"Bullshit Walter!!!"

A Western in the greatest sense, the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski nestles us nicely into the ethos of the American West and explores the ramifications of living in George Bush's (41) America. The cold war has ended, our global terrors have loosened; the sixties is long over and idealism is for the weak. Gorbachev did indeed "tear down this wall," so to speak. This is Ronald Reagan's American; RICHARD NIXON'S AMERICA!!! Los Angeles style. (These were California men after all.) Pornography? Drinking during the day? Recreational drug use? The occasional acid flash-back? Sure. Why not? This is freedom after all. Death to all those who would whimper and cry. War with Iraq? It's nothing. Pure, unadulterated realism. Dreams: failure. Our better angels have crashed and burned. What are we left with? Bowling?

Well, yeah. Sort of. If Sam Elliot is right, and The Dude is the man for his time and place - a characterization made possible by contingent circumstances, bred by environment, successful inasmch as evolution decrees existence to be a victory of sorts; a great arrival of all that is real Los Angeles - then what other conclusion would we draw. The Dude is a hero, the man for his time and place (again); he fits right in there. Does that mean woe to the American Dream; the idealizations of Manifest Destiny? Is this to be the new paragon of western masculinity? Of course it is.

This is the freedom we fought so hard for. The freedom we wanted. To be loosed of societal and larger concerns and responsibilities. To chart our own course. To create our own identities. Call The Dude lazy; call him a freeloader. A free society will always suffer from free-riders; parasites.

We love The Dude for all that he is - a freak. God bless the freaks, as they say. This is not meant in some sort of carnival barker, old weird traveling sideshow, sort of way. The Dude is specifically not like us; maybe not like anyone we have ever met. He stands in opposition to "the square-community," that everything tells us we are supposed to prize. Woe to the world if everyone listened to whale sounds during a candle-lit bath alone. But he alone who perseveres in the face of the certain spiritual devastation facing us all: that's a good job by him. Viewed in light of our broader, self-imposed roles and rules themselves: this is The Dude.

Maybe he speaks to the less ambitious aspects of our unexplored longings. Surely we might each dream of great things: fame and renown. But can't we not, as well, dream of a small apartment, slippers and robe, nights at our super's experimental theater performances? Where our greatest desires and encumbrances can be spoken of as we also are addressing ten pins, a narrow lane and a ball? Only in our weaker moments? Why? Who says so? This is freedom. We are free to create reality as we see fit. Everything is possible. What do we choose?

We can call him hero; only as we remember that it is contrast to our own deadness.

If indeed, The Dude abides. Then I, too, am left with a measure of comfort in that.