“The Man for His Time” The Big Lebowski as Carnivalesque Social Critique

Abstract

This essay explores the ability of carnivalesque rhetorical strategies to challenge hegemonic social hierarchies and the social order in general. Working through grotesque realism, the inversion of hierarchies, structural and grammatical experimentation and other tropes, the carnivalesque encourages audiences to achieve a critical distance through laughter and realize the constructed nature of the social world. In analyzing The Big Lebowski as a carnivalesque text, the film's critical stance becomes clear—it proposes an alternative worldview contrary to that which dominated the political and social landscapes of the United States at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991. The film encourages receptive audiences to question both the nature and the values of that social world, as well as their place in it. A “person's place” is thus revealed to be more of a malleable choice than a concrete dictate. However, because carnivalesque texts challenge the status quo (and are often offensive to dominant tastes and values), they tend to meet with denigration and derision. Such was the case with The Big Lebowski. By employing a carnivalesque lens and working against the grain of mainstream value systems, cultural critics can help to rescue such texts from pop culture oblivion (as Lebowski was by its cult-like following) and highlight their potential to help us realize more humane, more egalitarian, and more pacific ways of being and interacting in our communities.

Keywords:

• Bakhtin
• Carnival
• Grotesque Realism
• Rhetorical Analysis
• Rhetorical Inversion
• Social Critique

This article stems from the first author's 2005 master's thesis at San Diego State University, directed by Dr. Renegar. An earlier version was part of the Top Paper panel in the Media Studies Division at the 2006 Western States Communication Association annual conference in Palm Springs, CA. The authors wish to thank Cezar Ornatowski, David Dozier, Jim Query, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Notes

The Coens' body of work tends to focus on the plight and perspective of the common, working-class citizen. This is a major theme common to carnivalesque texts (Bakhtin, 1965/1984). Moreover, in Barton Fink, the semi-autobiographical namesake of the film is a screenwriter who tries to “‘make a difference'” (Coen & Coen, 1991).

Analyzing the efficacy of carnivalesque tactics in social protests, Bruner (2005) suggests that their results differ greatly depending on the setting. Such protest strategies are most effective given such protests operate within a liberal (social) democracy where “checks and balances to state power” (p. 143) exist. These tactics can also be moderately effective when the control mechanisms in an otherwise totalitarian state are temporarily relaxed to allow for limited public protest. Bruner goes on to propose that “carnivalesque protest is simply not possible if the state is so oppressively humorless that it utterly eliminates all public opposition” (p. 149). Finally, within conservative (market) democracies, carnivalesque protests are endured, though they are not very effective given the populace tends to “crave certainty and discourage dissensus” (p. 137).

Yet if spectacular media is common and popularly appreciated, why was TBL so reviled? We suggest that viewers did not find humor in the Coens’ carnivalizations, if they perceived them at all. Nor is it surprising that the pundits of mainstream media condemned a film that challenges the status quo on so many fronts.

One episode involved “poo-diving,” where a member of the Jackass crew donned a diving-mask and snorkel and attempted to skin-dive at a sewage treatment plant.

Hall specifies three different positions from which a text can be decoded: 1) dominant/hegemonic, 2) negotiated, and 3) oppositional. Those who interpret a text from the first position see the text as its creators intended. Those who negotiate the meaning of the text may see some of the carnivalesque tropes as challenging the status quo, but only those that speak to their experience—thus they might see a gross generalization as an accurate portrayal. Those who read TBL and other carnivalesque texts from the oppositional position would not see its hierarchical inversions and its parodies as socially transformative but as representations that reinforce stereotypes and the status quo.

While Dostoevsky's Poetics focuses on Menippean satire rather than carnival per se, we turn to this work given Menippea is a genre that is “profoundly” carnivalesque (Bakhtin, 1963/1984, p. 156). For Stam, Menippean satire is “intimately linked to a carnivalesque vision of the world” (1989, p. 9) and paves the way for the carnivalization of literature in general.

For example, the word “fuck” and its variants are employed 281 times in the film.

However, carnivalesque strategies are not bound solely to the arts or limited to the analysis of academics. See Harold's work on pranking rhetoric (2004), Bruner's analysis of carnivalesque protests (2005), Oring's discussion of humor as an organizational tool (2003), and Stam's carnivalized election-campaign strategies (1989) for examples. Moreover, the introduction of relatively inexpensive digital media production and the abundance of Internet forums allows laypeople to produce and distribute their own carnivalesque media.

This manuscript was accepted by the previous editor, Professor Jim L. Query.