“The Man for His Time”The Big Lebowskias 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.

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