Althouse: "Jesus was into the whole brevity thing, and the aloof rhetoric he used to deflate the invective and indignant finger-pointing of his enemies bears close resemblance..."

April 28, 2018

"Jesus was into the whole brevity thing, and the aloof rhetoric he used to deflate the invective and indignant finger-pointing of his enemies bears close resemblance..."

"... to the ways in which The Dude [in The Big Lebowski] shows his default distrust and dislike for authority. When Jesus faced the authorities of his time and place, whether they were religious rulers, political leaders, or civil officials, he refused, even when it cost him, to show deference. Earthly hierarchies held no value in the philosophical system or moral practice of Jesus. The Dude, at no point, humbles himself at the feet of millionaires, law enforcement, or known pornographers. One of the messages of the Gospel is that respect and reverence are qualities given to a person, regardless of that person’s level of income and social status, only after that person has proven herself worthy. Jesus told his followers that what a person puts inside of his mouth does not make him clean or unclean, but only the words that person allows to leave his mouth. He also cherished the gift of one bit from a severely impoverished woman more than a large donation from a boastful tycoon. Jesus asked those around him to look past status and peer into the soul. The Dude, sitting across the table from the Big Lebowski or the Sheriff of Malibu, knows that these men, despite their wealth or legal authority, are vast reservoirs of emptiness. Their treasure chests are hollow, and their shiny suits of gold exist only to conceal the hideous deformities of their character. The Big Lebowski, surrounded by the accoutrements of wealth and walls that adorn photographic tributes to his own vanity, lectures The Dude about his lifestyle, calls him a bum, and boasts about his achievements. The Dude puts on his sunglasses, and says 'fuck it' before walking away. Later in the movie, we find him in another office receiving another cumbersome reprimand. On the opposite side of the desk is the Sheriff of Malibu whose moral compass is so far off that he praises Jackie Treehorn – a known pornographer and extortionist – because 'he draws a lot of water in this town' and insults The Dude, because he 'doesn’t draw shit.' After unleashing his tirade, he asks The Dude if he understands that he is not to return to Malibu. The Dude looks him in the eye and says with deadpan delivery, 'I’m sorry I wasn’t listening.'"

From "Takin' It Easy for Us Sinners: The Dude and Jesus Christ" by David Masciotra.

Meade and I watched "The Big Lebowski" a few days ago, and the first thing Meade said this morning was "The Dude is Jesus."

52 comments:

Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/28/18, 10:33 AM
Ann Althouse said...: There is another character in the movie who is actually named Jesus, so when you have your Dude-is-Jesus conversation, you must remember to deal with this evidence. That Jesus, played by John Turturro, is named Jesus Quintano.

Per Turturro:

-----------------

"When I got the script, I was kind of disappointed,” he said about the role. “I was like, ‘There’s nothing here!’ So then I thought, ‘I better make something up because they’re all talking about him!'”

The Coen Brothers allowed Turturro to make the character completely his own, and a lot of Jesus’ trademark behavior ended up being the actor’s own ideas as a result. The backwards dancing and the many sexualized encounters with bowling balls were all the actor’s inclinations for the character. He was even allowed to come up with Jesus’ purple-clad bowling outfit.

“The first time they showed [my scenes] to me, I was really embarrassed,” he said. “I didn’t even get the movie when it came out. When I saw it, I thought [Jeff Bridges] was great, but it went over my head.”; 4/28/18, 10:35 AM
Mid-Life Lawyer said...: Good catch!; 4/28/18, 10:36 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Turturro is currently making a movie in which he plays the same character: "It’s not a spinoff of ‘The Big Lebowski,'” said Turturro. “It’s much more sexual. You find out that he was framed [as a pedophile].”; 4/28/18, 10:36 AM
Ann Althouse said...: The passage quoted in the post uses the same Biblical reference I had on this blog 2 days ago.; 4/28/18, 10:38 AM
robother said...: What is it about that Family and out-of-wedlock birth?; 4/28/18, 10:39 AM
Unknown said...: Jesus never showed disrespect, either.; 4/28/18, 10:40 AM
Earnest Prole said...: Jesus Quintana, that is.; 4/28/18, 10:42 AM
Paul Zrimsek said...: "The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that the Dude abideth for ever." --John 12:34; 4/28/18, 10:42 AM
William said...: In the movie. "A Serious Man", there are plenty of parallels to Job. I never caught any references to Jesus in The Big Liebowski. I haven't seen the movie in quite a while, but I don't remember the Dude existing on a higher moral or spiritual plane than the other characters. In fact, his resistance to such callings was his superpower.......If the Dude character is Jesus, does that make John Goodman Peter.; 4/28/18, 10:52 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Another theory we'd work on if we rewatched the movie again is that the John Goodman character (Walter) is the main character.; 4/28/18, 10:54 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I'd like to see a nice numbered list of the evidence that the Dude is Jesus (without having to do it myself), but:

1. Wears robe and sandals, has long hair and beard

2. His story begins with baptism (in toilet)

3....

I'd also make a list of the evident that he is not Jesus:

1. There's another character who is actually named Jesus

2. His very first motivation is an exaggerated interest in a material thing — the rug that really ties the room together. This suggests another theory that I'd like to work on if I rewatch the movie: Furniture and other things that need tying together in a room (and all related symbolism).; 4/28/18, 10:58 AM
Earnest Prole said...: If you do watch it again, consider reconsidering your assessment of Julianne Moore's nude entrance. To me it seems less sexual and more a bold and disorienting contrast with the broken-down male characters in the film.; 4/28/18, 11:07 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "If you do watch it again, consider reconsidering your assessment of Julianne Moore's nude entrance. To me it seems less sexual and more a bold and disorienting contrast with the broken-down male characters in the film."

You're assuming I said something that I don't recognize. I think what I said was that the actress was enticed or forced into doing something that was degrading for her.

That says nothing about the character she played, who was given a lot of power, influence, and talent. She was totally imperious and in control.

But if you say to an actress, you will play a very strong and powerful woman who lords it over all the men, and then you add, but you'll need to be naked and strung up to the ceiling and zoomed across the screen in that apparatus, well... that's a sexist game in my book.; 4/28/18, 11:22 AM
Ann Althouse said...: When I saw that movie for the first time, that scene — Maude's naked entrance — was very disturbing to me. I felt excluded from the boy's club the audience seemed to be made from. It really very close to ruined the movie for me. Maybe the filmmakers thought they were making a powerful woman character and this would make women in the audience feel empowered. That emphatically did not happen for me. It was: Here's where they entertain the men and I'm supposed to grit my teeth and bear it. This is what pop culture is like, over and over, and here it is again. The fact that the character proceeded to speak in a haughty, imperious way did not make me feel energized about femaleness in any way. I felt it was more of the same: sex for the boys. I can get a different perspective on it now, but I'm just telling you how it hit me.; 4/28/18, 11:28 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Compare:

""But this time, it was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or another.... I had to say yes.... I arrived on the set the day we were to shoot the scene that I believed would save the movie. And for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears. Since those around me had no knowledge of my history of Harvey, they were very surprised by my struggle that morning. It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein. But I could not tell them then. My mind understood that I had to do it, but my body wouldn’t stop crying and convulsing. At that point, I started throwing up while a set frozen still waited to shoot. I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse. As you can imagine, this was not sexy, but it was the only way I could get through the scene.""; 4/28/18, 11:31 AM
dustbunny said...: TBL, as all fans endlessly insist, gets increasingly interesting and amusing with repeated viewings. And as I said in another post, Moore is known for taking her clothes off. I think she sees it as a power play rather than simply entertainment for the boys.; 4/28/18, 11:41 AM
Heartless Aztec said...: The Jesus abides...; 4/28/18, 12:07 PM
Mary Beth said...: Takin' It Easy? Is that an Eagles reference in the title?

Man, come on I had a rough night, and I hate the fucking Eagles, man.; 4/28/18, 12:08 PM
hombre said...: Julianne Moore is a Hollywood softcore porn queen who is naked or nearly so in virtually all of her movies. What’s the big deal?; 4/28/18, 12:14 PM
Scott said...: The authors of the Gospels were not contemporaries of Jesus -- they didn't know Him personally. They merely collected and transcribed stories from oral traditions; and almost none of these accounts of His life match.

Given that sketchy provenance, it's garbage rhetoric to assert what Jesus was "into" by reading the Gospels.; 4/28/18, 12:22 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Althouse wrote: "This is what pop culture is like, over and over, and here it is again."

Most pop culture today depicts men as hopeless doofuses that need to be cared for & guided by smarter, more ambitious, better behaved women. It's silly to take pop culture seriously.
A few months ago I watched the premier of a time travel series on television. The premise was that a history professor was leading a team of grad students into the past to fix things.
The premier episode opened with the female history prof lecturing to her class that the Vietnam War was the result of LBJ swinging his penis around and wanting to show his dominant position in the world. I changed the channel. You can do that.
The notion that men need to lead lives as they are imagined by women is as ridiculous as the notion that women need to live lives as they are imagined by men.
TBL is just a movie, for God's sake.; 4/28/18, 12:47 PM
William said...: When a beautiful woman takes off her clothes, it doesn't necessarily reveal her vulnerability but rather her strength. In some ways, It's like asking Arnold to flex his biceps.......I can see why some women would object to being objectified, but other women might have a more regal attitude to their nudity. Look upon my perfection and despair.; 4/28/18, 12:52 PM
rhhardin said...: I rewatched it; less attracted to the dude than Walter, the guy who gets probabilities wrong.; 4/28/18, 12:52 PM
rhhardin said...: There were more tits than I remembered. I didn't remember any.

None of the women looked vulnerable, just part of the scene.; 4/28/18, 12:53 PM
rhhardin said...: I rewatched The Thomas Crown Affair last night and that had tits in it too that I didn't remember and will probably soon forget again.

Tits just show up as part of the marketing probably. No plot connection, not remembered.; 4/28/18, 1:00 PM
rhhardin said...: I have a theory that the trauma women experience is entirely due to the narrative that they ought to experience trauma.

If the narrative were to take the position that women are at least partly responsible for everything that happens to them, the trauma would disappear. They're in control, they can avoid it if they want, whatever it is.

Essentially rape is just a mugging. Not nothing but not more.; 4/28/18, 1:03 PM
rhhardin said...: I felt excluded from the boy's club the audience seemed to be made from. It really very close to ruined the movie for me.

The boys aren't interested either.; 4/28/18, 1:05 PM
rhhardin said...: The interest in tits is love for the character the actress plays or played in one flick or another, taken to the next level that you want to see that character naked.

The actress herself is of no interest naked without that. It's just second-rate porn. The actress herself, if you stumble on it somehow, is a moron.

Correspondingly, it's not much of meaning in going nude, if you're an actress. To the extent it's interesting, it's the character going nude, not you. To the extent it's you, it's not interesting.; 4/28/18, 1:10 PM
Roughcoat said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/28/18, 1:13 PM
rhhardin said...: The cleanest example of meaningless tits is the strip bar scene in movies going for an R rating, that has no plot connection at all. Nobody says boy did you see that strip bar scene. It's forgotten and not rewatched.

Just more tits from the world's vast supply of tits.; 4/28/18, 1:13 PM
rhhardin said...: If you want a Jesus connection, somewhere thinking the best of people rather than the worst has to turn up, which I don't think the dude was into. He was into laid back.; 4/28/18, 1:14 PM
Roughcoat said...: Christ was respectful of lawful authority, even Roman authority. Consider his encounter with the Roman centurian (Matthew 8:9). They spoke to each other man to man, without animosity or challenge, and were in fact quite cordial, almost friendly, to each other. This is one of the most beautiful and theologically profound passages in the Bible. Not only because it shows by example (Christ's favorite teaching method) how his followers should relate to legitimate (i.e., lawful) authority, but how they should relate to people "other" than themselves, including, especially, gentiles. In doing so he showed that his message was universal not particular to the Jews. And, what is more, he showed by not disdaining it, that the centurion's profession, i.e. that of a soldier, was also legitimate. Accordingly, the centurion's beloved but grievously ill servant, on whose behalf the Roman had sought out Jesus, was healed.

I love TBL, thought it hilarious when I first saw it and think it hilarious still, but ... the Dude is neither Christ nor Christ figure: he doesn't respect authority and he doesn't sacrifice himself for anyone's good, much less the good of all mankind. He's a slacker, only concerned with himself and with getting by. A nice guy, certainly, and harmless: but not Christ.; 4/28/18, 1:16 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The over riding message that I get from the NT is "You are the beloved child of your heavenly father and you act like it."; 4/28/18, 1:23 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: ". . . should act like it."; 4/28/18, 1:25 PM
rhhardin said...: I didn't get the impression that Jesus was into God that much. He used God as a figure of speech.; 4/28/18, 1:31 PM
tcrosse said...: Jesus wept.; 4/28/18, 1:49 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Matthew 22:37-
"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
How do you love a figure of speech? Why should you love a figure of speech?; 4/28/18, 1:51 PM
rhhardin said...: God is merciful = be merciful like Him.

Love God = be like God.

All the properties of God are commandments. Be like.; 4/28/18, 2:02 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Be like a figure of speech? How? People aren't figures of speech, they are persons. Persons are beings with reason, emotion, and will.
The key idea of monotheistic religion is how human beings can relate to a person who created the universe, exists outside of time, and is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all make that relationship a matter of words. The laws of the OT and the Koran, and in Christianity, Christ the living word.; 4/28/18, 2:16 PM
Howard said...: It simpler rh. god = good, be good; 4/28/18, 2:39 PM
Howard said...: d'evil=bad, don't be evil; 4/28/18, 2:41 PM
mccullough said...: Juliane Moore’s character, Maude, was a counterpoint to pornographer Jackie Treehorn. Both are fake powerful and both are terrible artists.

She also took advantage of the Dude, fucking him when he was exhausted from the after effects of the drug Treehorn gave him and his encounter with the Malibu sheriff.

Maude is as manipulative and selfish and exploitative as Treehorn. They are the antagonists in the film. The Big Lewbowski, like his fat, loud-mouthed counterpart Walter, are sideshows. Distractions to the Dude. Just as the Big Lebowski was fake rich (it was his deceased wife’s money he lived on), Walter was a fake Vietnam bet. He never fought in Vietnam, as the Dude pointed out, and was not Hewish, as the Dude pointed out. Both Walter and the Big Lebowski has the same idea, give a fake suitcase to the fake kidnsppers and keep the money. Walter is the one who thinks The Big Lebowski is faking that he is a cripple. The only genuine thing about the Big Lebowski is he was a cripple.

Bunny and Donnie are the innocents in the movie. Bonnie was presumed dead and Donny actually died.

It’s an incredibly bleak movie. Set against the start of the Iraq War and bookended by the western motif of the tumbleweed and cowboy.

The Dude is a decent guy but he is not a strong enough person. He is a weaker version of Philip Marlowe or the old cowboy. But he’s the best that Los Angeles has. The movie is about LA. It is the main character just like it is the main character in Chinatown.; 4/28/18, 4:37 PM
The Godfather said...: I haven't seen The Big Lebowski (maybe I should), but I have read the New Testament. I don't know if the Dude abides, but I sure know that after 2,000 years Christ abides. No one should allow smart-assery to keep him or her from getting to know him.; 4/28/18, 4:41 PM
Earnest Prole said...: Gratuitous tits have been a staple of popular film for forty years, so I agree their deployment requires strict scrutiny rather than the rational basis test.; 4/28/18, 5:05 PM
Bilwick said...: Finally: a religion that makes sense and doesn't ask me to believe a lot of buncombe and bosh.; 4/28/18, 5:32 PM
Earnest Prole said...: Your reaction to seeing Julianne Moore nude in The Big Lebowski mirrors perfectly Roger Ebert’s reaction to seeing Isabella Rossellini nude in Blue Velvet, documented in this short clip with Gene Siskel. It’s a serious philosophical debate laid out in 90 seconds.; 4/28/18, 8:19 PM
Earnest Prole said...: If you watch the film again, note how the unpleasant emotional impact of the painting scene is intensified by the jarring, disjointed underscoring.; 4/28/18, 8:39 PM
Earnest Prole said...: In other words I think the scene plays unpleasant, not titillating, to men as well as women.; 4/28/18, 9:18 PM
Zach said...: Counterpoint: The Dude is Phillip Marlowe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u0uo0TxS-I

(Warning: tits!)

But where Roger Altman and Elliot Gould play Marlowe as a 1940s suit-wearing private eye out of place in the hippie 60s, the Coens and Jeff Bridges play him as a 1960s hippie in the straightlaced 90s. Everybody else is caught up in a detective story and he just wants to drink White Russians and go bowling.; 4/28/18, 9:40 PM
Sydney said...: Bishop Robert Barron thinks the dude is Jesus, too. But he posits that Walter is a Pharisee.; 4/28/18, 10:45 PM
Bilwick said...: Roughcoat: The impression I get from the Gospels is that Jesus was fairly intelligent. It's hard for me to believe, then, that he considered the Romans "lawful" authority merely because their superior military power had enabled them to conquer his homeland. If so he believed in a Might Makes Right ethic, making him both evil and stupid.; 4/29/18, 12:03 AM