by Chalupa
Lebowski Podcast
It can sometimes be unnerving and embarrassing when someone who’s opinions we value, points out something to question in our lives. This can be something serious or something quite trivial. Say your best friend makes fun of your favorite shirt or a new haircut. Or what if your co-workers cracked jokes about your new desktop background? Has a crowd ever yelled something offensive at you from a sidewalk or street corner? It’s not fun having your ego and self-worth tested.
One thought we’ve had for an Lebowski Podcast episode is to critique The Big Lebowski from a moral standpoint. Even though I love the Coen Brothers’ 1998 masterpiece dearly, I can tell you exactly what my mother would say if she saw it. She wouldn’t appreciate the swearing, she wouldn’t like the sexual aspects, and she would really dislike Walter. How do you recommend a film like this to someone with different film watching values from your own?
Apologists are people who defend things that are brought under public scrutiny or persecutory examination. The most common types are Christian apologists who have taken on the task of defending and recommending their faith to others, but before we get off some rabbit trail about how The Church has wronged you or you think they’re all a bunch of hypocrites, let me make something clear: The Church is not the issue here.
What I’m trying to say is, how would one defend The Dude? How can I justify my favorite movie to people who disapprove of its content? How can I bring my opponents to see the 
redeemable morals where they see only drunkenness, substance abuse and debauchery. Even though the term apologetics has turned into something seemingly bad as of late, I’m wondering how I can be a Lebowski apologist in the classical sense. Another way to put it would be that I’m interested in the aesthetics of The Big Lebowski.
Putting all personal feelings and issues aside, what would you say to someone that brings up an issue about your favorite film? I must admit that Jesus Quintana was one character
that immediately stood out to me after my first viewing. Would I really love “the Jesus” if he were a character in the film The Woodsman? The guy’s a pervert, a pederast, a friggin’ child molester. What about how Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women? Does that really uplift the spirits of our mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers and special ladies? Furthermore, Walter has some pretty serious anger management issues. And The Dude, bless his heart, would probably make a good candidate for Dr. Drew’s reality TV show, Celebrity Rehab. Even The Stranger makes a point of trying to lovingly correct The Dude:
THE STRANGER: I like your style, Dude.
DUDE: Well I dig your style too, man. Got a whole cowboy thing goin’.
THE STRANGER: Thankie, there’s just one thing, Dude.
DUDE: Whassat?
THE STRANGER: D’ya have to use s’many cuss words?
So what are we to do? Is this even a battle we should choose to fight? What groups of people would you advise not to see The Big Lebowski? I have some answers, but am more interested in what you have to say. We will be doing an episode on this topic in the near future and I would love to include your input. As always, we appreciate your notes.
As you may know, I wrote and gave a sermon on Pulp Fiction and TBL. Granted, it was for a Unitarian Universalist congregation (which means they’re not very uptight with unconventional religious services), but I still struggled with putting the sermon together.
While I cautioned members about the language, violence, and sex, I also emphasized the reason why I find both movies so dang innaresting (more seriously, why they’re both so meaningful to me in a spiritual way). That’s how I approach it in general with anyone who wants to know why I like TBL so much.
If they can appreciate my thoughts, cool. If they can’t, that’s cool too.
Life goes on one way or another…
I have a couple of pastor-friends who have done movie series. They have purposefully chosen films that they think most people would not watch and pick particular scenes to focus on. I think it’s a great idea and have tried to give them some ideas.
I think one important thing is remembering to be Dude-like is something does not like your favorite film. Different strokes for different folks, ya know?
This is sort of off-topic, but Great Dude Mark Twain got embroiled in a controversy in Elmira, NY over an unorthodox minister who held popular religious services in a (gasp) opera house, sort of the equivalent of having church services at the local mulitplex.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/paine/appendix9.html
A particularly relevant passage from Twain’s sarcastic letter:
Therefore he (the minister) secured the Opera House and proceeded to preach there every Sunday evening to assemblages comprising from a thousand to fifteen hundred persons. He felt warranted in this course by a passage of Scripture which says, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature.” Opera-houses were not ruled out specifically in this passage, and so he considered it proper to regard opera-houses as a part of “all the world.” He looked upon the people who assembled there as coming under the head of “every creature.” These ideas were as absurd as they were farfetched, but still they were the honest ebullitions of a diseased mind. His great mistake was in supposing that when he had the Saviour’s indorsement of his conduct he had all that was necessary. He overlooked the fact that there might possibly be a conflict of opinion between the Saviour and the Ministerial Union of Elmira.
Being sensitive to others feelings about an artistic composition (movie, book, painting, etc.) seems a very Dude like quality and yet, ultimately, if others find the film offensive well, as the Dude himself says – it’s just like, their opinion, man.
One of the greatest things about TBL is how real it is – It’s east to maintain morality in a proper, upstanding moral world without bad example or temptation – that is not the world we live in, though. we live in a society where people very commonly cus, abuse substances, womjectify objects and the like – The Dude abides through all of this which shows the strength of his moral character even though overtly, he appears to be a lazy, unproductive bum that the community doesn’t give a shit about. He really has nothing to lose by letting his morality slip all the way to Nihilism, yet he does not ever let that happen – What better test of character and morality!
I tend to just tell people it’s my favourite movie and leave it at that. Like Fight Club, another of my favourite movies that I wouldn’t recommend watching with your grandmother.
If they watch it and think it’s offensive, well, maybe their thinking has become too uptight, or maybe they might come to like it later on down the trail.
Can’t be worried about that shit. Life goes on man.
“They’re gonna kill that poor woman.”
The Dude preached on and on about this, yet Walter mocked his concern.
“She kidnapped herself, Dude.”
As for apologetics, well, steel yourselves for mockery, insult, and various and sundry “What the fuck you talking about” responses.
Some people are just naturally inclined to be dudeists and others are not. Those who are will eventually become dudes, whether or not you preach to them. The others… sometimes they eat the bear and sometimes the bear, well, he eats them.
You gotta just keep on abiding, man. You can’t save them and it would be very undude to think you can.
Or, as another Zen dude once said, “When the student is ready, the teacher will come.”
You’ll know another dude (or pre-dude) when you see one.
Thanks for all the notes. I really appreciate them.
Rev_Dudezen hit the nail right on the head: “You gotta just keep on abiding, man. You can’t save them and it would be very undude to think you can.” Show respect for their different opinions (no matter how “wrong” they may be) and try to get them to maybe take another look at it; if they change their minds, cool, if not; oh, well…fuck it, you can’t be worrying about all that shit.
I really like how you guys are mentioning to just be cool. So many try to proselytize when just having a meaningful conversation can net much better results.
So I hate somebody’s favorite band – that’s cool. I’m at least willing to hear why they like it so much. Maybe that’ll change my mind, and if not, that’s ok too.
I myself dabbed into changing people’s mind about certain political or moral issues once, but I didn’t do very well at it. I told them about the first amendment, about Duchamp, about the whole hermeneutics concept, even about Dostoievsky and how it is absurd to consider him immoral because one of his characters wants to kill his own father (Karamazov), but, awh, there’s always a cultural context that is almost impossible to overcome.
So, TBL is both: a movie of its time and place and a movie WAY BEYOND its time and place, in the same way Madame Bovary was.
Yes, there’s a collection of liberal (the three Leb’s, Jackie) and immoral characters (The Jesus, the Nazis), but they are all funny.. and in comedies, immoral but funny characters have always existed (Rabelais, anyone?)
So as you can see, fncking literary theories… fncking nazis… nothing changes…
That’s just my opinion man…but that’s why I find the whole thing so darn inneresting..