Jeff Bridges recently visited Jon Stewart on a bridge-themed episode of The Daily Show, promising audiences depth in his new book, The Dude and the Zen Master, which was inspired by a happenchance conversation about Bridges in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski.
The Big Lebowski: crippled, rich, impudent doppelgänger of the main character of the movie.
Less likable than The Dude, the Lebowski-denying, poor Lebowski in the same city (played by some parts of Beverly Hills that seem like a quiet, slow-paced small town).
The little Lebowski: the baby alluded to at the end of the film who will be some confused mesh of the Big Lebowski's genes-- perhaps having the ego of grandfather-- and the Lebowski-denier's genes, probably inheriting lots of laziness. Do you smell the makings of a sequel by the end of the film?
I don't, because of one man:
The narrator: a nearly cartoonish descendent of Yosemite Sam who breaks the fourth wall to tell us that "Sometimes, there's a man, a man who's just right for his time and place. He just fits right in there. Sometimes there's a man… sometimes there's a man…"
You could sit through the whole movie waiting for the narrator to finish his thought, or show us how The Dude exemplified a modern, relevant male of 1991. How did his story fit right into the times, and no other time?
In Bridges' TV interview, he said he was convinced of the Zen of the movie-- many subtle
Kōans directed by the Cohen brothers, that are at once shocking and blasé: "Shut the fuck up, Donny."
Is that it?
No, fans, there's much more, but you might not like to hear it. I see this symbolic story as a comment on the modern emasculation of ordinary men, with more than a few hints at castration.
Castration! If we were watching a different film, one The Dude might enjoy, we might say "Double Castration!"
The two unavailable female characters threaten the men with different, subtle forms of castration.
Big L.'s daughter, Maude Lebowski, over-the-top feminist, points out the relative poverty and ineffectiveness of her father's lowly position, tearing away the facade of a rich, smart, older business man who built up his wealth from nothing. She uses the admittedly poor, younger Lebowski in a mildly incestuous plan to conceive and have a baby with someone who shares her father's name, preferring no involvement of a father, cutting off the influence of one parent and cutting ties with the masculine.
Both rich daughter Ms. Lebowski and gold-digging stepmother Mrs. Lebowski approach The Dude seeking sex-- "I'll suck your cock for a thousand dollars"-- but Ms. Maude is the one always kidnapping and calling him-- she arrives in his bed, but communicates unemotionally and matter-of-factly, tossing about ideas with him but distinctly disapproving of partnership with him. Meanwhile The Dude chases after Mrs. Bunny Lebowski and never finds her: the willing nymphomaniac driving the chase, perpetually unreachable. As an erotomaniac (diagnosed by Maude), she is emotionally unavailable and uninterested too.
Surely you saw the painting of a big pair of scissors and the color red, as The Dude entered Maude's apartment? The imagery reappears in The Dude's drug-induced vision, when men dressed in red are running with scissors: huge, menacing scissors that threaten to snap up and, dare I say, castrate The Dude.
You knew there would be hidden, sexual meanings when you saw the "Gutterballs" drug-induced film-within-a-film sequence. And, like the resolution of the hostage mystery, it's kind of anti-climactic: The rich, powerful man is physically, financially, and, within his circles, socially powerless. Impotent.
(You knew it when Brandt introduced the Big Lebowski's children. The Dude: "Ah. Different mothers." Brandt: "No, no, not literally his children…")
The important main character is unemployed, always suffering hard knocks, lazy, unmotivated, impotent-- reaping such rewards of his glory days of occupying college buildings and resisting the draft, fighting hard for his right not to fight or do anything, much.
The Vietnam veteran, eager sidekick: socially impossible, savage, inept in the face of crisis.
The fake abductors, foreign male threats that demand ransom money (never proffered) for Bunny Lebowski (never abducted): impotent, inept, losing to the one-man fighting machine that is Walter, after wailing that life is unfair, even when they have no moral ground to stand on as branded "nihilists."
The L.A. cops are admittedly, gleefully powerless to help.
The professional PI looking for Bunny Robinson Lebowski: so clueless and clumsy that he looks to The Dude for clues.
The film takes on philosophy more than religion, though you can't help but salivate for some symbolic showdown between the Zen of The Dude and the offensive bowling rival, The Jesus.
"Don't fuck with The Jesus."
The showdown and the the bowling tournament are not part of this story. (Can you believe that by the end I actually care about the bowling tournament?) The initial question, "Where's the money, Lebowski?" is never answered.
This is the story of an unrealistic Stranger who just ambled off his dude ranch, narrating a very realistic middle-aged man in a crazy hostage situation that goes around in circles. Why?
Because, despite incompetence and other forms of impotence, there is one man in the film who stands out simply because he fits in. He goes with the flow. He doesn't stop when his friend or his car dies. His existence, seemingly shiftless and selfish, is justified by how everything works out around him.
Perhaps the spirit of the times, then, was living in the now and being One with the chaos.
"Sometimes there's a man…." …who isn't a MAN, he's just a Dude. When you're an emasculated Dude, you get out of the expectations and responsibilities of having to be the Man.
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