The Visual Argument of The Big Lebowski Cole Fennimore College

One of the 650 film deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry is The Big Lebowski, a film described whose summary is “’The Dude’ Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it” (IMDB). The Big Lebowski follows this upon the surface, but there is a much deeper purpose. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen have stated the inspiration for the film were Raymond Chandler’s noir crime writings and wanted to put The Dude in “the most impossible of situations” as “the person who seemed least equipped to deal with it.” The Coen brothers manipulate the crime genre with The Big Lebowski to evaluate the nature of easily definable characters and expand on these characters true selves through credibility and empathy created in certain scenes.

Introductory scenes for both the Dude and Mr. Lebowski focus on the assessment given to their characters by society before the audience gets to determine how they truly behave. The introduction to The Dude comes in a typical grocery dairy section. The camera moves along the dairy section before The Dude comes on screen and the cameras continued movement...