriately named “The Dude”, very well. “Well, sir, it’s this rug I had. Furthermore, consider Sobchak’s contempt for Saddam (“…look at our current situation with that camel-fucker in Iraq.”) and the Iraqis (“…what we have here, a bunch of fig-eaters, wearing towels on their heads tryin’ to find reverse on a Soviet tank. This leads me to the fallen pride of the big Lebowski. The Dude is so embarrassed, he quickly pays and leaves, while Sobchak is so oblivious to what an ass he’s being, he’s proudly “staying,” “finishing,” and “enjoying [his] coffee.”, Finally, Sobchak proudly imagines he’s clever enough to know that the big Lebowski isn’t really a cripple, then picks the old man up and out of his wheelchair, imagining Lebowski will stand when he’s let go of. These are the themes I’ll be examining in this analysis: The Taoist orientation of ‘Dudeism’ is more than justified, for the Dude’s whole way of life is, like that tumbling tumbleweed, a passive going-with-the-flow, though this passivity is carried to a comically slothful extreme. Like the black dot in yang, and the white dot in yin, each opposite has a bit of the other in it. This isn’t mere overindulgent swearing in a Hollywood movie. He married Bunny for the same reason Trump married Melania…as a kind of male jewellery to boost his ego. His outbursts indicate the emotional dysregulation of PTSD sufferers. One of the attackers, an Asian-American, pees on on The Dude’s favorite rug. What’s this bullshit?! One day, The Dude, returns to his home after grocery shopping, when he is attacked by two thugs who claim that his wife owes money to a man named Jackie Treehorn. Introduction. Click here to download my The Big Lebowski screenplay analysis. Drive around. Next, there’s the pairing of Sobchak and Jesus Quintana. Exploring English Cinema. You might fool the fucks in the league office, but you don’t fool Jesus. These two facts establish his credentials as a progressive: remember the Dude’s pro-woman, “racially…cool” attitude; it also, however, shows his disengagement from the labour movement and concern for class struggle. Thus, Maude politically represents how liberals are no better than conservatives when it comes to preserving the class structure of society, all the while acting as though such establishment thinking is solely the fault of conservatives. ( Log Out /  The next pairing is that of the Dude and Walter Sobchak. The … The big Lebowski represents the spoiled capitalist who finds himself in the upper classes by association with them (i.e., marrying a rich woman, Maude’s mother), not by having “achieved” on his own merits, as he and other capitalists like to boast. [stands up] AM I THE ONLY ONE AROUND HERE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES?! 1120 Words 5 Pages. Donny, who’s constantly being told to “shut the fuck up,” dies of a heart attack, and his ashes are put in a Folger’s tin; then Sobchak, after quoting Hamlet, scatters them…all over the Dude’s face. Maude is a bourgeois liberal who judges her father for his conservative posturing, but she’s sitting on all that wealth, too, rather than pushing for revolution. From there, one merely locks in the more communicative aspects of the message: Plug those into Subtext’s Premise Builder, and you get: Wordy, yes—but this Premise perfectly encapsulates the message behind The Big Lebowski. They speak freely, in full control of linguistic signifiers: Bunny in her jouissance has a lascivious tongue, and she doesn’t care who hears it; Maude is particularly articulate. Arguably, despite her bourgeois liberalism, Maude is OK–provided she relents and lets the Dude regularly see their future child; for the Dude, for all his faults, foibles, and laughable moments, is the closest the movie comes to having a character who represents a political ideal worth striving for. The Big Lebowski Screenplay: The Beats. Bunny’s toes, however, are all intact, and she freely expresses herself as she sings ‘Viva Las Vegas’ while driving. The three nihilists aren’t Nazis, of course, but their use of violence and destruction in pursuit of their goals (as well as, unfortunately, the German stereotype) shows that they represent the fascist wing of capitalism, for they cut off the toe of their German girlfriend, in hopes of getting “ze money.” (Sobchak’s confusion of the three nihilists with Nazis, as wrong as he is about that, nonetheless strengthens this symbolic association.).