-
Pacifism as Ideological Complicity in The Big Lebowski
- Author(s):
- Todd Comer (see profile)
- Date:
- 2007
- Group(s):
- Film Studies
- Subject(s):
- Motion pictures, Culture--Study and teaching, War, Myth, Narration (Rhetoric)
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- The Big Lebowski, pacificism, Film, Cultural studies, War and conflict, Narrative
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/vsy7-my32
- Abstract:
- Abstract: Insofar as Walter identifies with this myth, his rational imperative is profoundly interrupted. However, this representational interruption also operates on a larger level. Since the film opens and closes with the western actor Sam Elliott (The Stranger) and is shot through with western stylistic motifs, it can be seen as striving toward a traditional western narrative (that is represented microcosmically by the Branded narrative). The film narrative fails because the "original" poet of the western myth, Sellers, lies gasping in an iron lung, incapable of speaking and making his narrative cohere. The Big Lebowski is postmodern in the sense that it represents not only the death and finitude of the "writer" of the filmic narrative, but also the interruption that results. This interruption explains the "impurities" of the Lebowski "narrative:" the intrusion of the pornographic and detective genres for instance in an (allegedly) western narrative. Lebowski can then be understood as an interrupted "narrative" that attests to the impossibility of absolute non-relation: the rational subject can never exercise complete control over difference.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 2 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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