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The Big Lebowski and The Dying Western Genre
The Big Lebowski and The Dying Western Genre
Megan Voegele
Dr. Henley
ENGL 300-004
11/28/09
In the 1998 Coen brothers film The Big Lebowski, “millionaire” Lebowski asks, “Is it...is
it, being prepared to do the right thing? Whatever the price? Isn’t that what makes a man?”. He
probably didn’t realize that the question could be expanded to the idea of the Western hero and
where he fits with the 90s culture. Cowboy movies have been around since the dawn of film-
producing time, each decade offering its own hero. The 90s gave us The Dude. The Big
Lebowski is at first glance about a man and his rug, but further reveals itself as a movie about a
man and how he is constantly trampled upon. Though the film initially sets itself up as a
stereotypical Western, the Dude fails as a representation of the classic Western hero because of
his passive character traits and inability to act unguided. Furthermore, the Dude’s failure
There are many different subdivisions of the Western genre ranging from the Classical
Westerns of the early 1900s and the contemporary and revisionist Westerns of the 60s to present
day. They feature overarching themes such as honor in the society, the struggle to cope in a
lawless world, and revenge against wrongdoing. Societal images of Western film include the
nomadic cowboy and horse, saloons, and the ever-popular damsel in distress. The classical
Westerns churned out and embellished this vision even before color film. Stagecoach (1939) is a
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prime example of this era, and it inspired many films to respond to and tweak the genre for years
to come.
The many elements of classic Westerns are demonstrated through the characters and
plotline of Stagecoach. The Ringo kid is one of the main characters, and though he is an outlaw,
he like many other “disrespectable” characters in the film are among the most noble and selfless.
His brother and father have been killed by Luke Plummer, and the kid intends to seek him out
and enact revenge. A stage coach discovers him and Marshall Curly has to arrest him, but later
becomes fond of him. Among this crew is a prostitute named Dallas who has been driven out of
town. The kid takes a liking to her and asks her to marry him, but she tells him that she won’t do
it unless he drops his plot to avenge his father and brother. He grudgingly agrees, but then they
are intercepted by approaching Indians. After a series of gunfights and other events, the
stagecoach arrives in Lordsburg where Plummer lives. The Kid decides to break his agreement
with Dallas, and murders Plummer and his two brothers in a gun fight. The film ends with the
The Big Lebowski may not be as dramatic in its representation of the West since it
features modern Los Angeles, but many of the elements are still there. The film opens with the
Stranger’s narrative against the song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and a backdrop of the city. The
Stranger is the ultimate gentleman cowboy, complete with thick accent, boots and hat. He pipes
out quirky sayings such as “that about wraps ‘er up” with a heavy Western drawl. There is a
general discordant feel to the movie, as none of the characters mix well together. “Watching it
amble along is enough of a treat, since the Coens populate this story with oddballs and bowling
balls of such comic variety,” is how Janet Maslin describes the film in her general review. This is
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even more emphasized by the lack of effective law enforcement that the Dude struggles with,
In many ways, the Dude does fit in with the Western hero role. When the Jackie Treehorn
thugs raid his house and pee on his rug, he eventually ends up seeking out an answer. Like the
Ringo Kid and his family, the Dude has been personally wronged and must resolve the issue. As
Amrys Williams says in his article, “the Dude is unencumbered by the corrupt politics of the
kidnapping: he is looking only to find the responsible parties, not to lay blame in the way which
best suits his own self-interest” (5). In this way the Dude is a sort of noble character. Some
would argue that his casualness adds to his heroic appeal. Williams claims that “[t]he Dude is
the only character who seeks true justice” (5). However, The Dude’s passive character traits
Throughout the entire film, the Dude’s masculinity is threatened, and he cannot overcome
this challenge. Everyone from the Big Lebowski himself to Jesus Quintana verbally degrade him.
Jesus is an example of the coarse and sexualized male, and is most successful at making the
Dude look faded and weak in contrast. The Dude’s largest problem is that he represents an era
that is dead. He’s long-haired, wears baggy clothes, and he has no real goals. All he wants to do
is smoke pot and drink his White Russians. His pacifist attitude gives him an aimlessly
wandering life, and does not help him achieve anything. As Comer says in his article, “ [i]n the
case of the Dude’s pacifism, the painful fact is that his presence does not hinder violence.
Instead, the Dude is complicit with the violence that kills Donny.” So the one thing the Dude
wants is something he does not accomplish. A hero cannot be a defeated and deflated character
It is true that The Dude wants his rug back, but he wouldn’t have done anything about the
situation if it weren’t for Walter. Walter is the force that often spurs the Dude into action. When
they are sitting at the bowling alley and the audience is first introduced to him, he emphasizes
that the rug really pulled the room together. Walter tells him, “I’m talking about drawing a line
in the sand, Dude.” This scene shows Walter’s dominance over both Donny and the Dude. It is
only after Walter pesters him about it that the Dude seeks out the Big Lebowski to get
compensation for the rug (perhaps out of fear that Walter would do it himself). A real Western
hero would not have needed a kick to get going after his offender. A man like the Ringo kid
would have been hot on their tails and ready for a gun fight, whereas the Dude always preaches
“take it easy.”
The Dude is in fact dominated by any character he is in a scene with. When he first meets
Maude, she disarms him by launching into a feminist rant: “without batting an eye a man will
refer to his ‘dick’ or his ‘rod’ or his ‘johnson.’” She always controls the conversation, and often
ends up confusing him. He repeats her words back at her since he is barely capable at holding an
insightful conversation. She eventually uses him to get the foundation’s money back and to
impregnate herself. She tells him, “I don’t want the father to be someone I have to see socially,
or who’ll have any interest in rearing the child himself.” In this way she uses the fact that he is a
lazy bum to her advantage, and achieves what she wants and is done with him. Maude is the
character that truly emasculates him, but when he learns what she’s done he simply stands there
in silence. Any real cowboy would have been horrified, since part of the heroic image is being
Stagecoach demonstrates the reversal of the roles portrayed here in a more traditional
“male-dominates-female” scenario. The Ringo Kid initially consents to give up his quest for
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revenge by marrying Dallas the prostitute (a female-demeaning role), but he doesn’t follow
through. He decides to murder the Plummers anyway and does not give in to the female will. His
choice is seen as the masculine way to do things that resonates strongly in Western culture. He
also evades the law, and when he walks away from punishment it could be interpreted as a way
The Dude continues to be emasculated and dominated by the German nihilists. He has
dream sequences where they chase after him with large pairs of scissors, threatening to castrate
him. The Dude’s true passivity is revealed in the scene where they are confronted by the nihilists
after Bunny has returned. They demand their money, and Walter is extremely offended,
proclaiming “What’s mine is mine.” The Dude attempts to opt for the easy way out and starts
digging in his pockets to give them his four dollars, but Walter won’t have it.
If any of the characters typify the “Ringo kid” kind of cowboy, it would be Walter. It is
clear that Walter is more aggressive and assertive than any of the other characters, but he is
placed on a lower level of importance than the Dude. Since his character is muted by a lead role
pacifist, the film fails at representing a clear picture of the Good Old Western. By making the
Dude the main character, the Coen brothers have implied that his passive traits are the most
The Stranger’s character is also an attempt at personifying the Western hero role. At the
concluding scene, The Dude is shown throwing back drink after drink, and the Stranger is
speaking to him. He’s dressed in full cowboy gear and dispenses little pearls of wisdom as the
all-knowing narrator. He becomes a sort of omniscient voice that does not act in the movie but
remains as a sort of half-hearted guide. He is modest and does not swear, and he does not order
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an alcoholic drink. He even goes so far as to ask The Dude not to swear so much. The Stranger
This calls to question what the perfect Western hero is. On the one hand there is the
gentleman cowboy, Stranger, and on the other side is the aggressive shooting cowboy, Ringo kid.
It seems there are contradicting views on what is ideal. The first is a call for the noble and
modest hero. The second is a throwback to the masculine role that so many movie-cowboys
fulfill.
It is perhaps because of the contradicting images of the ideal cowboy that the Western
genre itself has been muddled, and the “classic” Western has been lost ever since the 30s. It is
now been taken over with the revisionist and modern movements, and even broken down further
into stranger categories like acid Westerns and horror Westerns. A lot of the modern Westerns
question the images and stereotypes represented in the classics, and they have replaced them
with a more serious undertone. Many take place in modern settings, like the film Brokeback
Mountain. Brokeback Mountain heavily contradicts the classic image by presenting its audience
“Western” has now leaped out into areas so far from where it started, including animated series
like “Cowboy Bebop”, a science fiction western. The series includes many of the Western
themes such as the bounty hunters and the cowboy violence, but distributes the action on an
The vast diversity of the genre has given the Dude a chance at fulfilling at least one
Western representation, and yet he doesn’t. His character approaches neither Ringo kid nor
gentleman Stranger, because he is passive and yet vulgar all at once. He seems to fit in nowhere.
He wanders through the movie getting passed from character to character, never acting, and
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never deciding. His conversation is minimal and does not contribute many ideas to the table. He
just seems to “exist”—He is not a hero but just an average guy. It is as the Stranger says: “…and
even if he was a lazy man, and the Dude was certainly that—quite possibly the laziest in Los
clearly evident when the mortician offers him and Walter the most modestly priced receptacle.
Walter blows up when he learns it is $180, and the Dude wholeheartedly agrees with him, saying
“Hey man, don’t you have something else you could put it in?” Ironically, neither of them seem
So if the Dude cannot be considered a Western hero, can he be considered any type of
hero at all? He cannot be considered a Byronic hero; he lacks the high intelligence, charisma and
dark attributes that are associated with it. He is not a tragic hero since he is not idealized in any
way, and there is no ‘one’ decision that leads to his downfall. He is not a Romantic hero, who is
generally defined as a character that individually triumphs over the limitations of social
conventions. The only thing that he could be considered is an antihero, because he rejects all of
the traits of a hero. He has no concern for others, and “all the Dude ever wanted…was his rug
back…not greedy,” as he says when Jackie Treehorn has drugged him. It is true that the Dude is
not judgmental, and this is where the audience draws a kind of strange sympathy for the
character.
Just as the Dude’s character is muddled and clouds the movie’s representation, the classic
Western genre as the world once knew it is dead. This is even ambiguously stated in The Big
Lebowski through the dying elder Sellers. As Walter and The Dude come in to interrogate Larry,
Walter speaks to elder Sellers who is on an iron lung. He wrote many episodes of the 60’s TV
Western series Branded. Walter pays his homage with a few emotional words, and goes on about
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his business. The Coen brothers have subtly placed this image in the movie, and it has rather
The revisionist and modern movements will continue to bring new concepts to Western
films, and the genre will constantly morph. The Stranger provides a very telling line in his final
narrative: “the human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself, down through the generations, westward
the wagons, across the sands a time until—“ Until what, exactly?
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Works Cited
Comer, TA. "" This Aggression Will Not Stand": Myth, War, and Ethics in" The Big
Lebowski." SubStance 34.2 (2005): 98-117. JSTOR Arts and Sciences VII
Maslin, Janet. "A Bowling Ball's-Eye View of Reality." Rev. of The Big Lebowski. The
New York Times 6 Mar. 1998. The New York Times, 6 Mar. 1998. Web. 19 Nov.
2009.
The Big Lebowski. Dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Perf. Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and
Stagecoach. Dir. John Ford. Perf. John Wayne, Claire Trevor. Warner Home Video,
1997. VHS
Williams, Amrys O. ”The Dude Abides: Western Influences in The Big Lebowksi.” 11 Dec. 2001