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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nFor about ten years now, I have watched The Big Lebowski on my birthday. If you have seen the film, you will easily remember one of its first scenes: two thugs have erroneously broken into The Dude\u2019s apartment to shake him down, having mistaken the disheveled \u201closer\u201d for a millionaire who has the same name, Jeffrey Lebowski. As one of the thugs, Woo, \u201cmicturates\u201d on The Dude\u2019s rug, he utters a seemingly Shakespearean line, and I realized this year that I had never before heard it properly: \u201cEver thus to deadbeats, Lebowski.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cdeadbeats\u201d part makes perfect sense: The Dude is seen by nearly everyone in the film as a layabout hippie, a non-contributor. But \u201cever thus?\u201d Hardly the phrase one expects from a hired goon, particularly one whose idea of articulating his displeasure is aggressive urination. A quick investigation reveals that \u201cEver thus to deadbeats\u201d is a paraphrase of \u201cEver thus to tyrants,\u201d or \u201cSic semper tyrannis,\u201d a pronouncement supposed to have been made by Brutus as he helped murder Julius Caesar. The phrase has subsequently been invoked by, among others, Virginia as its state motto, John Wilkes Booth as he assassinated President Lincoln, and Crazy Joe Davola, Jerry\u2019s would-be assailant on Seinfeld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A reference to throwing off tyranny is not at all out of place in The Big Lebowski: the film\u2019s prologue features the first President Bush on television, taking a stand against the tyranny of Saddam Hussein (another character in the Lebowski universe), insisting, \u201cThis will not stand\u2014this unchecked aggression against Kuwait.\u201d The Dude\u2019s best friend, Vietnam War veteran Walter Sobchak, looks for any opportunity to free himself from oppression\u2014perceived or otherwise\u2014even yelling at a grandmotherly waitress who has the nerve to ask him to keep his voice down after he shouts profanity in a quiet coffee shop. Moreover, there\u2019s the tyranny of Woo soiling The Dude\u2019s rug as he does the bidding of Jackie Treehorn, the terror campaign of the nihilists who smash up The Dude\u2019s private residence, and the fascism of the Sheriff of Malibu, who lambasts The Dude both physically and verbally, \u201cstay out of Malibu, Lebowski\u2014stay out of Malibu, deadbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, what is so bizarre about Woo\u2019s Sic semper is that he attacks the tyranny of The Dude\u2019s desire simply to be only after it is clear that they have staked out the wrong Lebowski. Throughout the film, The Dude\u2019s commitment to absolute, peaceful being is contrasted with a zealous drive to achieve: the millionaire Lebowski boasts of his achievements in business, charity, and political connections\u2014just think of his \u201cTime Man of the Year\u201d magazine cover made from a mirror! And because Mr. Lebowski has achieved in spite of a physical disability, he expects The Dude to be even more impressed with his self-serving accolades and, consequently, The Dude should be even more ashamed of his own failure to achieve. Mr. Lebowski berates The Dude\u2019s wardrobe, intelligence, and lifestyle, insisting that his \u201crevolution is over,\u201d and that \u201cThe bums will always lose!\u201d The Dude is deplored not only because he does not serve Mr. Lebowski\u2019s vainglory, but also because he does not buy into the ideology of achievement: he isn\u2019t even employed\u2014the horror!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pursuit of achievement embodied by the millionaire Lebowski is macroscopically represented by the film\u2019s many references to America\u2019s Manifest Destiny. To call The Big Lebowski a Western may seem peculiar, but it self identifies with this genre, one that has in the history of literature and cinema expressly promoted the Manifest Destiny agenda. Narrated by a cowboy known only as The Stranger, the film begins with a desert landscape, a tumbleweed, a song called \u201cTumbling Tumbleweeds,\u201d and the line \u201cA way out West, there was this fella . . . .\u201d With his cowboy hat and drawl, The Stranger is our link to the motifs of the old Westerns, and less-obvious tokens keep us in mind of Manifest Destiny throughout the story, such as little Larry Sellers\u2019 social studies homework on the Louisiana Purchase and Smokey, the film\u2019s only Native American Indian character. The mere accusation of Smokey having stepped over the line into forbidden territory while bowling is enough to send Walter, the Vietnam veteran, into a violent rage during which he points a loaded gun at Smokey\u2019s head and forces him to change a written document under duress. By 1991, when the film takes place, the westward advance of American civilization has long since ended, and Los Angeles is as far west as our Manifest Destiny can take us. \u201cWestward the wagons\u201d and the pioneer work ethic have given way to laziness and decadence. And The Dude is, in the words of The Stranger, \u201cthe man for his time and place\u201d\u2014in this time and place, he is the hero of the Western, the somewhat absurd culmination of America\u2019s Manifest Destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While everything around him works within the paradigm of achievement, The Dude simply wants to \u201cabide.\u201d Understanding what it means to abide has been my way into understanding Woo\u2019s dictum, \u201cever thus to deadbeats.\u201d The word is only uttered three times in the course of the movie: first, by the millionaire Lebowski who swears to The Dude, after handing him a severed digit (ostensibly belonging to the millionaire\u2019s wife), \u201cBy God, sir. I will not abide another toe.\u201d The sense of \u201cabide\u201d here is \u201cto tolerate, endure, or withstand.\u201d Mr. Lebowski, who has concocted this double-cross to frame The Dude for stealing Bunny\u2019s ransom money, insists that he will not abide any further harm to a wife he actually hopes will be murdered by her captors. He feigns exasperation and refuses to endure any further tyranny from the situation he, in fact, controls. His pseudo-achievements and his unwillingness to abide contrast directly with the most significant instance of \u201cabide,\u201d which comes from The Dude himself in his last proper line of the film: \u201cThe Dude abides.\u201d The line is immediately repeated by The Stranger in a direct address to us, the viewers. \u201cAbide\u201d in this context has most readily been interpreted as \u201cto live\u201d and, more specifically, as an encapsulation of The Dude\u2019s Zen desire to just be. While this meaning of \u201cabide\u201d certainly holds, I want to suggest an additional, complementary meaning: \u201cto pay a price; or, to suffer for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Curiously, this is the same usage of \u201cabide\u201d that is found in Julius Caesar. Brutus speaks to the conspirators and witnesses, saying \u201clet no man abide this deed, \/ But we the doers.\u201d The deed is the murder of Caesar\u2014during which, incidentally, Shakespeare does not have Brutus speak the line, \u201cSic semper tyrannis\u201d\u2014and while Brutus means something different, Caesar is the one who has literally abided and, simultaneously not abided, it. He has suffered the consequences of their deed, but he has not survived to continue abiding. Far from this explicit meaning, however, Brutus here intends that no one should suffer the consequences of Caesar\u2019s murder but the conspirators themselves; he has convinced himself that theirs is a just crime and that they are, therefore, safe from judgment. By using the word \u201cabide,\u201d however, he simultaneously curses himself and his co-conspirators, commanding that none should live with this deed, nor suffer it to go unpunished, and the plebeians quickly say as much: \u201cIf it be found so [i.e. that Caesar was not ambitious] some will dear abide it.\u201d Ultimately Mark Antony & Co. do not abide the murder, and Brutus, Cassius, et al. are made to abide their deed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Dude abides.\u201d He is neither ambitious nor tyrannical\u2014he just wants to be. He tolerates the tyranny of those who label him a loser deadbeat bum. And, as The Stranger points out, he suffers on our behalf in an inverted Christ narrative: \u201cThe dude abides . . . I don\u2019t know about you, but I take comfort in that. It\u2019s good knowin\u2019 he\u2019s out there, The Dude, takin\u2019 her easy for all us sinners.\u201d In this version of the Western, the cowboy\u2019s task is laid to rest long before the narrative begins, and he is free to drift with the tumbleweeds, ultimately unharmed by the worries of civilization, be they thugs, nihilists, slow-witted middle-schoolers, phony millionaires, pedophile bowling rivals, price-gouging morticians, or known pornographers. He can absorb and diffuse that which the world rolls his way. On a conquered frontier governed by inertia, where the tyrant is the one who proclaims Sic semper, this long-haired, bearded, sandaled peace lover, abiding our sins, is the one who has transcended the triviality by being ultimately trivial. So, when my next birthday comes, I\u2019ll watch the movie again and abide getting another year older as best I can, knowing that a way out West, The Dude will abide the rest for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"