The Big Lebowski

I'm not a huge fan of TBL, I'd be lost at a "The Dude" convention, but my husband likes it very much, and it intrigues me that so many people love it and that it's said that you see something new everytime you watch it.

I watched once before, I'd say about a year ago, and then once more tonight.  Tonight I wasn't trying to follow the plot but to see new layers in it, different meanings for the characters, and what I've come up with is this.  Donny is us.

At the first watching I thought that the Dude was us.  That through no fault of our own, we get drawn into things that hurt us and put us in danger and put us in positions where we have to make life and death decisions and the only peole who profit are the ones who are rich already and it reduces us to just hoping to be left with what little damaged possessions we still have and our lives.

This time I realized that we aren't actually the Dude, who, through no fault of his own, happened to have the same name as someone who needed a reason to steal some money.  So even though it all seemed random, it turns out that some one was out to get the Dude, The Big Lebowski.  It was all planned.  He was a targeted victim.

Who we are is Donny.  Nice guy, has some kind of life, shows up for bowling practice.  But never knows what's going on because when the information is given out, he is off doing something he lis legitimately supposed to be doing, like bowling.   Then when he asks, some asshole like Walter screams abuse at him about how stupid he is for not knowing something he was never told and for trying in the politest possible way to get that information.

He gets dragged along to see someone who can supposedly solve the Dude's problem because he wants to get an In And Out burger, and is told by Walter that the kid will be a pushover, and then he's told to stay in the car anyway.  Which he does until Walter comes screaming out of the house and starts attacking the Corvette with a crowbar.  Lucky thing Donny did get out because the next thing you know the neighbor (owner of the Corvette) begins attacking the Dude's car with the crowbar.  But then he does get an In And Out burger so apparently everything is okay.

Then, he's at the bowling alley with the Dude and Walter and they go out to the parking lot to find three German guys with weapons want money.  The Dude has 4 dollars, Donny offers up 18 (4 and a half times the amout that Dude has, just because the Dude is his friend and he wants to end this thing peacefully), but Walter insists on making it a fight, and these guys actually come after The Dude, Donny and Walter.

So here's Donny, being attacked and hurt due to something which has never even been explained to him, by people he doesn't know, but whom Walter explains by saying that they're not Nazis they're nihilists, so Donny has nothing to worry about, dying alone in a parking lot not by any particular wound, but by the stress caused to him by his so-called friends and their lives.

That's us, being lied to and abused, then placated by bad, cheap food, then being stressed by events which we have no part in, to the actual point of death.

And then $180 is too much for these 'friends' to pay for an urn to take him from the crematorium.

They intend to spread Donny's ashes over the ocean, but don't take even one second to determine the wind direction which can be easily seen by the way the Dude's hair keeps blowing into his face..

And the Dude has nothing to even say about Donny.  He's just standing there behind Walter, as sort of an uninterested party, while Walter rambles on about Vietnam.  Then Walter opens the coffee can they've so respectfully put Donny's ashes in, and dumps out Donny's ashes so that they blow away from the ocean, behind Walter and directly on to the Dude. And THEN the Dude yells at Walter about screwing up the whole thing, brushing Donny's ashes off of himself as if they were just dirt, because who cares about Donny's final resting place, really, right?  And Walter just apologizes . . . to the DUDE, not DONNY.  And that's the last we hear of him until the Cowboy says he wished Donny hadn't died.  So do I . But God forbid anyone take any responsibility for it.

We Are Donny.  Other people, wealthy, respected people, people we're not even good enough to meet, begin all sorts of machinations, to get money which does not belong to them, and is not meant for them, and they create so much chaos that the stress kills us, and we die never even knowing why.  And then it's as if we never existed. No grave, no tombstone, not even an empty urn to show for ourselves.